Super Mario Bros. Special for Commander X16

Chat about anything CX16 related that doesn't fit elsewhere
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SonicGamer2007
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Feb 02, 2024 2:50 pm

Super Mario Bros. Special for Commander X16

Post by SonicGamer2007 »

I want to port Super Mario Bros. Special to the X16 using 6502 assembly language.
Kalvan
Posts: 115
Joined: Mon Feb 01, 2021 10:05 pm

Re: Super Mario Bros. Special for Commander X16

Post by Kalvan »

Well, Super Mario Bros. Special by Hudson Soft was originally written for the NEC PC88, NEC PC98, Sharp X1 Turbo, and Fujitsu FM77 A/V. Those computers featured either the Zilog Z80, Intel X86, or Motorola 6809 as their CPU. Any codebase for any of those versions would be completely incompatible with the Commander X16.


You would be better off trying to port the Super Mario All Stars version of the original. Mr. Murray already ported the original Super Mario Bros. as a demo, so this would be a ,logical next step. As far as I can tell, it doesn't use more than two parallax fields, so it should be doable with the only caveats being a smaller master palette and the need to Port the audio to VERA and the YM2151.
TomXP411
Posts: 1776
Joined: Tue May 19, 2020 8:49 pm

Re: Super Mario Bros. Special for Commander X16

Post by TomXP411 »

Kalvan wrote: Fri Mar 08, 2024 6:08 pm Mr. Murray already ported the original Super Mario Bros. as a demo
To be clear, MooingLemur did that port, and it still requires a copy of the original game to play.

And yes - that was much easier to port, since the NES uses a variant of the 6502. Trying to port things like SMB Special would indeed basically be a re-write.

Also - because it apparently needs to be said: this site does not accept unlicensed ports for upload. We might make exceptions in the case of orphaned works by companies that no longer exist, but if OP tries to port a Mario Bros game as-is - we can't host it. After seeing what happened to the Yuzu devs, we don't want any part of hosting Nintendo ports.
hstubbs3
Posts: 72
Joined: Thu Oct 26, 2023 12:14 pm

Re: Super Mario Bros. Special for Commander X16

Post by hstubbs3 »

>And yes - that was much easier to port, since the NES uses a variant of the 6502. Trying to port things like SMB Special would indeed basically be a re-write.


Well....
First, all of the main game logic would need to be re-implemented in 65C02.. one could start with a disassembly of the game binary or even original assembler for the other processor, and use macros to define opcodes that don't exist on the x16.
OR - if you disassemble to C, you could then recompile it... BUT it won't 'just run' because the hardware architecture is not aligned.

You have to account for -every- difference in the hardware - how does sound work, how the graphics are formatted for display, how things are shuffled about between different parts of memory. Does the program need to do bank switching etc..

essentially, unless you start by tring to write a generic PC88 emulator that runs on the X16, you do have to rewrite everything. or at least almost everything.
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