yeah i remember this kid, Eric, at my day camp telling me about it. i probably said something like SMW is technically Mario 4 and he responded, somewhat exasperated, that Mario 4 totally came out on “the Nintendo,” and he knew this because he rented it from his local video store. he talked about how you play as “Baby Mario” (this conversation predates the canonical arrival of Baby Mario in SMW2) and there’s a level where you eat through a cake.
while i knew that he was wrong, i also had no real explanation at the time for what he was telling me, since his story seemed real to me.
years later, i came upon Upa and figured out what had happened
Yes! I believe the name on the cart was something along the lines of “Super Mario 4: Baby Mario”, so at least on the one I had that was the big selling point deal.
The game is fine BTW, it’s no where near the quality of any of the actual NES Marios but is cute and decent.
Oh, I forgot the one other part of this story. I was the kid who spent all his allowance on EGM and Gamepro, kept them all in comic-esque cardboard long crates and would go back and read through them from time to time. Some years later I was doing this and I think EGM had a CES or preview of the year ahead issue with a ton of tiny screenshots on the cover, and for the first time I noticed one of them was of Mario 4! I went through the whole issue trying to find any mention of that game and nothing, no screenshot of it or any matching description. It felt like I was so close to an answer as to what the heck that game actually was, and simply was never gonna get the answer.
i recently got some disappointment when i found out that the shiren gb translation is no longer being worked on, so this bit of good news is very welcome
