Browsing on Ebay (always dangerous) and found this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/SUPER-MARIO-...UAAOSwYaFWepj~
What the holy hell is this? There are other "Russian" Genesis games for sale as well.
Printable View
Browsing on Ebay (always dangerous) and found this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/SUPER-MARIO-...UAAOSwYaFWepj~
What the holy hell is this? There are other "Russian" Genesis games for sale as well.
Wow the pics on the box look like Mario World. Which was always said to exist, but the ROM never surfaced online AFAIK.Quote:
Originally Posted by marlowe221
So if it's really Mario World then this is awesome, and someone needs to dump the ROM online, like the other Mario hacks that are floating around online already. :cool:
Russia is the core of where these after market games come from.
You should check out Mr. Dendy, a Russian kid who grew up with these type of games that not only reviews them but knows a good portion of their history.
I don't know... I don't remember Mario holding crates up over his head in the SNES game. To me this looks like some kind of Genesis style remake of the original NES game. Then again, there is something very... Alex Kidd-esque about the graphical style too.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecco
Very cool, I will check out his videos.Quote:
Originally Posted by Thunderblaze16
Wow, the price is atrociously high.
Actually it looks like screenshots from several games.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecco
Pretty sure it was already dumped, no idea if already emulated though (there's a mapper to work around >_>).Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecco
Super Mario World 64 was dumped and really looks like SMW, but unfortunately, plays like shit!Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-jhSjft_lM
Based on videos of it, it just seems to be Super Mario Brothers with unimpressive renditions of the music. Everdrive fodder in my opinion.
There are two "Super Mario World" hacks. One of them is Squirrel King with all the graphics being Mario-nized, the other's a port of SMB All-Stars' Super Mario Bros 1 with bad controls.
And there's a game that looks like Super Mario World too (which appears in three of those screenshots). The physics are utterly broken, which sucks because the graphics side of it at least was well done.
Weird how the back of the cover shows the "Super MarioWorld 64" pirate, while the last screenshot shows that SMB1 pirate.
There're a lot of crossover Knock-Off ports like this. Also hacks and the like. I don't really mind them. Actually, I'm very surprised at the level of professionalism behind their physical copy iterations (which include very good looking manuals and cases). 'Way better than many Genesis homebrews nowadays. I may even get into those crazy ports one day. Who knows? I think it's cool. I don't think of it as anything official or even collectable; but definitely cool.
Actually I am surprised that it includes a manual as well. I've seen many a bootleg cart and while cases are nothing unusual (only famiclone cartridges are sold loose) the manual is an uncommon thing.
There was a dump of Mario World 64 that was hacked to run via the Everdrive, I have a copy. To be honest its graphically pretty good, but the controls take a bit of getting used to, especially the way Mario runs. The only thing making the game unplayable for me is the lack of checkpoints, every level has to be done entirely in one attempt. Considering the fact that its an unlicensed hack job, its kind of okay, but you're not missing anything if you can't find a copy.
I guess it'd be way more playable if Mario's run momentum was gradual (like in most platformers) instead of being stuck in two speeds.
I started to collect the Russian bootleg games some years ago. If you wish I could provide a complete list of all games which aren't pure graphic hacks. If I am not wrong there are 5 different Mario games for Mega Drive. First they came without manual but one year ago they suddenly included a very thin one which explains the controls and not really more.
Hello! I am from Russia and I collect pirated cartridges. I can say that with the leadership of the cartridges - is a fraud. Manual does not exist. It marketing move to buy these cartridges foreign audience. I can recall only licensed guides and manual for a few Russian translations. This seller on Ebay sells cartridges quite different covers, ie, it's not something that I can buy at an electronics store. You can drive yourself into a search engine the name of MK8 games and Kolobok - the search engine will give out cartridges with different cover - this cover will be present. You can scan multiple manual?
P.S. purely hammered into Google translator)))))
I didn't know that the actual hack of SMW has been dumped. I'll definitely be downloading and playing it. Graphics look good at least.
As for the other Mario hacks that I know about:
The Squirrel King hack is lame, because it's not Mario gameplay at all.
The hack of Mario 1 (SNES) on Genesis is good IMO, despite the strange controls, graphics are great and there are small changes to the game here and there.
There's a hack of that, with Sonic sprites instead of Mario, but pointless because the gameplay is still Mario, not Sonic (i.e. you can't spin attack anything, you can only jump on top of enemies).
There's also the NES version of Mario 1 on Genesis and this is sweet, just the colors are slightly weird.
I'm still wondering what the product for sale really is, but whatever, I'm more interested to download that SMW hack soon.
The rest of that seller's offerings are similarly bizarre. Of course, I mean no disrespect to our Russian members - I recognize how tough it must have been to get much in the way of video games for many years in that part of the world and, well, any port in a storm as the saying goes.
That said, I would be curious to play a couple of these if only to see what happened when I plugged it into the Genesis and hit the power button.
There's still more than that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Bgj8NuR0ek
What is that music that starts at 2:32? I know I recognize it...Quote:
Originally Posted by LinkueiBR
EDIT: Yep, it's TaleSpin (says in the comments).
This bag though...
http://assets0.ordienetworks.com/ima...idth_600x.jpeg
It took quite some effort for to dump the SMW64 cart a few years ago, it was one of the last few original unlicensed games from the 90's that remained undumped . Besides those mentioned in Ecco's post, there are 2 original Russian Mario games. One often referred to as Super Mario Galaxy or Super Mario 4, the other as Super Mario 3 or Mario: Around the World. Both have absolutely fantastic music but leave a lot to be desired control-wise.
You can find a lot of info about these unlicensed Mario games at the Bootleg Games Wiki and the Pirated Games Central forums.
I downloaded that SMW hack and I actually really like it. The control is not the same as Mario controls, but the controls aren't terrible either. He can't run by holding a button, and instead, he runs by gaining momentum. It's not as nice as Mario's normal controls, but it works OK.
Can anyone explain why these hacks tend to get strange controls? Like here, are the controls from a different game or something?
Also: I got the "fixed" download at the YouTube video in this thread. I realized that I had a few downloads of the same game already, but that they weren't "fixed," and they would never play in an emulator. Can someone explain what was broken and fixed with this hack?
Getting it to work smoothly requires subpixel precision (i.e. manipulating non-integer values). You can achieve this easily with fixed point, but the problem is that most of these guys don't realize it and instead try to use integer precision instead. It backfires miserably, but they're probably in such a hurry that they can't afford to care for it. (I recall hearing of a story of some Chinese guy who was given only two weeks to make a new game from scratch - who has the time to polish that?)Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecco
Unfixed version still has the original copy protection intact and require the emulator to have the protection for that specific game written into it. Fixed versions have the ROM patched to remove the copy protection so it will work in any emulator.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecco
if these hacks could just get the controls the same as their original counterparts they would be halfway playable!
So what kind of copy protection is on the unfixed version? Is it a region lock-out, or something along those lines?Quote:
Originally Posted by Azathoth
Bank switching and encryption. The encryption is just rotating the bits and then applying a XOR mask, but it sure can be elusive to figure out.
In short, they made it so you can not illegally copy their illegally ported game.
So then we cracked it so we can illegally copy their illegally ported game.
Illegally I might add.
Russia, where game cracks you!Quote:
Originally Posted by NeoVamp
Here's a weird Russian bootleg called "Planet Contra". It's Mega Turrican with the Google Android mascot on the cover, a green orb with snorkeling goggles as a protagonist, and redrawn enemies and power-ups. Truly a bizarre game.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/PLANET-CONTR...-/321893238765
You know what is great Russian hack? Mortal Kombat II Unlimited. It has a lot of added extras. oh yes bless the people who made that happen. http://www.writersbeat.com/images/smilies/shifty.gif
That's the most badass incarnation of the android ever seen. (EDIT: found it)
As for MKIIU: my biggest grip with it is how the MKI backgrounds were converted. Not only do they lack parallax, they were also crammed into a single palette... I'd rather the hack just use the MKI backgrounds as-is. I mean, the game is already on the console, may as well reuse that =/
Bless them all indeed. The ones who helped with converting the story from arcade to Mega Drive included :).Quote:
Originally Posted by NeoVamp
Funny thing, I live in the same city as the guy who made that hack. A pity we never met.
$19,99? Really?
Another question: Back then, in the countries that received crazy hacks as SMW64, with such broken difficulty: How did people actually play games like this? I couldn't get through the second stage without using save states.
How did anyone play this on real hardware? There are Game Genie codes, but did people know them back then? Without some kind of cheat, I can't imagine anyone beating the second stage lol.
Most cartridges were just bootlegs of licensed games so that wasn't much of a commercial problem. As for this stuff... well, most of the players for these games would be kids who are stubborn enough to keep trying and coping with it (not to mention that you wouldn't get another game soon enough to just jump off, as happens with modern platforms these days with all the free games out there).
Right, I was mostly wondering if people (in regions that received such crazy hacks) used Game Genie on hacks like SMW64, because it would balance out the broken difficulty. But for that to happen, they would have needed homemade codes from somewhere, without the internet...Quote:
Originally Posted by Sik
The whole scene is a mystery to me...
Goati's been working on this lately (Mario 4: Космическая Одиссея = "Super Mario 4: Space Odyssey") and I was inspired, so I beat it today. It was kinda fun! -- in a janky/trashy way, of course.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sik
Controls are totally broken, but in such a way that I didn't have much trouble adapting. (Then again I've beaten Dark Castle, a bunch of games from Action 52, etc. so maybe I'm an outlier in that department.)
Be sure to play at 50Hz, since everything's far too fast at 60Hz, especially the music.