Mario64
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Fans make 80 new levels for 'New Super Mario Bros.'
If you're pining for some classic Mario and don't have a copy of Super Mario Maker to hand, there's always Newer Super Mario Bros. DS. As the name implies, it's a fan-made successor to the portable title from 2006. The 80-level campaign was created with the free and legally dubious New Super Mario Bros. Editor, and requires a ROM of the original DS game to run. If you can find one and a compatible emulator (the team says it works "pretty much perfectly" with DeSmuME) you can play the game for free.
The life of an elite 'Super Mario 64' speedrunner
Allan Alvarez can complete the game Super Mario 64 faster than anyone in the world, which means that most days he gets out of bed around 4 PM. Afternoons consist of errands -- lately, finding a new apartment and office space with reliable internet for streaming -- and training with his volleyball team. After dinner, he does a few rounds of arm and finger stretches, makes sure he's hydrated, then turns on the Nintendo 64 to practice. At around midnight in Spain -- 6 PM on the US East Coast and thus peak viewing hours -- he starts streaming on Twitch under his alias cheese05. His shift often wraps up close to 7 AM. Alvarez is a full-time speedrunner; he competes with others around the world to beat a game in the fastest time possible. His primary game, the classic platformer Super Mario 64, is the most popular for speedrunners. Alvarez holds the world record for beating it: 120 stars, which essentially means conquering every goal in the game. It takes the average gamer about 24 hours to do this, according to HowLongToBeat.com, an online database of game lengths. Alvarez has done it in 1 hour, 39 minutes and 28 seconds, including cutscenes.
Nintendo squashes browser-based Mario tribute game
While Nintendo proper might be willing to let some folk make a Mario game, we're a long way from that extending to free browser-based versions of the company's best-known franchise. As such, that Super Mario 64 HD tribute that popped up last Friday is (perhaps predictably) no more. Now back to work, the lot of you.
Super Mario Chart
NeoGAFfer Stumpokapow compiled this chart of Japanese Mario sales throughout the series, and two things are immediately obvious from looking at it: Mario sprites still look great! Seriously, yay Mario. New Super Mario Bros. is huge. We knew that NSMB was riding the combined influence of Nintendo nostalgia and Being On The Nintendo DS into sales Valhalla, but we didn't realize just how successful it was. If Nintendo ever gets enough DS Lites into Japanese stores, we can almost guarantee that two-million copy gap between it and the original Super Mario Bros. will disappear. In other good news (in one blogger's opinion and pretty much no one else's), Super Mario 64 is near the bottom of the list, providing evidence that 3D Mario was a failed experiment. This in no way means that Super Mario RPG's position on the list is indicative of the quality of that game. That's, uh, completely different. Check after the break to see the full chart and to register your disgust about our treatment of Mario 64.
