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### Mario Bros. 2007 [Atari XE/XL]

#### http://atari.fandal.cz/

#### Reviewed By J. Monkman

Mention 'Mario Brothers' to a member of the public and they'll most likely think that you are talking about the popular Nintendo series of games rather than referring to the original 1983 coin-up; few people outside of the retro-gaming field realise that Mario started out as a carpenter in Shigeru Miyamoto's classic Donkey Kong before trying his hand at plumbing (with a little help from his brother) in the original Mario Bros. arcade game. Even fewer people would know that the second Mario videogame was actually ported to just about every home computer of the time; yes, that's right - Mario and Luigi have made official appearances on the Spectrum, C64, Apple II and even the early range of Atari machines.

Mario Bros., as you probably already know, is a single screen arcade platformer in which you must dispose of a set number of enemies on each stage by jumping from below, hitting the floor beneath the enemy sprite and flipping them over. With the creature defenceless and lying on it's back, Mario or Luigi have a few precious seconds in which to kick the upturned monster off the screen - take too long and they'll flip back over and you'll have to repeat the process again. It's simple and addictive stuff, and like most classics from the 80's, Mario Brothers has stood the test of time and aged amicably. Likewise, the official Atari port of the game remains as playable as it was upon release back in the early 80's, but unfortunately it's appearance is a little on the crude side (especially when compared with later titles from the Atari back catalogue). But thanks to TeBe, Vidol and stRing, there's now a new version of the classic available for the 8-Bit range.

Mario Bros. 2007 isn't a remake (which explains why this isn't in the reviews section); it's a hacked version of the original game in which the coders have successfully touched up some of graphics, fixed a few bugs and added a new title screen and some much needed music. Although that may not sound particularly impressive, anyone with programming experience will know that adding to an already compiled game via a monitor and object code is a far from trivial task. Regardless of whether or not you've played the original, you'll be hard pushed not to be at least a little impressed by this update - and in that respect the team behind this hack have done a fantastic job.

Unfortunately, information on both this release and the team behind it is extremely scarce; aside from mentions on a few Atari news sites I've been unable to locate a home page for the project or any further details. However, on the strength of this hack I'll be keeping a keen eye out for further similar projects - after all, there are a lot of early Atari releases out there that would benefit from a 21st century facelift.