In Which Dian Shi Ma Li

We've seen a lot of Mario-related failure at the hands of companies other than Nintendo who were bold enough to license him and try to live up to his real games. Kerog, Weegee and Judge Peach are all scary remnants of those colossal catastrophes. Yet there are deeper abysses - deeper even than the worst Intellivision port of the DK arcade. Yes, I speak of *dramatic thunder* pirated Mario games.
One of these is Dian Shi Ma Li Mario Lottery, a horrific bootleg game for the NES centered around a Mario wannabe called Fortran with sideways feet who makes you bet on various inane things and urges you to "push start to rich", which doesn't even work unless you substitute "start" for "A". Take a look for yourself:
The "game" starts with red-toothed Fortran showing us a demo of the new and innovative enrichment method found in this game: you get to hit a question block for coins! Then, you get to set your credits on the fields - D-pad up for bells, right for sevens, left for stars, down for watermelons, A for berries, B for tomatoes, Start for the oval green things, Select for the pink round things, second-player A for bars and second-player B to start the roulette. Alternately, the game begins when 180 credits are set. You win things according to the multipliers, and get random bonuses if Fortran hits a matching box, and from time to time, get to bet the bonuses themselves on cards, and... it would only interest anyone if the game was fun to play, which it isn't.

Perhaps the best parts are Fortran's flashing sprite when he hits the coin block (not funny if you have epilepsy) and the random sounds you can produce by just mashing on the buttons. For examples of this, check out this video:


You can download and try this misshapen piece of software here, among other things. What's your high score? Could you unlock something, like a Luigi Pascal mode? Do Fortran and his bleeding mouth/creepy eyes combo appear in your nightmares?

~Waluigious: Arrrrrrr.