Juju just posted this on IRC:
https://vimeo.com/148909578
This is apparently a canceled PC remake or port of the NES game Super Mario Bros 3. It either was in early stages or just was poorly implemented, because the physics seems broken, but it's still interesting to know.
Back in the days, it seemed common for Nintendo to allow third-parties to use Mario in their own Mario games. For example, Hudson Soft once made Super Mario Bros. Special in 1986, for the PC 8801 and Sharp x1 computers, which had no scrolling (once you reached the edge, it moved to a different screen, so you didn't know where you would land, and in the Sharp version it scrolled like Zelda 1) and the controls were sluggish. Super Mario Bros. Special was designed to be a sequel to SMB1. Even the 84+CSE has better scrolling.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=aSsrQa7B_5Q
And don't get me started on the CD-i games. >.<
This is indeed a nice piece of history John Romero shared today. At the time, John Carmack, along with the other founders of id Software, were working at Softworks and he discovered a good way to make a side-scrolling plateformer on PC (which was a big deal back in 1990) and did a demo of Super Mario Bros. 3 in the hopes to pitch it to Nintendo, which replied they were uninterested in the PC market and Nintendo titles should be exclusive to Nintendo consoles. They later expanded on the concept and made their own Mario-style game, Commander Keen.
Wait, do you mean the John Romero guy who used to visit TI-Freakware or another person?
And yeah back then I noticed that most computer games were more educational or point and click style. Even today the amount of genres available on PC is more limited. It's only because of Steam that we are finally seeing JRPGs appear, and even then, they're old games converted to HD.