I am a Teacher: Super Mario no Sweater (NES) Translated Playthrough - NintendoComplete
254A demonstration of Royal Kougyou's 1986 sweater-design program for the Nintendo Famicom Disk System, I am a Teacher: Super Mario no Sweater. All of the in-game text has been translated into English for this video.
It was followed up by a "sequel" named I Am A Teacher: Teami no Kiso (Knitting Basics), which gave tutorials on how to perform specific stitches and whatnot, sans Mario.
I wanted to do something fun and totally unexpected as a thanks to everybody that helped grow the channel to where it is today: 25,000 subscribers - it's hard to believe given how humble of a start it had! I hope you enjoy this look at what has to be the product of one Nintendo's strangest partnerships yet, and thank you! I can't tell you all how much I appreciate the support!
In what is perhaps one of the iconic plumber's strangest official showings to date, Mario no Sweater (lit. "Mario's Sweater") was the result of a partnership between Nintendo and Royal, a Japanese sewing machine manufacturer. I mention this in the video's introduction, but you could edit any of the game's patterns or create your own, save the pattern to a FDS floppy disk, and mail it in to Royal, who would then create a real, wearable sweater for a fee. I have no idea how much, though - does anyone know what they charged for the service? I'm pretty curious on that point.
There was also a prototyped automatic knitting accessory that you could hook up to the system that would knit your patterns for you, but it was never officially released. Somebody, somewhere was confident enough that it would succeed, since it was shown at the Winter 1987 CES show in America. But alas, nobody was interested, and so nothing ever came of it. I have to ask, though - how did nobody want a SWEATER PRINTER for their Nintendo? That would've been awesome!
Just imagine the custom creations - Contra sweaters? Kid Niki? Yo! Noid? Castlevania? I'd wear any of those! Of course, maybe it's better that the product never got made. Once the world moved on to the internet, you'd probably see some pretty horrifying sweaters start to appear from it. I feel like my soul would die a bit if I ever saw someone wearing a Goatse sweater printed from Mario no Sweater. Oh God, that wouldn't be okay. Moving along...
Just to be clear, there is no game here whatsoever. This ¥2900 (appx. $25 in 1986) floppy disk was essentially an interactive knitting-pattern book. It provided fifteen pre-made patterns (seven of which were Mario themed, one was a cat, another was a rabbit, and four were basic sweater-type template patterns) that you use, and it provided the ability to create your own. The program allows you to change a pattern to suit your needs by specifying the necessary dimensions of the sweater, the number of rows that have to be knitted, and the overall gauge of the stitching. You could choose between a regular style sweater, or create one that was sleeveless, had a v-neck, or was an open or closed-style vest.
However, if you are intending to use this to create magical Mario-themed holiday joy for your loved ones, I should warn you that these sweaters will not fit your average adult American. I suppose you could manually adjust the patterns that the game provides if you know how to knit and to read patterns, but when the program's height setting maxes out at 150cm (4'11"), you're looking at something better suited to children or very short women - even by Japanese standards.
In this video I show all of the basic functions of the program, and I have translated all of the on-screen text into English. You know, in case you have a burning desire to create one of these for your next ugly-sweater Christmas party at work or school. I show off one of the patterns the way the game displays it, unedited except for the subtitles - and then I switch the video over to a "montage" of sorts to show the remaining patterns available. That blinking that happens when switching rows could cause a headache before long I imagine, so in an intense bout of video-editing, I cleaned it all up to make it far more watchable. The music playing is from Mario no Sweater, just without the constant beeping sounds playing over top of it.
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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