Mario Bros 32k Prototype Holy Grail Rare Colecovision Game & Review Bean Gene Bourbon Barrel Beer

[@tursilion]

After watching the video, I had to laugh :) That was great, thanks :) The collision detection issue you see is because there was no collision detection implemented while Mario was in the air. The scene that just 'skipped' was the bonus stage, that was one of the last things implemented. No score as you noted. Detection on the edge of the platforms was also tuned much later. Losing your POW was because Mario didn't stop moving UP during his jump, so he kept hitting it till it went away. The bad flicker was an off-screen sprite bug that wasn't noticed until later in development. The 'moonwalking turtle' I never saw before, that was great! That one I wonder if it's in the final too... ;) Thanks for the video!

[@RelliKsReliCsTheBeerNinja111]

Thank you so much for the kind words and all of your information! It means a lot that you liked my video :)

[@tursilion]

The 32k version was never completely scrapped and started over, but I did push against the 32k limit for a while before giving up and asking for the multicart. Once I had that, I didn't need to be conservative at all anymore. The bugs in this version are mostly because it's still very early in development. There's a lot of graphics - screens are RLE compressed (since they are mostly empty space), they still take about 2k. Graphics tiles and sprites are uncompressed so they can be blitted to VDP in real time. 255 of the 256 color tiles are used (16 bytes each because they are bitmap characters). There are 126 16x16 sprite patterns at 32 bytes each - so just that is a bit over 8k. Sounds effects are a really big offender.. there's only really basic RLE going on, so even though there's not a lot of music and sound, it's chomping up about 4k. So just that, and we're at 14k. The code was built with SDCC which is not the most space-efficient compiler (mind you, it's hard to gauge how space efficient C can be on a Z80). The CV library takes up a bit over 1k, and the C runtime about 0.5k. The rest is game code. Just the helper functions for drawing Mario in his various states are over 2k. (All figures for Rev.A, I'm just looking at the map file.) My point is: it adds up fast. :) The final object is about 61.5k. As far as I know, we got everything in there from the arcade except the later levels with the falling icicles. :) Hope that's interesting.

[@RelliKsReliCsTheBeerNinja111]

Thank you so much for all that info! It is really interesting how this game came about, and it is amazing when I play the finial product that I'm playing a almost perfect version of Mario Bros on my Colecovision! It is a amazing piece of work! Thank you!

[@electricadventures]

Sweet getting hold of the 32k prototype, I missed out on all versions of this unfortuneately. This version seems quite early, lots of little things wrong with it, not bad though. I am struggling to see why it would need more than a 32k cartridge though. It's not as if there is a tremendous amount of music in the full or game, or even that much more graphic content in the cut scenes. Soon as I get this VGM player code going in ASM will probably potentially start busting the 32k limit with the ability to add sound and music a lot easier from now on.

[@RelliKsReliCsTheBeerNinja111]

Thanks I really love this game. The 32k ver. was tossed and never released. When the game was not going to be the way JF wanted on a 32k cart, they switched to the mega cart and had to start the game over by scratch. It was a complete do over... That's why this game play's different and is very different then the retail release.

[@RelliKsReliCsTheBeerNinja111]

I'm not sure what the ceiling was that he could bust through, but I was told it couldn't be done the way he wanted with out going over 32k.

[@electricadventures]

I would say it was written in C and not in ASM, there really are not that many graphic objects are sprite shapes even to get close to 32k. I only just went past 16k with my next game, Pyxidis which has lots of tiles and sprites. I will say other than RLE compression I don't think much was known to the community back when this was done I would say i.e. had not been much transfer of knowledge from the MSX community. I will say sound is still a pain for myself though, so I may be forced to eat my words :)

[@tarstarkusz]

The released version I have is only 64k not 128. Also, the 7800 version is 48k, but doesn't have the cut scenes and has terrible sound. However, I think if the 7800 had actually shipped when it was ready, I think Atari could have held onto the American Market. They waited far too long to release it, almost as an afterthought.