My dad was a pretty rad guy, but he never hacked my video games so I could play them as a female character. What girl wouldn't love to save the dudes? Well, that's exactly what game developer Mike Mika did for his daughter Pauline, and he's released the patch so you can share it with your kids too.
Mika says he and his daughter love to play vintage games together, but she recently told him she was sad because she never got to play Donkey Kong as the princess. Here's a sneak preview of Pauline Edition:
Here's how he did it:
She's played as Princess Toadstool in Super Mario Bros. 2 and naturally just assumed she could do the same in Donkey Kong. I told her we couldn't in that particular Mario game, she seemed really bummed out by that. So what else am I supposed to do? Now I'm up at midnight hacking the ROM, replacing Mario with Pauline. I'm using the 2010 NES Donkey Kong ROM. I've redrawn Mario's frames and I swapped the palettes in the ROM. I replaced the M at the top with a P for Pauline.
This is fatherly love at its finest.
You can download the Pauline patch here.
(Photo Credit: Bryan Ochalla via Flickr's Creative Commons)
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I smell a business opportunity in this.
I love this so much.
Now there's a man that I'm glad has procreated.
Way to set the bar!
Old story, but still a good one. Definitely an awesome dad.
This is also why Super Mario Bros 2 is IMO the best one of the bunch. The Princess was the best player anyway, with that hovering ability, and I loved that you could go backwards if you wanted.
This is awesome!!!!!! I love it!
Awesome dad...just hope he doesn't get sued by Nintendo for doing this!
Great dad, great developer!
Dear Princess Pauline,
You have the most awesome dad ever.... Well, next to mine. ;)
Love!! What a great guy.
great story but the daughter's name is not Pauline, that's the character in the game.....
Awesome!
I wish I could have been there to see her face when her dad had her play the very first time.
Interestingly, the only reason that Princess Toadstool was a playable character in Mario 2 was because it was originally not a Mario game. They reskinned it to be a Mario game for marketing purposes, and since it was already programmed with 4 playable characters, they had to include the Princess.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=X6p5AZp7r_Q
That is one awesome dad
Wow!.....how sweet! You win my personal Father of the Year award!