--- title: "I Was Making Fixes Right Up Until The Deadline" - The... description: An interview with the course designer Ichiro Sakurada and programmer Yukio Takeoka behind Super Mario Bros. Special — a little-known 1986 Hudson Soft port of... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/i-was-making-fixes-right-up-until-the-deadline---the-story-of-hudson-soft-s-bizarre-super-mario-br-dkujjqzzw twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: "I Was Making Fixes Right Up Until The Deadline" - The Story Of Hudson Soft's Bizarre Super Mario Bros. "Spin-Off" | daily.dev og:description: An interview with the course designer Ichiro Sakurada and programmer Yukio Takeoka behind Super Mario Bros. Special — a little-known 1986 Hudson Soft port of... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/i-was-making-fixes-right-up-until-the-deadline---the-story-of-hudson-soft-s-bizarre-super-mario-br-dkujjqzzw og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/dkujjqZzW.png og:image:alt: "I Was Making Fixes Right Up Until The Deadline" - The Story Of Hudson Soft's Bizarre Super Mario Bros. "Spin-Off" og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # "I Was Making Fixes Right Up Until The Deadline" - The Story Of Hudson Soft's Bizarre Super Mario Bros. "Spin-Off" **[Two Stop Bits](https://daily.dev/sources/twostopbits)** · 10 min read · 3 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary An interview with the course designer Ichiro Sakurada and programmer Yukio Takeoka behind Super Mario Bros. Special — a little-known 1986 Hudson Soft port of Super Mario Bros. for Japanese computers (PC-88 and Sharp X1). The developers discuss how hardware limitations forced them to abandon smooth scrolling in favor of page scrolling, redesign all levels, reduce the color palette, and add original enemies and items. They reveal that Nintendo only supplied printed color character designs, that the background music contains a transcription error because it was done by ear, and that Miyamoto likely doesn't even know the game exists. The game has since gained a cult following, including an NES ROM hack downloaded over 20,000 times. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What is Super Mario Bros. Special and how does it differ from the original NES Super Mario Bros.? Super Mario Bros. Special is a 1986 version of Super Mario Bros. developed by Hudson Soft for the Japanese PC-88 and Sharp X1 computers under a cross-licensing deal with Nintendo. It replaces smooth scrolling with page scrolling (PC-88) or delayed scrolling (X1), uses a reduced color palette, features redesigned levels, and adds extra enemies and items like the hammer and crab from Donkey Kong and Mario Bros., plus a Hudson bee. _Curious about untold ports and remakes, retro gaming fans track deep-dive histories like this one through daily.dev._ ### Why did Hudson Soft use page scrolling instead of smooth scrolling in the PC-88 version of Super Mario Bros. Special? The PC-88 hardware could not handle horizontal scrolling with the graphics detail the developers wanted, so they dropped from 8 colors on 3 planes to 2 planes with 4 colors, and even then scrolling remained too heavy, forcing them to settle on screen-swapping page scrolling instead and requiring a complete redesign of the game's maps to accommodate it. _Developers debugging hardware constraints value firsthand accounts like this when weighing technical trade-offs on daily.dev._ ### Did Nintendo provide technical assistance to Hudson Soft while developing Super Mario Bros. Special? Nintendo's support was minimal, limited to supplying color prints of character designs and possibly some course data and advertising materials, all in printed form; no algorithms, logic, or music data were provided. The background music was transcribed entirely by ear, which is why one part of it contains a known mistake, and Nintendo supplied no development personnel, leaving Hudson's own staff to handle everything. _Anyone researching how licensing partnerships actually worked in game development finds context like this useful on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Using The SNES Super FX Chip To Run Super Mario 64](https://daily.dev/posts/using-the-snes-super-fx-chip-to-run-super-mario-64-mbpusul7i) · Hackaday · 3 upvotes · 0 comments - [Super Mario Bros. Wonder now runs natively on PC without emulation, and Nintendo probably isn't happy about it](https://daily.dev/posts/super-mario-bros-wonder-now-runs-natively-on-pc-without-emulation-and-nintendo-probably-isn-t-happ-00uo05pay) · XDA Developers · 4 upvotes · 2 comments - [Silver Pines Animators Filmed Monsters Backwards to Make Them Uncanny](https://daily.dev/posts/silver-pines-animators-filmed-monsters-backwards-to-make-them-uncanny-5fklrf62z) · 80 LEVEL · 2 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#game-development](https://daily.dev/tags/game-development), [#gaming](https://daily.dev/tags/gaming), [#nintendo](https://daily.dev/tags/nintendo) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/i-was-making-fixes-right-up-until-the-deadline---the-story-of-hudson-soft-s-bizarre-super-mario-br-dkujjqzzw) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"\"I Was Making Fixes Right Up Until The Deadline\" - The Story Of Hudson Soft's Bizarre Super Mario Bros. \"Spin-Off\"","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/i-was-making-fixes-right-up-until-the-deadline---the-story-of-hudson-soft-s-bizarre-super-mario-br-dkujjqzzw","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/i-was-making-fixes-right-up-until-the-deadline---the-story-of-hudson-soft-s-bizarre-super-mario-br-dkujjqzzw"},"datePublished":"2026-07-16T19:09:30.484Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T19:03:28.107Z","description":"An interview with the course designer Ichiro Sakurada and programmer Yukio Takeoka behind Super Mario Bros. 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