To mark the 25th anniversary of Commander Keen, one of the first games of id Software, John Romero has released a gameplay video that shows a PC port of Super Mario Bros. 3 of 1990 that was denied by Nintendo.
Before proposing the Wolfenstein or Doom licenses, the development studio id Software had worked on different gaming platforms. Commander Keen is one of the first titles of the team founded by John Carmack and John Romero, released in 1990 on DOS.
To mark the 25th anniversary of Commander Keen, Romero had published a particularly interesting video that shows a demo of Super Mario Bros. 3 adapted on PC. This project has been initiated by Carmack in 1990, since it had succeeded in developing a technology that has the ability to display a smooth scrolling in all directions on PC.
From this demo, Carmack has offered the assistance of Tom Hall, programmer who replaced Mario graphics by that of Dangerous Dave, a character created by John Romero in one of his old games. This time, the demo was called Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement then presented to Nintendo to persuade the latter to adapt SMB 3 on PC. Japanese publisher had refused it since they preferred to retain its draft licenses on its own machines. A second version offering Nintendo graphics was also presented, without success.
Following this decision, Carmack and Romero turned to the publisher Apogee Software and could form the studio id Software, then went on site on the creation of Billy Blaze and the game that puts the scene: Commander Keen. Watch the video below:
Super Mario Bros. 3 Demo (1990) from john romero on Vimeo.
