In accordance with Ars Technica, an anonymous donor has delivered a demo of Super Mario Bros. 3 for PC to Strong National Museum of Play. The institute has its own Hall of Fame of video games and is dedicated to the preservation of titles and pieces of hardware that marked the industry.
This game that runs on MS-DOS is perhaps one of the biggest curiosities in the museum right now, since we are talking about a port that id Software made on its own. The creators of DOOM or Quake, began their journey through the industry with another name “Ideas From The Deep” and tried to sneak in by making this port without permission.
The Mario that was not released
Then they made it to Nintendo of America and they in turn sent it to Japan. Nintendo dignified the demo with a response in which they were impressed, but did not allow id Software to continue with the project. What they had done was really incredible because the transition between screens was not something common in the PCs of the time (1990).
For his part, museum curator Andrew Borman stated the following:
The person who donated it was a game developer. But they did not work in this field, they received it during their work. It wasn’t something I expected to see in this donation, but it was extremely exciting, having seen the video that Romero shared in 2015. One of my favorite things at the museum is helping process incoming donations, especially when we can help share stories. from leading developers such as id Software.
The 2015 video he refers to is the one you can see below.
In the video description You can read Romero, one of the studio’s founders and industry icon, talk about the demo and how they programmed it into a workweek day and night. Upon receiving Nintendo’s refusal, they decided to use the same technologies for their own games, and that’s how they started with the Commander Keen saga.
Only a couple of years later they would release Wolfenstein 3D and later, the titles that changed everything for PC gaming.
For his part, the curator of the Strong National Museum of Play revealed that there are no plans to show the demo to the public, however, this may change in the future.
