suppermariobroth – Set Side B

The Official Backstory of Punch Ball Mario Bros.

rodneylives — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 15:00:00 +0000

Back when Nintendo was a little freer about licensing their games and characters out to other companies, Hudson Soft released for Japanese home computers a strange variation of Mario Bros. (different from their strange variation of Super Mario Bros.), called Punch Ball Mario Bros. It’s pretty strange.

An example of its strangeness, recently pointed out on Bluesky by Mario obscurities blog Supper Mario Broth, and boosted by Ars Technica’s Kyle Orland. It turns a simple scenario in which two plumbers try to clear pests out of a sewer into the story of humankind’s rise as a tool-using species. Image from Supper Mario Broth and text pasted from the Mario Wiki. Check this out!

いつの頃だろうか、人類が道具を持つようになったのは……。初めは動物
の骨、石のかけらを利用した単純なものであった。人類は英知をふるい、道具を改良していった。それが、火を使い、風を利用し、そして今では原子力をも駆使し、高度な文明を築き始めたのである。　だが、ある一方ではまだ石を利用しているだけの人々もいるのである。彼らはどのようにして獲物をとり、外敵から身を守るのであろうか。彼らは強力なジャンプ力と石の玉を持っているだけである。それをうまく利用し、彼らの身を守って欲しい。　ここに、そういった人々のうちの２人を紹介しよう。そう、彼らの名前はマリオとルイージ。彼らが高度な文明を身につけるのはいつになるのだろうか。
At some point, humans gained the ability to use tools… At first, they were simple things using the bones of animals and fragments of rock. Using their wisdom, humans improved their tools. Harnessing fire, wind, and nowadays even atomic energy, they began to build up a sophisticated culture.
On the other hand, however, there are people who still only use stone. How do they catch game and defend themselves from outsiders? Using only their strong jumping power and stone spheres. They use those skillfully to defend themselves.
Here, we introduce two such people. It seems their names are Mario and Luigi. Will they ever learn about sophisticated culture?

Will Mario and Luigi ever learn about sophisticated culture, or are they the same as the lowly, technology-hating hedgehog, bandicoot, and bone-headed caveman? Time will tell.

rodneylives

Super Mario All-Stars Random Debug Mode

rodneylives — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 15:00:00 +0000

We are told by The Cutting Room Floor this interesting fact. Super Mario Bros. 3 has a debug mode that activates when a specific memory location contains 80 hex, that allows the user to grant Mario any powerup. In normal play this never activates because the cartridge initializes all of RAM to 0 as part of initialization. But the version of the game included in SNES Super Mario All-Stars, while it closely follows the original’s logic in many ways including including debug mode and its criteria for activation, doesn’t initialize memory when starting up. When the console boots up, its RAM contains random voltages that can be interpreted as nearly any value, and there’s a chance that there’ll be 80 hex in memory location 7E0160, and enable the debug mode for Super Mario Bros. 3.

While ordinarily this would be a 1-in-256 chance, some consoles are prone to favoring specific values, so some units will turn on debug mode more often. As a result a legend developed that certain Super Mario All-Star cartridges are special debug versions that accidentally got put into retail boxes and sold.

Supper Mario Broth made a short video (about 1 1/2 minutes) explaining how it works in crudely animated form:

As it turns out, Mario All-Stars has its own debug modes for each game in the compilation, but the one for Mario 3 is different, and buggier. Meanwhile the original debug mode for Mario 3 remains, intact, buried in the code, waiting for the value 80 hex to appear in its magic location to unveil itself.

rodneylives

Sundry Sunday: Supper Mario Broth’s Mario Compilation Video

rodneylives — Sun, 27 Oct 2024 14:00:00 +0000

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

The maintainer of awesome Mario obscurity site Supper Mario Broth has had a hard time of things lately. Their mother died and send them into a spiral of emotional and economic uncertainty, which the community helped out by generously contributing to their Patreon.

As part of their thanks, they posted a Youtube video to answer the question, “What is Supper Mario Broth?” and it’s, well…

It’s great! And very, deeply weird! And it’s only 2 1/2 minutes long! Every image comes from some point in Supper Mario Broth’s rich and aromatic history, and it’s a masterpiece of meme imagery. It’s here:

Every rapid-fire clip in the video is worthy of pausing on and zooming into. It’s incredibly dense! Please enjoy, perhaps with the benefit of the mind-altering substance of your choice. And here’s only a few images from the video:

rodneylives

From Supper Mario Broth: Luigi Concept Art & Mario Strikers Banners

rodneylives — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 14:00:00 +0000

From the “Small Findings” sub-blog of Mario obscurities site Supper Mario Broth comes this collection of concept art for Luigi, from last year’s Super Mario Bros. Movie. Here is the original post.

Here’s another image, from the main Supper Mario Broth site. Several spinoff Mario titles have promotional images for fake Mario universe companies used as background art elements. Most of the time these are used in the Mario Kart games. There were a few made for the original Mario Strikers, that went unused in the final game. This one appears to be for some kind of Bowser Support Hotline. Original post.

rodneylives

Scrapped Playable Peach in Super Mario 64 DS

rodneylives — Sat, 17 Jun 2023 14:00:00 +0000

Wonderful Mario obscurity blog Supper Mario Broth recently posted about evidence found in the cart for a playable Princess Peach in the Mario 64 remake for the Nintendo DS. Incomplete, slightly broken animations for Peach were found in the game’s data.

The original post shows the animations in motion, which includes some glitchy movement in her right arm. Maybe she was meant to hold something in it?

rodneylives

News 6/26/22: Path of the N64 Controller Minecart

rodneylives — Sun, 26 Jun 2022 22:00:00 +0000

“We scour the Earth web for indie, retro, and niche gaming news so you don’t have to, drebnar!” – your faithful reporter

Graham Smith of Rock Paper Shotgun lets us know that the team who made AM2R, which infamously Nintendo sent a cease-and-desist, are working on a new game that’s a Metroidvania, but has nothing to do with Metroid, called Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus. It’s awful that Nintendo did that, and it’s great that they didn’t let the experience sour them!

Over at wccftech, Aernout van de Velde writes of an N64 emulator plug-in that supports many advanced graphics features, such as ray tracing and 60 fps output! Ocarina of Time ran natively at just 20 fps, seeing it at 60 is like opening your eyes opened for the first time. Here’s the announcement tweet, with embedded demonstration video:

I'd like to reveal that RT64, the path tracer behind sm64rt, is evolving into an N64 emulator plugin.

Here's a small reel of footage I've captured from games that are already showing results.

Ray traced lighting, object motion blur, widescreen, DLSS and 60+ FPS. pic.twitter.com/qLJHzGfKUc
— Darío (@dariosamo) June 3, 2022

At Ars Technica, Sam Machkovech reviews Sonic Origins, and notes a discomfiting thing about it: it costs $40 for many fewer games than a standard Genesis rom collection, yet on top of that also locks features and music behind DLC charges. Boo!

Matt Purslow of IGN tells us that Microsoft is confirming shortages of Xbox controllers. I’m sure some people are already trying to figure out ways to blame this on Joe Biden.

Ollie Reynolds writing on Nintendo Life relates an interesting discovery about Super Mario RPG back on the SNES: during its minecart section, if you don’t touch the controls at all, the game will play itself, and complete it for you. They found the news from the Twitter feed of splendid Mario arcana site Supper Mario Broth!

rodneylives