SAN FRANCISCO, June 21 — An unofficial modification to Super Mario Bros. drops up to 75 players into a frantic race to the finish of a randomly selected Mario world.

Tetris 99 is no longer the only way a classic Nintendo franchise has been reborn as a last-person-standing battle royale.

Thanks to an enterprising programmer, InfernoPlus, Mario Royale has up to 99 players simultaneously racing to the end of a random world from Super Mario Bros. (1983) and its more difficult counterpart Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels (1986).

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The Mario Royale challenge blends competitive speedrunning with the gradual elimination of a Battle Royale.

Players are all superimposed into the same level, but their Mario sprites can’t jump on one another or get in one another’s way.

Instead, they can throw Koopa turtle shells at each other, be the first to obtain a power-up, break destructible blocks, or zap one another out of existence by catching hold of a Super Star.

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The object of each level is to be the first, second, or third Mario to reach the finishing flag.

Nintendo typically does not permit copyright infringing material such as this, so Mario Royale may reach its own finishing line before very long.

Even then, however, the concept has been proven. InfernoPlus released Mario Royale on June 17 as a browser game through infernoplus.com/royale, and it spread through YouTube and Twitch over the rest of the week; other programmers and game designers can now iterate on the idea without the encumbrance of a Nintendo legal letter.

In fact, obstacle course scramble Fall Guys was revealed the week before at the 2019 Electronic Entertainment Expo, and though its challenges appeared to lean a little more on environmental risks rather than threats posed by other players, it’s set for a 2020 release on PC and PlayStation 4. — AFP-Relaxnews