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Were there scrolling platformers before Super Mario Bros with decent graphics?


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3 hours ago, carlsson said:

I suppose it could've been a coincidence, or there was some arcade game with this style of graphics that several borrowed ideas from.

 

In any case, I think it is safe to assume that Shigero Miyamoto did not get any inspiration from a barely known UK game for the Beeb and C64. Besides the scrolling, I wonder about the jumping on enemies mechanism. Of course already in Mario Bros, we have this method of knocking turtles over and kicking the shell so probably it came natural in SMB.

CV was inspiration for the famicom so it's possible Nintendo got jump on contact enemy "kills" from games on that. Smurfs may have influenced SMB as well since it shared the 3 "areas" a world with three music tracks set up. Including the third "area" being a dark dungeon theme with a damsel at the end.

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Another thing to consider is that most early platform games really tried to utilize the entire screen - really build platform based levels with ladders, sliders, enemies everywhere. Some would scroll, like the mentioned Trollie Wallie, Monty Mole, Son of Blagger. Just recently we played Whistler's Brother in the A8 HSC which is a scrolling platform game predating SMB but it has nearly nothing in common with it. The much lesser known Whirlinurd (A8 & C64) might come a bit closer, but not as close as Nutcraka.

 

To be honest I'm not sure that SMB is a platform game, more like a run and jump game. Then again I know those are subgenres and usually are grouped together.

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11 hours ago, carlsson said:

Another thing to consider is that most early platform games really tried to utilize the entire screen - really build platform based levels with ladders, sliders, enemies everywhere. Some would scroll, like the mentioned Trollie Wallie, Monty Mole, Son of Blagger. Just recently we played Whistler's Brother in the A8 HSC which is a scrolling platform game predating SMB but it has nearly nothing in common with it. The much lesser known Whirlinurd (A8 & C64) might come a bit closer, but not as close as Nutcraka.

 

To be honest I'm not sure that SMB is a platform game, more like a run and jump game. Then again I know those are subgenres and usually are grouped together.

By 1990 console centric magazines leaning Nintendo kind of screwed up the term platformer so people usually dont separate the two anymore.

 

They were still separate a few years longer in Europe though, just like Fighting games(beat em ups) and one-on-one post 1993.

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On 7/21/2021 at 7:16 PM, Leeroy ST said:

The thread is about home though, and I mentioned 86 or before in the OP addressing your second point. I never mentioned 85 for SMB.

You never mentioned "home" in the topic or OP, but here are some from <1986:

 

Wonderboy - SG-1000

Teddy Boy - Sega Mark III

My Hero - Sega Mark III

Ghost House - Sega Mark III

Alex Kidd in Miracke World - Sega Mark III

 

 

Pac Land is very relevant either way, as it's obvious how influential it was to SMB. SMB is more of a "clone" of Pac Land than most games labeled as clones are to another game.

 

Mario Bros waa also influenced by Pac Man and sone of that carried over to both Pac Land and SMB.

 

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How about these two from Coleco:

Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park and Smurfs: Rescue from Gargamel's Castle. Both had great graphics for their time but neither has aged very well. The Smurf game was probably the better of the two but still doesn't hold a candle to SMB.

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On 7/21/2021 at 11:29 PM, carlsson said:

To be honest I'm not sure that SMB is a platform game, more like a run and jump game. Then again I know those are subgenres and usually are grouped together.

It's not that difficult to categorize or even understand; scrolling platform games and non-scrolling platform games, and anything that fits in between. It's not that complicated. 

 

On 7/22/2021 at 11:06 AM, Leeroy ST said:

the term platformer so people usually dont separate the two anymore.

As they shouldn't. If you want or need to be specific of the type of platformer, then do so. 

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1 hour ago, EmuDan said:

How about these two from Coleco:

Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park and Smurfs: Rescue from Gargamel's Castle. Both had great graphics for their time but neither has aged very well. The Smurf game was probably the better of the two but still doesn't hold a candle to SMB.

Same mistake i made earlier in the thread. Both good platfirm games but neither scrolls like montezumas doesnt.

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On 7/25/2021 at 12:53 PM, EmuDan said:

How about these two from Coleco:

Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park and Smurfs: Rescue from Gargamel's Castle. Both had great graphics for their time but neither has aged very well. The Smurf game was probably the better of the two but still doesn't hold a candle to SMB.

Smb is basically smurfs, it is three types of stages and 3 music tracks with the last stage per "world" being a dungeon with a damsel. Given Famicom was influenced by Coleco it's not surprising.

 

Issue with it and CPK is they dont scroll, they dont continuously scroll.

 

16 minutes ago, mbd39 said:

NES Lode Runner from 1984 was kind of a precursor to SMB with cartoony sprites and scrolling.

 

I remember that one, was big on load runner back in the day, but for some reason I'm not as interested these days. Not sure why.

 

On 7/25/2021 at 8:50 AM, Mikebloke said:

Some of us grew up with amstrads where the words smooth and scrolling never joined together in a sentence. 

This remind me, did the specify have scrolling? That was more of a UK thing so I wasn't sure.

 

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On 7/25/2021 at 6:00 AM, Black_Tiger said:

You never mentioned "home" in the topic or OP, but here are some from <1986:

 

Wonderboy - SG-1000

Teddy Boy - Sega Mark III

My Hero - Sega Mark III

Ghost House - Sega Mark III

Alex Kidd in Miracke World - Sega Mark III

I'm confused by you reasoning. Super Mario Bros. was released on September 13th 1985 in Japan

  • Wonder  Boy was released on April 21th 1986
  • Ghost House was released on April 21th 1986 too
  • Alex Kidd in Miracle World was released on November 1st 1986
  • My Hero was released before Super Mario Bros., but it's a scrolling fighter like Kung Fu Master

Teddy Boy is the only scrolling platformer that predates SMB (at least the arcade game), although it's quite different.

 

Now Pac-Land is clearly an inspiration. But there's a reason SMB was a huge success; it was maybe not the first of its genre, but it clearly was the one that made it popular. Like Doom or even Wolfenstein 3-D were not the first FPSs, but that doesn't make them less important.

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Fun Fact:

 

Shigeru Miyamoto's work porting the classic side scrolling arcade beat'em up Kung-Fu Master to the Famicom (NES) inspired his work for Super Mario Brothers.

 

Fun Fact 2:

 

In Japan, Kung-Fu Master is called Spartan X, which is a tie in to the excellent Jackie Chan movie of the same name known in the US as Wheels on Meals.  In the film, Chan's character is named Thomas and by the end of the movie he, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao have to climb to the top of a Spanish castle in order to rescue Thomas' girlfriend.  Of course, the game actually draws the most inspiration from Bruce Lee's Game of Death.

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Another one that kind of ties in with B.C.'s Quest for Tires is Jogging on the Sord M5. It barely scrolls the background, only blocky but with different offsets so low resolution parallax scrolling. Also the character isn't completely unlike e.g. the Wonderboy sprite a couple of years later.

 

 

But yeah, it ain't a SMB contender, that is for sure...

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On 7/26/2021 at 5:00 PM, roots.genoa said:

I'm confused by you reasoning. Super Mario Bros. was released on September 13th 1985 in Japan

  • Wonder  Boy was released on April 21th 1986
  • Ghost House was released on April 21th 1986 too
  • Alex Kidd in Miracle World was released on November 1st 1986
  • My Hero was released before Super Mario Bros., but it's a scrolling fighter like Kung Fu Master

Teddy Boy is the only scrolling platformer that predates SMB (at least the arcade game), although it's quite different.

 

Now Pac-Land is clearly an inspiration. But there's a reason SMB was a huge success; it was maybe not the first of its genre, but it clearly was the one that made it popular. Like Doom or even Wolfenstein 3-D were not the first FPSs, but that doesn't make them less important.

Scrolling platformers were popular before SMB I'm just wondering if any before it had decent graphics.

 

As for SMB it was mainly a success because it was given away 5 times, it didn't light fires during the AVS and other test launches until it was packed. 

 

Otherwise it's basically a scrolling Smurfs with a powerup. But what I'm curious about is why powerful computers with better looking games in other genres mostly have poor graphics specifically for scrolling platformers. There are exceptions, some in this thread, but even in other genres with scrolling this doesn't happen.

 

I suppose the reason is computers focused more on first person, and immersive games or games with a lot of moving sprites or scaling and devs were not that interested in pushing graphics for scrolling platformers.

 

I mean it's odd for this to just be for one specific sub genre, but it's all I can think of.

 

Outside of computers Coleco is basically the closest thing. But only with stock NES hardware.

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On 7/26/2021 at 7:46 PM, Leeroy ST said:

 

This remind me, did the specify have scrolling? That was more of a UK thing so I wasn't sure.

 

Yes there was attempts at scrolling but it wasn't particularly great at it. The Amstrad CPC line was essentially a budget Commodore. Many games were ports of 64 games and a good port would work near the same, but many would suffer from the slightly different and lower specs. Games like Turrican and R type is playable, and if you never knew better at the time you wouldn't of questioned it. 

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48 minutes ago, Mikebloke said:

The Amstrad CPC line was essentially a budget Commodore.

Huh? I don't know a lot about the CPC, but to compare it with the C64 seems quite odd. The CPC uses a 6845 + either software generated or dedicated hardware to generate video, runs a Z80, has a completely different palette so porting games from the C64 must've been equal to complete reprogramming. To me the CPC rather looks like a mix between ZX Spectrum (Z80), Oric (AY chip) and BBC Micro (6845 based graphics).

 

But yes, the ZX Spectrum only has bitmapped graphics so any form of scrolling would involve replotting segments of graphics. It works somewhat well for smaller software sprites but scrolling entire screens might be a challenge, in particular if those contain a lot of detail. The segmented memory layout also possibly couldn't help.

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Alan Sugar supposedly had evaluated the market, both in terms of hardware, software, packaging and not the least pricing before his team designed the CPC line. Technically of course it is far more advanced than the Speccy - see the most recent CPC homebrews that implement soft scrolling, additional interlaced colours and a lot of other tricks. While most systems have been exploited far beyond the original intentions, I'd say that in modern times perhaps the CPC has come the furthest from what the software output looked like when it was new, around 1984-86.

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On 7/28/2021 at 3:12 AM, roots.genoa said:

And Doom was mainly a success because it was shareware, but whatever.

No one brought up Doom but ok.

 

That's also wrong anyway, otherwise more people would have been skunny fans.

 

21 hours ago, carlsson said:

Alan Sugar supposedly had evaluated the market, both in terms of hardware, software, packaging and not the least pricing before his team designed the CPC line. Technically of course it is far more advanced than the Speccy - see the most recent CPC homebrews that implement soft scrolling, additional interlaced colours and a lot of other tricks. While most systems have been exploited far beyond the original intentions, I'd say that in modern times perhaps the CPC has come the furthest from what the software output looked like when it was new, around 1984-86.

I heard Acorn was more likely to take that crown. From what people say early Acorn could barely compete with early ST/Amiga and was closer to early MAC/PC at first, but ended up with games like Starfighter along with other impressive titles starting 92 onward.

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By Acorn, I suppose you mean the RISC based Archimedes, RiscPC etc that were forerunners to the ARM? I have never seen one in action so I can't comment on that. When it comes to the BBC Micro & Electron stuff, I'm sure advances have been made too but not sure if the latest Beeb homebrew is quite that exceptional as the best CPC homebrew appears to be.

 

I think the Doom reference was made as an analogy to your claim that Super Mario Bros mainly was popular because it partly was a pack-in game (in some markets and in some bundles) so many people who bought a NES, would get SMB included with the system, sometimes combined with Duck Hunt but if you didn't have a light gun that game is not playable anyway. That is to say that neither SMB nor Doom are particularly good games on their own, most of their respective success was due to how they were distributed - as a pack-in or as shareware.

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1 hour ago, carlsson said:

By Acorn, I suppose you mean the RISC based Archimedes, RiscPC etc that were forerunners to the ARM? I have never seen one in action so I can't comment on that. When it comes to the BBC Micro & Electron stuff, I'm sure advances have been made too but not sure if the latest Beeb homebrew is quite that exceptional as the best CPC homebrew appears to be.

 

I think the Doom reference was made as an analogy to your claim that Super Mario Bros mainly was popular because it partly was a pack-in game (in some markets and in some bundles) so many people who bought a NES, would get SMB included with the system, sometimes combined with Duck Hunt but if you didn't have a light gun that game is not playable anyway. That is to say that neither SMB nor Doom are particularly good games on their own, most of their respective success was due to how they were distributed - as a pack-in or as shareware.

I was thinking archimedes specifically, but apparently that had some crazy growth over time with some weak beginnings.

 

But I'm interested in the large Speccy gaming community overall just because from what I can see from outside, all the competition for the time was better for games. I know it was comparably affordable so many Brits had access to it, obviously an important factor, but even now there seems to be a larger active community for it than any of the other big platforms that were available, American, British, or otherwise.

 

23 hours ago, carlsson said:

But yes, the ZX Spectrum only has bitmapped graphics so any form of scrolling would involve replotting segments of graphics. It works somewhat well for smaller software sprites but scrolling entire screens might be a challenge, in particular if those contain a lot of detail. The segmented memory layout also possibly couldn't help.

I figured there would be sacrifices on hardware to get the Spectrums price point, but I was still curious if it had the ability to scroll, but it seems that would be quite the effort 

 

It really shows what kind of deal in power and value you were getting with the old A8 line up. 

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I think a lot of the effort to program the ZX Spectrum is about the challenges to make the impossible possible, not totally unlike Atari 2600 programming. The same could be said about Colecovision, VIC-20 and plenty of other systems that don't have hardware support for smooth scrolling but as mentioned above, people try to implement in software within the graphics capacities of each system.

 

Sure many of those efforts have been implemented much later than 1985, so the original question regarding smooth scrolling run and jump platform games prior to SMB still mostly limits it to systems that has that feature more or less for free.

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