Hudson Mario Trilogy

[Sketcz-1000]

Although covered elsewhere on the internet, something as unusual as Hudson's forgotten trilogy of Mario games deserves a comprehensive HG101 article. It's partially a reprint from my Retro Gamer days, but I've rewritten several sections. Most places online also only focus on the PC-88 titles, whereas we've tracked down and covered the FM-7 versions which are in some cases considerably better. Article includes an emulation pack with everything you need to get rolling.

www.hardcoregaming101.net/hudsonmario/hudsonmario.htm

[Trickless]

You've mentioned a couple of times that the PC88 game(s) run a bit too fast. What cpu clock speed did you set on your emulator?

Also, underneath the Super Mario Special screenshots you've written:

Super Mario Bros Special - FM-7

[vnisanian2001]

Super Mario Special makes SMB2J look like Barney's One-Two-Three, in terms of difficulty.

[Sketcz-1000]

Aug 2, 2010 8:25:17 GMT -5 Trickless said:

You've mentioned a couple of times that the PC88 game(s) run a bit too fast. What cpu clock speed did you set on your emulator?

I've never been able to get a perfect speed for either emulator. On PC-88 4mhz seems to be good for framerate and smoothness, but the clocks runs too quickly. This was actually on Wikipedia, and I thought they were just being their usual self. So I made a point of checking, and it does run too fast. On the X1 about 8mhz is good, and the clock runs at a good speed, while the game is quite smooth, but the music plays too fast.

Without native hardware I've no idea how it's actually supposed to be running. I guess fiddling until the best speed is found is everyone's best bet.

Thanks for the typo correction!

[derboo]

Hey, how did you get the Japanese to be displayed correctly?

Dunno if it's worth mentioning, but Super Mario Bros Special was ported to the Samsung SPC-1500 in Korea (I think in 1987, but I can check, might have been a bit later).

[ReyVGM]

Here's the SMBS ending in case you want it:

www.vgmuseum.com/end/pc88/a/smbs.htm

[Sketcz-1000]

Aug 2, 2010 13:40:24 GMT -5 derboo said:

Hey, how did you get the Japanese to be displayed correctly?

Dunno if it's worth mentioning, but Super Mario Bros Special was ported to the Samsung SPC-1500 in Korea (I think in 1987, but I can check, might have been a bit later).

I found that if you type the Japanese text into a forum post, then use firefox to "VIEW PAGE SOURCE", it'll show the text as a series of HTML numbers, which I copied.

So Punch Ball Mario is this:
パンチボール マリオブラザーズ

But in an HTML document it's kana characters. I'm putting japanese in all my articles now.

Thanks for the info on the port - when I get a chance I'll add that to article (I'm on another PC posting this). Unless you have admin access Derboo, in which case feel free to amend it.

Thanks Rey, that would actually be worth linking to in the main article. I'll try to put it in next time I've the chance. Thanks again for those images - you're a life saver.

[jorpho]

Aug 2, 2010 5:04:38 GMT -5 Sketcz-1000 said:

Article includes an emulation pack with everything you need to get rolling.

Are you using the patched version of the PC88 disk image? (98% of people will probably give up long before it becomes necessary, but nonetheless.)
www.romhacking.net/hacks/383/

[ReyVGM]

Aug 2, 2010 17:17:29 GMT -5 Sketcz-1000 said:

Thanks Rey, that would actually be worth linking to in the main article. I'll try to put it in next time I've the chance. Thanks again for those images - you're a life saver.

No problem. I spent almost 20 hellish hours straight playing that game to the finish. 6 of those hours were on the last stage only. Very frustrating.

The ending says there new stuff for the 2nd loop, but I just didn't have the strength to keep playing. The PC88 emu I used didn't even have save states (I don't know if it does now), or else I wouldn't have taken as long.

[thethird]

Curiosuly, instead of porting the original Mario Bros and Super Mario Bros,

Second paragraph of the beginning of the article. The only spelling error I could see in the whole thing.

Um, anyways, this is really interesting! I had no idea that these games even existed. Super Mario Bros. Special sounds like a kind of game that would make me hurl my controller across the damn room because of those technical faults.

[jorpho]

Aug 2, 2010 21:31:12 GMT -5 thethird said:

The only spelling error I could see in the whole thing.

Well, in that case you missed "and he only stops wen you press down or leap to another platform".

[thethird]

I, for one, consider "wen" to be perfectly acceptable shorthand for "when", and YOU SIR, are a goddamn philistine for suggesting it is not! A goddamn philistine!

I also feel that at the very least, Punch Ball could have made for a really really sweet Mario Party minigame. Or could have been included in the minigame collections in the DS Mario titles (Mario 64). Four players would be interesting to say the least. Especially since Hudson also did Mario Party!

[starscream]

Aug 2, 2010 13:40:24 GMT -5 derboo said:

Hey, how did you get the Japanese to be displayed correctly?

Dunno if it's worth mentioning, but Super Mario Bros Special was ported to the Samsung SPC-1500 in Korea (I think in 1987, but I can check, might have been a bit later).

I for one, crave such kind of information . Is there an emulator somewhere, one of the shots/links from the Korea article looked like there is one, from what I remember?

[derboo]

There's mySPC (http://blog.naver.com/mtwtfss365) and another one I don't have a link for. I've been meaning for some time now to arrange the roms I've got and translate the readme to post all the stuff I could find, but like everything else I'm planning to do right now it takes me longer than I hoped to get to it. (I don't have the Super Mario Bros Special ROM, though. Nor the required SPC-1500 bios, just SPC-1000 stuff.)

[derboo]

Aug 2, 2010 17:17:29 GMT -5 Sketcz-1000 said:

I found that if you type the Japanese text into a forum post, then use firefox to "VIEW PAGE SOURCE", it'll show the text as a series of HTML numbers, which I copied.

I found a site that offers that kind of conversion, might save a few clicks compared to the forum method:

www.pinnacledisplays.com/unicode-converter.htm

In the meantime, I put the original titles inside the company profile pages for my Korean article (most of the appendices still use the Korean encoding method, though, pain in the ass to change them all)