Super Mario Bros. Special was the second Nintendo-licensed follow-up to Super Mario Bros., released around two months after Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels. While superficially very similar to the original Super Mario Bros., the game features original new levels and has a screen-by-screen scrolling mechanism. The most significant difference is that it features none of the original levels, since the eight worlds are all unique to this release and have a high level of difficulty surpassing even Super Mario Bros. 2.
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God this is the funniest game of all time. They could not get screen scroll so they got black transiitons which makes you have to do so many jump of faith. With slow down music and graphics straight out of an lsd nightmare, mario seems to have passed through stuff we have never known about, maybe his past as part of the army was actually relevant to the lore
basically a playable newgrounds sprite animation
PLATFORM: Steam Deck via RetroArch's Sharp X1 emulator
GOAL: Clear all eight worlds
PROGRESS: 3-1
Super Mario Bros. Special is the best NES ad I've ever seen.
The choppiness, jankier controls, inconsistent framerate, and screen-by-screen scrolling when the levels don't feel designed for it all make for a less-than-ideal game.
Will say that the level design itself is pretty good, but that's because I played up to 8-3 in a recreation of the game with more proper scrolling and controls.
I specifically hate when I come across a spring that I swear you have to be dead-on perfect to bounce off of, otherwise you slide off.
I commend the effort to bring the SMB1 experience to home computers at the time, but it just wasn't enough. This game is not fun in its original form.
GOAL: Clear all eight worlds
PROGRESS: 3-1
Super Mario Bros. Special is the best NES ad I've ever seen.
The choppiness, jankier controls, inconsistent framerate, and screen-by-screen scrolling when the levels don't feel designed for it all make for a less-than-ideal game.
Will say that the level design itself is pretty good, but that's because I played up to 8-3 in a recreation of the game with more proper scrolling and controls.
I specifically hate when I come across a spring that I swear you have to be dead-on perfect to bounce off of, otherwise you slide off.
I commend the effort to bring the SMB1 experience to home computers at the time, but it just wasn't enough. This game is not fun in its original form.
I'm a sucker for weird stuff like this because there's just no way in hell something would like this would ever be greenlit today. This is now exclusively the domain of modders and Super Mario Maker freaks, and I love it for those reasons, but it's also too janky at times to be genuinely called good.
A+ for effort but god is this janky
Beaten on 8Mhz (in the M88 emulator) as that is what Japanese consumers would have been playing this on at the time of release. Full disclosure, I did use savestates to act as "extra lives" but beat every level normally in one sitting. I'd like to see if I can beat this with "FF" lives at some point but that will wait for a bit. I'm writing this review basically immediately after beating this game at like 5 in the morning
This game is like genuinely one of the worst games I have ever played, but also incredibly fun if you have the mindset for it. It's extremely difficult. It's just absolutely baffling that it exists at all, a weird Super Mario Bros sequel for a couple of two japanese home computers. It even predates the Lost Levels! There's a bit of a misunderstanding about this game online since I think there's a fair amount of people who just assume it's a port, and some who are just aware of some of its surface level stuff (there's stuff based on the arcade games, the scrolling is messed up etc).
The game just feels like complete shit to play. I'm under the suspicion that the PC-88 port was fairly low effort, and it is incredibly aggressive to play. I will not refer to its aesthetics as while they are pretty ugly I don't think it particularly detracts from the game. The game has some fun ideas like introducing enemies from the Arcade games but most of them are just unkillable and painful to deal with. The additional items introduced are also far too sparse and situational.
Mario controls ridiculously terribly in 8mhz mode (which again, is what PC-88 owners would have been using for videogames) and I frankly think it has to be played to be believed. Every single jump in the game becomes a challenge and you have to be incredibly methodical with your movement, while still being fast due to the strict time limits on the stages. This game even frequently makes you do jumps from 1x1 block to 1x1 block, which is incredibly difficult. Making things worse, the game actually slows down if you have a mushroom, since Super Mario is made from two objects, as opposed to small Mario who is just one. As a result of this, a mushroom is vital due to giving you far better reaction times, given how absurdly fast this game is. The amount of blind jumps in this game that are hidden away by screen transitions insane by the way. I mean like actual blind jumps, no hints. There's even a blind jump from a 1x1 block to another! It's ridiculous!
I don't think people are quite aware that this game is just genuinely broken in a lot of ways. One notable example that walled me for months was when a platform refused to spawn in 4-3. I had assumed that I had emulation issues, or maybe even a bad dump, and I had been searching around ages for a solution. I later discovered that you are supposed to collapse a pair of platforms earlier in the level, because there too many platforms in existence. If you do not, that platform, which is vital for progression, does not spawn. It's insane how consistent this is, given that the game has a pretty frequent issue with just not spawning enemies or powerups sometimes.
It's strange because while I do genuinely think this game is completely awful, and blatantly the worst Mario game ever made, I think it must be played to be believed. I had so much fun progressing through this game over a long time with my friends in calls, it was such a spectacle and the game just kept giving in how obscene it was. I hope more people talk about this game because it's genuinely one of the most fascinating things relating to the Mario series, and another example of how strange third party Mario offerings were (perhaps the most interesting, in my opinion).
Side note, do not play this in Retroarch! 4-4 broke for me in it and lead to me having to switch to M88, which worked flawlessly.
This game is like genuinely one of the worst games I have ever played, but also incredibly fun if you have the mindset for it. It's extremely difficult. It's just absolutely baffling that it exists at all, a weird Super Mario Bros sequel for a couple of two japanese home computers. It even predates the Lost Levels! There's a bit of a misunderstanding about this game online since I think there's a fair amount of people who just assume it's a port, and some who are just aware of some of its surface level stuff (there's stuff based on the arcade games, the scrolling is messed up etc).
The game just feels like complete shit to play. I'm under the suspicion that the PC-88 port was fairly low effort, and it is incredibly aggressive to play. I will not refer to its aesthetics as while they are pretty ugly I don't think it particularly detracts from the game. The game has some fun ideas like introducing enemies from the Arcade games but most of them are just unkillable and painful to deal with. The additional items introduced are also far too sparse and situational.
Mario controls ridiculously terribly in 8mhz mode (which again, is what PC-88 owners would have been using for videogames) and I frankly think it has to be played to be believed. Every single jump in the game becomes a challenge and you have to be incredibly methodical with your movement, while still being fast due to the strict time limits on the stages. This game even frequently makes you do jumps from 1x1 block to 1x1 block, which is incredibly difficult. Making things worse, the game actually slows down if you have a mushroom, since Super Mario is made from two objects, as opposed to small Mario who is just one. As a result of this, a mushroom is vital due to giving you far better reaction times, given how absurdly fast this game is. The amount of blind jumps in this game that are hidden away by screen transitions insane by the way. I mean like actual blind jumps, no hints. There's even a blind jump from a 1x1 block to another! It's ridiculous!
I don't think people are quite aware that this game is just genuinely broken in a lot of ways. One notable example that walled me for months was when a platform refused to spawn in 4-3. I had assumed that I had emulation issues, or maybe even a bad dump, and I had been searching around ages for a solution. I later discovered that you are supposed to collapse a pair of platforms earlier in the level, because there too many platforms in existence. If you do not, that platform, which is vital for progression, does not spawn. It's insane how consistent this is, given that the game has a pretty frequent issue with just not spawning enemies or powerups sometimes.
It's strange because while I do genuinely think this game is completely awful, and blatantly the worst Mario game ever made, I think it must be played to be believed. I had so much fun progressing through this game over a long time with my friends in calls, it was such a spectacle and the game just kept giving in how obscene it was. I hope more people talk about this game because it's genuinely one of the most fascinating things relating to the Mario series, and another example of how strange third party Mario offerings were (perhaps the most interesting, in my opinion).
Side note, do not play this in Retroarch! 4-4 broke for me in it and lead to me having to switch to M88, which worked flawlessly.