BROS

You can never guess where the obscure Mario titles will pop up next. "BROS" for the Atari 800 computer, a public domain release by German group "KE Soft" in 1989. Initially bundled with a bunch of polish demos on a double-sided disk, this game has largely escaped the gaming public, probably because like the MSX, nobody really cared for what the Atari 800 had to offer in terms of forgotten titles, and because it was a demo infringing Nintendo's copyrights it won't have been widely distributed in the first place.

As a broken Super Mario Bros. clone there isn't much to say about BROS that can't be seen in these screenshots. It's another case of trying to give a piece of computer hardware a program it can't handle, and the side effects of this include a lack of scrolling, lag and sprite flicker. But considering the time period, the hardware and of course, the fact it was made as part of a demoscene, it's done a decent job trying to bring the Mario magic to Atari's system.

There are of course a lot of cutbacks, and the game is very difficult to play, but it still counts as being one of the first Mario fangames to be made. I can't "recommend" it, but it beats the likes of Super Boy.