Super Mario World 1989 Footage Recovered

I've managed to recover a tape which was either unreleased, or only for Famicon/Nintendo employees to view. It's 20 minutes long, and mostly unnoteworthy, mostly just boring talk about the technical details of the systems. However, around 9 minutes into the tape, they began playing a demo version of Super Mario World. It looks very stylistically different from the finished version, much like the beta images. The game (in the video) was commented on at 60% completion. I'm guessing the overworld was finished last, as it's still the single island which I saw in Nintendo Power in the early-1990's.

I apologize for the somewhat blurry quality, but I got the footage about as high quality as possible.

 

Whoa...

 

Whoa indeed! This is history in the making!

 

Awesome, thank you!!!

 

Wow that's a great find, thanks for sharing!

 

x

 

Please elaborate for the Super Mario uneducated like me!

 

Interesting find. I wish more early footage like this could be found.

Oh? Eh, is this going to cause a ruckus like that Sonic 1 hoax a while back... ugh!

 

Really crappy copyright text at title screen, English on-screen text, final version HUD but early in-game graphics, odd stutter (ex. at 0:24) that reminds me a lot of an emulator not performing well on someone's PC, Japanese voice-over saying "yon" and "san" instead of "four" and "three" (which IIRC is how numbers in game titles tend to be pronounced there, at least for some series), voice-over saying "Super Nintendo", voice-over sounding kinda artificial to my ears...

...some of my points might be questionable, but those things say "fake" to me, personally.

 

x

 

As inappropriate of a place this is, allow me to introduce myself, I am Sonikku; I have been hacking Super Mario World since 2007 and have since then done many things to the game's engine.

This isn't a real beta of the game. It tries to replicate some beta elements that remains inconsistent due to various things. Here are a few examples:

Obvious signs:

- The title screen doesn't sync up with either known beta screenshots. Example 1, Example 2.
In the first prototype screenshot, the screen appears to reflect the 256x240 resolution of the NES, not the 256x224 resolution the SNES has. While it could be because the bottom portion of the screen was cut off, this would mean that most of the ground in the "welcome" screen as well as levels would also be cut off, otherwise in-game it would be several tiles higher and thus look incredibly odd and not reflect any beta pictures we've seen. If this prototype is from the SNES prototype, the title screen would reflect the second example instead, which is closer to the final (showing the title screen animation), but the logo is placed differently. Additionally, the statement of the completion being at 60% at the time of that video would indicate that the game would have been moved to the SNES, which would suggest it would use something similar second example or from the final game itself.

- The overworld looks right, but nothing else does. Example.
The border of the overworld has been noted in all known beta screenshots to have the level and world number, additionally the current players' coins and presumably score as well. The score and coin count were left out in the final version, so this could pass as a plausible focus on development between the NES and SNES versions, but there is no level information either - which both the beta and final versions had in some form - which breaks the authenticity of this part.

- The "donut clouds" in every beta scan are seen in this video, but are improperly implemented. Example 1, Example 2, Example 3.
The donut clouds as stated do exist, however in the 3 examples they appear to be overlapped above the normal background suggesting that they are utilizing the new third background layer that is also used in the final game (certain caves where parts of the ground shift around). In this video they are scrolling with the normal background suggesting that they are on layer 2 - the normal background layer, which indicates that they are still using the SNES, but aren't utilizing one of the SNES' best features.


In case any pictures display errors, all beta screenshots are on the Unseen64 page.


Potential signs:

- The "welcome" screen card is in English. Although this is forgiven because of it being in a prototype phase - it is still worth noting that only tiny details like portions of the HUD, title screen, etc. were in English in the original Japanese versions.

- The Japanese voice-over audio seems desynced from the actual in-game audio. The game appears to also have been recorded with the ZSNES emulator, based on the audio. This can be forgiven since this is supposedly from a VHS tape.



Trust me, I wanted this to be as real as everyone else. I was excited when I saw the title screen and thought this guy had found one of the holy grails of gaming, but became increasingly disappointed when I noticed these faults. A lot of the resources even appear to be directly used from an existing SMW hack that tries to replicate the beta, but even that hack did a slightly better job at recreating certain things (like the level/world number on the overworld). You're free to believe this if you want, but I can say with near certainty that this isn't authentic: I would be lead to believe this more if the OP would show us any other details like the entire video or a photo of the tape itself.

 

Well there is a hack out there to restore an early version from 1989... They even where able to find at least a few original beta sprites in the SNES Test Program.
So Druid II could be right about the VHS Filter ^^
http://www.smwcentral.net/?p=showhack&id=3339&force_old=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmMBTKMQU8A

 

Well, given the overworld is the same as the video Geomon posted, and that the hack author says it's mostly his GFX, I guess it really is a fake with VHS filter!

 

I got proof it's fake if the rest hasn't proved it yet. The Japanese comes from a text to speech website.

http://tts.imtranslator.net/RykR

This is just a tiny bit of the beginning of the speech, but compare to the video. Exactly the same in voice, pauses etc.. Plus the Japanese is obviously Google Translator shit.

 

What's wrong with people these days?

 

Well, it had me fooled. So close... so close...

 

I'm disappointing, Should we ban that original poster?

 

Well, the jig is up. How about you upload your ROM hack so we can try it for ourselves?

 

I think it's "the one and only" post he'll make here.

 

And he failed miserably