Project: Mushroom-MD
By DeltaW
You thought these cheap bootlegs were the best ways to play as the Nintendo mascot on the Sega Mega Drive? Fear not, because I have a project that does it better!
Introducing Project: Mushroom-MD!
This project aims to recreate the entirety of the first Super Mario Bros. on the Mega Drive. I don't want to aim for 1:1 accuracy, I want to ensure the game feels just like the first Mario game, with a couple of changes derived from later Mario games, while keeping the Super Mario All-Stars visuals and audio as close as possible. This demo contains three levels to try out: World 1-1 (Ground), World 1-2 (Underground) and World 1-4 (Castle).
As for the controls, A or C jumps and B runs when the button is held or throw fireballs as Fire Mario. (you will be able to toggle the controls in a future update)
Just a heads-up:
- Mario is the only character playable here. Luigi will be implemented in a future update.
- Just bear in mind that compromises had to be made to the artwork as the Mega Drive only has a much smaller palette than the SNES, in addition to displaying a limited set of colours on-screen. Certain aspects were recoloured in order to be presented well with these limits and will continue to refine them.
- While I have tried to make Mario's physics as accurate as possible, anyone looking to speedrun the game may notice that they aren't exactly 1:1 to the original game. I will keep ironing out discrepencies in future updates, but just keep in mind the physics aren't bit-perfect to the game its based on.
- There's no entry cutscene nor warp pipe area in World 1-2.
- There are no checkpoints in this demo.
- Objects will spawn a bit too early when they're not on-screen (obvious if you kick a shell or shoot a fireball and it hits an enemy off-screen)
- Any well-known glitches you can do in the original game cannot be recreated here nor do I have plans to go about recreating any glitches.
Having said all of that, I'm sure some of you are confused as to why it's submitted in a contest where you're supposed to present ROM hacks/mods of Sonic games? To answer your question, this is running on a heavily modified and debloated Sonic 3 and Knuckles engine. So yeah, that's why it snuck into the contest.
AI usage: everything you see in this project was hand-crafted. No AI was used to make this game.
Main Credits:
- DeltaW - main programmer, music arrangements, SFX porting, assets importing and tweaking, level layouts
- TomatoWave_0 - creating SNES-like FM instruments and for recreating the Ground theme
- AlloyGK - Sky background dithering used for the first level
- LackOfTrack - music arrangements and a bunch of sound effects derived from their Master System port of SMB1
- Cinossu - title screen logo
Playtesters:
- Undying_Star
- VAdaPEGA
- Techokami
- Speems
- giovanni.gen
- GenesisDoes
- RetroKoH
- KC
- D.A. Garden
- rocket
- DustinVG
- ChiliHog
Special thanks:
- Naoto & devon - modified S3K disassembly (Hedgebrew - which is built on top of Sonic's Fun and Easy Adventure's disassembly)
- flamewing - Kosinski+M decompression and optimised decompression codes
- vladikcomper - MD Debugger and MegaPCM v2.1
- MDTravis - custom punctuation marks for the ASCII text
- doppelganger - Super Mario Bros disassembly (heavily referenced for the majority of this project such as power-ups, enemies and the red plumber himself)
- TakuikaNinja & co. - smb1-bugfix (referenced for fixing and tweaking certain aspects of the player physics)
- IsoFrieze & co. - Super Mario World disassembly (used as reference to understand Mario's physics better when I was recreating SMW-styled physics but also a few aspects from that game was brought over here as well such as the camera system)
- BMatSantos - SMB3 title screen expanded font (used as a basis for the project logo)
- Monty Python - an interesting little gag I snuck somewhere in this game
- Nintendo - assets taken from Super Mario All-Stars (SMB1 and SMB3), Super Mario World and Super Mario Advance and for creating a franchise still adored by many people to this day
- GameTec - Underground background taken from Super Mario World (bootleg/hack of Squirrel King)
File Type: rom/zip
File Size: 132.01 KB
Awesome!!
Great work, this looks fantastic and feels like it's an authentic Mario game made for the Sega Genesis hardware. Look forward to further updates on this.
EDIT: also I laughed out loud when seeing how this demo ended
Last modified by SF-Human @ 2026-10-22 17:38:46
I loved this demo, even though I got stomped by Big Ol' FEET.
I've got a little jumpscared when foot appeared, lol :sob:
But other than that, hack is LOVELY
Impressive 1-1 port! Everything definitely feels near accurate! I did also laugh at the aburpt ending as well lol
The resolution reminds me of sesame street counting cafe, but why?
Last modified by Mildanner @ 2026-10-23 20:55:06
This is already FAR better than the well known HK bootlegs that came back in the Gen/MD's late days :)
Sega Does What Nintendoes™
no way we got super mario bros on megadrive but better
Such peak
Heads up for PAL users: I forgot to mention, but outside of the music being optimised, it supports full 240p mode (mainly due to me not setting a compile flag before submitting =P). While it works really well, just bear in mind the backgrounds haven't been updated to support the new hardware addition so you may see the background cut below or misaligned. They will be fixed in a future update.