Famicom · 1989 · Taiwan · Unlicensed Gambling Game
A 1989 Taiwan-only Famicom adaptation of local slot-machine gambling, fronted by an off-model Mario with an "F" on his cap — the game that seeded a whole genre of Taiwanese Famicom gambling bootlegs and, decades later, the "Grand Dad" meme.
Dian Shi Ma Li (電視瑪琍, roughly "TV Mari", officially titled Big TV Mary Bar in English) is a 1989 Famicom game adapting the Taiwanese "Xiao Ma Li" slot-machine gambling machines to the home console. It carried a spurious "Namco Corporation" publisher credit and was likely built by a team connected to Bit Corporation, judging by its resemblance to that company's work. The game technically stayed exclusive to Taiwan, though stray copies reportedly reached Australia and Brazil through the informal channels that moved pirate cartridges around the world. The gameplay is straightforward casino simulation: the player accumulates credits by betting on which of nine symbols a slot reel will land on, using a control scheme that demanded ten inputs across two controllers — one button per symbol plus a start/re-bet button. It is not an action game or a platformer; it is a video slot machine, made for a market where such gambling games had a ready audience and where the Famicom's low cost made a home version commercially attractive. Dian Shi Ma Li's lasting significance is twofold. First, it was a template. It established a durable genre of Taiwanese Famicom gambling games — countless similar slot and card titles followed the same model — that formed a distinct and long-lived corner of the unlicensed software world. Second, it contributed a character to internet folklore. The game is fronted by a Mario lookalike with an "F" on his cap and the broken-English exhortation "Push Start To Rich," and unused tiles in the game contain the word "Fortran," assumed to be either the character's or the development team's name. Fans came to call this off-model Mario "Fortran" or, later, "Grand Dad." That sprite outlived the game that introduced it. It was recycled across the Taiwanese pirate ecosystem and turned up years later in the notorious 7 Grand Dad hack, whose 2014 rediscovery made the figure internet-famous. Dian Shi Ma Li is therefore doubly a point of origin — for a genre of gambling bootlegs that ran for years, and for one of the most widely recognised mascot ripoffs in gaming, a knock-off Mario who began life advertising a Taiwanese slot machine and ended up a meme.
Seeding the genre of Taiwanese Famicom gambling bootlegs and originating the off-model "Grand Dad" Mario later made famous by the 7 Grand Dad meme.
Dian Shi Ma Li is not the kind of game that usually gets remembered, because it is barely a game in the conventional sense — it is a video slot machine ported to a home console. But that is precisely what made it commercially sensible in Taiwan in 1989. There was an existing appetite for "Xiao Ma Li" gambling machines, and the Famicom was cheap and ubiquitous, so an unlicensed studio adapted one to the other. The ten-input betting scheme spread across two controllers is a reminder that this was a faithful gambling interface first and a console game second.
The game's enduring fame rests on a detail its makers surely never weighed carefully: the off-model Mario with an "F" on his cap that fronts the title screen. Recycled endlessly through the Taiwanese pirate scene and eventually planted into the 7 Grand Dad hack, that sprite became, decades later, one of the internet's favourite bootleg mascots — "Fortran" to some, "Grand Dad" to most. It is a neat illustration of how bootleg history compounds: an unlicensed 1989 gambling game produced an unlicensed Mario, which a second bootleg reused, which a Twitch stream made famous, none of it planned and all of it traceable back to a slot machine on a Famicom.