Doom creators John Romero and John Carmack released footage of a 25-year-old PC demo for Super Mario Bros. 3 today.
Published at Romero’s Vimeo account, the six-minute-long demo playthrough is more a rough technical proof-of-concept than a faithful recreation of the 1988 NES classic. Character sprites jitter around, all of the game audio is custom-made, and aside from level 1-1, the game world is largely incomplete.
Despite the lack of polish, this tech PC demo is still a fascinating piece of video game history. It shows that western developers had an interest in games coming out of Japan and lends fuel to the long-standing rumor that the Doom creators were looking to port the game to PC.
It’s probably only a matter of time before we see recreations of Romero and Carmack’s levels in Super Mario Maker!