That Time Nintendo (Unintentionally) Gave Life To 3d Games

Back in July of 2021, gaming archaeologists unearthed an old demo of Super Mario Bros. 3 that was developed not by Nintendo but by id Software. This revelation, combined with some video game history digging, proves that Nintendo is even more family-friendly than we originally thought, as they've unintentionally paved the way for the creation of games where you get to kill demons and Nazis.

Now, a huge misconception about id Software is that they're the most influential company when it comes to the first-person shooter genre. Sure, they made Doom, which inspired Gabe Newell to create Half-Life after porting Doom to Windows 95 via what we assume was a complex system of valves, but the truth is that id Software is the most influential company when it comes to 3d games, period. But that only happened because they got their ass rejected by Nintendo. For a goddamn 2d game.

From the get-go, id co-founder John Carmack saw the technical prowess of Mario games that more casual players couldn't; Mario games benefited from awesome side-scrolling coding that allowed for smooth level progression impossible to DOS games of the '80s. In a somewhat anticlimactic twist, Id managed to make a functional copy of some Super Mario 3 levels without any access to the original code, all over the course of a mere week. 

He and his team then managed to turn the aptly titled "Dangerous Dave In Copyright Infringement" into an awesome copy of Super Mario Bros. 3.

Which they then sent to Nintendo in the hopes of getting a deal to port Nintendo games to the PC, but Nintendo decided on not having their games running on anything other than Nintendo systems, a decision they've stuck with to this day.

This probably sucked for id at the time, but instead of having a career consisting of making millions from working like four hours to port new Mario games to the PC, they were now free to create something new. Also, they'd already figured out what made Mario special, so they just made their own game with Mario's smooth-ass scrolling.

… and moved on to sell their souls to the devil and revolutionize the gaming world through 3d graphics.

Then they brutally murdered the devil. For fun.

Top Image: Nintendo