Continuing ~ Super Mario Bros. World Class Track Meet Duck Hunt - Unused Mario 2 Lost Levels Tiles Graphics

Time for another Super Mario Bros. article where we take a look at Super Mario Bros. 2 assets that remain inside of the menu programming of the one of the most videogame cartridges ubiquitous. Seriously, everybody and their dog owned a copy. I still do along with the manual. It never came with an official box as it was bundled with the Action Set NES.

For aesthetic mental reference: The controller (left), NES (middle), cartridge (right)

  

Surprisingly Nintendo for some reason used the Japanese true Super Mario Bros. 2 and character tilemapping to form the basis of the menu; graphic tileset and relative assets. I guess they were porting the Famicom Disk System file system when writing the menu because it may have been quicker or it was just on their workstation at the time? Maybe they did this on purpose just to see if someone would undoubtably notice over time? I really don't know and we will probably never quite know exactly why this even exists on the cartridge at all.

What you are about to see may burn your eyes because it may look like a garbled mess, but actually it is clearly (well maybe not so clearly.) the graphics from Super Mario Bros. 2. The palettes are based on which game is selected in the menu so it is the most visually pleasing to look at the Super Mario Bros highlighted section for better visual analysis.

Long and behold the detail!

Title screen graphics of Super Mario Bros 2 for reference.

Here is the original information I found.

[CODE]
Super Mario Bros. + Duck Hunt + World Class Track Meet (U) (PRG0) [!].nes
Replace Super Mario Bros tiles with unused Super Mario Bros. 2 Lost levels tiles
IEXTGAZE
XEVTAZAV
ZPETALZA

Display unused Super Mario Bros. 2 Lost levels tiles at game select menu (I actually made this interesting discovery about a week ago. All of the CHR from the Lost Levels / Super Mario Bros. 2 is actually inside the Super Mario Bros. + Duck Hunt + World Class Track Meet game select bank! There are also unused tiles in Super Mario Bros. 2! https://twitter.com/nensondubois_/status/924508098907267072)

YPSTLGPA

Fixes Duck Hunt selection palette to match Super Mario Bros. / 2

TLXVYZPZ

YPUTAZTZ

YAUTPZIZ

Fixes World Class Track Meet selection palette to match Super Mario Bros. / 2

TLUTLZYL

YPUTGXZZ

YAUTIZPZ

Replaces Duck Hunt 'upper-left brick' tile with unused Super Mario Bros. 2 tile. The table starts is located at 0x01E556-1E8CA beginning with Super Mario Bros and ending with World Class Track Meet.

E665:??:AD

Replaces Duck Hunt 'upper-left brick' tile with unused Super Mario Bros. 2 star tile (there are other unused tiles but this is just an example)

OYVTIVSZ

[/CODE]

Unused Super Mario Bros. NES Theme found in WarioWare, Inc. - Mega Microgame$!.gba!

WarioWare, Inc. - Mega Microgame$! GBA Menu Music Modifier Unused Microgame Music 2 0104 Super Mario Bros Theme.

We're on a roll with Super Mario Bros related content, so today is a step in the same direction. I'm sure many people have spent countless hours city surfing through Wario Ware Inc on their often eye-straining Game Boy Advance screens back when people no longer thought break dancing was cool.

One of the lesser-known interesting things is Wario Ware Inc actually has some music that was never used in-game and the best example of this is a rendition of the Super Mario Bros theme done in the theme of a microgame.

I located the internal song ID, known as a music modifier, where the main menu selects to play it's music using a debugger and it took some effort but it wasn't too difficult for my level of skill to figure out. To play this song, open up a hex editor of choice (mine is hex workshop) and go to the following address and change it to (in this case, 0104)

WarioWare, Inc. - Mega Microgame$!.gba Main menu song set 

(083FA4C0) 0x3FA4C0 0B00 to ????.

This is a weird one. A version of the Super Mario Bros. Theme with whispering, a baby crying and weight lifting samples! :S

Hut-hut-hut-Hii-yyaaaaAAAHHHHH!!!