Looking back: Old Mario ROM hacks, part 1 -- Ninja Mario Bros.

I've already posted a series of these looking back at my Earthbound hack titled Fnrrf Ygm Schnish, and recently I started poking around with Mario hacking stuff again and thought... hey, why not go ahead and post some stuff about some of my other old ROM hacks, too?

And when I say "old"... I mean really old.  The Earthbound hack was started in 2005, while all of these except possibly the Ninja Mario one date back to sometime before that -- I know the sumo-themed ones are from somewhere around 2003, and Goma-Mario is even older.  Anyway... I'll start with the most recent of the bunch, which doesn't have a changed title screen (well... not the actual title screen part of it, anyway) but the filename of the ROM is "ninja.nes," so I'm just going to call it "Ninja Mario Bros."

Oh, and it turns out this answers my question of "when did I make this" -- it says right on the title screen that it's from 2007! So... the same year I finished Fnrrf Ygm Schnish, meaning that technically, all of these hacks are at least as old as that one.  Like Fnrrf Ygm Schnish, I replaced "Nintendo" with "Ninjutsu" on the copyright line.  Never did change the big "Super Mario Bros." title, though as you can see the graphics are... more than a little different.  Cities visible on the hills in the background, the bushes have angry eyes (and a gunshot wound in one, it seems)... there's even a knife for the "select one-player or two-player mode" cursor.

Introduction-to-a-new-level screen says "HOOD 1-1."  The bar at the top says "GHETTO 1-1."  Whoops.

Also, as may be obvious at this point, this hack has a really odd mixture of "gangsta" and "l33t" references along with the ninja theme.  Mario is apparently "HAXOR" now.  It gets weirder from here, too.

 The mushroom replacement is... some kind of giant potion-type bottle that says "l33t" on it.  Also, yep, that's the ASCII smiley-face symbol (as seen as the player character in ZZT games and various others from the 80s and early 90s) flying across the screen, replacing a Bullet Bill.  Small Mario is a ninja sprite from one of the older Final Fantasy games, but edited a bit to fit into Mario's movement patterns better.

The graphics are a bit "ghetto-ified," it seems, with random metal girders and trash cans (barely visible on this screen) replacing giant mushrooms and blocks.  Also, for some reason the thing holding up the girder randomly says "OATS!" on it.  I'm not sure why, but I vaguely remember that a lot of other ROM hacks made reference to Wilford Brimley and/or Quaker Oats so I probably slipped that in as a reference to those.

 Another ZZT-Bill here, and also water borrowed from... Mario 3, I think.  Also, the Goombas now have sunglasses, backwards hats, and dreadlocks.

 And the Koopa Troopas have been replaced by... what appears to be Koopas with makeup, lipstick, and enormous random jiggling boobs.  Also, skulls painted(?) on their shells.  This particular one also has wings, which seem to have been edited into bat-type wings rather than the fluffy white feathery ones that were there originally.

I guess they're supposed to be some sort of demonic Koopa hookers?  So basically... Koopa Hookas.

More Koopa Hookas here.  Apparently they come in red and purple rather than red and green in this game... except the purple are the equivalent of the red ones in the original, and the red ones are the original game's green ones.  That's a little confusing.

 Went down a pipe and discovered that the coins are, appropriately enough given the ninja theme, marked with Yen signs rather than the standard Mushroom Kindom "Roman numeral I, which is sometimes a raised part of the coin and sometimes an indented one depending on the game.  Or sometimes randomly a star instead, in some of the 3D ones."

End of the first level.  Taking down the ":P" flag and putting up a "PWN" flag from the castle.  I guess this game is "hacker ninjas vs. gangsters and internet memes/smileys/etc."... or something? I dunno, it's all kind of randomly slapped together. XD

 And now on 1-2... and the replacement of Hammer Bros. arrive.  They're... Hammer Bros., but with an Amish-type hat and beard rather than the helmet.  And they throw bibles.  I figure I'll call them the Amish Bros.

 Also, here's the Fire Flower replacement, which lets you throw shuriken.

Sadly, those shuriken are borderline useless because instead of bouncing like regular Mario fireballs, they fly in a straight line.  This could be a good thing, but... Mario 1 physics doesn't quite cooperate with them.  They fly right over the gangsta-Goombas' heads, and also the Piranha Plants (...well, I suppose more like Piranha Penises considering what I replaced their graphics with.  Don't look too closely at the above screenshot if you'd rather not see that), even though they look like they're being hit with the shuriken (as seen in the above screenshot.)  The Koopa Hookas and Amish Bros. are hit by them like normal, and I assume the squid and fish in the water levels can probably be ninja-starred to death also, but anything small that's walking along the ground will always dodge them.

 Also appearing in this level: Buzzy Beetles! Which have been modified a bit to resemble football helmets, a change that traces all the way back to my dad's first reaction upon seeing them in the original Mario game waaaay back when I was 4 or almost 5 years old.  Yep, he thought they looked like walking football helmets. XD

 Those Football Beetles are sprite edits that I'm actually pretty happy with even now, 8 years after I made this (along with the Koopa Hookas, though those are almost a little disturbing.  I mean... skanky turtles with big jiggly boobs... even though they're reptiles.  What the heck was I thinking when I made them!? XD)

 And now on to 1-3... which, randomly, is another underground level rather than a "giant trees" level like it would've been in the original game.  There's LOADS of ZZT-Bill launchers in here, too.

And it's at this point that I got my first "Game Over," or as this hack calls it in l33t-5p34k... well, you can just read the screenshot right above this text.

My second attempt worked out a bit better, though, and I made it to the end of the random underground level filled with cannons.  Along the way I found out (and repeatedly failed to get a screenshot of) an odd thing about the Goombas in this hack -- other Goombas will "trip" and die when they touch a squished Goomba during the brief time that it stays on the screen.  I can't remember how I did this, but apparently I edited the programming of Goombas somehow, just like I had done with the fireball behavior.

 1-4 is a pretty standard castle level, albeit with some pretty obnoxious jumps that probably shouldn't be in world 1 of a hack.  As you can see above, the fire bars have been replaced with... spinning chains of shuriken? Not sure how that works, but okay.

 Bowser, unfortunately, has not been edited... but the axe used to destroy the bridge and drop him into the lava has: it's now a Looney Tunes style dynamite-detonating plunger thingie connected to the bridge, which is apparently strapped with explosives for no apparent reason.

 And... Toad is now a gangsta, and refers to the princess as "da whore."  Okay.  Either that, or Princess Peach was replaced with... a whore.  Apparently this is the story of a l33t-speaking ninja on a journey to save a prostitute from turtles.

Actually... the Koopa Troopas are hookers now, too.  I guess maybe Bowser's running a prostitution ring and has kidnapped the princess to make her work as a hooker, too.  This game doesn't have any story actually mentioned in-game (...probably because I never thought up one...), so I guess that's as good a guess as any.

 And now onto Hood 2-1, or Ghetto 2-1 depending on what part of the screen you ask, which is... exactly the same as 2-1 in the regular game, but with mailboxes and EAT OATS NOW! signs (or EAT OATS, OATS NOW! in the case of the taller ones) replacing the trees and fences that were originally in the background.  Well, I guess we found where I stopped working on this hack. XD

But, since there's still some edited/replaced sprites I haven't gotten to, I'll keep going for now.

 Speaking of edited/replaced sprites, here's some weird up-arrow-rope thing replacing the vine, and some clouds with Xaldin eyebrows and sideburns.  I definitely need to re-use those Xaldin clouds if I ever make another Mario hack, I'd completely forgotten about them until now but they're pretty funny. XD

 And in 2-2, the first water level... there's lots of "fish this way" signs, but they're lying because there are no fish down here.  Only demons (ripped from the cheesy unlicensed Christian-themed NES game Spiritual Warfare) and penis-squids.

 And in 2-3, you get jumping pink/purple demons.  I was distracted by taking a screenshot so I got hit by one.  I actually like my edited versions of the bridges and trees, though!

 After a couple more uneventful levels, 3-1 has a slightly modified palette (blue rather than white/gray) and more "EAT OATS NOW!" signs.  Looking closer, though, I notice that the signs actually say "EAT NOW" if they don't have the full "EAT OATS! OATS! NOW" like the taller signs do.  Weird punctuation those signs have.

And here's some more Amish Bros., throwing bibles as always.  I can't remember why I took this particular screenshot, but it's here now.

 And now on to 4-1, the home of one of the sillier enemies in this game... the humping mosquitoes.  Replacing Lakitus... instead of a turtle guy on a cloud, there's two mosquitoes, doing what mosquitoes tend to do when two of them get together (and they're not teaming up to bite  your legs.)

 They fly around, humping in midair, and every once and a while throw down one of those purple eggs which hatches into a little spikey worm thing.

 I found out in this level that it actually is possible to hit smaller enemies with the shuriken... but you need to have really good aim, and they need to be falling at the time rather than walking on the ground.  I even managed to get a screenshot of the exact moment where I hit one of the eggs in mid-fall.

 I also managed to actually hit a Piranha Penis somehow in 4-2.  It happened in an area before this screen, when I was standing on a shorter pipe and throwing shurikens at the one coming out of a slightly taller pipe.  A few hit the pipe as usual, and then unexpectedly, one hit the thing coming out of it instead.

I couldn't get this to happen again in this area (though I did have a shuriken go right over a Koopa Hooka's head rather than hitting it like they normally do), but I did manage to hit one while jumping/falling in a later level.  I guess the Mario 1 physics just do not like fireballs traveling in a straight line.

 Speaking of things I managed to get a screenshot of... 5-1 brought an opportunity to finally get a picture of a Goomba tripping over a squished Goomba and dying as a result.  (Also pictured: some of the absurd things that the 100, 200, 400, etc. points numbers that pop up when you kill enemies are replaced with.  They're pretty much all just random words.)

And here's the furthest I got -- Ghetto 5-3, which is a harder version of 1-3.  "Harder" in this case means "random shuriken-chains attached to ZZT-Bill launchers and the floor," it seems.  Apparently something went wrong in the "make the level harder" process here, though, because at one point I ran into what seemed to be an invisible wall, fell in the water, and got a Game Over.  So... unless I feel like using a warp zone and skipping past world 5 to poke around at later levels, that's all for Ninja Mario Bros.!

Next in the series: probably the two Sumo Fatio Bros. games.  Expect even more ridiculous modified enemies, though there won't be any giant penis monsters or Koopa hookers in these ones at least!