We were fortunate enough to get advance access to the new Digital Eclipse Gold Master series of documentary releases, Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story, so for this week's episode of the podcast we discuss the title, its interactive exhibits, and the 42 games and light synthesizers included.  From Attack of the Mutant Camels to Hover Bovver to Tempest 2000, there's quite a collection of history here.  Join us and find out what all the fuss is about.  Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story is available now on all major platforms.  Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, subscribe via iTunes, Amazon Music Podcasts, and Google Podcasts, toss this RSS feed into your podcast aggregation software of choice, and be sure to catch up on past episodes if you're joining us late. Remember that you can reach us via , you can leave a message on the Power Button hotline by calling (720) 722-2781, and you can even follow us on Twitter at @PressTheButtons and @GrundyTheMan. We also have a tip jar if you'd like to kick a dollar or two of support our way. 

2023's The Super Mario Bros. Movie was a real "local plumber makes good" story that the media loved to frame as making up for the 1993 film loosely based on happenings in the Mushroom Kingdom, but if you weren't around back then, you may not understand what all the fuss was about.  That's where Dan Larson steps in.  Digging into what made Super Mario Bros. such a troubled production is a very deep rabbit hole, but Larson condenses the key points down to a half hour tale of discarded drafts, inexperienced directors, and dissatisfied actors for an overview of what went wrong.  Consider it a gateway to a larger topic and a good starting place.  I'll say it once again: it's not a perfect movie, but I enjoyed it and have happy memories of watching it.

My wife has a knack for baking special birthday cakes.  In the years we've been together she's made me a Triforce cake, a Kirby cake, a Borderlands vault symbol cake, and a special cake for Homer Simpson to ruin on Maggaggie's birthday.  This year she outdid herself though.  Taking inspiration from @giganticbuddha's famous comic about Princess Peach telling Mario not to come to the castle, my wife baked a real life version of the princess's terrible cake.  This is about as in-jokey as it gets because anyone who didn't play Super Mario 64 will be lost as to why this is funny.  When I sent photos of the cake to non-gaming friends to show it off, I had to include the comic and the original screenshot from 64 of the princess's letter inviting Mario to the castle for cake.  There's layers to this joke is what I'm saying, just like there's layers to this cake.  Thanks to my wife for another amazing cake!

@giganticbuddha's comic

My wife's terrible Peach cake made real

We're strolling on the shady side of the tracks this week as we focus on some favorite retro ROM hacks and the baked-in achievements that go with them.  All of this talk of emulation inevitably leads us to touch on the Nintendo/Yuzu Switch emulator lawsuit, too.  Join us and bring your ROM patching tools for some new takes on old fun.

ROM Hacks Mentioned In This Episode

• The Real Ghostbusters Remastered
• Sonic 3D Blast Director's Cut
• Mega Man X3 - Zero Project
• Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 Color Edition
• Mega Man World 5 DX
• Smash Remix
• Ghostbusters - Special Edition

Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, subscribe via iTunes, Amazon Music Podcasts, and Google Podcasts, toss this RSS feed into your podcast aggregation software of choice, and be sure to catch up on past episodes if you're joining us late. Remember that you can reach us via , you can leave a message on the Power Button hotline by calling (720) 722-2781, and you can even follow us on Twitter at @PressTheButtons and @GrundyTheMan. We also have a tip jar if you'd like to kick a dollar or two of support our way. 

We have a hodge podge of smaller topics for you on this week's podcast as we touch on the recent Nintendo Direct, Microsoft taking select Xbox games to other platforms, retrogaming emulation made easy, the Borderlands movie trailer, and much more.  Join us for another reach into the grab bag!  Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, subscribe via iTunes, Amazon Music Podcasts, and Google Podcasts, toss this RSS feed into your podcast aggregation software of choice, and be sure to catch up on past episodes if you're joining us late. Remember that you can reach us via , you can leave a message on the Power Button hotline by calling (720) 722-2781, and you can even follow us on Twitter at @PressTheButtons and @GrundyTheMan. We also have a tip jar if you'd like to kick a dollar or two of support our way. 

Nintendo released a batch of unexpected classic video games from developer Rare this morning for the suite of Nintendo Switch Online apps in North America.  Subscribers can now enjoy Snake, Rattle, & Roll and R.C. Pro-Am for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Killer Instinct and Battletoads in Battlemaniacs for the Super NES, and the underrated Blast Corps for the Nintendo 64.  This is the first time many of these games have been re-released at all.  I'm happy to see them back, particularly Blast Corps which I sank a lot of time into back in the late 1990s but could never fully unlock everything.  Looks like it's time to get moving.  My wife, on the other hand, is excited for Snake, as it was one of her favorite games from her childhood.  She even has a framed in-box copy hanging on her game room wall!  I know she'll appreciate being able to play it without having to open up the frame. 

I'm not a fan of video gaming rumors anymore.  A product is released when it's released, and I have enough going on in my life that I can wait for it.  Do I want to play the next Super Mario game?  Absolutely.  Do I have other things to do in the meantime?  Also yes.  That's why I'm not that disappointed when I read a report from Kyle Orland at Ars Technica indicating that Nintendo is now targeting the first quarter of 2025 as a release window for its successor to the Switch.  He cites a number of sources backing this up and he is a trusted name, so I figured it was worth bringing this up.

Brazilian journalist Pedro Henrique Lutti Lippe was among the first to report on the new planned release window on Friday, and Video Games Chronicle expanded on that report the same day. The outlet cited its own sources in reporting that "third-party game companies were recently briefed on an internal delay in Nintendo’s next-gen launch timing, from late 2024 to early the following year."

By late Friday, those reports had been corroborated by Eurogamer, which said the launch would slip past the 2024 calendar year "but still [be] within the coming financial year" (ending in March 2025). Over the weekend, Bloomberg cited unnamed "people with knowledge of the matter" in reporting that some publishers have been told "not to expect the console until March 2025 at the earliest."

Orland goes on to mention that Nintendo so far as three major Switch titles announced for release this year which we know includes a remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and the original Princess Peach: Showtime.  Mario vs Donkey Kong, a remake of the Game Boy Advance game from 2004, just released last week. 

I admit I don't play my Switch as much as I used to, and I would say that I exclusively play, well, Nintendo's first-party exclusives.  I'm sitting on a backlog pile that you wouldn't believe over on the Sony PlayStation 5 which is where most of my gaming time goes these days.  There are a few Switch titles I need to make time to play sitting on my shelf, but I figure I have all the time in the world to get to those.  Meanwhile, when the next Switch or whatever they call it comes out, I'll have to start all over again with fresh purchases of hardware, games, and accessories.  That can get expensive quickly, and suddenly that backlog of already paid for games on the shelf looks pretty good.  I'm too much of a Nintendo fan to say I won't be there on release day though (especially if a new Super Mario game is involved), so I will make those purchases, but I know in my heart it's not the most responsible thing to do.  With all of that in mind, I say for Nintendo to take its time and do this right.  I'm not in a hurry.

Of all of the Nintendo Game Boy Advance games that could be remade for Switch, I really didn't expect 2004's Mario vs. Donkey Kong, but here we are twenty years later and the game is due out at the end of the week.  Previews so far have focused on the new levels and the two-player mode, but I'm excited about the soundtrack.  The GBA version sported some fun music that was held back by hardware limitations, but now, on the Switch, the orchestra can run wild.  Consider the game's title theme, for instance.  On the GBA you can recognize snippets of the Super Mario Bros. overworld theme and Donkey Kong Country's "Jungle Hijinx" theme bouncing off one another, but the Switch version takes the song to another level and features both characters' themes dancing and interweaving among each other to produce a unique take on familiar music.  Check out both versions and, as they used to say in high school classes, compare and contrast.

It's time for a brief history lesson.  Back in 1994, Nintendo began creating video gaming content for the BS-X Satellaview satellite modem add-on for the Super Famicom.  This device connected to the console's AUX port and allowed players to download games and other content via satellite.  Much of the content was recycled from retail Super NES releases, though some of it (such as an Excitebike sequel featuring Mario or a remake of the original The Legend of Zelda) was brand new.  Curiously, some of the new content took the form of expansions of retail games.  Consider F-Zero, for instance.  The Sattelaview service offered a semi-sequel to the game that went unreleased on cartridge.  While considered for international release on a cartridge, ultimately nothing more came of the project and when the Sattelaview service shut down for good in 2000, those new tracks were lost. 

F-Zero fans are a committed bunch though and have never let a little something like "lost to time" stop them, and so after six years of work and offering a $5,000 bounty for the lost data, the F-Zero hacking community has created what it calls BS F-Zero Deluxe.  Containing all ten of the new BS-X tracks split over two cups, four new cars, and a mode where you race against a course ghost, the Deluxe content is seamlessly added to the retail F-Zero cartridge data to create the ultimate Super NES F-Zero experience.  You can download the patch files from Archive.org and load the resulting ROM into the emulator or original hardware of your choice.  I've been talking with project programmer Guy Perfect about the effort that went into recovering the lost tracks and adding them to the base F-Zero game.  You may remember him from such previous F-Zero hacks such as adding the 64DD tracks exclusive to the F-Zero X Construction Kit to F-Zero X and adding the lost e-Reader courses to F-Zero GP Legend.  I'm going to turn things over to him because he can explain it much better than I can.

Capcom took Mega Man back to his 8-bit roots for Mega Man 9, structuring the game based on the features and abilities seen in Mega Man 2.  By the time Mega Man 10 was in development, the team at Inti Creates had a little more freedom to experiment and iterate upon some interesting concepts.  While the finished game has some new material including adding Bass as a playable character, a series of recently recovered early versions of the game for Microsoft Xbox 360 shows that there was a lot more planned for the game that was cut from the final release.  Most interestingly, a co-op mode allowed two players to team up and tackle the game together!  Rockman Corner has the full breakdown on the abandoned mode and several other cut features.

Each prototype build includes demonstration videos featuring the "Assist Co-Op Mode" and a set of "How to Play" instruction screens. From the footage and instructions, it appears that players had the option to assume the role of either Mega Man or Proto Man to tackle stages together and face obstacles not seen in the final game.

For example, in Commando Man and Pump Man's stage, as well as the first screen following the Weapons Archive fight in Wily stage 1, players encounter a blockade that impedes their progress. To dismantle it, both players must "Sync Up" to unleash a powerful Buster Shot. Players enter a "sync" state when they are in close proximity to each other, marked by a sparkling effect. 

It's interesting to think that for all of the Mega Man sequels that aren't unusual novelty titles like racing or sports games, only two games included any sort of co-op mode, and those were the two arcade games, Mega Man: The Power Battle and Mega Man: The Power Fighters.  Being able to tackle an entire traditional Mega Man game with a friend is one of those things I never knew I wanted, but now really need.  I wonder why it along with the other abilities and modes seen in these prototypes were removed.  They seem to work just fine.  While the Mega Man franchise is now under the administration of a different studio within Capcom, maybe someday the new team will revisit some of these ideas.  There's interesting potential here and I'd like to see it explored.  Want to try the prototypes for yourself?  Hidden Palace has them available for download.