PARODY PANIC

How gaming’s most famous plumber nearly ended up in a Master System game

Alex Kidd In Shinobi World went through major changes during development. For a start, it was originally titled Shinobi

Kid – or Shinobi Kidd, depending on which magazine you were reading – and had a main character sprite that looked like Joe Musashi. Graphics data found in the game shows that it was supposed to have at least one extra stage with its own boss, and early screenshots are barely recognisable compared to the final game. But one screen, which is initially pretty recognisable, shows off a cheeky swipe at Nintendo.

When redesigning the fireball throwing samurai boss Ken-oh, the devs decided to simplify his fireball pattern to a simple arc that bounced off the ground. He’d shrink after taking enough damage, he had a big moustache, and if it wasn’t obvious enough who he was meant to be then his new name was listed on the level’s title card: Mari-oh.

Though nobody at Sega has ever spoken about this, we’d imagine that this particular piece of fun was the victim of legal concerns – it’s certainly not something that Nintendo would have seen the funny side of, even though it had yet to consider Sega as a serious competitor. But whatever motivated the change, it seems that the decision was one taken at the last minute, as the original title card graphics for Mari-oh and the early character sprite are still present in the game’s data, and can be swapped for the final art with a little bit of simple editing.