Welcome to another Super Mario Sunday!

This is an 11-minute video from gruz talking about the fascinating world of South Korean bootleg Marios, such as Super Boy, Super Bros World, and Super Bio Man – existing solely because of Korea’s subpar copyright law of that era:

In short: The code was copyrighted, but the IP was not, so many companies rebuilt Mario for the dominant game console of the region, in the process stripping it of all of the original game’s actual craft – with “levels feeling assembled rather than built” and “getting the [visuals] right and missing almost everything underneath” – and as such become interesting as a reflection of the details that actually made Mario great.

However, as the time moves on, some of the bootleg games actually get better and better, and come into their own. It’s interesting to compare this to Nintendo’s own “clone” I mentioned before.

What I wouldn’t give for some oral history of what looks like an absolutely fascinating time and place for software.