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Portables (Games) Entertainment Games

Super Mario 3 Gets All Portable 55

Posted by simoniker from the raccoon-tail-floaty-light dept.
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a Gamers.com article showcasing new screenshots and details from Super Mario Advance 4 for GameBoy Advance. This title, which is a portable revival of the classic NES title Super Mario Brothers 3 with the higher quality visuals of the SNES Super Mario All-Stars version, will also have e-Reader connectivity, and a recent IGN Pocket preview claims "players can transfer the data from e-Reader to the game... to upload brand new levels and challenges", though, logically enough, "you'll need two GBAs (or a Game Boy Player [for Gamecube] and a GBA) to take advantage of this feature."
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Super Mario 3 Gets All Portable More

Super Mario 3 Gets All Portable

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  • Frustratingly... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by antin ( 185674 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @05:14AM (#6241176)
    It is a shame they didn't release a Mario All Stars (Advance), as they did for the SNES. I find it somewhat annoying that considering the cost of porting a game, that Nintendo decided to release the titles individually. Especially when they have bundled them in the past.

    I am not sure what the sales have been like - but although I would purchase 'All Stars' I don't find any of the older Mario's worth full price (mainly because I already own them).
    • I agree completely. Super Mario All Stars was a great package and the graphics touch-ups done for it really made the classic games even better.

      Even when ignoring the price of the separate carts, it's so much easier to carry around one cart for all that Mario goodness.
    • The sales of the first one were so high that they went ahead and ported the rest...individually. Yes, it sucks for us, but for them they are making boatloads of cash. I think the main reason is that alot of gamers today havent played SMB2,3 or even World. Sad really.
    • Well I for one never cared for the American version of SMB2 so I avoided that one (SMA1) like the plague. SMB was released as SMBDX for the GBC, so that one's covered. I'm kinda glad they're releasing them separately.
    • Hm. Well, one reason for this is of course that they want to earn a truckload of money, which they are doing. Also, possibly, a GBA cart may not hold as much as a classic SNES cart, and this wouldn't even be possible. Anyone know?
      • SNES carts maxed out at 4 megabytes. GBA carts are a minimum of I think 4 MB, although just about everything uses an 8 MB cart. A few games use 16 MB. I think 64 MB is the max.

        For comparison, Mario 64 was on an 8 MB cart. The largest N64 carts were 64 MB.
        • Nope, largest is 32MB (256Mbit). That is the maximum addressable size for the gba. Black-market carts use fancy techniques to trick the gba into addressing a certian portion of the memory at any given time, but no single game could exceede a hard 32MB limit.
          • no single game could exceede a hard 32MB limit.

            Things aren't so hard & fast... by using tricky hardware, you could easily surpass any memory address limitations.

            Take a look at the Atari 2600. It's memory space only allows for 4K cartridges, meanwhile there are many games that use 8K or 16K roms. Although the actual implementations by each company was slightly different, they all use "bankswitching". Basically, the cartridge reserves a special set of bytes that it listens on. If the Atari were to atte
            • Of course, the cartridges would have to be more complicated, possibly making them more expensive, or maybe even slightly larger

              And we all know that larger cartridges aren't a problem, since the original GameBoy and GameBoy Color cartridges are about twice as long as the GBA cartridges, and work perfectly fine in the GBA systems.
  • playing Super Mario 1 on Atari with black and white TV? Those were the days...
    • That was just Mario Bros. Super Mario Bros. was not released until the NES.
      • You're right, I meant Mario Bros. Thanks for reminding me. All of the recent versions were "Super," so I forgot the name of the classic Mario Bros...
    • ...except it wasn't called Super Mario, it was just Mario Bros. You ran around bopping turtles and flies from underneath to get them flipped on their back so you could kick em off. I think that was either the first or second game to have a POW (block that would knock everything over) on screen...although Popeye for the Atari may have come out before it.

      --trb
      • If Popeye had the POW block I don't remember, but I won't argue it. But don't forget that Super Mario 2 also had the POW block that came out of the ground when you pulled turnip stalks.....
        I just realized just HOW high those guys must've been. I mean, I know it was a sprite-swap job, but still. Wild vegetables that turn into 'magic potions' and make you see the world in a different way? Riiight. Tell me they weren't on something.

        Jeffool.
        It's all about the love.
        • Popeye had a POW block, but I don't remember if it was on the bottom floor or what...hitting it caused Brutus to fall over or something.

          SMB2 definitely had the POW block in the ground, but I only remember getting like 2 of them in the entire game. I wonder if they just forgot to add it everywhere else?

          --trb
          • Popeye had a POW block, but I don't remember if it was on the bottom floor or what...hitting it caused Brutus to fall over or something.

            I don't think so... I own a bunch of different versions of this game (2600, ColecoVision, NES), and I've never seen a POW block. What you could do was pick up the spinach, and then pound him off the screen... maybe that's what you're thinking of?

            Of course, I was never able to get past that stupid 3rd level with the ship, so maybe it showed up after that?

            SMB2 definitel

      • ...except it wasn't called Super Mario, it was just Mario Bros. You ran around bopping turtles and flies from underneath to get them flipped on their back so you could kick em off.

        Yes, that's it! What a game that was back then... Now, the only important factor is "fps." I think today game developers could learn a lot from the classic. Actually, it's just like in music.

  • Cha-ching. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jeffool ( 675688 ) <Jeffool@gmail.com> on Thursday June 19, 2003 @05:23AM (#6241207) Homepage
    I'm sure there's some porting involved in things like this, but you have to wonder why Nintendo doesn't do a "Mario Anthology" containing the 'Mario Allstars' and 'Mario 64' on the same disc for the Game Cube. They could do the same with Zelda or Metroid games. Put them out for $20 or so. Chaaaaa-ching.

    Jeffool.
    Wasn't too off-topic, was I?
    • Fuck yeah. It's a cash cow with over 28,000,000 teats. I'm suprised they haven't done it with all their famous franchises.
    • Hell, why dont Nintendo but the classic Mario, Metroid and Zelda games on the same DVD disk.. I'm sure they all fit.. As all the roms would be about 100-150 mb.. That would make me go out and buy a GameCube...

    • Re:Cha-ching. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Drakin ( 415182 )
      Because they want to maximie profits... which releasing the games individually does. They'll probably promote the GBA player accessory as the way to play your old favorites on your TV, using your game cube...

      Which, to me is the best way to do it... by releaseing them for the GBA, and with the soon to be relased player, you can play the games at home, and on the go...

      • Re:Cha-ching. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Jeffool ( 675688 )
        Normally I'd say "Good plan.", but why not put it out for GBA and GCN? For the portables AND the home crowd. Casual gamers would be more likely to buy their home system (which floundered this time, compared to their past ones) if they was a quality line of games for $29. Which, compared to most games, is a throw-away price. Barely more than a CD or DVD.

        And it'd give newer gamers a chance to catch up on what they've been missing. It's an idea, anyway. Like those nifty Atari controllers that have games
        • Normally I'd say "Good plan.", but why not put it out for GBA and GCN? For the portables AND the home crowd. Casual gamers would be more likely to buy their home system (which floundered this time, compared to their past ones) if they was a quality line of games for $29. Which, compared to most games, is a throw-away price. Barely more than a CD or DVD.

          As the previous poster said, they could probably use it as promotion for the GameBoy Player, which is the add-on for the GameCube that let's you play Game
    • Why release them all together for $20 when they're selling fine for $30-35 each?

      Right now, the games they're releasing are about 10-15 years old. Most owners of a GameBoy haven't played them before, so they're taking advantage of that. I think it would make sense if they waited until sales of the individual games died down, and then released a compilation. That'll catch the interest of the older people who already bought the games the first time around.
  • to get me to buy a GBA. Super Mario 3 was my favorite Mario game. I've been wanting a portable game system for a while (still have the original blocky 4 AA battery GB), but I'm holding out to see what the Sony PSP looks like. It had better not be a dog, because I think Nintendo is doing a lot right with the GameBoy. This Mario game included.

  • How does that work? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Shishio ( 540577 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @06:53AM (#6241507)
    After reading the IGN Pocket review, I still don't understand why the bonus levels uploaded through eReader would "logically" need more than one GBA to play. Is it because the bonus levels are only the head-to-head levels?

    If that is the case, why can't the eReader be used to upload normal levels or entire worlds to the Super Mario game? There's plenty of crafty Unreal modders [slashdot.org], but I'm sure there could be a strong Mario modding community if we could figure out how to use the eReader system.

    • Re:How does that work? (Score:4, Informative)

      by rmach ( 164119 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @07:09AM (#6241560)
      The reason you need two GBAs for a Gameboy Player is that you can't have an e-reader and a cartridge in the GBA at the same time. Thus one GBA has the super mario game cart in it ready to receive and save the new level and the other GBA reads the e-reader cards and sends the level.
      • Oh! OK thanks, that makes lots of sense to me now.

        Me + Pain Medication + 8 AM = Dummy on the loose.
      • and the reason that you probably couldn't do this through modding is because the information on the card is most likely just a code of some type to unlock a level that's already on the cartridge, but isn't part of the original game.
        • Unlikely, the E-reader actually supports an enormous emount of data on a card (think the size of an NES rom, give or take a few bits), that being its biggest success.
          • Unlikely, the E-reader actually supports an enormous emount of data on a card (think the size of an NES rom, give or take a few bits), that being its biggest success.

            I didn't realize this until I had read the article on the reader. It still sounds as if their primary mode of interaction with most games is through unlocking items stored on the games, though. Having read through and found out that you can actually buy entire games on cards that play without any other game makes it more of a question in my
    • I had the same idea. You could play Super Mario 3 until the end of time. Nintendo could release level packs as cards. Major profit comes to mind. I know I'd by an E-Reader.

      I'm waiting for the witty hacker to make a program that converts GBA code to E-Reader code. Compile and print on your PC! Just tape to a playing card, and boom. Instant levels. I can dream, can't I?
      • Yeah, do that and I'd give you $5 at least. I've seen some ROM mods online, but nothing professionally done. Now that there would be a way to get it into the actual game, we have more to dream about though.

  • Or, you could get all super marios at once (Score:4, Interesting)

    by truffle ( 37924 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @07:24AM (#6241625) Homepage

    There is a program like MAME called PocketNES [retrogames.com] which is an NES emultator for the Gameboy Advance. This allows you to play hundreds of NES games on your GBA. Up to 200 NES roms will fit on a single GBA cartridge.

    I personally prefer the opportunity to play the original rom, than a remake, even one that is identical from a gameplay perspective.

    So to play NES roms on your GBA you need:
    - A flash cartridge and linker (I bought mine at SuccessKH [success-hk.com] and got great service. I recommend the flash2advance USB linker with a 256 Mbit cartridge.
    - PocketNES [retrogames.com]
    - Nintendo Roms, a google search [google.com] finds these quickly

    Or if you don't have a GBA but still want to relive your childhood on linux, os x, or windows, grab your roms and then grab RockNES [kinox.org].
  • Even though I'm sure they can fit all the Mario games on 1 GBA cart, I'm glad to see this one finally come out.
    Now, they should do this for Metroid and Zelda as well. Also, does anyone know if there would be a problem with releasing zelda games from other systems? Its unfair that only like 20 people in the US got to play them since they were released on systems I can't even remember.
    • I don't know what kind of problems there would be with releasing other Zelda games, but there's a bunch of information on the games at
      http://www.zeldauniverse.net/main.php?page=add itio nalgames

      including games that simply included Zelda characters (ie the upcoming GameCube version of Soul Calibur 2).
    • They tried porting Zelda 1 before they ported Zelda 3. The problem with Zelda 1 is each dungeon room is exactly 1 screen. The only scrolling is when you move to a new room. The GBA screen isn't tall enough for the game to be playable.

  • Little information on gameplay?? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Mantrid ( 250133 ) on Thursday June 19, 2003 @09:07AM (#6242391) Journal
    Hehe, I'm amused by the article where it mentions that little information has been released on gameplay.

    Now maybe i'm crazy, but I think it'll involve some running, jumping, and bouncing off of bad guys...

  • Mario (Score:1)

    by Zed2K ( 313037 )
    Mario Allstars was an awesome compilation cart and I would buy it again to play it on my SP. But I'll definitely be there to buy this mario!
  • At first I was fearing with Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire than needing 2 GBA's to send e-Reader data(Eon Ticket, Trainer battles) would be hard to come by, but think about how many people got an SP, and kept their old one, OR how many people are getting a GB Player with their GameCube?

    Really, it seems expensive, but it's worth it to get an e-Reader, anyway, for Animal Crossing, Pokemon, Super Mario Bros 3., Mario Party-e(Which my sister LOVES), and just the NES games alone(Especially Excitebike and Golf!)
  • I want Nintendo to make us all shit our pants with their next portable. Translations of N64 games on an extremely high resolution portable screen? I can only hope. Mario64 on the go, here I come.
  • It's like my childhood is coming back, only swankier. I was so pissed off when my sister finalyl returned my NES to me after 5 years only to find out that she lost/sold/damaged most of my games. SMB3 had a huge crack running through it because it was eventually used to steady her dinner table. I think this is finally going to drive me to get an SP when the Black version comes out. Man, I've waited years to play SMB3 again. Now I jsut need to grab a copy of The Wizard somewhere.

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