A Wonderful Super Mario Bros Commodore C64 Port Is Under Attack By Nintendo Legal Hounds
For most people, the thought of playing Super Mario Bros. on a Commodore 64 probably never occurred to them, for a number of reasons. The biggest one, of course, is that Super Mario Bros. was never made available for the best selling PC of all time—it's an NES game. However, the thought did occur to developer ZeroPaige, who made a ROM of the classic game, but unfortunately Nintendo is shutting down the party.
ZeroPaige spent the better part of a decade—seven years, to be exact—developing a nifty port of Super Mario Bros., in the form of a ROM that is playable through C64 emulation software on a modern PC. While the gameplay appears to stay true to the original, however, it's not authentic, meaning Nintendo had no part in its creation.
"This is a Commodore 64 port of the 1985 game Super Mario Bros. for the Famicom and Nintendo Entertainment System," ZeroPaige wrote when he released the ROM earlier this month. "It contains the original version that was released in Japan and United States, as well as the European version. It also detects and supports a handful of turbo functionalities, and has 2 SID support."
While an impressive port, Nintendo has seemingly been sending cease and desist orders to sites that host the ROM.
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
The good news for fans is that once the cat is out of the bag, there's no shoving it back in, no matter how hard Nintendo tries. Unfortunately, it does mean the ROM is more difficult to find with this latest effort, and of course there is always the risk of malware when venturing into dark alleys on the web.
This apparent move by Nintendo is not surprising. The company has a history of chasing down ROM creators and distributors, and hitting them with legal action. Nintendo also maintains a detailed section on ROMs in its Legal Information page, which spells out why the company is against them, and the whole emulation scene as a whole.
"The introduction of emulators created to play illegally copied Nintendo software represents the greatest threat to date to the intellectual property rights of video game developers. As is the case with any business or industry, when its products become available for free, the revenue stream supporting that industry is threatened. Such emulators have the potential to significantly damage a worldwide entertainment software industry which generates over $15 billion annually, and tens of thousands of jobs," Nintendo states.
As such, this apparent move by Nintendo was both predictable and inevitable.
