Super Mario Bros. 3 is an all-time classic, and particularly impressive when you consider the technology it relied upon. The 16-bit SEGA Genesis was right around the corner in Japan by the time the Famicom version launched in Japan, for example, yet Nintendo delivered what was a huge step up for its flagship series.
The overworld map added to its perceived scale, but the nature of memory management back in the day meant that Nintendo will have been using all sorts of coding tricks to squeeze all of the game's overworld locations, stages and minigames onto a humble cartridge. Now, with eager enthusiasts and ROMs at our disposal, these workarounds and coding are often deconstructed.
A recent example is from @BoundaryBreak, which shows that if you break the path boundaries in world one you can trigger the optional Mario Bros. stage; if you 'win' the stage your character switches to Luigi.
https://twitter.com/BoundaryBreak/status/1470065908949438469
As many have pointed out in the Twitter thread the minigame isn't new, but its map location certainly is something different. It seems to be another example of how boundaries and coding in games like this can wrap around and lead to surprising skips and changes in progression.
It's never too late to discover new things in Super Mario Bros. 3, it seems.
Comments 23
I've played around with the out of bounds Game Genie code a lot before, and different map tiles can access very unusual "levels".
Some will try to load in the map screen itself like a playable level, with some very strange tile collision behaviour.
The engineering behind SMB3 as an NES game is phenomenal though, and it's a joy to poke at the inner-workings of that game with things like cheat codes and memory editing shenanigans.
Wow. That is incredible. I never knew that! Thank you for sharing! Can’t wait to show people this!
The true reward is playing as Luigi
I love that we are able to discover new things in generations old games. Makes them still feel magical after hundreds of playthroughs ❤
At least Luigi is REAL!
I've been playing this game since 1990 and never knew about this! I can't wait to try it.
@icomma Yeah I'm thinking a few people skimmed/didn't read and looked at the video and now are going to go try it. As a great man named Nelson once said, ha-ha!
I don't think the Mario bros stage is stored there but rather the unused second player. Otherwise I don't think Luigi would have loaded there. Someone try it in multiplayer and see if it still loads the Mario bros stage there! If not then my hunch should be correct.
If it CAN'T be done on the original Hardware, with original Software, it isn't something to be fawned over.
This is old news lol, we use to do this as kids.
@Spider-Kev It sounds like you're just having a bad day, so by all means get it out of your system, but this technically can be done on the original hardware and software using a Game Genie (which for the born-yesterday folks was a contemporary piece of 80's tech that wedged in as an interposer between NES and cartridge and merely twiddled the signals between the two), so... fawn away?
@Fath:
Game Genie is not original Hardware. It is an exploitation device.
No, I'm not having a bad day.
All you have to do is go back to the L or M circle on the space the other player is to activate the Mario Bros minigame normally...
@Fath as Spider said, this is not original hardware. Game Genie is a non licensed hack device that manipulates a games hex code. The game cant do this on its own.
I always wonder, does Shesez ACTUALLY find new stuff or does he just assume it's never been discovered before?
Either way, pretty neat to see!
@Gwynbleidd Still my favorite of the 8-bit/16-bit Mario games, with World being close behind.
I'll have to go try this....I'll be back and yes I'm going to try on original hardware the nes...
And nope it don't work it's not a new glitch.he modded it as you can see he is playing it on a computer
man, some people drop in just to bring everyone down, eh?
a counterpoint: feel free to think this is cool. 😎
Poking around in old games is great fun, used to do it in Mario World back in the day with the Action Replay. One of the best codes I found changed Mario's physics so he died in the title screen, you could then take over, playing the title screen level, which is slightly different to the Special Zone "Groovy" level it appears to use.
One of the best games of all time, no question!
@Spider-Kev There is no need to behave like a gatekeeping jerk. These sorts of exploits are interesting because, as stated in the article, they reveal the creative programming used to get the most out of the hardware. If that doesn't interest you, that's totally valid and fine, but you don't speak for the community.
And really, maybe don't be so invested in what other people find interesting. Just move on with your day instead of trying to build yourself up by dumping on other people's fun.
It would be nice if I can use this trick to go out of bounds with the pandemic, or my life right now
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