I remember sitting down and talking with Jez San about his work on the Super FX Chip, which was the MARIO chip back then (Mathematical Argonaut Rotation I.O. chip), and discovering firsthand from someone who worked on the project just how influential it was when it came to producing games back in the 90s. It made 3D graphics possible in Star Fox, and although it all looked very simple, it blew people away.
We all know that the N64 brought Nintendo truly into the 3D realm, and getting to see Mario in a 3D adventure for the first time was utterly amazing. I can't tell you how excited I was when I first saw him pop out of that warp pipe, and the game still gives me those same chills today whenever I play it.
Who do we know who takes on challenges like this? Who do we know who, after hearing the fact that there was possibly going to be a Super FX Mario game that never happened, would put all of their spare time into making the rumour a reality? Yes, you guessed it - Game of Tobi is back to do the jobs that the big companies don't want to or never did.
The fact that we can see Super Mario 64 running on the SNES with the power of the FX Chip is wild. Tobi has a track record of working with the source code of Super Mario 64 and is getting more and more used to bringing it to different platforms, and he's used the original source code and assets here again. Honestly, I'm well impressed with this; you can tell all of the elements of the levels, and while it's a bit jittery here and there, it's 100% Super Mario 64, and all of Mario's moves work. You would be able to play through the levels that Tobi has finished quite easily; you might feel like you've been glued to a Virtual Boy visor for a while afterwards from having to squint, but it'll be worth it.
Tobi has had a hard job working with a limited 2MB of memory, with him explaining that he's had to paint frames back to front. Nevertheless, he's done it, and it's very impressive. Tobi will release the game for us to play on the SNES via a flash cart like the FX Pack Pro once he's happy with the results. Obviously there's a little bit more work that needs to happen here, but it's running much better than Tobi's project to bring Super Mario 64 to the GBA, which, while ambitious, was always going to be a tough ask.
I'm going to be watching this very carefully over the coming weeks and months, and I'll let you know as soon as it's available to play in full!
