I was never a fan of the game, Super Mario Bros. In fact, I was never really fond of Nintendo in general. I never owned an NES, Super NES, or Nintendo 64, back in the day. I just never had much interest in the type of games Nintendo produced, nor do I care for Nintendo's corporate attitude. I preferred my Commodore and Sega Genesis and never saw any reason to buy into Nintendo.

The only Nintendo products I ever owned were a Wii and DSi. The Wii was intriguing when it was released, and I did enjoy some of the games that were produced for it, but my favorites were typically not produced by Nintendo. However, my interest in them didn't last very long. I bought the Wii in 2008 and the DSi not long after. But by 2011, the only thing we used the Wii for was to stream Netflix. I can't recall the last time I touched the DSi (I don't even really know where it is at the moment).

So, why am I blogging about Nintendo? Well, as you are probably already aware, a very talented coder, who goes by the handle Zeropaige, has recently released a port of the classic game Super Mario Bros. for the good ol' C64. And, although the game isn't one of my favorites, Zeropaige has done a spectacular job of putting this game together.

From what I can tell, Super Mario Bros. 64 stays very true to the original. The reviews I've read about the game, written by true Mario fans, also agree that it's a near perfect recreation of the Nintendo version. In fact, it's so perfect that Nintendo is pulling out all the stops at eradicating this game from existence. And this is one of the major reasons why I've never liked Nintendo; their corporate attitude sucks, they are bullies, and they treat their customers like criminals and with contempt.

I mean, com-mon! Nintendo were never interested in providing a version of their game to Commodore owners, so even if we wanted to pay them to play SMB on our C64s, they refuse to cater to us. So Zeropaige decides to use their skills and dedication to the game to produce a version for the C64 for the few of us who would enjoy it, asking for no compensation in return. But rather than just making an official statement saying that Nintendo do not support such an action and warn that it infringes on their property - and leave it at that, they actively go out and attempt to prevent any distribution of this niche of a game. Like having this game out there is really going to make any difference to their bottom line.

Corporate bullies, plain and simple. I expected nothing less (or more) from Nintendo.

Anyway, to be perfectly honest, I much prefer The Great Giana Sisters to SMB (which was another game that suffered from Nintendo's bullying practices). It's just a much more engaging game and actually has more going for it, in my opinion, than SMB. But I don't want the fact that the Giana Sisters is a better game detract from any of the great work done by Zeropaige. I'm just saying, once you've given SMB64 a go, load up The Great Giana Sisters for even better platform-gaming entertainment! Even though Nintendo tried to wipe this game from the face of the earth, you can get a copy for yourself by visiting www.C64.com.

And, as for Nintendo, my message to you is: you can't stop the signal!

Composed using Archetype on my C128.