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There's nothing wrong with this hack and you may prefer it over the X1 version, which has an appropriately-garish PC-88 style color palette and lots of dithering. X1 makes some other minor gameplay tweaks to get a little closer to the source material.

This is a very faithful port of SMB Special, and i'd definitely recommend it. Just a simple port improves 1000+ more times than the original. Better scrolling, runs faster, you name it. If you stumbled upon this hack out of nowhere, still try it. Near perfection.

When I learned of Super Mario Bros Special, I was so excited to see that somebody had "ported" it back onto the NES.

Here's what you will get: All levels have been faithfully ported over to the NES with a palette that makes sense and sidescrolling. The levels are an interesting take on what people thought Mario was before Mario 3. They are surprisingly well-made, with the exception of a handful that are troll levels. I actually prefer these levels to SMBJ2 (The Lost Levels).

Here's what you won't get: The Sharp X1 and PC-88 versions contain some extra items: the hammer, which operates like it does in Donkey Kong, the Wing, which allows Mario to fly (read: swim in the air), the Hudson Bee, which gives you an additional continue, etc. All instances of these items appear to have been replaced with 1-UP Mushrooms or stars. I'd love to see a version that includes these in the future.

There are a handful of minor bugs, but they are all caused by the faithfulness of this port. For example, there are level designs that have too many sprites on a horizontal line, which the NES can't handle, so portions of a platform will briefly disappear. The original SMB also can't have more than one powerup on screen at a time (vines are considered powerups), so you'll have times when a mushroom or vine will just disappear. The only actual bug I found was in a special zone where the warp pipe to bring me back to the main map was non-functional.

Overall though, if you want to play a piece of history, pick this up. The Sharp X1/PC-88 version is borderline unplayable due to wonky physics, hitboxes, and a lack of screen scrolling. This fixes all of those problems.

It's a great hack, I haven't played any hacks my whole life up until now, but there's 1 issue using FCEUX 2.1.5: the music playing when you have a star power-up is messed up, and can mess up the music in the rest of the level, but it's fixed when you take a pipe/vine warp or go to the next level.

EDIT: Another issue: the vine warp in 4-3 has a broken pipe at the end, so you get stuck waiting for the clock to hit 100.

This is a very high quality hack. The level design is very fun, and sometimes I had a hard time putting the game down. The difficulty is a lot higher than today's standards, but if you prefer a challenge, this game is for you. While playing, I got a couple of GAME OVERs before beating the game. The level design is good enough that I really didn't mind replaying the hack several times before beating it.

If you want a fun challenging hack that will push you to improve your skills, you'll enjoy SMB Special Edition.

Difficulty: 9 / 10 (You'll probably have get a couple GAME OVERs before you get the hang of it, which I consider perfect)

Level Design: 9 / 10 (A lot of thought was put into the levels, high quality)

Atmosphere: 8 / 10 (Some unique areas such as an under water fortress add to the experience)

Total: 13 / 15 | 86.6%

(I recorded myself playing the hack in its entirety. If you want to get a feel for it, here's the playlist.)

Review of "SMB Special for NES" version 20090219 by indstr

I had never heard of SMB Special before, but I'm incredibly glad I tried this. Hudson did a great job on the original levels, and frantik has done a fantastic job on the port.

You can tell there is a high level of quality and thought put into the level design — obviously one of the most important aspects of any SMB ROM hack. Here, this can be expected since the original levels were made by a professional game developer.

Difficulty: Although the description mentions "fiendish difficulty", I think the difficulty here is just right. It's more difficult than the original SMB, but not as hectic as the lost levels.

Worlds 1 and 2 start you off somewhere near the difficulty of around worlds 4-5 on the original SMB, and then the difficulty continues up from there.

So far I have not gotten past world 6, but I am sure the last sections of the game will present quite an interesting challenge indeed.

This hack is highly recommended.

• indstr