Dream Mary on a Budget

[133MHz]

Want to play Dream Mary without searching half of the planet for a copy of it? You can convert a regular Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt NES cartridge into Dream Mary in two easy steps!

Check it out on 133MHz's Junk Box, the finest in cheap electronic entertainment:

http://133fsb.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/dream-mary-on-a-budget/

This was inspired by you guys, and your fascination with Dream Mary. I know you'll like it .

[Medisinyl]

If I didn't already own a Dream Mary, I would have done this.  Thanks for posting it.  However, Dream Mary isn't quite as interesting as I hoped.

[Nightstar699]

Cool article, i never dream mary was like that! Quite simple indeed.

[Bramsworth]

Wierd, do most games have a simple point on the pcb like that for the Horizontal and Vertical mirroring?

At least this way people can forget about tracking down hard to find pirates of this thing  

[133MHz]

do most games have a simple point on the pcb like that for the Horizontal and Vertical mirroring?

Yeah, most old games, you know, the simple ones. Games like Mario 3, Zelda, etc don't have mirroring select on the board because they control it by software.

[manuel]

Wow, that's what even I would call ridiculously easy.

And I see you used my video to illustrate the point. Thanks. 

[nintendodork]

I'm so glad I know how to do this now.  I've always said that I'm never going to spend money on Dream Mary, and now I don't ever have to.  That is, unless of course, Manuel is willing to sell his unique version.

Another game that's fun to play with switched mirroring is Excitebike.  Try it out sometime!

[manuel]

Haha, no, I will probably not sell mine. I like the cover very much and that it has a switch.
Some time in the future I think I'll buy one of those cheap baseball games to get a nice black box and make a custom inlay.

[UglyJoe]

Technically, SMB uses Vertical Mirroring.  "On cartridge boards made by Nintendo, this is selected by shorting the "H" solder pad (for "horizontal arrangement"). "  A horizontal arrangement gives you vertical mirroring.  Check this screenshot of the name table viewer of FCE Ultra XD SP, as an example:

http://ximwix.net/storage/smbmirroring.png

[133MHz]

You're technically right.
Horizontal Arrangement !== Horizontal Mirroring. My bad.

A horizontal arrangement gives you vertical mirroring

Damn Nintendo and their confusing terminology

[UglyJoe]

Heh, sorry to bring it up.  It's a good article.  I've never actually taken a look at the solder pads.

[NintendoKing]

I just did this and it worked amazingly, 1 million points for awesomeness.

[son_ov_hades]

If I only had a soldering iron I would do this right away.

[cubelmariomadness]

Will the duck hunt portion have weird mirroring too?

[133MHz]

Will the duck hunt portion have weird mirroring too?

Yeah, but only the title screen is affected, the game plays fine as far as my testing shows (I haven't plugged in my Zapper to test the hit detection so this is not 100% conclusive).

If you want to step it up a notch, you can add a switch just like in Manuel's cart. Just get a small single pole double throw toggle switch and wire it up like this:



Mount it somewhere on the case and now you can flick the switch to select between SMB and Dream Mary.