ROM Hack 20 Years In The Making, Mario Adventure 3 Is The Ultimate Mario 3 ROM Hack

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ScarlettVixen has just released Mario Adventure 3, an ambitious Super Mario Bros. 3 ROM hack which is 20 years in the making.

"It's been an extremely long project, but after 12 years, it's finally here," says the developer. "Many of this game's elements are iterations and polishes on concepts found in prior projects. Mario Adventure 3 is more than a 12 year project, it's a 20 year amalgamation of ideas waiting to see fruition."

Mario Adventure launched in 2002 and, since then, has been iterated upon with other hacks, including Luigi's Coin Quest and Luigi vs. Mario.

Mario Adventure 3 takes many of the concepts found in these previous games and augments and enhances them.

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Some of the new features included in the game are:

• Day and night system (Mario Adventure)
• Weather effects (Mario Adventure)
• Item shop (Mario Adventure and Luigi vs Mario)
• Exploration heavy (Luigi's Coin Quest)
• Traversing and backtracking worlds across the entire game with no cutscenes (Luigi's Coin Quest)
• Hidden collectables to gain access to blocked areas (Luigi vs Mario)

While it might seem like a fairly standard ROM hack on the surface, it showcases a lot of effort, including a completely custom level format, a custom-built tile collision system, a new object handling system, new enemy patterns, new power-ups (including a cool Ninja power-up, complete with wall-jumping), a weather system and much, much more. And the best thing is that it runs on actual NES hardware.

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If you fancy checking it out, you can download the patch here.