TVG DIY: Fancy Mario (aka Dream Mary) Mod w/ a Switch

A few years ago there was a famous Super Mario Bros. ROM hack by the name of Fancy Mario, aka Dream Mary, that was included on many Famiclones and multicarts. The hack was simply a reversed mirroring effect that made the game more challenging. Many of the original NES games had mirroring options right on the PCB in the form of solder pads for vertical or horizontal. When, and why the ROM was hacked is beyond my understanding, but it was quite popular. One of my favorite Famiclone blogs by the name of 133MHz offered a tutorial on how to convert a cartridge of Super Mario Bros., or Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt, into your own version of Fancy Mario.

The tutorial is a very straight forward and simple option to turn your copy of Super Mario Bros. into the, at that time, highly sought after Fancy Mario. Simple cut a trace between the mirroring pads and solder the other two together. You may also find one is bridged with solder already, this will require you to desolder that pair and solder the other pair. Each set will usually be marked with V and H, for obvious reasons. This flips the normal mirroring and gives you exactly what you get when you’re playing Fancy Mario. Although I already had Fancy Mario on a multicart, I’m always a tinkerer and decided to use a spare copy of Super Mario Bros. to create my own version. It was just as simple as the 133MHz tutorial made it out to be.

Mirroring Pads on Gyromite

Fast forward to 2024 and I’m a bit bored, so my brain is creating its own problems to solve, much to the dismay of myself and my therapist. As I’m looking through my NES collection I remembered my copy of Fancy Mario and wondered if I could modify it by adding a switch so that I could choose which version I wanted to play. I found the lowest profile switch I could find and modified the cartridge to fit the switch into. Then I soldered three wires to the game’s PCB as well as the switch and I was done. It works! My own version of Fancy Mario that now can be switched back to normal Super Mario Bros., should I want to play it.

Ugly Soldering, but functional

This mod is also super simple, firstly you follow the normal tutorial for making your own permanent copy of Fancy Mario. This time you’ll need to stop before you solder the two pads together, instead you’re going to solder a wire between the common pad and the center lug of the switch. Then you solder two more wires to the opposing mirroring option pads and connect those to the top and bottom lugs of the switch. My soldering isn’t the best with such small wire and solder pads, but I did ok. It does work, and that’s really all I was hoping for.

All finished!

This modification does have one major drawback that I kind of saw coming, but still failed to circumvent. This is totally playable on an NES top loader and any of the Famiclone style NES consoles, but this is NOT compatible with the original NES toaster console. Even though I used the lowest profile switch I had it still hits the metal crossbar on the cartridge cradle. If you’ve removed this crossbar, or are using some other form of cartridge insertion device in your NES console that does not have this metal crossbar, you should be good to go. Using a Game Genie may also be a workaround, but original, unmodified NES consoles are a no go.

I’m not even sure Fancy Mario is still popular, sought after or has even been thought about by anyone other than myself in the past ten years, but this mod is a fun little project to add a bit more playability to an already incredibly playable game. With Super Mario Bros. being as ubiquitous as it is you shouldn’t have any problem finding a copy to use for this mod. Maybe play around with different switch placements. I wanted to keep the label complete and this seemed like the best place for a switch, but I still didn’t manage to make it fit into the original NES console.

Posted October 3rd, 2024

About the author

Samuel Floyd first fell into video gaming with the Atari 2600...in the mid-90s! Always late into the system wars, Samuel enjoys that as he acquires them when they're cheap and the hot titles of yesteryear are bountiful. Samuel loves RPGs, his favorite being Crystalis for the NES.


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