Super Mario Bros: The Great Mission To Rescue Princess Peach! has been given the 4K treatment and is now available to watch online.
The anime, originally released in 1986 after the success of Super Mario Bros. on the NES, has been available to watch online for quite a while, but this marks the first time the movie has received a significant bump in visual quality to 4K. Boosts to the resolution, colour correction, and brand new subtitles have all been added to make the experience even more weird and wonderful than ever before. You can download the full movie over on Internet Archive.
Femboy Films, the team behind the restoration, has managed to complete the project thanks to obtaining a “16mm reduction print likely used for small, local screenings back in the day”, which the team believe to be “one of the, if not the only surviving print in the world.”
This is a remarkable effort to preserving one of Nintendo's most unique adaptations; a movie that the company would no doubt rather see buried in the depths of history thanks to its bizarre take on the world of Mario. When it comes to the fans, however, there's seemingly just no stopping them.
What do you make of the new 4K restoration to one of Nintendo's most bizarre adaptations? Let us know!
[source polygon.com, via engadget.com]
Comments 30
Leapin lasagna.. Gimme the Super Show over this anyday
Neat! Thought I'd download a copy for the archives, then saw the 4K video is over 55GB in size....
Wonder how long this will be up before Nintendo gets it taken down?
Why is Luigi's mustache similair to Mario's?
There's 1080p H264 for 357MB and 2160P HEVC for 355MB
Wow. I'm completely outdated when it comes to modern video compression algorithms.
I suppose HEVC is still somewhat bleeding edge and few players support it outside of VLC?
@denpanosekai thinking I might use Handbrake and convert it. Are those sizes you've quoted from using a YoutTube ripper?
I watched the restoration as it premiered, and it's certainly an interesting piece to behold.
A few things that featured in the film would emerge as ideas in the later games though, like sailing on an airship through the sky, or swinging Bowser by the tail.
Other parts like there being a neighbouring flower kingdom, or giant Cheep Cheeps that explode into dozens of smaller Cheep Cheeps, or Luigi being blue and yellow, not so much.
@denpanosekai
HEVC is also known as H265, and the actual full encodes are 21.6GB for 1080p and 52.7G for 2160p.
The 355MB files you're looking at are actually just 480p encodes used for playback on the archive.org website.
As for HEVC as a technology, it's the successor to H264 and newer devices support hardware decoding for it, they have done for many years now.
It achieves the same image quality and fidelity as H264 but in a lower filesize, but the encoding time is much longer.
Being able to play HEVC is not as much of a software issue as it is a device issue. There's also just that the default media player on Windows is junk and should be ignored.
@sikthvash
Most viewers will probably be happy to just download the YouTube encodes using something like yt-dlp. You'll need to make sure you set it up to extract and preferably embed the subtitles.
The 52GB 2160p upload on archive.org with FLAC encoding is for archival purposes, it preserves as much of the grain and detail (after the post-processing to remove defects and stablise footage) as possible.
Don't know how large the 4K YouTube file is.
@sikthvash just the filesizes on the internet archive download folder
@RupeeClock really 640p? I was happily downloading the "2160p" file thinking I could replace my old ass youtube rip.
@TommyTendo this isnt Luigi, its Green Mario
@denpanosekai
That was supposed to be 480p sorry.
Again though, the version that plays within the web browser is a 480p encoded MP4 file despite the filename.
The actual 1080p or 2160p file you want is the Matroska (MKV) file, which is an increasingly popular video container file format.
https://archive.org/download/mario-anime-movie-4k-restoration
I came to this article to learn more about the Mario anime.
Yet, I am now leaving with the detailed knowledge of different video file compression formats.
Apparently, 16mm film scanned in 4K provides little improvement over a 1080p presentation of a 16mm film.
This can be seen with 4K versions of films shot in 16mm like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Evil Dead having little obvious improvement in comparison to their 1080p versions.
That said, this looks amazing and this is one of the best 4K remasters for a 16mm film I have ever seen.
I love this remaster even more than the official 4K restoration of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
I really wish this could be released officially on physical media. Maybe Discotek or GKIDS can just author discs based on Femboy Films' restoration after securing the rights.
I was skeptical going in (presuming that it would be some AI upscaled crap), but wow! Even on my tablet (and YouTube’s heavy compression), it looks fantastic, and that kind of filmic authenticity cannot be faked.
I hope to get around to downloading and watching the 4K version in due course.
And I can’t see how the upcoming western Mario movie could possibly top this. I absolutely love traditional hand-drawn (and coloured) animation, and whatever little I’ve seen of this is filled to the brim with charm, even if the character designs are a little more... grotesque (for wanting of a better term) than what we’re used to.
@Hydra_Spectre
For all we know, this might've actually been done by Discotek staff in the absence of being able to do any licensed distribution, given that Nintendo likely wouldn't do anything with this historic material due to it conflicting with the modern brand image.
That's just speculation though. Discotek are clearly passionate about preservation and remastering of classic animations.
@Silly_G
That's the beauty of having access to a 16mm film reel and being able to scan it.
The film reel acquired by Carnivol in 2016 and subsequently scanned apparently set them back about $20,000!
Femboy Films describe their restoration process on the Archive.org entry itself.
I'm really hoping that Nintendo don't issue a takedown of this material, I've downloaded it to be safe.
@RupeeClock : I would have absolutely loved a proper restoration of Sailor Moon. I’m nevertheless glad to finally own the entire series with subs, and on Blu-ray no less, but the fact that they’ve been DNR’ed to hell is such a travesty. Ironically, the Italian SD masters are far closer with respect to the integrity of the source material.
And on the same note, I would love to see The Simpsons’ golden seasons get a proper rescan/restoration, in particular the first few seasons as their masters are extremely dated, and I can only imagine how absolutely phenomenal they would look in the right hands (the series had fully transitioned to digital from the fourteenth production season, though they experimented with the series’ first full-length digital episode back in season 7 with Radioactive Man and in season 12 with Tennis the Menace).
The current stretched/cropped/DNR’ed abominations are an absolute disgrace, and I’m flabbergasted that anybody anywhere ever saw fit to give such an exhaustive project the go-ahead (that’s over 400 episodes that they’ve butchered!), all because a few schmucks are terrified of their screens not being filled.
King of the Hill’s early seasons were also “shot on film”, but sadly, I doubt that will ever get the restorative love that it deserves. But I am cautiously optimistic that a pop culture titan like The Simpsons will eventually have its day.
@Silly_G
I heard about the Sailor Moon situation recently, that the best available version is based on a properly done AI upscaling of the Italian SD masters and re-dubbed from other sources.
It's surreal to think about that fans have to take these measures to restore beloved content, in the absence of companies doing it properly from film reels that they possibly sadly no longer have, for one reason or another.
The more recent Funimation releases of Dragon Ball Z have also been handled disastrously with awful DNR and sometimes cropping.
Not bad. If Luigi was the right color I would like it. Definitely better than the 1990 live action movie
@RupeeClock : I object to the suggestion that there could ever be such a thing as “proper” AI upscaling, especially where film-sourced material is concerned.
AI upscaling or any other embellishments will always degrade the source footage because there is no better version that exists. Film can at least be cleaned up and rescanned at resolutions that current technology (and costs) will allow, but that is still dependent on the integrity/quality of the source material.
Digitally removing dust and debris is one thing, but smoothing out fine detail is another, which is what AI upscaling does.
The original series of Digimon is currently in the process of being AI upscaled for both subbed and dubbed releases later this year, and there is a noticeable loss in detail in that transition, which makes me question why they’re even bothering (I’m only in it for an uncut sub release).
I’m all about preserving the integrity of the source, and in the case of digital SD material, I can respect the fact that it will neve look any better than that, but I find it laughable that companies waste so much time in futile upscaling because the creators didn’t have the foresight to future-proof their work.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone went through the painstaking efforts to expand the framing of all of their SD-era episodes (given that the series was produced digitally, with presumably mostly vector-based graphics that can be rendered at a higher resolutions without any loss in detail), which makes me wonder why more SD animation couldn’t be restored in this way (though in most cases, they should retain their original 4:3 framing).
I should probably shut up now as I think I’ve gone way off-topic. In short, I’m very passionate about film preservation and I endeavour to do the same with my own projects (all of which are now shot in 4K or UHD for future-proofing).
@Silly_G
It's entirely on topic, considering we're talking about the digital preservation and remastering of vintage animated media.
I totally understand the point about AI upscaling embellishing or smoothing out details, but it needs to be mentioned that AI upscaling techniques are still developing and improving.
AI upscaling is needed in situations where no higher quality resources exist, such as film reels being lost.
The output is constrained by however good the input is, but the input is more than just the video or image data you feed the process; the trained model and its designs are just as important.
In a proper AI upscaling process, you will use a model that has been trained on a large amount of higher fidelity image data with similar properties to the intended input.
With a properly matched input and model, you should arrive at an output that with further editing could exceed a 480p DVD rip viewing experience.
Currently, AI upscaling is sullied by amateur efforts that do things like use the default Waifu2X CuNET or RealESRGAN models on consumer RTX GPUs, or something like TopazLabs software, with no post-processing of upscaled results. I'm also wary of Discotek's Digimon AI upscale and think it might take a while longer until AI upscaling techniques are ready for consumer grade releases, but the Discotek Digimon Adventures release might serve as a benchmark in the future.
In short, whatever an AI upscaler spits out should not be the end result, a lot of work has to go into both the input, process, and output!
To add on, AI upscaling should never be a substitute for proper film scans when possible, and film scans should not be subject to unnecessary AI upscaling!
Oh my god. The team who made this needs to contact Discotek Media about this. They make some top notch anime restorations that are put officially on Blu-Ray and 4K. The team behind the remaster should work with them on a 4K home video release of this. Show it to Nintendo too.
"dOki DoKi dOki Doooo OOOo Yea YEA YEA YEA" all I remember from watching this movie lmfao
@Silly_G
Trust me, I fully agree with you.
I didn’t know how bad “AI Remasters” could be until I watched the Blu Ray version of Gundam 0083. They completely botched the art style that OVA went for. It needs the jagged outlines of the art to fit the style. The remaster smoothed everything out so much that it lost a lot of its soul.
Which is why I returned the Blu Rays and I’m sticking with the 480p DVD release.
Thank you for sharing this. I remastered a different Nintendo hero last night. Are you familiar with Mega Man / Rockman (OVA) Upon a Star? I used AI video enhancement software on the DVD release for 1080p, 60fps video. The only bummer: it's mildly educational.
https://youtu.be/yNJ5UgwM114
@TommyTendo This is BEFORE Super Mario 2 (USA) Before this film, Luigi was usually depicted identical as Mario, just with a color Swap.
@Silly_G It's entirely possible that Discotek could be rereleasing Digimon Adventure in the west, seeing as the original Blu-Rays came out a while ago. Unless I missed something in the announcement, but I didn't see a confirmation that the Subs were using their smoothing method, just the dub because recutting anime like dubbing studios such as Saban and 4Kids takes forever. Fans have already done that for Digimon Adventure using the Blu-Ray, but there is an issue with the Sub Blu-Rays, seeing as the lines are more blurred in general than they should be in 1080p. This quality issue wasn't addressed until Digimon Tamers/Season 3 of Digital Monsters.
Wow. I honestly never knew this existed until today. Adding to my Watchlist. Thanks!
Now that this is in the news, I imagine it will be DMCA'd. I won't be surprised in the slightest when it happens either.
I mean, Nintendo did it with an out of print SM64 guide, so I think an entire movie will have it happen too. We'll have news outlets like Nintendo Life to thank when it happens!
@sikthvash They never took down the original incomplete version, so they probably won't take this down either. Probably.
Ooh! Nice! I never actually watched this, so that's on my weekend list now. ^^
That was an awesome watch. I guess it's safe to say Miyamoto stole ideas back from it-- Bowser tail swing, airship, Lakitu cloud riding, a giant Cheep Cheep that acted like Big Bertha lol. Funny how they referred to Toad back in the day as Princess Toadstools' retainers/maids, so it's not surprising to see Toad depicted as a female in this. Such a fascinating watch, even Luigi hadn't acquired his green tint (wasn't Mario Bros. arcade Luigi this color?) Glad to also know that coin treasure was a greedy habit of Luigi... Guess that yellow and blue bro would pass that habit on to yellow and purple Wario in time lol.
Tap here to load 30 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...