Many gamers know Super Mario Bros. 3 from 1-1 to the final castle, but few probably stopped to wonder what this classic NES adventure must look like from Mario’s point-of-view.
Yesterday, a group of visual effects artists released FPM: Endgame, and the FPM stands for first-person Mario. This clip follows Mario through the treacherous obstacles of World 8 up until the final battle with Bowser. It’s a meticulous re-creation, and the 3D visuals are actually quite amazing.
Check out the video below:
The video took over 50 days to produce, according to the video’s creator, Brandon Laatsch. He and his fellow animators used a suite of tools to bring the Mushroom Kingdom to life, including 3dsMax 2012, After Effects, and FumeFX.
“[It took] 20-plus minutes per frame [for over] 3,000 frames — it adds up super fast when you’re making something that has any length,” Laatsch wrote on Reddit. “It would have taken 50 days for our best computer to render it alone. However, at times we had up to eight computers networked to render over night. So we were able to cut that time down.”
Here’s a behind-the-scenes video that explains some more of the process: