ScarlettVixen has just released Mario Adventure 3, an ambitious Super Mario Bros. 3 ROM hack which is 20 years in the making.
"It's been an extremely long project, but after 12 years, it's finally here," says the developer. "Many of this game's elements are iterations and polishes on concepts found in prior projects. Mario Adventure 3 is more than a 12 year project, it's a 20 year amalgamation of ideas waiting to see fruition."
Mario Adventure launched in 2002 and, since then, has been iterated upon with other hacks, including Luigi's Coin Quest and Luigi vs. Mario.
Mario Adventure 3 takes many of the concepts found in these previous games and augments and enhances them.
Some of the new features included in the game are:
- Day and night system (Mario Adventure)
- Weather effects (Mario Adventure)
- Item shop (Mario Adventure and Luigi vs Mario)
- Exploration heavy (Luigi's Coin Quest)
- Traversing and backtracking worlds across the entire game with no cutscenes (Luigi's Coin Quest)
- Hidden collectables to gain access to blocked areas (Luigi vs Mario)
While it might seem like a fairly standard ROM hack on the surface, it showcases a lot of effort, including a completely custom level format, a custom-built tile collision system, a new object handling system, new enemy patterns, new power-ups (including a cool Ninja power-up, complete with wall-jumping), a weather system and much, much more. And the best thing is that it runs on actual NES hardware.
If you fancy checking it out, you can download the patch here.
Comments 15
Mario Adventure was an old favourite of mine to be sure, but like the authors admit it wasn't the most accessible hack, as there was lot of that classic "ROM hack" difficulty where just because you can do something, doesn't mean that you should (e.g. put Boom Boom at the end of every single level).
I will absolutely have to check this one out.
Very cool looking, hopefully it's not stupid hard as they tend to be. Definitely going to load this on the everdrive and take it for a spin on the AVS.
Kudos to ScarlettVixen for such an endeavor, will eventually give this hack a try for sure!
I’ll have to try this out on the AVS. I think my favorite SMB3 hack is 2nd Run since it’s a similar feel to a Nintendo developed game, at least world 1 since I’ve not played all that far. I’ve definitely played some nightmare difficulty hacks and that’s not what I look for in a hack; I’m typically looking for a game that feels like a natural expansion of the original.
That said, I’m not so sure that this hack is for me!
I'll definitely give this a go! I just wish they got rid of that weird extra column of screen on the left, it was always so distracting to me in the NES game. That's part of the reason I usually opt to play the SNES version instead
This is funny timing for me as I just finished Mario Advance 4 (Super Mario Bros 3) on the GBA the other week! I'll definitely check this one out.
Will this work on the NES / SNES mini?
@Spider-Kev
If you've Hakchi'd them then probably.
If it turns out it's not compatible with the default NES emulator on the NES Mini (such as using special mappers not present in the official titles), you'll end up having to use the Retroarch core instead.
@RupeeClock
Is retroarch compatible with the minis?
Also, thanks for response, I never seen to get that many anymore
@Spider-Kev
The NES and SNES minis are basically just ARM devices running Linux with a small storage space (less than 512MB), but they can access USB storage with a special adapter.
They can run Retroarch just fine and can actually run all kinds of systems, they're good at PlayStation games as I recall though will work best with a Wii Classic Controller instead of the bundled NES/SNES controller.
I have to say that this did not give me a good first impression. When you can die or get stuck in the mandatory tutorial stage, that's not good design. It also, probably unreasonably, bothers me that you don't squish goombas when jumping on them! They just...explode? Blasphemy!
@RupeeClock
Yeah, I remember hearing that the NES/SNES minis ran PS1 games better than the PSmini!
@MARl0
Yeah, I had some issues with the mandatory tutorial stage too.
The constant helper text overlaying your normal UI doesn't remind you that the super leaf power-up lets you fly (it assumes you know), and it doesn't communicate that your "double tap and hold B" powers that come with the super-super leaf and the frog-suit have a cooldown timer.
That one bottleneck section where you have to swim through jellyfish twice is a problem when you don't know about the cooldown.
You can skip the section where you're expected to douse flames and freeze water to get through, by taking damage and just running through as small Mario.
Something like sign-posts you stand in-front of to show the text boxes would've been much better, but when the opening level of your hack features level design weaker than on Super Mario Maker, that isn't promising.
@Boston_J This has the technical background that this area was left free in order to save storage space, as it was covered by the CRT televisions of the time anyway. Many NES and Master System games have this unused space of 8 pixels to the left and right, sometimes also at the top and bottom. In emulators such as Mesen, it is therefore possible to cut off this “overscan area”.
Quite ambitious, I owe it to their years of dedication to give it a shot!
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