Super Mario Bros. 3 Demo (1990) from john romero on Vimeo.

Nintendo has long been very careful in keeping its intellectual properties exclusive to its own consoles, but back in the Eighties the team from Ideas From The Deep pitched a PC version of Super Mario Bros 3 to Nintendo. Of course they weren’t successful in doing so, but the developer was renamed id Software and built Commander Keen instead, before taking the world by storm with Doom a few years later.

While it’s fairly common knowledge that such a pitch had been made, the version created as a pitch had never been seen. Thankfully, John Romero has found the game and uploaded some footage online yesterday, thus preserving an important part of the id Software story for all to see – not to mention providing a tantalising glimpse into an alternative history of Mario that never came to pass.