Two things I still want even though it’s 2017

A new Super Mario Bros game set in Subcon, based on the Doki Doki Panic engine
Super Mario Bros 2

Super Mario Bros. 2, the USA release. Everyone knows the story: the Japanese SMB2 was too difficult and unfair, Howard Philips recommended that it not be released stateside, and Nintendo scrambled and put out a game called Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic that they re-skinned the player sprites with Mario, Luigi, Toad, and Princess Peach, and had a smash hit. A strong minority of players rank SMB2-US as their favorite entry in the main sequence of Super Mario games, and I am among them.

Perhaps because of its unique development history, there has never been a revisit to the world of Subcon, the dream world setting where SMB2 takes place. And that’s really too bad. I wish I could play a new adventure in this world. The unique mechanics of this game, adding lifting and throwing to the core running and jumping game that made the first game a success just haven’t been used again in a 2D SMB platformer. Nearly 30 years on, this feels like a tragic oversight.

Will we ever?

I’d like to think so, but I don’t think it will be any time soon. Nintendo does have a history of reviving old IP that hasn’t been touched in years. Sequels to Metroid and Kid Icarus didn’t happen for years, despite high popularity of the originals. However, it may be that there are entangling copyright issues preventing the borrowed cast of enemies from Yume Kojo, which was originally created for Fuji TV from making a return on a Nintendo platform again.

A proper NES re-port of the original Metal Gear

Metal Gear MSX title screen

Most US gamers had no way of knowing it, but the original Metal Gear was a mess on the NES. Buggy, poorly translated, and yet somehow still lovable enough to be forgiven, the NES release was perhaps good enough only because there was nothing yet to compare it to.

The true original is the MSX release. The MSX computer wasn’t even available in the USA, as far as I know. I never saw the MSX advertised for sale here, in any case. And even if it was, as an eleven year old kid, I wouldn’t have been able to buy one.

I’ve always wanted to play the original original, but it’s cost prohibitive for me to buy a rare-ish classic computer and one expensive, collectible game just for that one purpose.

Metal Gear spawned one of the great franchises of the video game industry, and clearly deserves a better port to the hardware that introduced it to the US audience. I would love to see a proper port of the original MSX game developed for the NES, even today.

Will we ever?

Unless a fan takes on the project, I highly doubt it would ever be produced as a NES cartridge. But that’s not actually completely out of the question. Fans have been producing ROMhacks and homebrew NES games for years. It would be difficult. A ROMhack of the NES Metal Gear might be the easiest approach to take, but debugging the game, re-translating it, and adding back all the missing content would require a high degree of technical knowledge and skill. It might be better to start over and re-port the MSX Metal Gear as a new project, but that would be even more difficult. But it’s not outside the realm of possibility that a highly motivated, dedicated group of fans could pull it off.

But it’s unthinkable that we’d ever see an official release from Konami, certainly not on a dead console.

Slightly more likely, Konami might release an emulated MSX version with a US translation. However, Konami and Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima parted on very bad terms after years of public feuding, making it unlikely that the parent company would ever honor the original release in such a fashion.

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