When I learned of Super Mario Bros Special, I was so excited to see that somebody had “ported” it back onto the NES.

Here’s what you will get: All levels have been faithfully ported over to the NES with a palette that makes sense and sidescrolling. The levels are an interesting take on what people thought Mario was before Mario 3. They are surprisingly well-made, with the exception of a handful that are troll levels. I actually prefer these levels to SMBJ2 (The Lost Levels).

Here’s what you won’t get: The Sharp X1 and PC-88 versions contain some extra items: the hammer, which operates like it does in Donkey Kong, the Wing, which allows Mario to fly (read: swim in the air), the Hudson Bee, which gives you an additional continue, etc. All instances of these items appear to have been replaced with 1-UP Mushrooms or stars. I’d love to see a version that includes these in the future.

There are a handful of minor bugs, but they are all caused by the faithfulness of this port. For example, there are level designs that have too many sprites on a horizontal line, which the NES can’t handle, so portions of a platform will briefly disappear. The original SMB also can’t have more than one powerup on screen at a time (vines are considered powerups), so you’ll have times when a mushroom or vine will just disappear. The only actual bug I found was in a special zone where the warp pipe to bring me back to the main map was non-functional.

Overall though, if you want to play a piece of history, pick this up. The Sharp X1/PC-88 version is borderline unplayable due to wonky physics, hitboxes, and a lack of screen scrolling. This fixes all of those problems.