Someone animated Mario’s character sprite from Super Mario 3 with 24 frames instead of the standard three, and the result is maybe a bit too lively for most players. Released on the Super Nintendo in the early 90s, Super Mario 3 is considered by many to be one of the greatest video games of all time, and mint copies of the game have been sold at auctions for upwards of $156,000. It was even featured in the cult 1989 film The Wizard before its release, and Super Mario 3 has been rereleased on contemporary Nintendo platforms like the Wii U and Nintendo Switch in the decades since it first took the gaming world by storm.
Like most games in the Super Mario series, Super Mario 3 put players in control of either Mario or Luigi as they journeyed across the many different environments of the Mushroom Kingdom to rescue Princess Peach from the clutches of Bowser - though the game added several new enemy types and introduced the now-standard overworld map to transport the brothers between worlds. The basic gameplay of Super Mario remained intact though, and Super Mario 3’s retro 2D graphics and minimalistic animation still carry a certain charm among fans to this day.
However, some fans have attempted to flesh out Mario’s classic running animation from Super Mario 3, and Reddit user bumpitybum recently shared the results on r/gaming. They posted a brief GIF animation of Mario’s run cycle animated with 24 frames, with the hero looking decidedly bouncier in comparison to the three-frame run cycle from Super Mario 3. To many fans in the comments section, Mario's fleshed-out running animation is too bouncy, as he’s constantly hopping up and down with his hat and Tanuki tail flopping wildly. Bumpitybum would later explain that this animation was the result of an AI algorithm rendering Mario in 24 frames, which they then decided to share as a joke.
See the original post on Reddit here.
This is far from the only time fans have either modded the original Super Mario 3 or uncovered wild glitches that change the game in unexpected ways, as a player recently found a way to switch Mario out for Luigi in the middle of a playthrough by going outside Super Mario 3’s overworld map. Meanwhile, a rare PC port from fabled DOOM developer id Software was discovered and preserved by the Strong National Museum of Play, after fans were only able to hear about it from former devs like David Kushner and John Romero for decades.
While bumpitybum’s fleshed-out Super Mario 3 running animation is fluid and well-animated, it seems much too bouncy to be practical in a platforming game. Mario jumps around way too much, making it difficult for players to keep track of him even in the simple scene depicted in bumpitybum’s post. It isn’t hard to imagine that this bouncy running animation would be even more chaotic during Super Mario 3’s more intense levels, so perhaps it is for the best that Nintendo decided that less is more when it comes to Mario’s iconic run cycle.
Source: bumpitybum/Reddit