Rumour the Mario Bros mini-game in the GBA Mario titles appears to have originally been designed for the Game Processor (a SNES devkit intended for schools)

[Krvavi Abadas]

The Mario Bros sound effects have been known for years, but i never really considered they could have been connected to something else until now.
at the very least, the title screen art originates from it.
we know very little about the device itself. a patent for it exists, a few flyers were made (which is the source for the image), and that it was actually distributed to a few schools. as a few student projects made with it were broadcast on the Satellaview service.

it's possible other parts of the Satellaview were built with it as well, as @LuigiBlood also noted another application on it contains tracks that sound like sample music for it.

do any of the units still exist today? it seems plausible enough. other projects solely intended for educational environments. like a post-release build of Double Dash with debug features enabled, have made it out there. so there's probably a unit still out there waiting to be uncovered.
also consider the history of Nintendo Software Technologies, while the Noughts & Crosses game was given a limited release prior to it's recovery. it's still tied to the same sort of game development school the Game Processor would have been in.

 

[Deleted member 1141]

Wow, so uh, the GBA port included in several games suddenly took a very interesting turn.

 

[Reinhard Schneider]

Yep, saw it on twitter yesterday. Really interesting stuff.

The Mario Bros. remake on the GBA Super Mario games is obviously a multiplayer demo, but this gives it an entirely different meaning.

 

[Tangerine_Cookie]

Okay, this is really interesting. Wondering how much of Mario Bros Classic was already made for stuff like this, if this was an actual Game Processor demo that actually was playble, and how much content like this which was sort of used as a base for a completely different thing later on exists.

 

[LuigiBlood]

If you want, here's some footage of games made using the Game Processor and Mario Factory.
Those were broadcasted on the Satellaview, WHILE INTERVIEWING the creators behind them, as part of a show called "Drunken Game's Big Hole Special" (...not sure of the translation), this is a special show dedicated to the HAL School of Technology in Japan (nothing to do with HAL Laboratory), where they had actually access to the Game Processor.

Video 1 (featuring "Easy Racer" and "Sweet Honey Action")

(The creator of Sweet Honey Action said he made the game by modifying the MARIO BROS. sample game. It also reuses some of the sound effects I recorded in my Twitter thread.)

Video 2 (featuring "Puzzle & Bread" and "Flower")

(Flower also reuses a lot of those sound effects from earlier.)

Video 3 (featuring "ラジパズ" ("Radio Puzzle" or something) and "Wonderful My Race")

 

[Dcubed]

Oh wow! I only just spotted this just now, but that's really cool info. So Mario Bros GBA was actually a SNES port all along! Wow!

Makes you wonder just what other games originally started life out on previous systems but just were never released. This is pretty common for Nintendo after all, with titles like Luigi's Mansion 3 originally being developed for Wii U before being cancelled and moved over to Switch for instance.

 

[LuigiBlood]

I wouldn't say it's a SNES port because I suspect the code in Mario Bros. sample may not be as good as some may think it would be (just watch some of the videos I linked, some of them are based on the Mario Bros. sample).
However they totally reused its graphics.

By the way I made a page about the Game Processor that has like, pretty much every relevant detail and sources about it:

Nintendo GAME PROCESSOR

A page all about the rare Nintendo GAME PROCESSOR hardware and its history.

luigiblood.neocities.org