Mario’s Super Picross is a member of a rather exclusive club: Mario games that Nintendo never localised. As you’d expect, it’s very close to Mario’s Picross on the Game Boy, but the lukewarm market response to that title meant Nintendo passed on releasing the sequels outside of Japan until the rise of the Nintendo DS.
Super Mario Bros Archive
Industrious hackers bring Peach’s Castle to GoldenEye 007
Ever fancy playing a GoldenEye 007 deathmatch in Peach’s Castle from Super Mario 64? Now you can, thanks to the efforts of Sogun Studio and GoldenEye Vault.
The crew behind the Peach’s Castle map were previously responsible for porting The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time‘s Kakariko Village to GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark, which is included in this pack.
You can find the patch here. Follow the installation steps at the site and you’ll be blasting around the Mushroom Kingdom in no time.
Super Mario Bros.: Peach Edition continues role reversal ROM hack trend
Hot off the heels of Mike Mika’s Pauline hack for Donkey Kong, ROMHacking.net’s Kishi has released a similar effort for Super Mario Bros., which puts players in the shoes of Princess Peach, who has to rescue Mario from Bowser’s clutches.
While put together relatively quickly, Kishi’s hack, entitled Super Mario Bros: Peach Edition, is actually quite competent. Sprites have been redrawn too, so they’re not as ghastly as the original Peach sprite, and the animation is quite impressive for a quick project.
Classic Mario and Link join Medicom Ultra Detail figure range
Medicom are preparing the release of some new Super Mario Bros and Legend of Zelda figures this year. Rather than basing these new lines purely on modern interpretations of the characters, Medicom will also be releasing classic interpretations of Mario and Zelda based on the art featured in the manuals of the original NES releases.
Included in the range are the classic Link, Wind Waker Link, Tanooki Mario and SMB1 Mario.
Best of all, these figures are dirt cheap at just 730 yen from AmiAmi and will be available in January 2013.
Miyamoto: The Koopalings are not (currently) Bowser’s children
One of video games’ greatest ongoing paternity issues has been settled. At least until Miyamoto changes his mind again.
In the latest issue of Game Informer, the magazine’s staff had the opportunity to ask Shigeru Miyamoto candid questions about the Super Mario Bros. series. One such question asked was regarding the relationship between the Koopalings and Bowser. They asked; “In Super Mario Bros. 3, the Koopalings were suppose to be Bowser’s children. But there’s also Bowser Jr. Are they all his kids, and are they all from different mothers? Is Bowser Jr. a Koopaling?”
Miyamoto’s response: “Our current story is that the seven Koopalings are not Bowser’s children. Bower’s only child is Bowser Jr. and we don’t know who the the mother is.”
First person to make an animated gif of Bowser dancing on The Maury Povich Show gets my eternal thanks.