Super Mario World
Image: Zion Grassi / Time Extension

When it comes to the preservation of Nintendo's history, Forest of Illusion is constantly working away to archive anything it can and share it with the wider gaming community.

In July, for instance, we covered how it had managed to preserve an Intelligent Systems' dev kit for Game Boy and Game Boy Advance, giving us a chance to see how titles like WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames!, Fire Emblem, and Advance Wars were made. Now it seems to be offering us another unique insight: giving us the opportunity to see from the perspective of Nintendo developers working on the Super Nintendo.

In a new tweet, the group of archivists shared four new images of a couple of Sony NEWS workstation applications that Nintendo would have used in the early 90s to develop games like Star Fox and Super Mario World. These applications include the SRD-developed art applications CAD-TOOL and 3DCAD.

If the name SRD rings a bell at all, that's probably because the company made headlines earlier this year when Nintendo finally stepped up and acquired the long-running business partner after four decades of collaboration.

Interestingly, according to Forest of Illusion, these programs were originally leaked as part of the now infamous Gigaleak that occurred in 2020, but for a while, they were inaccessible to archivists. Now thanks to the ability to emulate the NWS-5000X in Mame, digital archaeologists are able to import files over and get them running to learn more about how its historically-significant games were developed. If you want to follow Forest of Illusion's work, you can follow it on Twitter or on its website.

What do you make of these images? Do you like seeing more about how Nintendo developed its games? Let us know in the comments!

[source twitter.com]