Did Nintendo Buy All Rights to ‘Super Hornio Brothers’ Adult Films?

Originally released in 1985, Super Mario Bros. and successive games in the series have maintained a stronghold in the gaming world in the decades since. From movies and merchandise to a real-life “world” opening in 2025, there is no doubt the digital brothers infiltrated the world of pop culture — and, judging by long-standing internet scuttlebutt, the adult film industry as well.

A post (archived) on Reddit on Sept. 12, 2024, claimed Nintendo owned the rights to two pornographic movies starring Ron Jeremy as the main character, Mario. At the time of this writing, the post had received 14,000 upvotes. 

(Reddit/MEMEY_IFUNNY)

Online Records and Interviews Indicate the Movies Existed

The image shown in the Reddit post above is actually the movie poster from the 1993 live-action movie “Super Mario Bros.,” produced by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution. Collectibles auctioneer Heritage Auctions sold a copy of the poster in 2008.

Following the release of the 1993 film, the story goes, porn director Buck Adams made a two-part pornographic adaptation of the film.

The Movie Database — an online, user-editable database — describes the plot of “Super Hornio Brothers” as follows:

A power surge sends whacked out computer programmer Squeegie Hornio and his brother Ornio into cyberspace where they meet up with, have sex with, and even fight, a variety of characters from a popular video game. Hornio Brothers Squeegie and Ornio fight to find their way out of cyberspace after a power surge lands them inside a computer game.

Its sequel, Super Hornio Brothers II, picked up where the first installment left off:

Hornio Brothers Squeegie and Ornio fight to find their way out of cyberspace after a power surge lands them inside a computer game.

The TMDB website features photographs of what appears to be VHS tape covers:

(TMBD)

Internet lore holds Nintendo bought the rights to the “Super Hornio Brothers” films immediately after their production “in order to halt any and all distribution of the two films,” according to the entertainment website Comicbook. Comic Book Resources, an online discussion site, echoes this story, but neither provides conclusive evidence corroborating the films’ existence.

In fact, aside from the gossip in online forums and anecdotal descriptions, Snopes was unable to find evidence to conclusively prove the films existed or that Nintendo secured all rights to them.

Something Awful, a parody and humor website, described “The Super Hornio Brothers Saga” in a post published on June 25, 2009, and posted a clip of the film’s introduction to YouTube.

In 2014, a user shared photographs said to show the VHS to a Something Awful forum. 

In September 2015, Vice published an interview with Jeremy in which the adult film star confirmed the existence of the films and described making them:

VICE: You’ve done thousands of movies. Do you remember Super Hornio Brothers?
Ron Jeremy: Yeah! Buck Adams did a great job. He wanted to simulate the actual show. I had never seen the video game—I don’t play them at all, except when I go to Hugh Hefner’s mansion. He has some video games in the back room. Other than that, I never play video games ever. I think they’re boring. As a former schoolteacher, Asians are kicking our ass! While our kids are drinking beer, and playing video games, Asians are getting high SAT scores. If you look at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, it’s almost all Asian and Scandinavian. [Note: This isn’t true.] Not a lot of Americans there, and it’s on our soil. It’s just weird. Nothing wrong with video games recreationally, but our kids are living on it. You know, not even reading books anymore.

What did you find especially good about the job Buck Adams did?
He tried very hard to simulate the basic show. Buck knew Mario Brothers inside and out. I’ve been told before that I look like one of the brothers. They’ve made jokes about it. I even did layouts in magazines where I had to impersonate that, with a plunger in one hand, overalls, a big, big mustache. Pretty funny, you know? He had good attention to detail. It was one of his better videos. He added that noise when I walked, you know? (makes a video-gamey boink-boink-boink sound) Plus it had good sex scenes. Pretty basic thing if you’re gonna watch an adult movie. That’s gotta be hot too.

It was one of his really, really better gigs. I’m pretty sure it spawned a sequel.

Snopes also found a record in the U.S. Copyright Office database for a “Super Hornio Brothers” videocassette published on Nov. 11, 2020. The registered copyright claimant was “Midnight Video.” There was no mention of Nintendo on the registration.

For this reasons, we believe that it is true Adams directed the “Super Hornio Brothers” films and that Jeremy starred in them.

Nintendo’s Supposed Ownership of ‘Hornio’ Movie Rights Unverified

The existence of the adult-themed “Hornio Brothers” films has been described as an “internet legend.” Snopes reached out to Nintendo for confirmation on whether the company owned “Super Hornio Brothers” rights, but our requests went unanswered. 

The claim Nintendo owns the rights appears to have originated on a now-deleted (though archived) version of Jeremy’s website:

Some of you may be wondering why it is that we, Ron Jeremy’s Official Website, do not offer Super Hornio Brothers or Super Hornio Brothers 2 within our massive library of Ron Jeremy videos. The simple answer is “Nintendo”. After Super Hornio Brothers was produced, the Nintendo corporation bought the rights to the films in order to halt their distribution indefinitely. Otherwise, we would 100% offer up Super Hornio Brothers for streaming glory. As you can see from the edited highlight reel above, it is a classic hilarious Ron Jeremy porn parody.

We will update this article accordingly.

Sources