It’s March 10th! You know what that means! Well, maybe you do. According to Nintendo circa 2016, the contrivance of “MAR10” is sufficient to dub today Mario Day and celebrate all things relating to the video game industry’s arch-mascot. Just this once, I figured I’d relinquish my usual stubborn urge to spurn all viral marketing and indulge in one of the plucky plumber’s perennially popular peregrinations. Incidentally, did you also know that excessive alliteration is generally considered indicative of poor writing? I’m full of fun facts today!
Having recently covered the monumental Super Mario Bros., I thought it might be a fine change of pace to present something comparatively obscure. Easier said than done, of course, as worthwhile games starring the most famous character in the medium don’t exactly grow on trees. Except on mid-’80s Japanese home computers, it seems, where Hudson Soft developed and published a total of nine licensed Nintendo titles for PC-8801 and Sharp X1 series machines between 1984 and 1986. The majority of these are straightforward conversions of well-known Famicom/NES releases like Golf and Ice Climber. A few, however, are effectively brand new works based only loosely on their source material. 1986’s Super Mario Bros. Special is firmly in the latter camp. While obviously patterned on Nintendo’s 1985 platforming masterpiece, it contains 32 original levels on top of new power-up items and enemies imported from Donkey Kong and the arcade Mario Bros.
Sounds amazing, right? Alas, the elephant in the room here is that both versions of SMB Special are rather terrible. Right up front, you can say goodbye to the console game’s scrolling. Instead, you’re presented with a single screen at a time. Reaching the edge results in either an abrupt blackout transition to the next on PC-8801 or a Legend of Zelda style flip-screen one on X1. Either way, the basic inability to see what sort of hazards await before you leap headlong into them is enough on its own to prevent Special from being a classically great Super Mario experience. Add poor performance, clumsy controls, broken hit detection, and garish graphics to the mix, and it’s abundantly clear why neither Hudson nor Nintendo has seen fit to re-release this in any form.
Yet despite all its technical incompetence, there were still those who saw untapped potential in Special’s unique level layouts and features. Two such individuals were the skilled ROM hackers frantik and Levi “Karatorian” Aho, who joined forces in 2021 to create Super Mario Bros. Special – 35th Anniversary Edition. By taking all of Special’s signature design elements and faithfully porting them into the buttery smooth NES SMB “engine,” the world at large was finally able to appreciate Hudson’s game free from the frustration stemming from its botched ’80s implementations.
So how is it? No bad at all, although it still doesn’t quite live up to Nintendo’s own in-house work. Stages are fairly well-balanced for the most part, with just enough tweaks to the formula to stand apart. You’ll encounter the rotating fire bar hazards outside castle areas, for example, and transitioning between surface, underground, and water zones within the same level is more common. That said, there’s a significant difficulty spike that brings the last leg of the adventure closer in line with Super Mario Bros. 2 (aka The Lost Levels) than the first SMB. I found it doable, but the tone of my playthrough definitely shifted from casual romp to intense teeth-gritting focus around world seven.
The added power-ups and enemies are a mixed bag. Special includes the wing, which allows Mario to “fly” using the same controls as swimming and a hammer straight out of Donkey Kong that Mario automatically swings up and down to pulverize any foes that draw near. Both are neat gimmicks, though they suffer from the triple defects of being rare (each appears exactly twice), hidden in out-of-the way invisible blocks, and of very short temporary duration. As such, they’re closer to cute Easter eggs than meaningful additions to the core gameplay. There are a few other hidden items, such as the famous Hudson Bee, but these are one-time score or timer bonuses that hardly impact play at all.
Our cast of baddies fares better, since the bulk of them deliver fresh challenges. Sidestepper crabs are functionally identical to Spinies, a basic ground enemy that can’t be stomped. Fighter Flies also can’t be stomped and, worse, continually hop toward Mario and thus require strict jump timing to bypass in the absence of a Fire Flower. Icicles resembling the ones from Mario Bros. fall from the ceiling as Mario passes underneath. Finally, the rolling barrels and animated fireballs from Donkey Kong both represent grounded hazards that move inexorably forward and can only be defeated if you have a hammer handy.
On the flip side, these additions are offset by some noteworthy cuts. Contrary to its title, SMB Special is strictly a one-player affair. Get bent, Luigi! The iconic warp zones that provide shortcuts to the later worlds are likewise nowhere to be seen. Regardless, I think the pros of this take on Special more than outweigh the cons and succeed at transforming a misbegotten regional oddity into a quality platformer worth a look from Mario lovers everywhere. As a lifelong fan, beating down the sewer pests from Mario Bros. with the hammer from Donkey Kong in the 8-bit Mushroom Kingdom is simultaneously a trip and a delight. Kudos to frantik and Karatorian for polishing this roughest of gems to a near mirror sheen and merry Mario Day to one and all!
Twentieth Century Gamer 