HTML5 ARTICLE

October 14, 2013

‘Super Mario Bros’ Gets Full-Screen HTML5 Remake


The original “Super Mario Bros.” was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka for the Nintendo gaming platform in 1985. The game is one of the most popular releases the company has ever produced, with more than 42 million units sold. Although the game was very popular at the time by today standards, it is primitive to say the least. But this hasn’t stopped many gamers from playing this and other old-school games in one form or another. Joshua Goldberg, a computer science student at Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute, has remade the "Super Mario Bros." game on a full-screen HTML5 platform.

This is a free, open source project that allows developers to tweak the code to their hearts’ content. Maps can be generated using the level editor and sprites can be generated using a high performance GIF-like library and renderer created by Goldberg.

Using HTML5 gives the game a new life across many different platforms, so whether you are on your smartphone, tablet or PC, you will be able to get Mario across all the levels to rescue Princess Toadstool.

Goldberg provides a set of cheat codes players can use during the game if it becomes too much of a challenge, or you just want to learn the ins and outs of the coding he used.

The code is available on Gifthub, and everyone can learn how he applied HTML5 to resurrect this game and inspire other coders to create original solutions, or bring another game back from their childhood.

HTML5 has seen many naysayers when the W3C (NewsAlert) decided to make this a standard, but today the vast majority of developers are seeing many of the benefits it provides, and when it launches sometime in the middle of 2014, there will be fewer cynics.

The biggest driver for HTML5 adoption has been mobile, and with the attrition rate the PC is experiencing towards mobile platforms the popularity by developers and users is only going to increase. HTML5 is more efficient at integrating mobile solutions giving developers, marketers, and businesses a solution that can eliminate the compatibility issues of the past and make the mobile ecosystem a place everyone can get along.




Edited by Alisen Downey





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