Super Mario Bros. 35 Lives Again With A Fan-Made Server

If you liked playing Super Mario Bros. 35, the unique multiplayer battle royale Mario game that Nintendo released last year on the Switch to celebrate 35 years since the original NES version of Super Mario Bros, then it’s likely that you have been disappointed since April. The gaming giant ended support and removed the game’s servers once their 35 year celebrations were over, leaving the game’s players hanging. Happily there’s a solution, because [Kinnay] has presented a reverse-engineered Nintendo game server replacement along with a game patch, that should keep gamers in multi-Mario fun forever.

While it’s a boon for fans of this particular game, the real value here is in introducing us to the reverse engineering work on those Nintendo servers. We learn about their various foibles over several generations of console, and perhaps most importantly we learn something of their inner workings.

Usually when a game server is turned off it’s because the platform it supports is so ancient as to have hardly any users. This time-limited game on an up-to-date platform is unusual then, but since it was made available to subscribers to Nintendo’s online service for free it’s less of a surprise. Certainly not in the same class as the loss of servers for an entire platform.

Thanks [Digiaap] for the tip.

Header image: Elvis untot, CC BY-SA 4.0.

26 thoughts on “Super Mario Bros. 35 Lives Again With A Fan-Made Server

      1. Yep, once the full stuff has been released, it’s harder to complete stop illegal server or file sharing than trying to catch greased pig. Best Nintendo can do is go after the first guy

      1. I thought reverse engineering ( especially in this case since it is still an active IP) was illegal, as that means you pretty much broke into their product to look at code that is supposed to be private.

  1. People seem to think Nintendo will do as they always do and take this down.. BUT they probably can’t. They could take them to court sure, but if they genuinely reverse engineered the game and server system then it’s completely legal.

    So if Nintendo did take them to court then Nintendo would not only lose but also be open to counter suit. At the very least Nintendo would have to pay all court costs. Of course it wouldn’t go that way and a counter suit would be filed. They could sue for lost wages, potential lost wages, pain and suffer (mental), damage’s to reputation and plenty more that any half decent lawyer could come up with.

    Nintendo would be wise to leave this one alone AND put Mario 35 back online.

    1. You seem to misunderstand Nintendo’s tactics. There are several cases of fair use where they will sue anyway. The purpose is intimidation and/or causing monetary trouble for the other party. This tactic almost always works and is highly effective despite being entirely unethical.

    2. They could win the suit if the person running the server doesn’t at least change a few cosmetics, because then they are hosting an illegal game ( stolen code ( technically) and more importantly stolen assets). I am sure there is more that they could be gotten for, but nothing is coming to mind.

    3. People reverse engineered World of Warcraft and made private servers. Still got sued by Blizzard. Unofficial server for Mario game will rile Nintendo and the server will be shut down unless the person happens to be in a country that has very poor relation with USA and Japan.

    1. Because there were no transactions in Super Mario Bros. 35. The game was completely free as long as you had a Nintendo Switch Online membership. The membership is a seperate transaction for a service, so even if someone bought the service just for smb35 there would be no legal standing for a lawsuit against the big N for taking it down.

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