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The secret of the missing "Super Mario Bros. 4" on the Japanese title screen.

Behold my latest and possibly greatest discovery! But first:

Check out the box arts for the game. Notice anything peculiar?

Here's the American box for Super Mario World:


And here's the Japanese box:


Notice how one has the words "Super Mario Bros. 4" and the other does not?

Now let's see how it is reflected on the actual title screens:

American:


Japanese:

Hey! Where's the "Super Mario Bros. 4" on there?

Perhaps we shall turn to old video game commercials to see, as they tend to have footage from non-finalized versions of games.

Let's try one for Sears.

Hmm, there's something peculiar about it... Wait!



It's the Japanese title screen, with the American "TM" sign, the inclusion of 1991 on the copyright date... and the words "Super Mario Bros. 4"!

But why isn't it on the actual Japanese title screen in the first place?

There's only one thing to do in a situation like this: look through the tiles!

Here's GFX2B.bin for the American version:


And here's its Japanese counterpart:


And here, we finally find the secret, hidden from us for more than 20 years:


The necessary titles were actually overwritten in the Japanese version!

Yes, apparently Nintendo wanted to expand the font for the game's Japanese version, but there was no room left for the pattern table where they kept most of the font graphics, so they had to sacrifice the "Super Mario Bros. 4" moniker on the title screen for additional font characters. This is information Nintendo never told us during Mario's 25th aniversary!

Before we close the file on the most bizarre case of title marketing ever, there's just one more thing I had to do...


Your layout has been removed.


Hello.

Though the fact that it's missing in the Japanese version is new, as far as I know.

Professional frame-by-frame time wizard. YouTube - Twitter - SMW Glitch List - SMW Randomizer
Cool.

Except Alcaro dug that up on my request like half a year ago.
There was a signature here.


It's gone now.
I think the point of this thread is actually to explain why it was deleted from the title screen, which is the lack of layer 3 space in the japanese version and not to show that it is present in the american ROM.
Your layout has been removed.
I already knew it from the old Thread. I almost though you bumped the old Thread.
Originally posted by Rockythetigre
I already knew it from the old Thread. I almost though you bumped the old Thread.

QFT.

Next time try using Google before submitting your discovery. :D

Nonetheless, good job, and at least the Japanese absence was original as far as I'm aware.
Which now begs the question: what are the absolute tile limits for the object & sprite layers? (I think the sprite layer's is 512)
Let's milk Sunny Milk. Then she'll have enough money to fund Sunny Milk Real Estate.
Everypony's digging with a shovel
Layers 1 through 4 can use 1024 tiles each, while the sprite layer is limited to 512.
But the VRAM often gets full before anything gets to 1024 tiles.
<blm> zsnes users are the flatearthers of emulation