Super Mario Vita Demo finally released and Redneck Rampage gets a Vita port – You can now play a native Super Mario game on the Vita… sort of

The PlayStation Vita homebrew scene is still kicking and this time, we have something that’s quite unexpected. This unexpected piece of homebrew is a demo of Super Mario Vita, a Super Mario fan game written in Unity, which is the first (and probably last) time that Mario appeared in a Vita game! On a more usual note, Rinnegatamante has ported Redneck Rampage to the Vita which will also be discussed in this article.

Super Mario Vita Demo Released

If you want to check out this demo, you must overclock your PSVita’s CPU to 444MHz unless you want a slideshow!

If you’ve been following r/vitahacks, then you’ve probably heard of Super Mario Vita which is a fan-made Super Mario game by Fanta Hourglass. News about this homebrew game emerged around 2 months ago, in early January, when its developer published a teaser video showing some gameplay in a PSVita Slim overlay and started posting regular updates about it on Twitter. Obviously, this kindled a fair amount of interest but many people warned Fanta Hourglass to stay quiet about his work as Nintendo has shut down fan-made games using its intellectual property, such as AM2R, in the past.

Now, a demo of this somewhat anticipated Super Mario 64-esque homebrew has been released and from a short playing session, I observed the following:

You must overclock your PSVita’s CPU to 444MHz to get playable speeds with some stuttering
- To do this, you can use a plugin such as Joel16’s PSV VSH Menu
- Don’t even think about running it at 333MHz (stock clock) as you’ll get single digit frame rates!
There are 4 small demo worlds which demonstrate what could be achieved with the engine
- This means that this demo is a tech demo as it doesn’t have any content that you can actually play through
Obviously, there are some issues with game’s physics and these are especially noticeable in the world with minimal lighting
The music, by guesswhatmusic, is pretty nice and I’d be pleased if it were to end up in some other fan-made Mario game
The controls work somewhat well but I kept dying in one of the demo worlds as Mario slid a bit too far and always ended up in the lava!
The Super Mario Vita demo is pretty cool but unfortunately, that’s the last we’ll be hearing of this homebrew game

This demo shows some promise and achieves some pretty cool things but unfortunately, it’ll be the last we’ll be hearing of Super Mario Vita. From the video posted by Fanta Hourglass about the demo’s release, it’s been revealed that he won’t continue working on the game as he’s rightfully afraid that Nintendo will shut him down. However, he’ll continue developing games with Unity as he showed off a prototype of an original 3D platforming game featuring a robot that he plans to release on Steam (PC) and possibly the PSVita. To grab the game demo (for PC and Vita), check out the links below and you can also watch the release video!

Redneck Rampage ported to the PSVita

Following his short (or inexistant) break from the PSVita scene, Rinnegatamante is back at work creating ports of open-source titles for the PSVita and this time around, he ported NRedneck which is a fork of the open-source EDuke32 engine which adds Redneck Rampage support. Redneck Ramapage, by Xatrix Entertainment, is a first person shooter with a hillbilly theme taking place in Arkansas released in 1997 that makes use of the Duke Nukem 3D’s Build engine. The story is pretty crazy as it features two brothers trying to save their prized pig called Bessie and trying to stop an alien invasion so it shouldn’t really be taken seriously!

From testing on my PSVita, I could deduce the following about the Rinnegatamante’s port:

Performance is pretty good so you’ll get a pretty solid playing experience
Sound effects work properly so you can enjoy various “Yee-haw”s present in the game
Do you feel like shooting chickens, pigs and mad people in a Wild West setting on your PSVita? Then, Rinnegatamante has fulfilled your wish!
The controls are a nice way similar to Rinnegatamante’s other ports
This port features the main menu and everything from the normal PC port so you can customise the game all you want

As Redneck Rampage isn’t a free game, you have to supply the game data yourself and this is to be done by placing “REDNECK.GRP” in ux0:/data/NRedneck. You may also play Redneck Rampage Rides Again with this port by renaming the GRP file to RA.GRP. To play this port, simply follow the link below to grab the VPK and then copy the data files to your memory card (demo data files aren’t supported). I have tested the game with files from GOG’s Redneck Rampage collection and that the base game works perfectly; you may also use files from the original CD or Steam release if you please.

Conclusion

It is pretty unfortunate that Super Mario Vita has been cancelled but it could be said that it was expected due to the fact that it was using characters/graphics from a huge Nintendo franchise. However, if you want to play Mario games on the PSVita, you may always play them through emulation as Super Mario Bros 1-3, World and various others including Super Mario 64 (via Adrenaline) all work very well on this excellent handheld