on today's episode of DFB Retro Gaming, I'm gonna introduce you all to one very memorable game from my childhood...for...some particular reasons...
so, a defining fact with chinese bootleg games was, many times they released some lesser known japanese famicom game with changed sprites (means graphics) of characters, changed title and all, to make it sell-able in market that knew mario well...
japanese perhaps made limited official games in name of mario, while the chinese repacked a lot of games and put it in market with mario's name there...
one such originally japanese but repacked game in mario's name ended up here,
original Japanese title being
Kaiketsu Yanchamaru 3: Taiketsu! Zouringen //
快傑ヤンチャ丸 3 : 対決! ゾウリンゲン (phew, it's loosely translated as "The Wonderful Yanchamaru 3: vs! Zouringen / Zoulingen ...have no idea what the hell is Zouringen here, Zou can be loosely translated as Elephant but with different characters, perhaps it's enemy gang name
) but our chinese friends simplified it as
Super Mario 14 lol
in the west, first game in Wonderful Yanchamaru series was launched as
Kid Nikki: Radical Ninja and i don't see many retro gamers remembering it so must be some average success or failure there
coming back to the game, title screen differences between the original and bootleg that we got here
View attachment 25731
both original and bootleg mario one are 95% similar, except mario's head on place of yanchamaru's, and some early enemies are replaced with typical mario ones like that koopa turtle thing, and japanese style of old era coins are replaced with mario style coins...basic sprite exchange at best
now you must be thinking, why is johny introducing us to this kind of obscure game?
well, as a kid i knew a little about original vs bootleg thing, so when i saw fuckin' suppa mario 14 on screen i was so excited that there are still some mario games to be discovered...
so i played it, and it's quite good platformer game, the main guy is armed with a flexible fighting shaft like weapon that he can strike on enemies, or when in air he can make it pogo-stick like weapon to stomp on enemies by press A to jump, then when in air kept down+B pressed, when in air press B again around corners to jump around the opposite side using shaft in pole-vault fashion but horizontally, or just kept B pressed to launch back-forth kick attack, or when in water you can use shaft to swim around too...lots of ways to explore this in-game world, yes!
music in game is also melodious and in typical chip-tunes fashion repeated through the game, each stage has different theme and boss battles have energetic theme too
just look at walkthrough video here
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Arrd3NbeOQ
so no complaints at all, game is entertaining, is playable, can be finished (yes, I remember first time finishing it i was so overjoyed...), and is overall innocent...
overall innocent ? what did i mean by that?
well, in stage two of the game, there's this particular enemy, a kid-like thing that looks like this
View attachment 25736
a kid-like enemy, holding on his PP, sending his
out in straight line towards player to hit them ?!
i'm not kidding, just watch above video from 6:14 onwards
back when i was a kid and playing this game as Super Mario 14, i just found it funny that some kid was pissing at mario....but after growing up and loosing my innocence i realised it was
something else entirely
oh you pesky japs...
emulation.gametechwiki.com
^to find official sources of various emulators, and also keep a watch over updates
