#Nintendo R&D4

[n64retro]

Super Mario Bros. 3 Nintendo R&D4 Famicom / Nintendo Entertainment System 1988 / 1990

[everygame]

The Mysterious Murasame Castle

Developed/Published by: Nintendo R&D4, Human Entertainment / Nintendo Released: 14/04/1986 Completed: 31/01/2024 Completion: Finished it (with quicksaves at the start of levels and before bosses.)

1986 is a huge year for Nintendo. They released the NES in North America at the tail end of 1985 and will launch it in Europe by the end of 1986. After nearly 3 years of spotty releases and arcade ports an avalanche of games are going to start showing up. But most fascinatingly, as they begin to conquer the world, they take a massive right turn in Japan by releasing the Famicom Disk System in February.

I assume that even if you’re not a scholar of video game history, if you’re reading this you already know all about the system, but in précis, Nintendo made a business decision. The Famicom was successful; producing cartridges was expensive. Retailers and consumers wanted cheaper games. Nintendo hadn’t created a licensing scheme for the Famicom (as they would for NES) so they weren’t seeing any sweet, sweet fees either. Seemingly, a floppy disk add-on solved all those problems, while also allowing games to be larger, have more sound channels, and include saving.

You can debate the success of this business decision. They sold 4.4 million of them by 1990, and the hardware pushed their game design forward leaps and bounds. But it seemed to come at the exact wrong time. Within four months of launch cartridge games were being released with larger capacities than the disks offered. Saving becomes available on carts; newer and better mapper chips meant games on the disk system were stuck in the past. It was simply a technological dead end. The first original game to released for it would be The Legend of Zelda, and by the time of its release in North America not quite a year and a half later it would be on cartridge without any major concessions.

Interestingly, though, the second original game to be released would be Nazo No Murasame Jou, aka “The Mysterious Murasame Castle” which would not be released outside of Japan at all. Why this is I have no idea and can find nothing concrete, because when considered contemporaneously, this is a perfectly successful run-and-gun adventure that feels like an early example of what the system would become known for via companies like Capcom: arcade ports that have been expanded into something more suitable for the home console (think Bionic Commando and that.) Here it’s like someone, noticing that Nintendo had The Legend of Zelda engine lying around, decided that they should make a version of Sega Ninja with it–and in fact, I’m not sure that’s not what they did, considering the SG-1000 version of Sega Ninja has flick-screen scrolling too.

Cast as the samurai Takamaru, you have to make your way through five castles by first fighting your way through their castle grounds (taking one or two maps) and then the castle interior (one more map.) You do this by melee combat (which tends to kill everything in one hit) or throwing projectiles (which tends not to.) Movement feels very much like The Legend of Zelda, including very boxy collision detection. The maps, too are like The Legend of Zelda dungeons, but not exactly: you travel about them in a non-linear fashion and have to pick up certain power-ups to advance (sandals, for example, that allow you to travel over water) but you’re not really ever forced to fight any enemies, and most power-ups follow the Xevious system of just being invisible and you have to shoot where they are to get them (thankfully, they’re predictable once you’ve found them).

While I can’t guarantee this was inspired by Sega Ninja, it’s very much like it in one respect. The Mysterious Murasame Castle is relentless. Multi-colored ninjas are throwing themselves on the screen constantly, and if you stop moving or stop attacking you’re dead–it really is that simple. Most of the game is played trying to get off screen as quickly as possible and working out the optimum route through the castle–it’s almost a racing game in that respect. 

It is very hard. Not impossible, but made, er, impossible-adjacent by how strict it is. You can only take three hits, health restoring items are rare (and invisible) and and every time you die you lose everything (but you do start on the screen you just died on–and you can backtrack to try and get some power back, so that’s nice.) While it feels stupidly difficult for 2024, I can imagine how for the right kind of player in 1986 this was the straight razor compared to The Legend of Zelda’s, uh… quill pen. Play a hard action game surviving and mapping out the levels, learning new things, new efficiencies every time rather than doodling about. It feels perfect, actually, for the American audience of the era, which makes its absence all the more puzzling–I suspect that the setting was considered “too Japanese” and reskinning it felt like too much work, the kind of thing that kept Ninja JaJaMaru-kun stuck in Japan too. 

Now, there are some absolutely brutal skill checks in this that I can only see as requiring you reset the system every time you die (most notably the last few bosses) that just make it feel old-school cruel, but I had a fairly decent time trying see how far I could get “for real” once I’d learned the maps (not very far, it turns out.) And I still enjoyed the challenge of this even letting myself do some judicious quick-saving. This isn’t the great leap forward for design that The Legend of Zelda was, but it sort of offers an interesting counterpoint–would games look completely different if Nintendo decided this was the one to get released in the west instead of Zelda?

Probably not actually.

Will I ever play it again? It’s fun, but it’s too hard. Probably not on this one too.

Final Thought: Nintendo really haven’t returned to this one very much. It’s not a complete black sheep, getting a GBA re-issue and (bizarrely) a 3DS release in Europe and Australia, but one of the strangest has to be that in Samurai Warriors 3 for Wii (Nintendo published in the west but otherwise a Koei game through and through) Nintendo EAD made an entire “Murasame castle mode” which is a remake in the Musou style. That’s an even odder decision than not releasing this in the west in the first place.

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[datcloudboi]

List of Video Games Turning 10 Years Old in 2024

Alien: Isolation

Assassin's Creed: Rogue (the one where you play as an Assassin turned Templar.)

Assassin's Creed: Unity (the one set during the French Revolution.)

Atelier Escha & Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky

Azure Striker Gunvolt

The Banner Saga

Bayonetta 2

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea (the DLC where you go back to Rapture)

A Bird Story (a sort of spin-off of "To the Moon")

BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! (is this a sequel to 1 or a prequel to 1? I forgor)

Bravely Default (in North America)

Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (the one with K*vin Sp*cey)

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 (to date, the last new Castlevania game to release)

Child of Light

The Crew (going offline at the end of March)

D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die (a wonderfully strange game from the guy that made Deadly Premonition)

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (in North America)

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair (in North America)

Dark Souls II

Deception IV: Blood Ties

Demon Gaze

Diablo III: Reaper of Souls

Disney Infinity 2.0

Divinity: Original Sin (from the team that would go on to make Baldur's Gate 3)

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

Dragon Age: Inquisition (the winner of GOTY at the very first TGAs)

Drakengard 3

Earth Defense Force 2025 (EDF! EDF! EDF!)

The Evil Within (from the creative director of Resident Evil)

Fable Anniversary

Fairy Fencer F

Far Cry 4

Freedom Planet

Guilty Gear Xrd Sign

Hyrule Warriors

Inazuma Eleven (in North America. And digital only.)

Infamous: Second Son (as well as its expansion, First Light)

Kirby: Triple Deluxe

The Last of Us Remastered (just one year after the original version came out...)

The Legend of Korra (the game from PlatinumGames that you can't buy anymore)

Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham

Lego The Hobbit

The Lego Movie Videogame

Lethal League (from the team that would go on to make Bomb Rush Cyberfunk)

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII (the third and final chapter of the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy)

Lisa: The Painful (yes, really)

LittleBigPlanet 3

Lords of the Fallen (not to be confused with Lords of the Fallen, which came out in 2023)

Mario Golf: World Tour

Mario Kart 8 (the original version)

Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes (the prologue to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, which came out 18 months later)

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Might & Magic X: Legacy

Murdered: Soul Suspect (it's like Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, but not as good)

Natural Doctrine

Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty! (a from the ground up remake of the first Oddworld game from 1997)

Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures 2 (yes, it got a sequel. I don't know how or why.)

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax

Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth

Pokemon Omega Ruby & Pokemon Alpha Sapphire

Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy (the last time that Professor Layton himself was the protagonist. At least, until the New World of Steam comes out)

Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Pushmo World

Risen 3: Titan Lords

Sacred 3

Samurai Warriors 4

Shadowrun: Dragonfall

Shantae and the Pirate's Curse (the 3rd one)

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments

Shovel Knight (yes, really)

Skylanders: Trap Team (the 4th one)

Sniper Elite III

Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric

Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal

South Park: The Stick of Truth

Steins;Gate (in North America)

Strider (the one from Double Helix)

Sunset Overdrive

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS (or Smash 4 for short)

Tales of Xillia 2

Tales of Hearts R

The Talos Principle

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call

Thief (the reboot)

This War of Mine

Toukiden: The Age of Demons

Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark (this game merged the storyline of the War for/Fall of Cybertron games with the storyline of the Michael Bay movies. I’m not joking)

Transistor

Valiant Hearts: The Great War

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

The Walking Dead: Season Two

Wasteland 2

Watch Dogs

The Witch and the Hundred Knight

The Wolf Among Us (sequel this year!)

Wolfenstein: The New Order

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z

Yoshi's New Island

[44gamez]

In 2023, Mario Got Weird Again

It might be no coincidence that Mario’s signature voice actor, Charles Martinet, didn't return to lend his skills to the character or his supporting solid in all three main appearances, as a substitute retiring to the position of a Mario Ambassador (no matter which means).

Picture: Nintendo Nintendo appears to have handled 2023 as a really public rebirth for his or her mascot. The dizzying one-two punch of the Mario film and the plumber's return to 2D platforming, plus the ending blow of Mario RPG, signified a clear break from a long time of meticulous visible design and characterization requirements. Sure, Mario nonetheless says “Wahoo!” and wears his trademark overalls and gloves—which will by no means change. However Chris Pratt’s efficiency within the animated movie gave Mario a flatter, a lot much less exaggerated voice, pulled from someplace far faraway from Martinet’s tackle the character. And although Kevin Afghani does an admirable job within the position for Marvel, the sport itself imbues Mario and firm with sufficient character to make the New Tremendous Mario Bros. sequence look downright wood. is prepared to take a danger on maybe probably the most recognizable online game character on the earth, trusting that regardless of his voice, top, or perspective, audiences will nonetheless know who he's. Marvel doesn’t even happen within the Mushroom Kingdom. As a substitute, it brings Mario’s merry gang to the Flower Kingdom, the place aptly named Marvel Flowers function in each stage. This stuff flip every stage on its head, enabling characters to stretch to ridiculous heights, remodel into Goombas for stealth missions, or flip to slime to squeeze into slim passages. However some Marvel Flowers will remodel the extent itself, generally altering the attitude from side-on to top-down, or turning your complete affair right into a musical. You may even equip badges that alter the sport additional, from permitting Mario to drift by means of the air to turning him invisible. And Marvel’s artwork fashion and animations mirror this 'something goes' vibe completely, with an virtually claymation-like aesthetic and designs that hew a lot nearer to Yōichi Kotabe’s unique hand-drawn character artwork. Mario wears a decided expression when he runs, switching stances simply on the contact of the sprint button, whereas his ft smear cartoonishly. And for the primary time in a 2D Mario sport, characters lean nervously on ledges, flailing their arms in order that they don’t lose stability. Even the sound profile is completely reimagined. Jumps and power-ups are signaled by heat and acquainted instrument seems like guitar strings and vibraphones, versus the extra harsh chiptune-ish sound results of the New Tremendous Mario Bros. sequence.

Picture: Nintendo It feels recent now, however we’ve seen such wild creativity earlier than. Mario could also be a product of the Eighties, however even within the ‘90s, Nintendo was nonetheless enjoying round with him. And it wasn’t afraid to let different groups take a crack at it, both. Tremendous Mario Land for the Sport Boy was created beneath the steering of Metroid producer and Sport Boy designer Gunpei Yokoi's R&D1 fairly than Mario mainstay Shigeru Miyamoto and R&D4, and it took a funhouse mirror to what had been then comparatively new conventions of the sequence. In Mario Land, aptly named Bombshell Koopas explode when jumped on, shoot-'em-up ranges punctuate the motion, and the ultimate boss is an alien. That ‘89 sport appeared to set a precedent for Mario within the following decade, releasing him to go wherever and do something he needed. Quickly, he was a health care provider, a go-kart racer, and a celebration host. However outdoors of workplace partitions, issues acquired stranger nonetheless. Nintendo was way more liberal with their licensing in the course of the Tremendous Nintendo period, forging partnerships with edutainment firms, Philips and their CD-i console, and letting third-party builders like Uncommon and Sq. flesh out Mario’s world. This was usually a roll of the cube—1994 alone featured each the wildly profitable Donkey Kong Nation and the moist thud of Resort Mario. Mario’s wibbly-wobbly portrayals in video games like Mario Teaches Typing appear only a bit off by at present’s requirements, and generally even the subject material appeared to float far into the uncanny. Within the case of Mario’s Time Machine, our courageous hero travels throughout the ages to return historic artifacts stolen by Bowser, resulting in the amusing indisputable fact that each Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi necessitate full pages on the Tremendous Mario Wiki.

Picture: Nintendo Life / Nintendo / Common Footage Mario mania, in fact, additionally prolonged to the worlds of TV and movie, leading to a trio of DIC Leisure animated sequence and the notorious Tremendous Mario Bros. movie, starring Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, and Dennis Hopper. The movie, which options Yoshi getting stabbed within the throat, bears little resemblance to the video games upon which it’s primarily based. There’s a purpose Nintendo waited 30 years to strive adapting Tremendous Mario to the large display screen once more, and why it sought a lot inventive management this time round. However whereas Nintendo noticed its share of flops by means of its varied partnerships and licensing offers, the corporate’s willingness to discover what Mario may very well be as a mascot character helped form him into the affable everyman that he’s often known as at present. Miyamoto has referred to Mario and his pals as actors enjoying roles—not in contrast to Mickey Mouse. And Mickey, in a really comparable means, was additionally a rougher character in his early days. He was extra of a mischievous rascal within the Twenties and ‘30s, thrown into completely different costumes and roles because the story dictated. Quickly sufficient, Disney straightened him out and cleaned him as much as make the universally acknowledged mouse everyone knows, and that’s precisely what Nintendo did with Mario within the 2000s. Throughout Tremendous Mario Sunshine, Tremendous Mario Galaxy, and the New Tremendous Mario Bros. sequence, Mario’s proportions, mannerisms, voice, and perspective had been all standardized in his video games and promotional art work (with some exceptions, just like the stylized Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi sequence). Gone had been the cartoons, movie aspirations, and academic PC video games. Mario would seem completely on Nintendo {hardware}—a streak that went unbroken till 2016, when Tremendous Mario Run launched on iOS. From there, the gates started to slowly reopen, most notably when Nintendo partnered with Ubisoft for Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle.

Picture: Nintendo However even in Kingdom Battle, Mario ’s picture is fastidiously curated to be in keeping with Nintendo’s portrayal of the character (regardless of all of the gunplay). The animated Mario film and Marvel—which was arguably influenced considerably by the Illumination movie—plus Mario RPG, symbolize Nintendo at its most assured and daring. It’s prepared to take a danger on maybe probably the most recognizable online game character on the earth, trusting that regardless of his voice, top, or perspective, audiences will nonetheless know who he's. 2023 could change the best way we see Mario for years to return. Very similar to Mickey—who had an analogous character design overhaul and revival in an Emmy Award-winning sequence—the plumber nonetheless has lots of life in him. Right here’s to a weirder, wackier, wilder Mario in 2024. See Additionally Associated Video games Read the full article

[gmlocg]

219.) The Mysterious Murasame Castle

Release: April 14th, 1986 | GGF: Action-Adventure | Developer(s): Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development/Nintendo R&D4 | Publisher(s): Nintendo Co., Ltd. | Platform(s): Famicom (1986), Game Boy Advance (2004), Wii (2008), Nintendo 3DS (2013), Wii U (2014)

[leoisbabygirl]

꧁ Hiiii, I thought I'd make an introduction for myself (under the cut) ꧂

- Intro ‧₊˚❀༉‧₊˚.

I'm Kit/Feather, call me either of those, I'm 20, she/her/hers/they/them/theirs, bi-curious/demigirl/poly-curious, I'm an aries, an intp-t, & a Ravenclaw.

- What I post about ⋆｡°✩

I post about my favorite media which consists of: Lab Rats, Mighty Med, Lab Rats: Elite Force, The Villains Of Valley View, Victorious, iCarly, Sam & Cat, Big Time Rush, The Thundermans, Gravity Falls, Trailer Park Boys, Riverdale, Super Mario Bros Movie, Barbie movie, the Five Nights at Freddy's movie, My Little Pony, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, Teen Titans Go!, Hazbin Hotel, Helluva Boss, & the Descendants and Z-O-M-B-I-E-S franchises.

I also enjoy playing video games too. I play mostly Pokemon Nintendo games but I also play ps games such as Thrillville, Pac-Man, and the Tony Hawk pro skater games. I'm hoping to extend my horizons to play other games such as Five Nights at Freddy's and Detroit: Become Human.

My favorite artists are: Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo, Tate McRae, Carrie Underwood, Reba McIntire, Luke Bryan, Nikki Minaj, Katy Perry, Hayley Kiyoko, Dove Cameron, Reneé Rapp, Ariana Grande, Mad Tsai, Troye Sivan, and theres more but that'd be a long list.

- info about myself ⋆｡°✩

I have Autism, ADHD, OCD, and a heart defect called Tetralogy of Fallot.

- my DNI list ⋆｡°✩

terfs n transmeds, homophobes n transphobes, racists n sexists, dog abusers, they/them haters, incest lovers, pedophilic people, blank blogs, corn bots, rude anons, and all the other weirdos out there, they know who they r, also pro-Israel's aren't allowed here, if you assume sexualities.

- Ask me about ⋆｡°✩

my ocs

my edits

My edits pt2

Moodboards, stimboards, and Spotify playlists

Discord: kit.2004

C.AI

Give me book recs

Ask me stuff

my other blogs: side blog @ex-obsessed, cat blog @repurtation, nsfw blog (minors dni) @slut-season, D4 rp blog @rebelmenaceonegirlriot

- disclaimers ⋆｡°✩

(I curse)

(I change my pfp and theme a lot depending on my mood or what phase I'm in)

(Please use tone tags around me)

(I'm not an art blog. Any art u see isn't mine, I can't draw for shit, ask anyone I know)

(My dms are always open so feel free to message me anytime)

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[surftens]

Super Mario Bros. 1985, Nintendo R&D4

[famicomclub-blog]

The Legend of Zelda ゼルダの伝説

Release: February 21, 1986 | Developer: Nintendo R&D4 | Publisher: Nintendo

The first original title released for a new add-on, The Legend of Zelda is truly a game that could have only existed on the Disk System; a proof of concept that utilized all of the features that made the Disk Card advantageous over the original Famicom cartridge. A game save feature, a first for home consoles, was implemented and serves to provide the player with a greater sense of immersion. You weren’t just entering a password and picking up where you left off; you were continuing your adventure! You were Link!

The sheer size of Zelda necessitated the use of both sides of the Disk Card, taking full advantage of the expanded program and sprite memory. At the time of its release, the average cart topped off at around 32KB, but Zelda used both sides of the Disk Cards mammoth 112KB storage. The Legend of Zelda was a game that certainly could not have fit on any cartridge.

The Legend of Zelda was also the first Disk System game to utilize the extra sound channel made possible via the onboard synthesizer within the RAM adaptor. Strange and beautiful, the haunting music of the title screen successfully set the tone for the adventure to follow; something no one had ever experienced before.

With the Legend of Zelda came a sense of freedom and wonder. Zelda heralded a groundbreaking design philosophy, whereby the player was given full access to the entire world at the beginning of the quest. Few games in Zelda’s wake attempted such a feat, and the concept was even banished from nearly every subsequent game in the Zelda series.

Even by 1987, it had become apparent to Nintendo that the Famicom Disk System was not going to be exported to the rest of the world, but regions outside of Japan would not be deprived of The Legend of Zelda for long. While other Disk System created games, like Metroid and Kid Icarus were stuck with a clumsy password system, The Legend of Zelda was lovingly given the first on-cart battery back-up to retain the save feature from the disk. Miyamoto’s original vision of immersion would remain intact in for North America, and create a juggernaut that is still revered even today.

[hotgarden]

Shadow Reviews: Super Mario Bros. (NES)

Hey guys, ShadowSect here. Let’s start with the first game review on the site!

Note: There is a surprise at the end of this review, so stay tuned.

Today’s review is Super Mario Bros. for the NES! Hit the jump for the review!

Plot Summary: Assuming you’ve been living under a rock, the premise is that Bowser, the “King of the Koopas”, has conquered the Mushroom Kingdom while holding Princess Peach captive. In the meantime, he’s had all of the Toads turned into bricks and… Shrubbery…. Is this Super Mario Bros.? …… It’s not just a damsel in distress story?

Well, it is. The princess is the only one who can revert the black magic that the King Koopa is using, but that’s the main reason why Bowser has Peach captive, among other things. Mario, a brave plumber straight out of 5th Avenue, storms several castles looking for her. Unfortunately for Mario, Bowser has several body doubles and no way to tell who’s the real one (minus using FIRE), so it’s a challenge Mario must take one step at a time… By jumping on enemies and destroying the Toads.

Methodology: Completion of the game, which means every level run on Regular, no warps, no cheats. Save states were used sparingly because of emulator save reasons. One map was used for a puzzle.

Estimated Play Time: Main+Extras took me about 54 minutes.

Review:

Assuming you haven’t been living under a rock, the premise of Super Mario Bros. is that Bowser, the King of the Koopas, has conquered the Mushroom Kingdom, while holding Princess Peach captive. In the meantime, he’s had all the Toads turned into bricks and shrubbery (Yep. Read the manual). The princess is the only one who can revert Bowser’s evil magic, which is why Bowser has peach captive, among other things. Mario, a brave plumber from 5th Avenue (not literally), storms several castles looking for her, but Bowser has several body doubles, so it’s a challenge Mario must take one step at a time…. by jumping on enemies and destroying the Toads.

If you know Mario, you probably know that plot isn’t an essential part of the game. It’s the means to an end, and nothing else. The plot itself isn’t original nowadays, although macabre to hear those blocks you’re destroying to get precious items used to be people, and you’re slaughtering millions for those coins…. Despite how long it has been since this game’s release, the visuals haven’t aged too well, but it’s Super Mario Bros., and it looks it too. Mario is lively as ever, with the red overalls and cap we recognize today. The background is crisp, the Fire Flower and Star stick out, and the sprites and enemies are noticeable and iconic (with the infamous Goomba and Koopa Troopa looking like what they should look like). These are graphical hiccups, however, like sprite flickering in later levels, mainly times where there are too many things on screen, but it doesn’t happen often. The pasty, photo-negative background changes in later levels aren’t winning browning points, though.

The soundtrack of Super Mario Bros. is still lively as ever. The traditional Level 1 music is still iconic today as the main theme of Super Mario Bros., and it’ll be remembered until the end of time. Koji Kondo’s work is pure art, and it’s so catchy too, even after hearing it a thousand times. The underground theme, while minimalist, is also very iconic, and the underwater theme isn’t bad either, and never gets repetitive. The sound effects are nice too, from the breaking of bricks to bopping enemies in midair.

The meat of the game is your basic side-scroller platformer. Mario starts tiny and moves across a linear landscape, using A to jump and holding B to run, and he can jump over blocks and pipes to his destination. Mario can also destroy blocks by jumping from underneath, and Question ? blocks leaves prizes, which 90% of the time are coins, but they could also drop a mushroom to make Mario bigger, a Fire Flower to grant him pyromaniac powers of shooting fire at enemies, or the lovely Starman to give you a temporary invulnerability.

You start the game with 3 lives, increased by 1-Ups you can find in some blocks or collecting 100 coins spread out throughout the level. Lose all your lives is game over, making you start at the very beginning (unless you cheat with A-Start to restart in the world you die in). It only takes one hit to kill you, although the Fire Flower and Mushroom give you breathing room, granting you an extra hit before death (first hit makes you small).

At the end of each level is a flagpole, the ending of a level. The journey to get there isn’t easy, since Bowser has minions across the map to make your life hard. There are 8 worlds to journey through, and each has 4 levels. There are, of course, variations to each level, as some level are in sky mushrooms where everything is tight knit jumping, or other levels take place underwater where you dodge fish and getting sucked into a vortex. There’s also underground levels with claustrophobic level design brought about with a dark background and some machinations like moving platforms or a bunch of bricks. Finally, there’s castle levels, where Bowser holds no punches.

Level design is the name of the game in Super Mario Bros., and it’s stellar. The first level itself is a model for many platformers today, introducing the game’s mechanics without having a tutorial, serving to show the player how to handle tougher obstacles by first forcing Mario to deal with the easy versions. There’s also bonus rooms under the surface in pipes, where you can get a ton of free coins. Added to that are secret warp places which only the most clever of players find. Add all this and you have a great formula for level design, that when combined with creativity, you have a ton of high quality levels you can play at your whimsy. Unfortunately, the dev team’s creativity eventually ran out and several levels ended up being reused with harder elements in later worlds. The castle levels are also guilty of unforgiving design, with no room to breathe. You’ll occasionally find insane enemy placement as well to give you nightmares. The controls for the NES are pretty smooth, considering how basic the controller is. The two buttons become natural pretty quickly, and the D-pad has no issues at all in responsiveness, as Mario turns quickly. That said, the usage of the jump button leaves something to be desired. Sometimes it won’t let you jump, as if you have to press the button as hard as humanely possible. This happens often enough that it’s a problem. In addition, when Mario picks up enough speed with the run button, he gets a lot of momentum, making it hard to slow down, turn, or even cause problems with jumping, as if that didn’t have enough problems already. You’ll find yourself dying quite often, not because of poor judgment calls, but because you’ll go way further than you mean after a jump and you can’t slow down no matter how hard you try. Occasionally it won’t even let you jump as you leave a platform, causing you to fall to your death.

Enemies come in all shapes and sizes, and most of the enemies in this game make their iconic appearance in style. We have the standard mooks, such as the Goomba and Koopa Troopa, but what you’ll really see the most are Piranha Plants, coming out of pipes to snap your feet. There’s also the invulnerable to fire Buzzy Beetle and the winged Koopa Paratroopa. There are some rather unfair enemies, though, such as the Blooper, a squid that pursues Mario underwater, and the Hammer Bro., a helmeted Koopa that throws an endless supply of hammers. The Blooper only takes damage from the Fire Flower, and the Hammer Bro is almost impossible to jump on because the hammers get in the way, and they’re usually not alone. There’s also infernal Lakitus that throw Spinies at you from above, chasing you until the end of a stage. Bosses are on short supply… well there’s only really one. They’re all very similar with small variations, and they’re a cakewalk with the right powerup, although without it is an entirely different story. They make for remarkably repetitive but not altogether boring bosses, and the game could’ve used more variety in the boss category. Don’t underestimate them, though, because sometimes the small variation can be pretty threatening.

There isn’t a lot of content in the game. There are, of course, the earlier mentioned bonus rooms under the surface, but other than that, the only feature besides the regular playthrough is Hard Mode, where all the Goombas are replaced with Buzzy Beetles to further infuriate your Fire Flower love, while stages are replaced with harder counterparts (and enemies move faster). Other than that, there’s nothing else. The difficulty is Nintendo Hard. 1-Ups are uncommon unless you exploit a technique, but otherwise there are only 8 in the entire game, and coins are also uncommon, strangely enough. No save feature can also be bad assuming you’re not playing on VC, and then there’s the fact that you start at the beginning of the world you died last in. Add that to problematic momentum, not the most responsive of jump buttons, Hammer Bros. that throw hammers at an absurd rate that makes it almost impossible to jump on them, and finally, punishing castle levels, and you have an infuriating Mario adventure. Of course, difficulty is subjective, and you may find it easier than most, but I’m sure you won’t feel it’s your fault sometimes when you die in Super Mario Bros. The difficulty isn’t linear, either, and if anything it’s rather schizophrenic. This is especially apparent in later worlds, where short, easy levels are surrounded by harder ones.

Replayability value is relatively small but rather fun. Hard Mode is an extra feature to add another hour to your playtime, if you feel brave enough (or if you can stomach it), and warps add different playthroughs, as you can skip entire worlds. It’s not a lot, but it’s something. You’ll die often, but the game will keep you going. The unfair difficulty spikes, the fight with jumping, and Mario’s momentum can be frustrating, but it’s Super Mario Bros. It’s still a platformer to enjoy today, and it still has a lot of great level design and good gameplay that hasn’t aged as much as it probably could’ve. Not one of the best platformers out there, but it’s not just a piece of history. It’s a great Mario game.

Rating: A-

Pros: + Interesting excuse plot + Good 8-bit graphics + Catchy soundtrack + Platformer goodness + Level variety + Stellar level design + Mostly smooth controls + Variety of enemies + Very replayable + Innovation + Great piece of history Cons: - Sprite flickering w/ Fire Flower - Lack of 1-Ups - Some repetitive and unforgiving levels - Mario’s frustrating momentum - Blooper and Hammer Bro. - Repetitive bosses - Short - Nintendo Hard difficulty Recommended Most For: – People who own a NES – Mario fans – People who enjoy platformers – People who want a taste of Mario history

So, what’d you think of the review? If there’s anything I missed, or you have something to say about this game, let me know!

Next 5 content will be as follows:

1. X-Men Origins: Wolverine Review

2. Mario Bros. for NES Review

3. Music Spotlight: Undertale, Hyper Potions, and A Day to Remember

4. Shadow’s Dungeon Reviews: Breath of the Wild: Great Plateau Shrines

5. Composers Countdown: David Wise (#10)

[hardcore-gaming-101]

Shin Onigashima

As the Japanese adventure (ADV) game genre kept increasing in popularity throughout the 1980s, games became more ambitious in terms of graphics, text and storylines. On microcomputers, where the genre had had its beginnings, using multiple disks or tapes was a standard solution when software grew in scope and size, but consoles such as the Famicom were struggling with size limitations since cartridges were costly to produce and limited in ROM size. Many of these issues were overcome by the Famicom Disk System (FDS) peripheral, which took double-sided rewritable diskettes that could be produced at a fraction of the cost of a cartridge. Naturally, adventure games thrived on the system. Famicom Mukashibanashi: Shin Onigashima (1987) was Nintendo’s first foray into the genre and differentiated itself from the murder mystery craze that had exploded in the wake of the Famicom port of Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken (1985) by basing the game on folklore rather than police procedurals. The game was developed by PaxSoftnica in collaboration with Nintendo R&D4 and was the first FDS game that came on two disks: Zenpen (前編; first part) and Kouhen (後編; last part); in total only six two-disk FDS games were officially released and all of them were ADV games. 

Read more...

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🌈About us//DNI🌈

💀Remy💚 & 💛Lucy😝

We r alters n our DID system! We r both teenagerzz! Do we scare the living shit outta you?? (Pointzzz if u knw the lyric and band tht inspired tht xD) annywayyzzz onto the short intros!

💚Remy💀 (14-17years old or younger), resident emo kid, music = luv & lyfe, movies, video games(old school 1z like PS2 games or nintendo DS)

BANDS: BMTH, SWS, 3oh!3, BVB, MCR, Asking Alexandra, Attack Attack, Hawthorne Heights, MIW, Amy Can Flyy, Blood on the Dance Floor, Linkin Park, Blink 182, Jack off Jill, Seether, Eminem, and NF.

👑Lucy💛 15 Sc3n3 👑

Haiiii 😝😝😝 Itzzz Lucy h3r3! XD Im an alt3r in c4s3 u didnt knw. Anywayyyzzz my f4v3 c0l0r iz y3llow(y itz n0t 0n d4 c0l0r thingy 4 text iz b3y0nd m3) Or4nge is c00l t00 s0 y34h h3nc3 or4ng3 t3xt color 👑 uuughhh meh b4ck hurrrttzzz 😫😒

MUSIC: BMTH, Tonight Alive, Amy Can Flyy, Linkin Park, The Millianaries, Flyleaf, Evanascence, Paramore, Melanie Martinez, SWS, Porcelain Black, anddd sooo many more tht c4nt think 0f rn. 😝

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Just DNI if ur gonna h8 on our blog and the stuff we will post!

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‘Super Mario Bros. 2′ + ‘The Legend of Zelda’

[FDS] [JAPAN] [VIDEO, COMMERCIAL] [1986]

The Lost Levels was first released in Japan for the Famicom Disk System as Super Mario Bros. 2 on June 3, 1986, following the success of its predecessor. It was developed by Nintendo R&D4—the team led by Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto—and designed for players who had mastered the original. Nintendo of America deemed the title too difficult for its North American audience and instead chose another game as the region's Super Mario Bros. 2: a retrofitted version of the Japanese Doki Doki Panic.

(...)The title is known for its intense difficulty, which contributes to its reputation as a black sheep in the franchise. Reviewers viewed The Lost Levels as an extension of the original release, especially its difficulty progression. Journalists appreciated the game's challenge when spectating speedruns, and recognized the game as a precursor to the franchise's subculture in which fans create and share ROM hacks featuring nearly impossible levels. This sequel gave Luigi his first character traits and introduced the poison mushroom item, which would be used throughout the Mario franchise. The Lost Levels was the most popular game on the Disk System, for which it sold about 2.5 million copies. It is remembered among the most difficult games by Nintendo and in the video game medium, and among the least important games in the Mario series. ~Wikipedia

Source: YouTube; uploaded by DryvBy

[everygame]

Super Mario Bros. (NES)

Developed/Published by: Nintendo R&D4 / Nintendo Released: 13/9/1985 Completed: 24/11/2022 Completion: Beat it by warp zoning to 8-1 and then using the continue trick. Trophies / Achievements: n/a 

[Apologies for interrupting, but before we get to the article I’d like to mention that you can pre-order a copy of exp. 2600, my brand new zine, right now and get more of–and help support–writing like what you’re about to read.]

Super. Mario. Bros. Is there a game that less needs anything more written about it? Even I’ve touched on it previously in the form of the (excellent) Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, and I’ve mentioned more than once on this blog the major thing I ever really have to say about Super Mario Bros., which is “ee, isn’t it funny how slippy and inertia-heavy Mario’s movement is? It’s not like a modern platformer at all!” so I should probably just skip that even.

In fact, Super Mario Bros. is such well-trodden ground that I couldn’t really get my dander up for playing the original again, even though I’ve never actually beaten the game in its original, untouched NES form. Because… well…

Am I alone in finding the original Super Mario Bros an incredibly drab looking video game? It’s so… brown. Super Mario Bros. Deluxe brightens things up quite a bit for the Game Boy Color screen, but the original is just so… RF Cable. I can’t think of another way to explain it.

Plus, I think that we’ve all played the first world of Super Mario Bros. so much by now that it doesn’t feel that exciting (especially if you played a bunch of Super Mario 35). Don’t get me wrong–it’s still a masterpiece. But it looks nicer on SNES, it’s richer on GBC… sacrilege it might be, but I think the NES version might be the least interesting version to play, authenticity be damned.

(Plus I was playing it on Switch online, anyway.)

So playing it this time I decided to take a short-cut, considering I’ll only play it again when I get to Super Mario All-Stars: I decided to play it “for real” but just warp-zone my way to the end.

I do not recommend this.

Playing Mario, the original, is a like riding a bike, sure. But the bike is a penny farthing, or or something. It’s not a smooth city bike or something like what I’m used to riding these days. Sure, I get on it, I remember the idiosyncrasies of it’s movement, I walk through the first couple of levels as usual, I get myself to 4-2, I get myself to 8-1… 

It’s like taking your penny farthing to a BMX course. You know what to do, but suddenly you’re having to do it exactly right. 8-1, you’re no fool, you remember Mario can run across single block gaps! But then you hit a bit where you need to jump perfectly onto a single block island and not lose momentum or die.

This… will lead to a lot of restarts.

And in 8-2 all hell breaks loose.

I did it, don’t get me wrong. I bloody did it (although I did look up the route for 8-4, and then was pretty lucky to dodge that twatty final hammer bro quite handily both times I had to.) But this betrayed the spirit of this project. Completing a game isn’t about just seeing to the end–if I cared about that, I’d just watch Youtube–it’s about experiencing the game from beginning to end, and playing Super Mario Bros. is about getting on a Penny Farthing in 1-1 and at the end being able to smash that BMX course because the level design has trained you up into it!

It’s a good life lesson, really, if probably also the kind of pat, obvious one you’d expect from an Adam Sandler movie.

I’ll do better next time.

Will I ever play it again? To be honest, I stand by my feeling that this is the least enjoyable version of the game, if only because it’s the most visually boring to me (your mileage may vary). I’ll play through the Super Mario Bros. All-Stars version and this time I’ll do it all the way through properly. My promise to you!

Final Thought: For all my disinterest in seeing this through this time round, I think it’s important to still note the insane context of Super Mario Bros., coming on Famicom as it does after a bunch of absolutely honking releases like Soccer, Ice Climber and the like, with even third-parties just putting out pretty weak sauce arcade ports like Yie Ar Kung Fu and Dig Dug. Things were of course far more interesting internationally on different platforms (A Mind Forever Voyaging! Ultima IV!) but it’s unarguable that the entire world of action games changed the day this was released, and it would take far longer than you’d expect for anyone to catch up–even something as simple as Sega’s Wonder Boy won’t be out in arcades for almost an entire year, and the first Mega Man doesn’t come out till the end of 1987!

Support Every Game I’ve Finished on ko-fi, either via a one-off donation (pay what you like) or by joining as a supporter at just $1 a month. Supporters receive an automatic 35% discount off physical zines, like exp. 2600, which you can order now.

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Zelda 2 The Adventure Of Link NES ROM Download [USA]

Zelda 2 The Adventure Of Link NES ROM Download [USA]

Zelda 2 The Adventure Of Link ROM is an Excellent Role-Playing & Platform video game developed by Nintendo R&D4 for the Nintendo Entertainment System [NES]. This game can be played as a single-player game. Zelda 2 The Adventure Of Link NES ROM Download Now. Game: Zelda 2 The Adventure Of LinkDeveloper: Nintendo R&D4Console: Nintendo Entertainment System [NES]Genre: Role-Playing Game &…

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Mario Multiverse Fangame Download

That this Mario was later killed. Super mario multiverse download pc. Apr 12, Super Mario Bros Download for PC: It was developed by Nintendo R&D4 and published by Nintendo. This is an amazing adventure and arcade computer game. Super Mario games free series is a very successful series and very trending now still days. All platforms Android Atari2600 GB GBI GBP Linux Mac MS-DOS NES PC SNES SNESClassic Web Sort by title Sort by oldest Sort by newest Sort by most active Sort by least active Sort by most players Sort by fewest players Sort by most runs Sort by fewest runs Sort by latest added Sort by earliest added. Show unofficial releases.

We are a community dedicated to bringing you a home for the hacking of Super Mario Maker (Wii U & 3DS). Our community is a place for everyone to post their projects, get help and support, and find tutorials. Join us to share your very own creations, or feel free to just browse the site and check out some of the awesome projects and tutorials found here.

Super Mario Maker Mods

We have all sorts of crazy mods for Super Mario Maker, ranging from Super Mario Odyssey in 8-bit style, to Super Mario Maker: Vanilla Revamped. Whatever you are interested in, you might find it in our Depot. Over at the Depot, we have links to download the best mods out there for Super Mario Maker & tutorials for newcomers.

Wiki

At the Mario Making Mods Wiki, you'll find lots of up-to-date information about all the technical parts of Super Mario Maker. You can submit your own findings there, too!

Social

We have a Discord Server you could join: https://invite.gg/MarioMakingMods

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Trouble in the Desert | Super Mario Unimaker Custom Stage

Posted on 05-10-19, 11:12 pm by NightYoshi370 Hey guys, sorry for the long break we've had. But now we're back and we're ready to showcase again. Today, we're playing the short level called Trouble in the Desert by DesertedZ for Super Mario Unimaker. We hope you enjoy! Link to level: Trouble in the Desert3 comments (last by dom mods). Log in to post a comment.

Welcome to Unimaker! Mario Making Mods Fangame Friday

Posted on 03-23-19, 12:58 am by NightYoshi370 Hello everyone, and welcome back to yet another Fangame Fridays showcase. NightYoshi370 here, and today, we're going to look at an introductory level MarioMario369 made on our forums. Link to thread: Block Hills2 comments (last by falling upwards). Log in to post a comment.

Windows 98 in Super Mario Maker Youtube Showcase

Posted on 03-19-19, 03:07 am by NightYoshi370 Hello there everyone, and welcome to yet another episode of Mod Mondays. NightYoshi370 here and today, we're taking a look at the Windows 98 theme made by Buntendo. Link to mod: smwwii uWindows 98 in Super Mario Maker3 comments (last by SuperMarioLand07). Log in to post a comment.

The future of Mario Making Mods - Evening out our media

Posted on 03-15-19, 04:29 am by NightYoshi370In a conversation I have had on Discord with Buntendo, we were talking about the future of Mario Making Mods. We took a look at the numbers. We took a look at our 'competitors'. We took a look at other modding scenes. We've decided to pull inspiration from them, and do some changes. Basically, there are three types of chatting-media types out there: Forums, mainstream media and chat platforms. - A forum is a place for archival work. It's more chilled out and often slow paced. Typically, it isn't the first post that's the main focus. This type of format is typically used during development of things, as it's only the latest post that matters. - Mainstream is what we'd defined places like Twitter, Youtube & Reddit, where you just say what ever is on your mind, and all the replies are subject to that first main post. This type of chat format is typically used when something is finished as it's kind of hard to alert people of new updates (Especially in the case of Youtube). - Chat platforms are places where you can work together with other members. Typically, messages here consist of few words and this goes at a high speed so anything important is quickly lost. In Mario Making Mods's history, we've combined all aspects of above. However, about a month ago, an issue with Discord came about which caused me to unaffiliate Mario Making Mods and everything related to me from Discord. Buntendo was placed as the owner and Huseyin the Mighty was placed as an administrator of the unofficial Mario Making Mods Discord Server. In it's place, I planned to host a Rocket.Chat server in which users can pick and choose their own channels to join. Unfortunately, it couldn't have been hosted by Oman Computar due to his VPS being shared. I tried to use Heroku and use the TWL-Mode Hacking Rocket.Chat server (which was then hosted on Heroku) as a test for how well Heroku would perform. I shouldn't have expected too much of a free hosting though, as the moment it started becoming active, there were memory issues, causing me to abandon the whole idea of a Rocket.Chat server. I then tried to code my own chat platform for MakerBoard which started out fairly well (even got the Database running smoothly) but then came the issue of Bandwidth and the Real Time aspect of it. It was way too much for me to do so I decided to can the idea and just not have a chat platform. However, as quickly as that decision was made, it was met with a ton of confusion and backlash, with it causing the Forum to become even less active. People want to be able to first join a Real-Time Chat system to get a glimpse of the community and then dive into the community roots (which lie here on mariomods.net). To solve that issue, I tried bringing back the idea of a Rocket.Chat server hosted on Epicpkmn11 Raspberry Pi. However, not only would that have been rude to do ('Hey! Can you host this community you know nothing about and know no one in it because I am too poor to pay for it myself?') but why not just use the chat platform we currently already have which still has the title Mario Making Mods title under it? Sure, discord still has their issues such as banning people unfairly (RocketRobz got banned two weeks ago with no explanation from the Discord Trust and Safety team), trying to take control over everything that happens on their platform (and it's even more apparent now that you cannot talk about cheats that give you an unfair advantage on an online game) and allthefoxes is still working at the Discord Trust and Safety team. In fact, the only thing changed was that cub porn is now banned on their platform. However, I've decided to not let that affect the actual chat platform itself, and when you look at it like that, it's actually a really decent platform. Of course, I would still much rather use Rocket.Chat as my main chat platform. However, based off of the experiences I've had on the DS Homebrew Rocket.Chat server, I've noticed that people would much rather have all their chatting needs in one place than having to join a server individually. I was hesitant on making this decision, due to my past experiencing with going the Discord + Forum route, generally one ends up engulfing the activity of the other platform. However, while that is a correct fact, what's also important is acknowledging how correct it is. To make more sense of it, if there is a section on Discord for a topic, then that means that the forum part of that section will end up being inactive. Though, rather than completely shutting down the chat platform equivalent, we'll be taking a look at how we can organize the multiple types of medias. - General Chatter is completely dead. No one would go and make threads to talk about a random topic when they can do so much easier on the Discord Server. - No one would make memes on forums either, so the end-of-forum is gone too. - The Youtubers Development forum will also be shutting down, as that fits much more in a chat area. - Super Mario Maker Modding Channels is something that is completely worthless. Why have one channel to talk about ONE mod? They would fit much more on the Database like structure on the forum, where you can pick and choose individual mods to speak about. Sure, if a Rocket.Chat/IRC-like feature comes along, where you can pick and choose which channel you'd like, then I'd be more than glad to allow Project Channels to be a thing. I just don't want them to be an official part of the Mario Making Mods discord server. - Instead of porting over DMs, Real Time Chat and other features over to the Mario Making Mods forum, they will be staying on Discord. They are Chat-Platform functions, not Forum Functions - Leaderboard-esc functions make sense on forums, but make even more sense on Discord. As such, if the lead developer of Yammamura (Samplasion) either lets me do the edit or give me back the bot, I will be porting over the Rankset & Syndrone features to Yammamura (not as if they're even noticed by anyone that doesn't use the acmlmboard theme). - Tutorials aren't exactly a place for discussion; they're more of a documentary. As a result, I've decided to repurpose the wiki similar to how the Custom Mario Kart 8 Wiki works, and have it as an all-in-one place for Super Mario Maker modding basics. - We'll be adding a link to the Discord Server in the header of the website. Youtube and Twitter will still be found on the Bottom because they aren't as important as a chat platform; They're media places, and we already have the media here. - Finally, we'll be organizing the modding community as such: For general modding discussion, they'll be talked about in the discord server in the channel For mods that are a Work In Progress & General Tutorials, they will be using the thread structure. For mod releases, they will be using the Mainstream structure, similar to GameBanana. Questions Wait, why did you come back to discord? It's all because of EpicPkmn11's Raspberry pie crashed and as such, I couldn't access the DS Homebrew Rocket.Chat server. Once I told Buntendo the news, he told me that I should come back to Discord. Just the fact that one of my best online buddies told me that, and my other two buddies (Mario Silva & WillyMaker) missed me, I've decided to stay. Of course, I've been used to logging onto Discord for a while now, as Mario Multiverse doesn't let you play the game when the Discord client wasn't opened. All I needed to do is just switch my avatar back to the lively one, reinstall Quarrel (a UWP (Universal Windows Platform) Discord Client clone), join the servers back and actually read my Direct Messages. (as all I would do was just log on, play mario multiverse, close Mario Multiverse, immediately close discord). Will you be discontinuing development on MakerBoard? Not at all. Just because Discord is taking precedent doesn't mean that this place will go to rot. In fact, I already have my next wave of updates planned out, and am currently working on a Super Mario World theme (with a really cool CSS effect I'm working on) Why do fan games get their own channel but Super Mario Maker mods can't? Isn't the whole point of Mario Making Mods to mod Super Mario Maker? It isn't necessarily 'each creation gets their own channel'. Rather, we go by 'each game gets their own channel', and by that means, each game has their own channel. Super Mario Maker has its own channel, Gatete's Mario Engine has its own channel, Super Mario Unimaker has it's own channel and so does Remaker..for now. Wait, for now? What do you mean by that? Well, I've decided that it's time we take off our nostalgia glasses and move on from the past. Super Mario REMaker has not seen activity in a long time, and does not have nearly as much features as Super Mario Unimaker. There is nothing to differentiate it from its competitors and the only purpose I see keeping Super Mario REMaker as part of Mario Making Mods is for all the old mods we've put, which isn't exactly a thing for the discord. It is, however, a thing for the forum, so I'll still keep the Super Mario REMaker forum. However, the Super Mario REMaker channel will officially be removed. The keyword is official, as the same rule applies with Project channels; If the Rocket.Chat/IRC feature where you can pick and choose your own channel gets ported over to Discord, I will allow someone to create a Super Mario REMaker channel. We just no longer want to make it an official part of Mario Making Mods, due to its dead nature.1 comment (by falling upwards). Log in to post a comment.

Mario Multiverse Fan Game Download For Pc

Super Mario Multiverse

Super Mario Land 2 in Super Mario Maker - MMM Mod Mondays

Posted on 03-05-19, 03:58 am by NightYoshi370 Hello everyone, and welcome to yet another exciting episode of Mod Mondays with Mario Making Mods. I'm NightYoshi370, and here, joined with WillyMaker is our showcase of the Super Mario Land 2 mod for Super Mario Maker, made by Louiskovski. Link to discussion thread: wii usmm2 wipSuper Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins1 comment (by falling upwards). Log in to post a comment.

[nullset2]

Toy Project: Fortune Telling from Super Mario Bros. DX

I recently moved out of my country and I've been staying at a hotel and turns out I got bored so I started just trying random stuff to try to have fun while I get my own place.

So I remembered... back in the day, I don't remember how, because I never actually had a gameboy of my own, but I remember I managed to play Super Mario Bros. DX for the Gameboy Color. I remember that port, a pretty good one at that, because of the fact that not only does it recreate Super Mario Bros. on the Gameboy Color really well, no matter the small screen size of the system itself which leaves a lot to desire to the NES's resolution, but because there's a massive amount of extra content added to the original SMB trip.

There's time trials, You vs. Boo mode, multiplayer modes, hidden red coins, hidden yoshi eggs, a new map screen and a lot of other random smaller stuff, such as Gameboy printer stickers (in case you have one of those laying around lmao), a day planner in case you're still rocking your gameboy color as a PDA 20 years later, and even a fortune telling minigame. It's awesome!

 The fortune telling minigame

You see, for some strange reason I have this weird kinship for the fortune telling minigame... I always liked the fact that the little messages you get are so satisfying to read, the little jingle that sounds before the message is displayed sounds so exciting, and the fact that you can even get extra lives for the main platforming game if you have good luck and you get a nice fortune :)

So here's the challenge:

I want to recreate, for fun, the fortune telling minigame in a web application.

Right off from the bat, this is what I'm gonna need:

A dump of all the fortune messages that Nintendo put in the game.

A dump of all the graphics and sound used in the fortune telling minigame.

A database schema to store traffic data and fortune content data, so people can login, see and share fortunes, ideally with facebook.

An admin interface to add or edit the fortunes on my database easily (nice to have, and it involves making a User model too. I can do with SQL only though)

A web server that displays the actual frontend for the fortune telling minigame, does the "random shuffling" process, handles user traffic, then shows the users' fortune as an actual document that they can see on a browser (Ideally I'd expose it as a RESTful API too, but I don't want to do that at the moment, and for the sake of having a controllable scope for this project, I'll focus on doing everything as a rails web application)

TL;DR: Here's is the finished product: Have fun

This is gonna be fun :)

Dumping the fortunes

First of all, unfortunately I didn't manage to find a complete text dump of all the available text data in SMBDX online. Bummer! I was sorta anticipating this though. I guess I have to dump the text myself.

How to dump the text off a gameboy color game though? I was puzzled by this... however, I did notice something, the font used in the fortune telling minigame is similar to the font used in other gameboy color games, like the Legend of Zeldas available for it.

For example, compare both uppercase "W"s in the words "Words and "What", respectively. It's the same typography.

So I figured out that there ought to be a parallel there. Maybe if somebody has already dumped the text off of, say, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX, and shared their techniques online, I could use something similar to dump the text off of SMBDX into a text file.

Turns out that there's many text dumps of all the zelda games on Gameboy Color, and off of the notes in those, I found out that there's many games that use ASCII encoding for their script. ZeldaDX is one of them. You can theoretically just open a game's files on a text editor with ASCII encoding and copy the script off of that

What does this mean? It means that the ROM image of the game, which is the actual collection of all the data that composes the game and that got shipped in carts in the original release of ZeldaDX (or any game on cart, ever, for that matter), has the actual text content itself encoded with the exact same hexadecimal values that the American Standard Code for Information Interchange uses:

From here onwards things are about to get more and more technical so buckle up and enjoy the ride. If you don't yet understand terms such as "Encoding", "VRAM", why RAM is different than ROM in the GBC or any computer's architecture, or what "Hexadecimal" means, feel free to stop here and just look at the results, or shoot me a line and we can chat about it over beers :)

So let's fire up good old trusty XVI32 and look at the ZeldaDX ROM image in it using ASCII and lo and behold, what happens when we try to search for a string of text which we already know is in the game, for example, "Marin"

There it is :)

You can also use a decent text editor to open the ROM and force "Western" (or Windows-1252) encoding when opening the ROM.

So, I procured a ROM image of SMBDX off from the actual retail copy I have and that I purchased with my own money, like you also should. Then, after dumping the ROM image, from here it should be a cakewalk, right? Open the SMBDX ROM on a hex-editor with ASCII encoding and presto, right?

Well, not quite.

Unfortunately, Mario DX, for some bizarre reason, doesn't use ASCII encoding for its text. Strange.

My hypotesis at this point is that, well the fortunes data must be there in some kind of sequential order still, because the fortune lines are data that must necessarily be persisted in order somewhere in the ROM image to be presented to the users.

Let's pretend that we have a false encoding for a second, where the letters of the alphabet are represented by the following key:

A => A0 B => A1 C => A2 D => A3 E => A4 F => A5 G => A6 H => A7 I => A8 J => A9 K => AA L => AB M => AC N => AD O => AE P => AF Q => B0 R => B1 S => B2 T => B3 U => B4 V => B5 W => B6 X => B7 Y => B8 Z => B9 a => BA b => BB c => BC d => BD e => BE f => BF g => C0 h => C1 i => C2 j => C3 k => C4 l => C5 m => C6 n => C7 o => C8 p => C9 q => CA r => CB s => CC t => CD u => CE v => CF w => D0 x => D1 y => D2 z => D3 ' ' => D4

Based on that assumption, and unless SMBDX is doing some shifty on-the-fly uncompression thing to the ROM image (!!!), based on the fact that we already know that there's a message in the game that reads: "With a Fire Flower", and that the data has to necessarily be in that order somewhere in the rom, we should expect to find a sequence similar to the following data somewhere in the ROM:

B7 C2 CD C1 D4 BA D4 A5 C2 CB BE D4 A5 C5 C8 D0 BE CB W i t h a F i r e F l o w e r

The problem is, though, that we don't know for certain that the game stores its alphabet starting from uppercase A, with value A0... it could be any other value for all we know.

So to try to get a bit more clarity at this point we can use a hearty good old emulation debugger. If we fire up the ROM on a good-ass old emulator (in this case, I'm using nocashgmb), you can see the state of the Gameboy Color's RAM on runtime. Nice. We can trigger a fortune inside the fortune telling game, then inspect the memory to find out what data is actually getting read and from where:

If we take a look at the first uppercase W when we triggered a fortune it shows that the data comes from address 99C1 in the Gameboy Color RAM (look under Map Address)

So let's use a hex-editor to Goto address 99C1 and we find from offset 99C0

8D D6 E2 ED E1 1D DA 1D C5 E2 EB DE 1D C5 E5 E8 F0 DE EB

Look at the following screenshot:

Notice something interesting here? Probably we got the jackpot ;)

What are the giveaways?:

Notice how there's a lot of instances on this string of hex values of the value 1D. Why could that be? Could it be some kind of separator? Or delineator? What about... if it was a representation for typographical space?

Notice how the value C5 appears two times. The character F also appears twice on the phrase, on "Fire" and "Flower". Coincidence? I think not.

It seems to me that the string of hex values we found translates very well to:

8D D6 E2 ED E1 1D DA 1D C5 E2 EB DE 1D C5 E5 E8 F0 DE EB W i t h a F i r e F l o w e r

Some other thing that I noticed is that the lowercase values seem to be incremental and alphabetically ordered (notice at the values representing 'l' and 'o' and how they seem to be in sequence when you interpolate 'm' and 'n' between them, exactly in order going from E5 to E8), yet the uppercase values don't seem to follow the same order. I may be mistaken though.

So perhaps we can build a translation table from Mario-encoding to ASCII by deducing it from the debugger, then input it into a hex editor that can do custom translation tables, and hopefully try to deduct the rest of the code from there. We could throw out some ruby for this:

#!/bin/ruby LOWERCASE = { } ASCII_LETTER_a_OFFSET = 97 offset = 0xDA (0..25).each do |i| LOWERCASE[($ASCII_LETTER_a_OFFSET + i).ord.chr] = offset+i end $LOWERCASE.each do |k, v| puts "#{k} => #{v.to_s(16).upcase}" end

Which produces this table:

a => DA b => DB c => DC d => DD e => DE f => DF g => E0 h => E1 i => E2 j => E3 k => E4 l => E5 m => E6 n => E7 o => E8 p => E9 q => EA r => EB s => EC t => ED u => EE v => EF w => F0 x => F1 y => F2 z => F3

So far so good. Notice how it perfectly syncs with the example fortune.

Let's try to see how this plays out in a hex editor before we move onto the uppercase characters. Let's open the Rom on XVI32.

A quick tangent: of particular interest, notice how there's a string of perfectly good ASCII text at the beginning of the ROM file, showing the game's title and key. Longtime experience with Wii hacking and Nintendo DS and 3DS fidgetry has made me understand that since a forever, Nintendo has always liked to assign a unique alphanumeric code to each and every title that releases on their console. They call that code the TITLEID. I can see that SMBDX is AHYE. A quick look at the game's product ID on a site like GameFAQs seems to confirm that:

So there's a feature on XVI32 called character conversion that one can use to make XVI32 follow a custom encoding instead of ASCII when trying to visualize the data inside a file. This fits perfectly with our use case that we want to see the text in Mario-Encoding, which we have already deduced. Let's try to input our conversion table there:

Turns out XVI32 has a format that it uses to exchange conversion table data called XCT. This is a simple format which can be created from plaintext consisting of n different lines denoting a semicolon-separated pair of translation values, one per each line. We can adapt our ruby code to produce an xct table very easily, associating our values on the reverse order, so to speak.

For example, we have determined that 'a' (ASCII hex 61) corresponds to Mario encoding 'DA', our first translation pair in the xct table would read: DA;61

Let's use the code that we used before and modify it a bit so it dumps an xct table for us:

#!/bin/ruby LOWERCASE = { } ASCII_LETTER_a_OFFSET = 0x61 offset = 0xDA (0..25).each do |i| LOWERCASE[($ASCII_LETTER_a_OFFSET + i).ord] = offset+i end $LOWERCASE.each do |k, v| puts "#{v.to_s(16).upcase};#{k.to_s(16).upcase}" end

The resulting xct table, so you don't have to run this script, is here.

Which we can then load into XVI32 for conversion... and once we do that, lo-and-behold:

And from here it should be pretty easy to decode the uppercase alphabet that Nintendo used for this game:

#!/bin/ruby UPPERCASE = { } ASCII_LETTER_A_OFFSET = 0x41 offset = 0xC0 (0..25).each do |i| UPPERCASE[($ASCII_LETTER_A_OFFSET + i).ord] = offset+i end $UPPERCASE.each do |k, v| puts "#{v.to_s(16).upcase};#{k.to_s(16).upcase}" end

Yes, I know, I didn't bother to modify the original code to integrate both cases and just ran one for uppercase alphabet, and another one for lowercase. I was lazy xD.

The final fortunes content, with a bit of formatting and retouching, is here.

Getting the GFX and the Sound

Fortunately it was really easy to find the graphics for the fortune telling online, since sprite ripping is fairly easy to do and has been commonplace since the dawn of the commercial internet and emulation (credits to spriters-resource.com).

The sounds weren't as easy to find since the Result, option select and option opening sounds weren't as interesting as to warrant somebody posting them online in wav format for other people to download. I didn't manage to find them, but not to worry, this is a simple sound capture job. VBA-m, a popular gameboy emulator, has screen and sound recording features. After sound capture, it´s a simple edition job. Audacity is a great tool for this.

But anyway, I had to rip the sound effects that come after you get your fortune, because those weren't available anywhere. That was a simple audio capture and then editing with audacity. My audio collection is available here.

Developing the app

Now that we have this, we can jump into development of the actual app! Oh joy!

I decided to architecture the application as a standard server request-and-response cycle. I kind of had to take a bit of time to think about this. Do I develop this in the traditional way, using a server and a database with a request-response loop, or do I do it on the clientside? After all, doing everything clientside is pretty hot these days... But the argument that having a relational database available to add extra fortune messages is too compelling to ignore, and backend languages are still in my opinion more amicable to that purpose than just doing everything on frontend. I will eventually make this app more robust clientside in a version 2.0.

These are the design tenets:

A web server displays the fortune selection page, which should have the necessary design to play audio and display animated content (without plugins, mind you! Modern Web is awesome!).

On click, the frontend performs an animation, then the user gets redirected. The user's traffic is intercepted by the server, which makes a dice throw and shows the user's result, with the corresponding audio and graphics according to the result.

The pages in the site should be responsive so it works well on different viewports, even smaller screens. The web server should be able to connect to a relational database to retrieve the fortunes.

The server should be able to retrieve the fortune text off of a relational database.

So I decided to go with a simple Ruby stack for this, with the Sinatra framework for coding the server, PostgreSQL on the database, heroku as the platform (I like PaaS and heroku has amazing, free support for PostgreSQL out of the box).

On the frontend I use some small parts of CSS for webkit animations, transitions to animate all the assets I got off the ROM, and rotations/translations to position the clickable elements of the page in a circle formation, and the Javascript audio API to play sound.

A snag that I ran into quickly is that I need to add another media query to order the elements in another way on very small screens (the responsiveness is achieved purely through media-queries). Plus the animation is fidgety and not compatible in all browsers because I'm tweening the content property of an img element in the page for animation and this doesn't play well with browsers, or rather, doesn't produce smooth-enough animation. I think that I will look into canvas in version 2.0 of the app to handle all the gfx.

And finally, I needed a way to populate my database quickly with all the text I dumped from the ROM. I made a quick sql script for that, which I placed on the project's repository. Vim proved very good for this, parting from the previous txt file with the raw Fortune strings:

CREATE TABLE Fortunes(type_id integer NOT NULL, content varchar(40), created_at timestamp DEFAULT current_timestamp, updated_at timestamp DEFAULT current_timestamp); INSERT INTO Fortunes VALUES (1, 'With a Fire Flower you''ll beat Bowser.'), (1, 'Fortune awaits you in the clouds.'), (1, 'Fortune will lead you to Yoshi.'), (1, 'Look below to find what you seek.'), (1, 'Good friends bear good news.'), (1, 'Southerly winds bring sunny skies.'), (1, 'Kindness given is returned tenfold.'), (1, 'Good news is due from a loved one.'), (1, 'Good things come from hard work.'), (1, 'Soothing music soothes the soul.'), (1, 'Keep a good grasp Fortune will last.'), (1, 'Worries naturally melt away.'), (2, 'Stomp a shell and scores will swell.'), (2, 'Pipe cleaning reaps rewards.'), (2, 'An eye to the sky reveals Red Coins.'), (2, 'Keep your head up Find what you seek.'), (2, 'A party of three brings good luck.'), (2, 'Luck arrives with the easterly wind.'), (2, 'Express yourself with written word.'), (2, 'Seek out the one who thinks of you.'), (2, 'Active bodies breed active minds.'), (2, 'To create music is to create joy.'), (2, 'You shall achieve great victories.'), (3, 'Enemies lurk in watery depths.'), (3, 'Fortune is hidden in bricks unbroken.'), (3, 'Today is your day to win the race.'), (3, 'Boxes may contain clues to the quest.'), (3, 'Victory is yours in the coming race.'), (3, 'Beware of winds from the west.'), (3, 'Feelings shared will be understood.'), (3, 'He who thinks of you is beside you.'), (3, 'Imagination is a wonderful toy.'), (3, 'Old tunes bring new fortune.'), (3, 'Trade high scores to set new goals.'), (4, 'Stomping on spikes leads to sore feet.'), (4, 'Careless footing causes one to fall.'), (4, 'Kicked shells may bounce back.'), (4, 'What you seek is right beside you.'), (4, 'Sincere apologies renew friendships.'), (4, 'Storms ride in on northerly winds.'), (4, 'You will not find true love this day.'), (4, 'A VS Mode victory is not your fate.'), (4, 'Not all pain leads to gain.'), (4, 'Happy songs lift sad moods.'), (4, 'The Warp Zone speeds success.'), (4, 'Only a Challenge clears the mind.'), (5, 'Bowser''s breath engulfs the future.'), (5, 'Flying Koopas cut short success.'), (5, 'Dont count Yoshis before they hatch.'), (5, 'Leave impossible dreams to dreamers.'), (5, 'Seek answers in a friends advice.'), (5, 'Beware of pointed enemies.'), (5, 'Change old habits Yield new success.'), (5, 'Victory in a race may wash pain away.'), (5, 'Excess is a powerful enemy.'), (5, 'Favorite tunes never fade.'), (5, 'Now is the time for patience.'), (5, 'Help all in need, not just a friend.');

If you're using heroku to mount the app, it's very easy to populate heroku's postgres database through the command line by using unix redirection from the file to heroku pg:sql with the following command:

heroku pg:psql --app "the_name_of_your_app_here" < scripts/create_databases.sql

A quick note: a fast look at the main executable for the server, fortune.rb, you can notice how I'm handling connections to the database. It is a good practice to store connection credentials for your database on an Environment Variable in the server, from where I read at the moment of connection in runtime, else I default to development-credentials, which you should replace by your own if you try to run this on your machine.

Final Words

So this is it! Hope you enjoyed the ride and remember that you can check out my project and deploy it for yourself from my github [profile] (https://github.com/nullset2/smbdxfortunes).

Have fun and may you have great luck in your future! :)