Prior to creating its iconic Doom franchise and establishing itself as the premier first-person shooter developer, Id Software created the Commander Keen franchise, and this began in an unexpected way–a rejected port of Super Mario Bros. 3 for MS-DOS. While Nintendo wasn’t interested in bringing the game to PC, the Museum of Play has managed to track down a copy.
Acquired via an anonymous game developer who did not work on the game, the Super Mario Bros. 3 pitch disk was actually donated as part of a larger game collection, according to the Museum’s Andrew Borman in a conversation with GameSpot. A video had been posted online a few years back by former Id designer John Romero, known as the godfather of the first-person shooter for his work on Doom, but the actual game was not released into the wild.