Super Mario Special 3

Super Mario Special 3
Also known as: Super Mario 3 Special (box and cart label), Pokémon Diamond, Pokémon Sapphire, Shuma Baobei - Hai Zhi Shen Developers: Makon Soft Studios (Yong Yong) Publishers: Makon Soft Studios (Yong Yong) Platform: Unlicensed Game Boy Color Released internationally: 2000 (original), 2001 (Diamond) This game has unused areas. This game has unused graphics. This game has revisional differences.

Super Mario Special 3 is a bootleg port of Super Mario Bros. 3 for the Game Boy Color. While it doesn't look too bad, it has the kind of knock-off physics, music, and overall quality you'd expect from something like this.

Inaccessible Areas

The Super Leaf power-up lacks the ability to make Mario fly, and as such the player can't reach most of the secret high-up areas in the first level (which is a direct copy of World 1-1 from the original game).

Unseen Details

The Podoboo enemy found in the last level has a black outline that was not present in the original game. Said outline can't be seen since the Fortress background is solid black.

Revisions and Hacks

A few modified versions of Super Mario Special 3 were produced in the years following its release.

Official

Pokémon Diamond

Made by Makon Soft in 2001, and features quite a few differences from the original game:

• The title screen is changed to a shoddily-resized sprite of Pikachu (from the Pokémon Yellow title screen) with a diamond behind it.
• An intro was added which consists of a selection of compressed pictures of characters from the Pokémon series with a mix of Mandarin, Japanese and English names. A few unused slides can be found in the game's data, each labeled as "Rocket".

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• Mario is replaced by Pikachu, a few Mario enemies with weird non-Pokémon critters, coins with off-model Poké Balls, and the Super Mushroom power-up with a new sort of "thunder ball" item.
• The HUD was touched up lightly: the "M" next to the life counter is a "P", and the "$" next to the coin counter is now a Poké Ball with its top part white and its bottom part red (a mistake present all throughout the game, in both the "coins" and the end card of the re-release).
• The tileset used in all of the levels has a different palette. The graphics for some blocks were also changed, namely the Note Blocks being replaced with Poké Ball blocks and the question mark on the ? Blocks being replaced with a lightning bolt.
• The map screen was removed.
• The levels were also rearranged, with the first level becoming the fourth one and vice versa. Unfortunately, the fourth level in Super Mario Special 3 contained a bug which prevented the level from being beaten as it would soft-lock at the end. As this bug was not fixed here, it now prevents the other 80% of the game from being played without cheating.
• The inaccessible areas from Super Mario Special 3 still can't be reached since this version also lacks a flight power-up.
• Some enemies were also moved around. For instance, in Level 1 an extra "Para-Goomba" was added in the block formation next to where the two "Koopa Paratroopas" can be found.
• The Boomerang Bros in World 3 had their ability to throw boomerangs removed. Despite this, they still jump up and down, playing their throwing animation as usual complete with the appropriate sound effect.

Pokémon Sapphire

A reworking of Diamond with a new title screen and intro sequence, plus several other changes:

• A save feature is added.
• The Level 4 glitch has finally been fixed.
• Three new levels are included before the five levels of the original game.
• Several music tracks were also added for the intro, title screen and Stage 1.
• Many of the existing music tracks are remixed for this version.
• Pikachu's sprite is inexplicably colored blue here.
• You now get a 1-UP after completing a level.

Unofficial

Shuma Baobei - Hai Zhi Shen

A re-release of Diamond made by the company Li Cheng, this time under the name Shuma Baobei - Hai Zhi Shen ("Pokémon - God of the Sea") and with its own share of differences:

• The title screen was changed to a poorly-digitized picture of an angry Lugia, taken from the Japanese poster for the second Pokémon movie The Power of One. Pikachu is still cheering on however, now in the corner and truly mouse-sized.
• The intro sequence was expanded upon, adding compressed Pokémon artwork, more character images, and some images full of lore(?) in Chinese. The unused slides from Diamond also make a return here, but with their own names now:

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  "Ditto"

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  Charmander

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  Mysterious Beautiful Woman

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  "Kadabra"

• Title cards can now be seen at the start of each level.
• This version fixes the World 4 glitch, making the game fully playable.