Nintendo Forces Removal of Commodore 64 Super Mario Port 7 Years in the Making

A modder who spent seven years building a version of Super Mario Bros. that could run on a Commodore 64 faced a sad but predictable reaction from Nintendo this week: Not on our watch. The company has already filed takedown notices against the modder, ZeroPaige, though his creation can be found online if you know where to look.

One of the specific features of Super Mario Bros. is full-screen side scrolling, which apparently isn’t easy to implement. Nevertheless, the C64 version of the game is an incredibly faithful port, as can be seen below:

Of course, this means Nintendo was also watching. Almost as soon as the mod started to become popular, it was immediately taken down. The Commodore Computer Club tweeted about the issue:

Good times. Due to a DMCA takedown notice we had to remove the Super Mario Bros 64 download from our website blog post from 4 days ago. Hopefully everyone enjoys the #Commodore 64 #C64 game who was able to snag it.

— PDX Commodore Club (@c64club) April 22, 2019

Of course, the flip side to this is that you can still play SMB online in any number of ways, provided you can Google the phrase “play Super Mario Bros. online.” Striking down the C64 version is more about sending a message than actually preventing people from playing the game.

If you’re curious for more information on how old-school game programming worked in a very different era, check the YouTube video above. The techniques and skills programmers used to create early games were quite different — but no less interesting — than what we see today.

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