At work, we did a high scores competition at Super Mario Bros, arcade version (Unisystem VS). My score was not high enough so I decided to train using the NES version at home. After playing a few minutes, I discovered that there was many differences between the NES and Arcade version of Super Mario Bros.

In the arcade version, there are less mushrooms (), less flowers (), and less lives (). They are usually replaced by coins or nothing. Some monsters are changed, there are more pits and some levels are completely different. The arcade version is harder!

Instead of practising using the Mame emulator, I decided to mod a NES console to make arcade roms playable on it. I could also have built a cartridge but modding the console was more fun and I learned a bit more. I wonder what's more fun: Playing the game or modding the console? ...

The result: A dedicated Super Mario Bros VS. console, without a cartridge (no bad contacts) with switches on the front panel to tweak some aspects of the game (A user friendly version of dip switches found on the arcade motherboard).
On the following page, you'll find pictures and explaination about what I did to obtain these results. And it's not only electronics...