Mario on Other Consoles, Computers & Arcades

In 1982 Nintendo was an arcade company with no home console in the West, so it rented Mario out. Coleco won exclusive console and tabletop rights to Donkey Kong: Hiroshi Yamauchi reportedly saw it as “the hungriest company”, and Nintendo took a lump sum plus US$1.40 a cartridge. Coleco’s version came in the box with every ColecoVision, and the company also sold it to owners of rival hardware, with an Atari 2600 port in July 1982 and an Intellivision one that autumn. Garry Kitchen had only a few months to squeeze the 2600 game into a tiny cartridge, so two of the four arcade stages were cut. Even so, Coleco sold around six million Donkey Kong cartridges.

Atari held the home computer rights. It released Donkey Kong on its own 8-bit computers in 1983 and, under the Atarisoft label, on the Apple II, IBM PC, Commodore 64 and others in 1983–84, and it licensed Mario Bros. for the 2600 (December 1983) and 5200 (February 1984). The arrangement had a sting in the tail: when Coleco showed Donkey Kong on its Adam computer at the June 1983 CES, Atari objected, and the row helped derail plans for Atari to distribute the Famicom in North America. Years later Atari Corporation returned with 7800 versions of Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. and Mario Bros. in 1988, plus a Mario Bros. for Atari’s 8-bit computers.

In Europe, Ocean Software converted Donkey Kong in December 1986 and Mario Bros. in 1987 for the Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64; Ocean’s is the only C64 Mario Bros. ever sold, because Atarisoft’s version was never released. Japan took a different route. Hudson Soft produced new takes on Nintendo’s games for home computers, starting in 1984 with Mario Bros. Special and Punch Ball Mario Bros., which lets the brothers stun enemies with thrown balls. In 1986 it followed with Super Mario Bros. Special for the NEC PC-8801 and Sharp X1, an officially licensed remix with fresh layouts that flips from screen to screen rather than scrolling continuously.

The early 1990s brought a wave of licensed PC edutainment. Interplay’s Mario Teaches Typing (1992) gained an enhanced CD-ROM edition voiced by Charles Martinet, and its 1996 sequel Mario Teaches Typing 2 added a slightly unsettling talking 3D head. The Software Toolworks released Mario is Missing! in January 1993, giving Luigi the lead, and followed it with Mario’s Time Machine and the preschool Mario’s Early Years! series, all later ported to Nintendo’s consoles. Merit Software’s careers-themed colouring book Super Mario Bros. & Friends: When I Grow Up (1992) and Presage’s board-game collection Mario’s Game Gallery (1995) rounded out the shelf. Nintendo licensed the characters, but on titles such as Mario’s Time Machine it had no hand in development.

The strangest chapter came from Philips. Nintendo had first worked with Sony on a CD-ROM add-on for the Super NES, then switched to Philips, and when the add-on was abandoned Philips kept the right to use some Nintendo characters on its own CD-i player, launched in late 1991 at around US$1,000. The result was three Zelda games and Hotel Mario (1994), a Fantasy Factory puzzle game in which Mario shuts doors across 75 stages in seven hotels run by the Koopalings and Bowser, linked by cartoon cutscenes. Mixed reviews at the time have since hardened into a reputation as one of the weakest Mario games.

The Virtual Boy is Nintendo’s own hardware, but it sits apart from the main line. Gunpei Yokoi’s R&D1 built it around red LED displays licensed from Reflection Technology and a 32-bit NEC V810 processor, and it launched on 21 July 1995 in Japan and 14 August in North America, never reaching Europe. Mario’s Tennis was a launch title and the North American pack-in, and Mario Clash (September 1995) was the first stereoscopic 3D Mario game. Only 770,000 units sold and Japan dropped it that December, yet in 2026 the system returned as Virtual Boy – Nintendo Classics on Switch Online, with both Mario games added on 10 March 2026.

Two final routes kept Mario on unusual hardware. The Game Boy Advance e-Reader, launched in North America on 16 September 2002, scanned dot-code cards, and from 11 November 2002 players could swipe the complete NES Donkey Kong into their handheld, alongside Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong Jr. cards. In arcades, Namco’s Mario Kart Arcade GP (October 2005) ran on the Triforce board it developed with Sega, added Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man and Blinky to the grid and photographed each driver’s face. Mario Kart Arcade GP 2 followed in 2007, Bandai Namco’s Mario Kart Arcade GP DX in July 2013 and a VR edition in 2017. For Mario’s main home, start at our NES hub.