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Written by Luke Hackett

We've jumped into Mario's Time Machine again, and this time emerged in the summer of 1993, June to be precise.

After the usual sharp intake of breath and realisation of "OMG I WAS X MANY YEARS OLD", eight years old in my case, we realise something monumental is afoot, something that will be iconic for many years to come, despite not actually being that good (my opinion) - you guessed it, this is Flicks magazines pre-release feature on the Super Mario Bros Movie which was due for release the following month (on July 9th, 1993).

You'd be thoroughly disgusted if you knew how long it took me to work out the hand-scanner to get this right. Click for the full size pages (You can also ctrl+mousewheel up if you're decrepit old eyes are struggling)

The movie starred Bob Hoskins as Mario, John Leguizamo as Luigi, the late Dennis Hopper (R.I.P) as Koopa, Samantha Mathis as Daisy and Fiona Shaw as Lena amongst others (you can check out the full info on our SMB Movie page).

The movie although highly anticipated due to the popularity of the Mario games series received some rather scathing reviews from critics and viewers alike, some examples below

• Rotten Tomatoes for example even now has this down as a 16% rated movie, and my favourite user review comment was "It will baffle kids, bore adolescents, and depress adults." I had to lol a little...
• Whereas on IMDB this scores a weak 4 out of 10 in over 30,000 votes.

Whilst I do think 4 out of 10 and 16% are pretty harsh I do have to admit that as an eight year old kid who had been watching the Mario cartoons for the 2 years prior, I was gutted it wasn't a cartoon-movie. What were your thoughts on this when you watched it back in the day?

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Written by Luke Hackett

Small update for today

• Super Mario Bros. Deluxe Box Art page re-done
• Super Mario Bros. Deluxe Artwork, Pictures and Printable Banners & Icons added
• Mario vs. Wario Comic Issue 1 and Issue 2 redone to be easier to read and higher res.

Newest addition to our Super Mario 3D World Walkthrough, World Flower 1 now completed, the rest of that world will be up by the end of the week, unless trying to get clean 3 star runs makes me smash up my Wii U and TV, some of these are quite tricky!

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Written by Luke Hackett

New challenger approaching? well, not a challenger, but someone is indeed approaching - Waluigi will not be a playable character in the upcoming Super Smash Bros title, although he will be featured in the game as an assist trophy, accompanied by his trusty racket, unfortunately unlike Little Mac, Waluigi was unable to pass the pre-tournament medical and fitness test due to poor diet and lack of training.

The director of the Super Smash Bros series, Masahiro Sakurai had the following to say on the Miiverse

Once again, Waluigi’s Assist Trophy joins the collection!! …Which also means he’s not a playable character. Just because you try hard doesn’t mean you’ll make it into the battle.

Well, thats a shame, A+ for effort though Waluigi.

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Written by Luke Hackett

For years and years we've seen new world records in Super Mario Bros, and other highly skilled mega reflex players trying to outdo record holders by a matter of seconds, or even fragments of seconds and it looks like its gone as far as it can now with the game being beaten in less than five minutes, 4 minutes 57 seconds I believe is the best current time by a guy called akyeren, the video of his run is below, it is supposedly an unassisted, clean run (not hacked).
 

But things have taken a little twist today, with a YouTuber called NotEntirelySure setting a new world record, but this time for completing the game with the LOWEST score, Yep, he is officially the worst Super Mario Bros player ever!

He managed to play all the way through the classic platformer without collecting a single coin, killing a single enemy or collecting a single powerup and he almost made it all the way through without deaths aside from one mistake on the horrible jump in World 8-1 but personally I don't blame him for not going back and redoing it every time he missed that - nobody likes strait jackets. Check out the 500 Point Run of Super Mario Bros video below.

Quoting from NotEntirelySure's video description:-

Well, I did it. This is THE lowest possible score you can finish the game with (without continuing). And surprisingly, it didn't take very long at all. Sadly, it's not deathless, as I miss my first attempt at the 8-1 wall jump. Getting 500 points without dying would have been nice, but that jump is so brutally precise I'd rather not restart every time I missed it (though I would have to restart anyway if I accidentally picked up a coin).

How tough is that jump in 8-1? Well, the timing of the liftoff, the duration of holding the jump button, and the timing of the wall jump are all frame perfect. NES games run at 60 frames per second, which means all the necessary inputs need to be timed within 1/60 of a second. In addition, the starting position before running I used not only has to be on the right pixel, but also the x sub-pixel has to fall within a certain range (technical stuff blah blah blah). In short, it's a pretty annoying jump.

Amazingly enough, I managed to accomplish my objective after my first successful 8-1 wall jump in a run. I was extremely cautious for the remainder of the run, not risking jumping over any of the hammer bros. I also had a few panicky moments since I was fairly jittery, but luckily nothing that cost me the run. By the end I felt like my heart was going to explode.

The other couple tricks I used I explain in the 600 point video. I leave in the death to evidence my humanity, and to showcase how precise you need to be to pull off that wall jump. There is literally no room for error.

No save states or slowdown was used. I did however fast-forward at flagpoles for obvious reasons. (also, I didn't look at the RAM during the run to make sure the sub-pixel was within the right range)

So all that remains to say is congratulations to NotEntirelySure on your new world record, you are the worst bro. the worst. ever. Good job on burning Bowser alive though.