''Full Screen Mario'' is a 2013

browser game A browser game or a "flash game" is a video game that is played via the internet using a web browser. They are mostly free-to-play and can be single-player or multiplayer. Some browser games are also available as mobile apps, PC games, or on co ...

created by American programmer Josh Goldberg. It is an unofficial

remake A remake is a film, television series, video game, song or similar form of entertainment that is based upon and retells the story of an earlier production in the same medium—e.g., a "new version of an existing film". A remake tells the sa ...

of the 1985 game ''

Super Mario Bros. is a platform game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The successor to the 1983 arcade game ''Mario Bros.'' and the first game in the ''Super Mario'' series, it was first released in 1985 for th ...

'' and was built using

HTML5 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HT ...

Gameplay

As a

of ''

'' (1985), ''Full Screen Mario''s gameplay is similar: it is a side-scrolling

platform game A platform game (often simplified as platformer and sometimes called a jump 'n' run game) is a sub-genre of action game, action video games in which the core objective is to move the player character between points in an environment. Platform game ...

in which the player controls

Mario is a character created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. He is the title character of the '' Mario'' franchise and the mascot of Japanese video game company Nintendo. Mario has appeared in over 200 video games since his c ...

through levels. The game features all 32 levels that appeared in the original ''Super Mario Bros.'', and adds cheats and the option to select any one from the start. It also features an

editor Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, photographic, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, ...

that enables players to create their own levels and a level generator that creates a random map. The game can also be played using an

Xbox 360 controller The Xbox 360 controller is the primary game controller for Microsoft's Xbox 360 home video game console that was introduced at E3 2005. The Xbox 360 controller comes in both wired and wireless versions. The Xbox controller is not compatible wi ...

Development

''Full Screen Mario'' was created by Josh Goldberg, who at the time was a junior at the

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute () (RPI) is a private research university in Troy, New York, with an additional campus in Hartford, Connecticut. A third campus in Groton, Connecticut closed in 2018. RPI was established in 1824 by Stephen Va ...

. Goldberg, who studies computer science and is a longtime ''Super Mario Bros.'' fan, wanted to create an "impressive" project when he conceived remaking a classic game in

. One day, he and a friend discussed "how cool it would be if you could play ''Mario'' in

our Our or OUR may refer to: * The possessive form of " we" * Our (river), in Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany * Our, Belgium, a village in Belgium * Our, Jura, a commune in France * Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), a government utility regula ...

browser" and determined ''Super Mario Bros.'' was simple enough to remake. Goldberg began working on ''Full Screen Mario'' in October 2012 and finished a working

demo Demo, usually short for demonstration, may refer to: Music and film * Demo (music), a song typically recorded for reference rather than release * ''Demo'' (Behind Crimson Eyes), a 2004 recording by the band Behind Crimson Eyes * ''Demo'' (Deafhe ...

the following month. From the beginning, Goldberg knew he wanted to add a map generator and a level editor; he wanted his remake to feel more modern when compared to playing the game in an

emulator In computing, an emulator is hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run software or use peri ...

. ''Full Screen Mario'' uses the

canvas element The canvas element is part of HTML5 and allows for dynamic, scriptable rendering of 2D shapes and bitmap images. It is a low level, procedural model that updates a bitmap. HTML5 Canvas also helps in making 2D games. While the HTML5 canvas ...

to render the levels. Unlike the original game, ''Full Screen Mario'' can be played in

widescreen Widescreen images are displayed within a set of aspect ratios (relationship of image width to height) used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than t ...

. Goldberg opted to recreate game assets from scratch to optimize them for browsers instead of

ripping Ripping is extracting all or parts of digital content from a container. Originally, it meant to rip music out of Commodore 64 games. Later, the term was used to extract WAV or MP3 format files from digital audio CDs, but got applied as well to ...

content from a

ROM image A ROM image, or ROM file, is a computer file which contains a copy of the data from a read-only memory chip, often from a video game cartridge, or used to contain a computer's firmware, or from an arcade game's main board. The term is frequ ...

. He used his personal copy of '' Super Mario Bros. Deluxe'' as a reference; he also consulted images of the original game's

level design In video games, a level (also referred to as a map, stage, or round in some older games) is any space available to the player during the course of completion of an objective. Video game levels generally have progressively-increasing difficulty t ...

s from the internet and used them to manually recreate each level. Goldberg said this was tedious and took a considerable amount of time, but was not difficult. His greatest challenge was recreating the game's physics. According to Goldberg, "I'd never really made the physics before. People would randomly disappear during the game". He spent months trying to perfect Mario's jumping physics. Goldberg said that remaking ''Super Mario Bros.'' was enjoyable because he could aspire to make it perfect. However, it was difficult for him to perfectly recreate the original game, and he spent a lot of time scrutinizing his work to make it as close as possible. After the initial release, Goldberg switched the code base from

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

TypeScript TypeScript is a free and open source programming language developed and maintained by Microsoft. It is a strict syntactical superset of JavaScript and adds optional static typing to the language. It is designed for the development of large appl ...

to help reduce program bugs and crashes.

Release

Goldberg revealed ''Full Screen Mario'' on

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, co ...

in January 2013. The game did not garner much attention until in October, when a writer on the website ''

Boing Boing ''Boing Boing'' is a website, first established as a zine in 1988, later becoming a group blog. Common topics and themes include technology, futurism, science fiction, gadgets, intellectual property, Disney, and left-wing politics. It twice ...

'' blogged about the game. This led to a significant increase in popularity. Shortly afterward, the website hosting the game, ''fullscreenmario.com'', was getting around 300,000 visits a day. After about a month, on November 1, the project was taken down after receiving a DMCA complaint from Nintendo, the publisher of ''Super Mario Bros.'' Nintendo had it taken down because it infringed the copyright of the original game, and it was too similar to one of their games already in development, ''

Super Mario Maker is a 2015 side-scrolling platform game and game creation system developed and published by Nintendo for the Wii U, released worldwide in September 2015. Players can create, play, and share courses online, free of charge, based on the styles ...

''. By the time of the takedown, it had been played nearly 2.7 million times. Prior to the project's demise, Goldberg desired to add the option to share levels via email and

multiplayer A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system ( couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, or ...

support. The

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comment (computer programming), comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a Computer program, p ...

for ''Full Screen Mario'' remained on GitHub for download, but was removed in 2016 after Nintendo issued another DMCA complaint. It can still be played today on certain websites.

References

External links

* {{Unofficial Mario media Unofficial works based on Mario 2013 video games Browser games Mario (franchise) Fangames Platform games Video game remakes Video games developed in the United States Unauthorized video games Unofficial adaptations