News

Fan Spends 7 Years To Create Super Mario Bros 5

Nintendo won’t be making a Super Mario Bros 5, so a dedicated fan took matters into his own hands — and the results are epic.

Published

4 years ago

September 27, 2022

Nour Nasir

fan spends 7 years to create super mario bros 5

A Mario Bros fan known as “Metroid Mike 64” has finished a massive project over 7 years in the making. Mike used Mario Maker 2 to build the new game and has unofficially given the 2D platform game the Super Mario Bros 5 moniker.

Metroid Mike heavily utilized the World Maker update for Mario Maker 2, which allows users to stitch together multiple levels into full games, including world maps. The dedicated fan brought together 40 courses spread over 8 worlds, with, according to Mike himself, “24 courses from Super Mario World, 14 from SMB3, and 2 courses from SMB.”

This Super World features 40 full courses spread across 8 worlds. 24 courses from Super Mario World, 14 from SMB3 and 2 courses from SMB. There are no courses from NSMBU or SM3DW, only the classics. So if NES/SNES 2D Mario is your jam, this game is for you. pic.twitter.com/y1hFPXhRW5

— Metroid Mike 64 (@MetroidMike64) September 25, 2022

The unofficial game comes from a fondness of the NES and SNES era of games, with obvious nods to some of their hallmark bosses, world maps, and puzzles.

“[I’ve been trying to] provide players with something Nintendo should’ve done already, and a full Mario game within Super Mario Maker 2, that’s fun as heck,” says Metroid Mike 64.

The response to the epic project has been overwhelmingly positive, with Mike’s announcement generating 4,000 retweets and 25,000 likes at the time of publishing this article, with users highly praising the attention to detail and satisfying gameplay.

Also Read: Nvidia Announces New Flagship RTX 4090 & RTX 4080 GPUs

Many people on Twitter have pointed out the oddity of a fan having to take matters into their own hands since Nintendo hasn’t released a 2D Mario game since 2012. Although the console giant has made games in that timeframe, none have been in the classic 2D format that fans seem to love so much.

If you’re a fan of the classic 2D SNES and NES games yourself, you can take Mike’s Super Mario Bros 5 for a spin by typing in the Mario Maker 2 ID, 0G9-XN4-FNF.

News

Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon

Foreign visitors will be the first users to benefit, but whether Syria’s own banks and cardholders follow is still an open question.

Published

2 weeks ago

August 27, 2026

Dana Saadeh

visa's return to syria starts with a test and a bank in lebanon

Visa is returning to Syria. Its first live international card transaction in the country was a test rather than a launch, and the milestone event ran through a Lebanese bank.

The acquirer (the bank on the merchant’s side of a card payment) was Fransabank Lebanon, with Paymera as the other named partner. Nadim Moujaes, who heads a Fransabank Group subsidiary, describes the test as both the culmination of “longstanding efforts to link Syria back to international payment networks” and “the first step in a larger path”.

Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa makes the first electronic payment in Syria using a @Visa card at a store in Damascus, following the lifting of US sanctions on Syria. pic.twitter.com/lpAN7nQ6Fc

— Tech Magazine (@TechMGZN) August 27, 2026

“We are excited to have successfully tested live transactions today as we plan to enable international visitors to use their Visa cards while in Syria,” says Leila Serhan, Visa’s senior vice president and group country manager for the North Africa, Levant and Pakistan region. Although a significant first step, that plan doesn’t come with a hard date for when a visitor’s card will work normally.

Mohammed Safwat Raslan, governor of the Central Bank of Syria, says the test paves the way for international card acceptance in Syria and that maintaining strong compliance, risk management and operational controls will remain essential. Serhan likewise stresses that Visa has worked within applicable legal, regulatory and compliance requirements. For a test transaction, it seems there was a great deal of attention paid to the rules, with the entire operation being carefully managed.

Also Read: Lebanon’s 5G Era Begins With 150 Stations And A $1M Budget

The test is the latest step in a sequence that began in December 2025, when Visa announced a strategic roadmap to support Syria’s integration into the global digital economy. In February 2026 it hosted its first industry gathering of banks, ecosystem partners and policymakers in Damascus and, the same month, signed an agreement with Syria’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in San Francisco.

Michel Kattouah, Paymera’s CEO, called the test “the return of international card acceptance,” but while that’s positive news, there’s no word yet on when a Syrian bank will issue a Visa card to a Syrian customer.