Thanks to The Bird Sanctuary for highlighting this attempt at an official conversion of Super Mario Bros.
This was to be a proper conversion, started in mid-1987 by Gary Liddon (code) and Gary Penn (graphics). They essentially recreated the entire first level on the C64, and trying to get as accurate as possible according to the C64’s limitations. Maybe Great Giana Sisters had inspired them?
Once complete, they began to show it around – and eventually Firebird took an interesti n the game. Colin Fuidge was very impressed with the work, and so contacted Nintendo to try and get a licence deal.
Everything went pear-shaped though when Nintendo made legal threats, and instructions were very clear – “Cease and Desist” and “Destroy everthing” – which both Gary’s apparently recall to this day.
So that was it – was the game actually completely destroyed? We are guessing so, as it no doubt would have surfaced by now like Tyger Tyger did. Would have been great to see how close it really was!
Contributions: Richard Hewison
