I remember when Mario 3 came out, there was so much hype and demand for yet another sequel that a local game rental store put a copy of “Super Mario Bros. 4” on their shelf. Astonished at our good fortune, we immediately rented it.

Our first clue something was off: the box was much different, square-shaped. Mario was on the box, but the writing was all in Japanese.

The game cartridge was also odd, but we just chalked it up to being a super-secret Japanese release and rushed home to play it. Looking back, It was actually a Famicom cartridge with a converter attached to it.

When we turned on the game, it gave us Mario game and a Luigi game options. We were quite befuddled to pick up the poison mushroom almost immediately and get that face-slap the game was intended to deliver. Somehow my brother later discovered he could play even harder levels right away by holding one or 2 of the buttons while pressing start.

Overall it was a bit disappointing, but it was the game we selected to rent so we were stuck with it and played the hell out of it. What a weird surprise to see it come back years later on the SNES…