Hudson's other two Mario games

[blue lander]

Huh! I'm almost positive Thunderforce came out for the MZ-1500, not the MZ-700. And I'm sure I've seen MZ-800 versions of Mappy and Rally-X. The MZ-700 isn't capabale of much more than extremely crude . I'd imagine whoever wrote that is rather confused, as the picture is of a MZ-80, not an MZ 700 or 800 (Although the 700 was backwards compatible with the 80).

[y-bot]

I just picked up Mario Bros. Special at a flea market in Tokyo in April for $5. I hadn't even heard of it before. Here's a pic:

http://www.hevanet.com/ccorner/tobys009.jpg

y-bot

[tom]

blue lander, you seem to know about the MZ700.

I own one and would like to know how many games they had released for it?
Any idea?

So far I got the following for MZ700:
Galaxians, Nightmare Park, Dragons Caves, Chock-a-Block, all from Solo Software
plus the two games tapes from Sharp with 5 games on each tape.

[rbudrick]

Well the 800 was basically a 700 with an included Quickdisk drive, iirc. The 1500 and the 800 were the same, only the 1500 was the Japan-only version. If anyone finds these games, I have a MZ-1500 if anyone needs to test these on the real thing.

Since the Famicom Disk games were just longer quickdisks, does anyone know how to copy them using an MZ-1500? I've heard it's possible, but I wasn't sure how.

-Rob

[cmstar]

Can anyone get the Super Mario Special disk image to run on a Mac PC-88 emulator? It runs fine on a pc. I'm having a hard time on a Mac cause every emulator is in Japanese.

Where any other Super Mario (not just Mario Bros.) games released on other computers?

[blue lander]

Well the 800 was basically a 700 with an included Quickdisk drive, iirc. The 1500 and the 800 were the same, only the 1500 was the Japan-only version. If anyone finds these games, I have a MZ-1500 if anyone needs to test these on the real thing.

-Rob

Are you sure? The 800 games I've seen have had considerably better graphics than the 700. I thought they were two distinct systems. I know the 1500 and 800 are internally identical, but I think there's enough changes to the BIOS that a game written for one won't run on the other.

Back to SMBS, I still haven't been able to successfully make a copy of the disk image. I'm going to try a different disk drive. However, I found out that there's also a Sharp X1 version of the game, and I even found a picture of the box...




I'd be very suprised if the X1 version didn't support a joypad (although I'm not sure if the X1 pad has two buttons).

[rbudrick]

Are you sure? The 800 games I've seen have had considerably better graphics than the 700. I thought they were two distinct systems. I know the 1500 and 800 are internally identical, but I think there's enough changes to the BIOS that a game written for one won't run on the other.

Hmm, yeah, your're probably right. I found this link:

http://www.old-computers.com/MUSEUM/computer.asp?c=208

I remember researching these a great deal when I was shopping around for a1500, but I think my memory is just remember ing stuff incorrectly. I think the correction would be that the 800 did pretty much anything the 700 could do and more...

Anyway, I noticed this on wikipedia:

MZ-800 (1985) - The first MZ with a 640x200-pixel graphics mode. Not available in Japan.
MZ-1500 (1984) - Features 320x200-pixel graphics and built-in sound capability. The tape recorder has been replaced with a floppy drive that reads 2.8-inch Quick Disks.

News to me...I thought they were basically identical. More likely someone just failed to mention the 1500 had that other graphic mode too...

-Rob

[blue lander]

I've been meaning to get more into the MZ family of computers. I specifically want an MZ-1500 and track down one of the few versions of Thunderforce I I'm missing (I already have the PC JX, PC-8801, and FM-7 version. I still need the X1, MZ-1500, and PC-6001 versions).

Anyways, I just won an auction for the X1 version of Super Mario Bros. Special, but it's just for the box and the manuals (no software). So I'll scan in a high res picture of the covers and anything interesting in the manual once it arrives. Hopefully there'll be some screenshots of the X1 version on the back.

[Papa Geno]

Thanks guys! Didn't even Know this existed. I want to eventually copy the level design onto a NES rom. Who need New Super Mario Bros. When you have this!

[rbudrick]

Well, you'd have to add some things like new enemies and sprites and a few other things. If you can disassemble the disk image and find the parts of the code corresponding to these, I'm sure it's possible to convert them to 6502 somehow and add them. That'd be a huge pain in the balls, though.

-Rob

[Jorpho]

I think he intends to use one of the many SMB level editors out there and copy the level layouts from screenshots.

[rbudrick]

I think he intends to use one of the many SMB level editors out there and copy the level layouts from screenshots.

Yeah, I know, but some of the level designs won't really work true to SMBS without the extras in SMBS. Plus, good luck finding all the secrets in it. It might be a worth it to disassmble that game just to analyze it to see where everything is. It sure would be awesome to have an NES version of SMBS

-Rob

[rbudrick]

http://cgi.ebay.com/Hudson-MARIO-BRO...QQcmdZViewItem


SMBS for PC-6001. Is there an emu for this computer? Could someone please buy this and dump it?

EDIT: I almost forgot...this is Y-bot's auction...I shoulda mentioned that. It was posted in his everything ebay post.

Anyway, can this just be dumped to a wav file and then easily converted to a bin somehow? Can any old platform's tapes be preserved this way? I remember that's how the old VCS Supercharger tapes used to be dumped...

-Rob

[blue lander]

That isn't Super Mario Bros Special, it's Mario Bros Special. There is an emulator for the P6, but I've never used it. I think there's a relatively generic program that'll convert wav files to dat files that many of these emulators use, but all the documentation is in Japanese.

[rbudrick]

Ah, so it is. My bad. Sorry, folks.

You may have won this time, Lander. But I'll get you next time! BWA HA HA HA!!!

-Rob

[rbudrick]

Lander, you ever try that SMBS image on your PC-88 yet?

-Rob

[Jorpho]

Ready to return to hell?

There's a thread at Romhacking.net about some of the new work that is being done to "port" SMBS to the NES. One of the things to come out of this work has been a new patch (discussed on page 4 of the thread) to fix the corruption in 4-4.
http://gis.net/~levi/gaming/smbs/

(Also note that there are now abundant Youtube videos of the later levels in the game.)

[rbudrick]

Thanks, Jorpho! It's about time, huh?

There's so many things in that game I can think of that would have to be done that aren't in SMB, like the level where you MUST drop the elevator from it's track or you can't progress, special enemies, upside down pipes, etc.

-Rob