Bobbing Barrel Brawl

View an interactive map courtesy o’ DKC Atlas

It’s shocking to see an Ellie level so high up, but for once we have a level that focuses on her abilities ( & not just the ability to throw barrels, which the Kongs can already do themselves ) & not her weaknesses. E’en better, this level adds many variations to her shooting & sucking skills & breaks up this theme with basic platforming to keep this level from feeling 1-dimensional, making this level feel like it came out o’ DKC2. The only caveat is that this level does have mo’ stopping & waiting than a normal DKC2 level, Ellie’s sucking ability doesn’t have many variations, & Ellie’s shooting ability is just a weaker version o’ Squitter’s, since it requires you to stop & suck up water for fuel, which doesn’t add much to gameplay other than slowing you down.

A few o’ the variations:

In addition to shooting forward, upward @ an angle, & jumping & shooting upward @ an angle, @ 1 point you need to shoot a Booty Bird to drop a TNT barrel onto a Zinger to unblock a bonus barrel.

Suck up a steel barrel & shoot it thru a rather narrow hole to hit Koin.

Jump up beetles to fall onto a lake o’ water with greater force & go deeper down to reach a bonus barrel lower down. ( Note: if this is too tricky to find, you can go back with the Kongs after losing Ellie & pair-throw someone up the 1 cliff in the way & then just swim down to the bonus barrel ).

The bonus challenges are all right: the 1st is just a basic challenge dropping barrels into the water to cross to the bonus coin, which I guess is mo’ challenging ’cause you have a time limit, but still feels a bit redundant gainst the level itself. The 2nd challenge requires you to cross barrels o’er water while collecting ornaments, which are laid out in an arc, which is not a huge challenge, but does feel mo’ different from what the main level offers while still fitting the level’s theme & does offer something o’ a challenge, specially for a rather early level, in that you have to make sure you grab the ornaments.

Krack-Shot Kroc

View an interactive map courtesy o’ DKC Atlas

This level finds the best balance DKC3 e’er has ’tween a gimmick that feels fresh, but doesn’t feel like it puts you into a different game, but with less polished controls ( like, say, “Rocket Rush” ). On the surface, this is just a normal, somewhat repetitve level where you play as Squitter & use web platforms to cross o’er boiling pots o’… ¿Pepto-Bismol? while dodging Zingers & Re-Koils. Howe’er, thruout this level there is a reticle chasing you, which stops every few seconds to charge up & shot & then shoots 1 o’ the fireballs that the owls in “Fire-Ball Frenzy” shoot where its reticle has stopped. These shots are so telegraphed, with such a delay after they stop to shoot, that it’s easy to dodge the shots, but the player will still likely want to stay ’head o’ the reticle, giving the player something o’ an urgency to keep moving forward, which thankfully, for once, DKC3 obliged with a level layout that ne’er forces the player to wait. Also, this isn’t an autoscroller, so there’s ne’er a time when you’re forced to wait round.

This level’s shape is similar to a lot o’ other levels’ in that it snakes in 1 direction, with only 1 small branch where there’s a bonus barrel. Howe’er, this being a level that encourages you the keep going, making you explore branching paths would only slow you down & be annoying while constantly dodging shots fired @ you, so it works better here than in other, mo’ slow-paced levels. Also, while this level is as long as most levels, the fact that you’ll be usually trying to keep moving makes it feel like it goes by faster than most, the reverse o’ the problem e’en DKC2 levels had ( “Castle Crush” being a prime offender ) o’ having levels feel too long ’cause they were slow & didn’t have their length readjusted. Since DKC levels tend to be on the long side, anyway, here it feels like a +.

That bonuses are ’bove average, too. The 1st bonus barrel is in a surprisingly hard to find thin niche in the ceiling o’ some seemingly random part in the middle o’ the level. But while it’s hard to find, it’s perfectly fair, without resorting to using move-thru walls, which DKC3’s otherwise superior predecessor succumbed to, including in 1 o’ its strongest levels, “Bramble Scramble”. The 2nd bonus barrel isn’t nearly as well hidden, but it does require somewhat tricky maneuvering round a red Zinger while still dodging the reticle’s bullets.

The 1st barrel’s challenge is all right: you have to collect appearing & disappearing presents using Squitter & use Squitter’s web platforms the reach the higher presents — tho a clever player will realize they can just put a web in the middle o’ the area & always be able to reach a present no matter where it appears. Part o’ me’s kind o’ disappointed they didn’t have you collect presents while dodging the reticle’s shots, like they did with the owl shots in “Fire-Ball Frenzy”, which would’ve been mo’ challenging than just using Squitter’s web, but it also would’ve been mo’ predictable, & maybe it’s good to give the reticle gimmick a break.

But the 2nd bonus’s challenge is the best challenge in the entire game: in an entirely new mechanic, you control the reticle & shoot fireballs @ enemies, desroying them all to reveal the bonus coin, which you also have to shoot a fireball @ to collect. In a game where bonuses fall into either extreme o’ having a bonus that has no relevance to the level or is just the predictable level’s gimmick, but also collecting presents or ornaments, this twist on the gimmick both feels like it fits this level perfectly & feels fresh.

That said, Koin’s placement & “puzzle” is lame: he’s right in plain sight, just on the other side o’ the Squitter end sign, & he has a wall right ’hind him. The only “challenge” is that you only get 1 steel keg, so if you somehow mess it up, you have to replay the whole level, which is mo’ an annoyance than an interesting challenge. This is specially disappointing as there’s an obvious better puzzle: make Koin die to fireballs & make it so you have to lead the reticle to aim @ Koin & shoot him.

The other quibble I have with this level is that it is a bit too repetitive & generic, what with all the verticle sections with Zingers, horizontal sections with Re-Koils & Bristles, & the multiple vats o’ boiling bubble gum you have to cross, with a red Zinger here or there to block your way — specially when most o’ the time they weren’t blocking your way, allowing you to just create platforms way ’bove them & cross without any true danger. I’m sure they could’ve come up with a few mo’ variations, such as having Re-Koils o’er the vat sections. I don’t know if they couldn’t handle having mo’ enemy types than these, but it seems like other levels have a greater variety o’ enemies. If ’twas technically feasible, it would’ve been interesting to see how this level’s gimmick might play while battling gainst, say, Bazukas, or, hell, have you dodge fireballs from the reticle while also dodging fireballs from the owls.

Also, if it wasn’t clear ’nough yet, I like this level’s weird palette. While the previous 2 factory levels have predictable vats o’ red lava & green acid, I love seeing vats o’ mysterious pink substances in this level, bordered by purple walls, which hopefully does some work toward rehabilitating that color after Quawks & “Poisonous Pipeline” has made it look so bad.

I Can Go with the Flow

Here’s a level I’ve been working on for a while. It’s actually a level I apparently wanted so much ’twas the primary inspiration to add the rather recent “swamp” theme to this game ( well, that & my desire to use this level’s music ). This level’s main gimmick is also 1 o’ the many I ripped off from the Wario Land games, but with this game’s oxygen mechanic & the need to aim for bubbles to keep Autumn from drowning as an extra challenge.

The reason this level took so long to finish that 2 other swamp levels were finished before it was simply that I had many 2nd thoughts ’bout this level. ¿Is it truly fun or just annoying? The current mechanic doesn’t work as well with Boskeopolis Land’s Mario-style swimming as Wario Land’s, where you’re actually swimming without gravity constantly dragging you downward, rather than constantly bopping upward in water, as in this game. I also wasn’t sure if the direction the currents are going are easy ’nough to see & whether the path to the end isn’t too obscure. As a developer it’s always important to keep in mind that actually playing a map, where the camera is only showing narrow pieces o’ the map round you @ a time rather than showing the whole map in its entirety before you, is harder than navigating in a map program. While playing the level I was surprised by how much I myself got lost in the maze.

On the other hand, the level is easygoing, with no enemies in the river itself to worry ’bout. I debated adding enemies, but figured the player doesn’t have ’nough control in the currents to make that fair & figured ’twas better to err on being a bit too easy & fair being preferable to frustrating cheap deaths. As a compromise & a way to give the level mo’ variety, I added sections @ the beginning & end with the hopping frog enemies from the 1st swamp level. Anyway, this is only a 2nd-cycle level, so it shouldn’t be that hard, anyway, & I think the threat o’ drowning is ’nough. I also added a small loop o’ currents going down & up ( but ultimately still linear ) round an otherwise unpassable wall @ the top as a tiny unspoken tutorial before immediately throwing the player into the big maze. This expanded the level a bit without making it too long: if one doesn’t make any wrong turns in the main maze, it’ll take the player ’bout 20 seconds. This is ’cause the big maze isn’t all that big, which I consider a +, since a gimmick like this with the risk o’ becoming annoying should err on the side o’ not o’erstaying its welcome.

’Cause the current physics are somewhat janky, I made the time & gem scores somewhat lenient. The time score offers plenty o’ time so long as you don’t take any wrong turns @ all, which is a fair challenge in itself. While the gem score is 1 o’ the highest score requirements in the game so far, @ 40,000₧, there are gems all ’long the current tunnels ( which I just now realized has the advantage o’ showing players paths they’d already taken ). I avoided having hidden tunnels in walls with gems & kept collectibles, like the collectible card, to some branching paths near the bottom middle o’ the level, which are tricky to get to, or in side cliffs in the out-o’-water sections, as expecting players to just ram gainst every wall while struggling thru currents would just be annoying, neither challenging nor fun.

As an arguably irrelevant addendum, to help me create the o’erworld events shown when beating this level ( as well as the previous level’s event, so the level isn’t just floating on water & inaccessible ), since ’twas getting tedious @ this point, I crapped together a quick JavaScript script to generate the event files from specially made Tiled map files. This will be specially useful, since I plan to heavily redesign the o’erworld map ( which means all o’ the events I’ve already made will have to be remade ), not the least ’cause I’ve thought o’ yet ’nother new theme I may add…

This video almost kept in a serious graphical error, like almost all my previous videos, in which 1 o’ the currents was missing most o’ the moving current tile graphics. Howe’er, this was so jarring & this video was relatively quick to record that this time I went thru the whole trouble o’ rerecording & reuploading to YouTube ( yes, it took that long to find, e’en tho I watched the video before uploading ). Howe’er, there is still ’nother bug shown in the video that I still haven’t fixed: you can clearly see the toad enemies hop thru the player from ’neath, hurting them rather than getting bonked. I think this only happens during a high hop, caused presumably by them moving so quickly upward that they pass the bonk collision threshold within a single frame, causing the player to get hurt ’stead.

Learn mo’ ’bout Boskeopolis Land @ https://www.boskeopolis-land.com/.

Read this code as tortuous as this level’s currents.

Poisonous Pipeline

View an interactive map courtesy o’ DKC Atlas

Not only is this the worst level in the game, it’s the worst level in the whole trilogy — & the bitterest sting is that this is the final level o’ the main game. While the original DKC gave you some o’ the trickiest platform jumps that game had to offer & DKC2 offered the ultimate challenge for Squawks, ¿what does this game offer? Water that reverses your controls when you’re in it. This is neither interesting, nor challenging, making this a breather level — & the last level is perhaps the worst level to have as a breather level. The hardest part o’ this gimmick is that jumping out o’ water is trickier ’cause you have to adjust what direction you’re holding right after leaving water.

& yes, just to make it e’en easier, they give you Enguarde, as they do for just ’bout every water level, for ⅓ the level if you find the 1st bonus or the Enguarde barrel just after the 1st bonus, allowing you to just plow thru nearly everything. ¿Why is a level with the slightest difference from a world-3 level @ the end o’ the game?

As for the level layout, it’s just a winding maze full o’ the same Kocos & Lurchins you dodged in every water level. The developers didn’t e’en try to add variety to their arrangements: get ready to weave thru Lurchins going up & down in alternating directions & dodge Kocos going right & left ’tween 2 Lurchins ’bove & below 4 or 5 times — but the last time they totally switch things up & add a 2nd Koco. Shit.

The bonus barrels aren’t e’en well-hidden: they’re both just @ the end o’ halls that telegraph you to make a turn & the “puzzle” is to ignore those signs & not turn yet. But if you’re looking for bonuses, obviously you’re going to search every path, ¿so why would you not explore the extent o’ every hall?

The challenges themselves are middleground: you just defeat all the enemies & collect all the ornaments. They’re far from new challenges @ this point o’ the game, but they do require a bit mo’ precision with the reversed controls than the main level.

As for the hero-coin-holding Koin, he’s just to the left o’ a fork just before the end & the way to defeat them is to just bounce the barrel off the wall right next to him.

The only positive things I can say ’bout this level is that it a’least tries to hide how linear it is by making it twist around space like a snake & that I like the color purple. Some people don’t like the gloomy visuals & music, but I don’t know why they single out DKC3 for this, when the original DKC had just-as-barren aesthetics, specially in its last world. I think it fits the mood o’ the end o’ the game fine as well as this game’s nature vs. technology theme; I just wish its gameplay fit as well.

Low-G Labyrinth

View an interactive map courtesy o’ DKC Atlas

After reversing controls underwater, making your character slow & have high jumps is the next lamest gimmick in this game, made e’en mo’ laughable by the way they just ditch the gimmick halfway thru the level so you can have yet ’nother Quawks section where you dodge moving Zinger formations. & slowly grab barrels & try hitting Zingers with them, which is just a worse version o’ being able to just spit nuts @ them with the superior Squawks — not the least o’ which since the Kongs can already throw barrels themselves, making Quawks feel e’en mo’ redundant. You know “Poisonous Pipeline” & Quawks suck when they make me hate purple things. The slightest difference they give to this o’erused mechnaic is that you move mo’ slowly, which is s’posed to be harder, but just feels less fun. You should ne’er create difficulty by handicapping the player; it’s cheap & not fun.

Some parts o’ this level are cheap, too. The vertical sections oft lead to blind hits if you’re playing as Kiddy or not using Dixie’s helicopter twirl ’cause the camera was clearly not programmed with downward movement in mind, oft leaving you @ the bottom o’ the screen with li’l space to see Zingers coming as you slowly drift down vertical shafts.

& getting past the 2 red Zingers after the midway point is ridiculous: the space is so small that your character’s graphics absolutely cannot fit ’tween it; you have to rely on you & the Zingers’ generous hit boxes to just squeeze thru — which means you have to know Squawks & the Zingers’ inner hit box, despite not being able to see them ( ’cause they don’t line up with their graphics ). It’s good game design to make your character & enemies’s hurt hit boxes smaller than their graphics to leave leeway for the player; but that’s s’posed to be leeway; it is a sin — a no-Reeces-ghost ( since Twinkies are gross ) offense — to make players play based on this invisible hit box. The player should always be able to squeeze their whole graphic thru a danger, not just the smaller invisible hit box.

In this level’s defense, it does try to implement meaningful branching in the latter half o’ the level. The bonus positions are somewhat clever, too: 1 challenges you to go back after getting Squawks to go up the suspicious banana trail ’bove the line o’ Zingers, which you couldn’t reach before, while the other is in a fork hidden under a Zinger, rather than just out in the open like in “Poisonous Pipeline”.

Tho the bonus challenges themselves are lame: yet ’nother bonus wherein you destroy a bunch o’ Zingers with Squawks & a bonus where you have to collect ornaments without any impediments — it’s just a rectangular room full o’ ornaments. Yeah, you move mo’ slowly, but you still have plenty o’ time to spare. This is halfway thru the game & yet this feels like the easiest bonus in the game.

On the other hand, there’s a few alcoves that serve li’l purpose, such as an alcove with bananas that are not worth dodging the Zingers to get or the invincibility barrel on the far top-left. You might think the latter sounds useful, but you have to do some rather precise maneuvers — either getting the steel keg o’er the gap with the 2 moving Zingers to throw it @ the line o’ Zingers in your way to the left, & still probably have to jump o’er the last 1, since your character accelerates so slowly that the barrel will despawn before you get to that last Zingers, or just jump o’er the 3 Zingers. & ’cause you move so slowly, the invincibility will run off before you get to the actually challenging part @ the end with the red Zingers clumped together. You’d be better off not bothering.

Treue schwören, keine Flagge,

Gottnation, gottverdammt;

der Teufel tanzt mit den Verachteten,

und wie das Feuer uns warm hält.

—Septuplum ultio dabitur de Cain de Lamech vero septuagies septies…

It’s that time o’ the year. ¿Will the Democrats after years o’ humiliating failure finally snatch victory from the US’s 2nd least competent president¹? Stay tuned to find out… Or, you know, just pay attention to real news.

For instance, votes have already been counted in the tiny community o’ Dixville Notch, NH — all 5 votes ( that’s popular votes, not electoral votes ) for Sleepy Joe, which is proof that people are taking seriously the need to exorcise the Hairpiece, as the kind o’ people hipster ’nough to count votes @ 12:00 AM are the kind o’ people mo’ likely to vote for a 3rd party, like 1 o’ the 4 alternate Republican parties I saw on my primary ballot last August.

As a laugh, I decided to watch the 1st the presidential debate after The Guardian alerted me to how so-bad-it’s-good ’twas, &, yeah, ’twas bizarre. I don’t know what I like best: journalist whose boring white name I recognize, but I know nothing ’bout, trying & failing to take some control as moderator as Hairpiece rambles & Sleepy Joe grumbles; Sleepy Joe’s straight not giving a shit attitude, which is refreshing from the typical false sincerity o’ Democrats; or Hairpiece seeming to care mo’ ’bout getting sweet jabs on Sleepy Joe than whether or not these jabs were actually politically potent, such as when he claimed that Sleepy Joe would lose the “far-left” for claiming he didn’t support “socialist” health care ( the kind o’ nationalized health care that pretty much all civilized countries have & has led e’en poor countries like Cuba to have better health care than the US ), which goes gainst Hairpiece’s attempt to portray Sleepy Joe as a far-left antifa Soros whate’er. I mean, I do that, but I’m a satirist, not a president. Maybe Hairpiece should be debating Colbert ’stead.

Actually, I think my favorite part was when Hairpiece claimed that he would make insulin as cheap as water thru magical trade agreements ( which from what vague info he gave, sounded like a scheme to get cheaper-made medicine from seedier places by butchering health regulations… which would not make people healthier ), which e’en the moderator couldn’t stop laughing @. Nobody asked the obvious question: ¿why hadn’t Hairpiece enacted this brilliant plan o’ his in the 4 years he had?

It always amazes me when I watch debates & see how li’l substance is ’hind either candidates arguments — high school students in debate class could do better. I’m sitting here thinking ’bout all the ways e’en someone as simple as I could deconstruct Hairpiece’s complaint ’bout “socialist” health care — ¿what is his definition o’ “socialist”? If it is government control or use o’ government taxes, ¿how is that different from the use o’ tax $ to fund police, which is ironically something that only the “far-left” supports? — or thinking ’bout all the statistics that show the US’s inferior health care performance compared to e’en poor countries like Cuba, including life expectancy, infant mortality, & death by cancer. Hell, I myself could make a better shot gainst the Democrats than Hairpiece by pointing out how lucrative government-funded health care is for private insurance companies, who get their money either way ( & lobbied for it, from both the Republicans, who were the ones who actually created Obamacare ). Sleepy Joe just babbles on some nonsense ’bout how Obamacare on 1 hand barely changed anything — it s’posedly just gives health care to people already eligible for medicaid ( which he accidentally called “medicare” once ), ’cept those whose governors tell them, “fuck you, you can’t have it, either” — but on the other s’posedly does a lot mo’ than just regular medicaid for helping people get insurance ( ’cept for the people in red states, who would still be fucked o’er ). Meanwhile, I’m just sitting here wondering why I should care so much ’bout keeping my private insurance, anyway — ¿Who cares ’bout their particular insurance provider? & indeed, I looked it up & found out that it’s not just the “far-left” who prefer “socialist” health care, but the majority o’ Americans, as well, making the whole debate subject a farce. So we have a ludicrous situation where both candidates are arguing o’er whether 1 o’ them is a socialist when the majority’s saying, “Actually, we want a socialist, please”.

Then ’gain, these debates are aimed @ the same type o’ people who voted for the rambling Hairpiece, anyway, so maybe research & critical thinking would be less palatable than Sleepy Joe dodging questions on expanding the supreme court ( rather than point out all the ways Republicans have been cheaply sabotaging Democrats from appointing judges when Obama was president, like a competent candidate, or be so audacious as to point out that having judges be appointed for life rather than elected for limited terms is stupid & antidemocratic ) or eliminating filibuster ( rather than, ’gain, pointing out that everyone knows it’s a stupid loophole & should have been eliminated decades ago ) by urging people watching to vote, which, presumable they’re going to do if they’re wasting their time watching a debate.

Still, with how nonchalant & passive-aggressive the debate is, it’s hard not to see it as as the elites sober-minded ’nough to know that the US’s government is a joke & now everyone has been let in on it by & are just going thru the motions in the waning years before the country is devoured by rioters & brownshirts.

As a refresher to moderate liberal Redditors fantasizing ’bout things the Democrats definitely won’t do if they win, such as prosecuting Hairpiece or fixing the mess that is the US’s electoral system, I checked in on my favorite faux-rural leftist hipsters @ Naked Capitalism & saw that Yves Smith is still somewhat o’ a crank. For instance, in her article, “One Trump Voter Explains Why Trump Will Win”, which quotes some anonymous hipster Trump voter named Zelda, she links to an o’erly-long thinkpiece that points out the shocking revelation that Democrats like Clinton ( who is still enemy #1 o’ hipster leftists, who is, as Eric Idle would say, an uppity rich bitch, & a’least she isn’t male, so fuck you all so very much ) are rich airheads who only exploit the troubles o’ minorities for their get-rich schemes & then later in her own article calls medicine “a medieval art”, as opposed to random online person’s thinkpieces, which are as hard a science as natural sciences.

FiveThirtyEight has frozen their election forecasts & are currently predicting that Sleepy Joe has a 9/10 chance of o’erthrowing Hairpiece & Democrats have a 3/4 chance o’ retaking the Senate. Howe’er, they were wrong in 2016, so we can ignore what they say & make armchair theories ’bout the psychology o’ the “average American” that I’ve ne’er met, ’cause I only know rich white people like me.

But in FiveThirtyEight’s defense, they do now have cute fox cartoons on their site, so that should absolve them o’ their sins o’ being know-it-alls who are sometimes wrong.

Daily Kos has an interesting spreadsheet listing important referendums and measures on the local state level, including an attempt by Republicans to repeal Colorado’s inclusion in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which, if ’nough states sign up to it, would make presidential elections based on popular vote ( genuine democracy ) rather than the silly electoral college the US’s drunk slave-holding founding fathers conjured up, — since it’s already well established that Republicans are opposed to democracy — as well as many other electoral reform measures. If there is 1 good thing from the great 2016 mistake it’s that mo’ normies are realizing how botched the US electoral system is & starting to actually reconsider it & consider ways to fix it, rather than just obsessing o’er whether candidates are civil ’nough or whether they come from “Starbucks” or “Chick-fil-a” America, or whate’er bullshit. This Cookie Monster man named Stephen Wolf e’en says that there’s a possibility the National Popular Vote could pass by 2024, which genuinely excites my cold, stony heart.

Hilariously, there is a website called “American Interregnum” that provides a table listing various social media’s policies regarding posts calling election results early. Only the US would form brands round the US’s crumbling electoral system.

The /r/politics ne’er mind, I somehow ended up on the /r/neoliberal subreddit, — don’t know why I would e’er want to go there — which I mentioned earlier in this very post already planning for what the Democrats would s’posedly do when they won ( which they most definitely would not do ) are now in despair mode ’cause they feel the polls were off ’gain, tho I feel like that’s just ’cause it’s not a blowout as they wanted, e’en tho that’s not what the polls promised. Anyway, I don’t see how anyone could have any idea o’ whose on top yet, considering how partial the results we have now seem to be. I particularly love the story 1 person told o’ smacking chicken nuggets their mother made for them out o’ their mother’s hand ’cause o’ how stressed they are. Good job making us look like adult-children, buddy. ¡Ha! ¡Ha! ¡I always knew neoliberals were secretly 30-year-ol’s still mooching off their mommies’ chicken nuggets! I’m glad that 1 person yelled @ them to apologize to their mother, tho.

Everyone knows it’s not o’er till Daily Kos starts despairing, & they’re still as calm as e’er.

Thanks to stumbling into the wrong neighborhood o’ /r/neoliberal, I did find this exciting livestream o’ 2 boring white people noodling o’er FiveThirtyEight’s stats all day. I thought neoliberals liked to pretend they were smart ’nough to read.

There’s a few fun electoral hijinx stories, like UPSP ignoring federal court orders to actually count all votes, a poll manager being late to work ’cause they just needed a few hours o’ extra sleep, & Facebook sabotaging liberals’ ability to get noticed. The fact that Facebook’s spokesman’s last name is literally Bourgeois just makes it all the funnier.

¡Ha! ¡Ha! ¡Look @ these Fox News polls showing what socialist atheists the majority o’ Americans are! I can’t wait for Republicans to still win the election, tho, ’cause polls don’t matter, since the US isn’t a democracy.

Everyone’s dour, but I don’t think that’s ’cause they necessary assume Sleepy Joe’s going to lose but just ’cause they for some reason expected a landslide & were hoping that all the Americans in the middle wilderness would come to their senses on Hairpiece. Considering the shitshow W. Bush was, I take for granted that Republicans are incapable o’ coming to their senses & that this was wishful thinking for people in the blue bubble. I have to say tho that I am a bit salty toward people who say things like “I can’t believe so many Americans are this racist, fascist” ( ¿Why didn’t Hairpiece’s original win convince them? ¿Were his sentiments subtle then? ). I’ve been aware o’ this before Hairpiece, but you don’t see me begging for pity.

Washington D.C. elects to turn themselves into the Mushroom Kingdom by legalizing hallucinogenic shrooms. We now have objective proof that the US’s politicos are all on shrooms.

The New York Times embarrassed themselves as they always do by claiming that declaring the winner o’ the election “falls to the news media” ( which only includes rich, connected papers like them, not newbie websites ) to determine election results.

Politico “news”: “We don’t like Hairpiece voters”. I can think o’ a few reasons that’s not exactly news, specially the fact that everyone knew this long before this election.

A great snapshot o’ both Hairpiece’s diehard fanatics’ disdain for e’en the weak form o’ democracy that the US has & their strategical brilliance: they chant “Stop the Vote” in front o’ a vote-counting building e’en tho voting has already stopped — they’re counting now — & @ the current count Sleepy Joe is ’head.

( Laughs ). Thank you for this, Zimbabwe: United States Risks Sanctions From Zimbabwe If Elections Are Not Free And Fair. Obviously, this isn’t truly important, politically, but it is a nice “Fuck You” jab.

I’m also amused @ this comment chain o’ Canadians expressing concerns o’ US people immigrating to Canada & the pros & cons.

( Laughs ). Vanity Fair: “Donald Trump, Colossal Asshole, Says Doctors Get Extra Cash If People Die of COVID-19”. I think you may be editorializing just a tiny bit in that headline, Mr. Lamestream Media. ’Sides, it’s needlessly wordy: “Colossal Asshole” is absolutely redundant before “Says Doctors Get Extra Cash If People Die of COVID-19”.

That article led me to a Twitter stream ( Fun fact: I don’t think I’ve read a single thing Hairpiece — or any politican — has said on Twitter for the entire 4 years o’ his presidency, & I can’t say I missed out much ) that I’d be better off not reading, & I found this bizarre tweet in response to some irrelevant bitching gainst General Motors that Hairpiece was doing for unknown reasons that I can’t tell if it’s ironic or genuine:

President Trump is an amazing man. Because He does everything he can, with his big strong hands, and even bigger plans. Although He is a billionaire, he understands the demands of the working poor, His biggest fans. United We Stand, for only Donald can Make America Great Again!🇺🇸

— Anthony Cornrod (@TWIT_ANTHONY) March 27, 2020

It’s too bad Hairpiece’s hands weren’t big & strong ’nough to win this election. ( Hopefully tomorrow doesn’t prove me as wrong on that as I was mo’ than 5 years ago. If that happens, this paragraph may have to mysteriously disappear like Trotsky did from Stalin’s selfies ).

Ne’er mind: I just found out he outright says he loves Hairpiece “*Sometimes sarcastically*” ( ¿What do asterisks mean in this context? This foreign Twitter culture is strange to someone as backward as me, who still thinks o’ the internet as the place for Geocities-like fan sites ’bout Super Mario 64, where I can learn such intriguing facts as “friendly Bob-ombs” & “70 stars to beat game, or come back to levels for all 120 stars” ).

I must admit, it’s surreal to see a milquetoast left-centrist like Paul Krugman echo the very same “extreme” critiques o’ the US electoral system & warnings ( well, in my case jokes ) ’bout the US becoming a failed state I’ve been making for years. & then we have milquetoast motherfuckers like Bloomberg offered this comprehensive deconstruction o’ all the problems o’ the US electoral system, which includes admitting that the US is the least democratic o’ all countries that aren’t blatantly nondemocratic — tho I would insist that it’s still inaccurate to call the US a democracy for both defacto & historical reasons ( the US was ne’er founded on democracy &, in fact, many o’ its most important designers, like James Madison, were very hostile to democracy, as anyone will learn from The Federalist Papers ).

I must say this election has completely fucked up my yearly tradition — that’s a far greater crime than COVID or the security dangers o’ vote-counters threatened by wingnuts ( ¿why does nobody use this term anymo’? It’s a beautiful word ). What was usually a recap o’ news sources commenting on a finished election has devolved into a muddled stream-o’-consciousness collage o’ random bullshit I found on Reddit. ¿Does it make sense to try talking ’bout how Daily Kos has reacted to Sleepy Joe’s victory when they’ve been talking ’bout it for days?

Well, fuck you, I’m going to do so, anyway. Here they are, showing off Sleepy Joe & Rando VP in their sinister anarchist black face masks, presumably ready to smash every small business window in the universe & cut socialist spending on police like the rabid laissez-faire-lovers they are.

I love this line, by the way:

There are still potential state wins on the table, but he does not need them.

Fuck you, Georgia & Arizona — Get outta here. Nobody needs you anymo’.

( O, shit, we still have 2 senate elections in George — ¡No, wait, come back! ).

I thought everyone’s favorite economist troll, Noah Smith, stopped updating his blog, but then I found out half a year ago he wrote an article ’bout keeping rabbits as pets. It is probably the only article he’s written that I 100% agree with — I am radically pro-rabbit, which is why I voted for Bugs Bunny for president this year, actually, which is why I feel absolutely no sympathy for Hairpiece & his whining o’ so-called sabotage. Bugs was the true victim here.

Lord Keynes, who I also haven’t been reading for years, still makes blog posts every blue moon, but he’s been quiet on any topic regarding Hairpiece or the alt-right — or alt-left, I guess — for the past few years, presumably after Hairpiece’s major tax cuts completely shattered any delusions o’ him being a Keynesian socialist whate’er. I can’t fault this decision o’ his.

Speaking o’ Reddit, I couldn’t get it to load to see what those idiots say, so I’m just going to assume Hairpiece shut it down in his beginning bid to silence all opposition. ¡Soon obscure blogs like mine will be the only 1s left & we will get our chance to shine!

The Nation responded with a seemingly backward schmaltzy article ’bout how, despite Sleepy Joe being a nothing centrist, they should still be appreciated for their “decency” ’cause he was 1 o’ the few people in the world to have family members who have died. ( I’ve had family members die, too, & no sane person would call me decent. ) I thought The Nation was a bit less coddling to centrists. On the other hand, The Intercept had no problem gleefully pointing out all the ways moderate Democrats were hypocritically attacking their base, not ’cause their ideas are bad ( like maybe some o’ Hairpiece’s mo’-rabid fanbase’s racism, sexism, etc. ), but ’cause it might make Democrats look bad. No wonder there are still many who prefer voting Republican: apparently Republicans still allow their voters to have independent ideas & try to attune their policies to their voters’ whims, rather than the opposite, trying to tell voters what they should believe & say. It’s shocking voters are so ambivalent toward a party that treats them as if they should be their servants, not the other way round.

’Course, I say that moderate liberals are only slightly better than utter failures, since as almost every major newspaper has been admitting ( thanks to Hairpiece breaking the moral horizon so much that e’en mainstream media can no longer delude themselves with the ol’ “both sides” bullshit ), the fact that Hairpiece received mo’ votes than he received last election & that this election was so close is still a deep embarrassment. Also, the Senate will probably stay red, — those fucking commie reds — so I look forward to 4 years where nothing happens & the embittered poor turn back to the right wing for ’nother zany heiler. Apparently the real-life version o’ Thursday O’Beefe is a top contender for 2024.

CounterPunch, a news site I have definitely not read in years, came out with an article called “Why Capitalism Was Destined to Come Out on Top in the 2020 Election”. The answer is obviously: “’Cause Capitalism Always Comes Out on Top”. This is as opposed to the 2016 election, when communism was so close to sweeping up the US & giving us all sweet Lenin-brand Po’ Boy hats. This article is legit so generic & transparently phoned-in that it could be applied to just ’bout every election. ¿Why e’en bother writing a new article? If anything, this election could’ve threatened to pull us much farther backward, which should a’least alarm or excite e’en noncompromising communists.

The only interesting thing they note is @ the end:

But those signs also reveal a huge remaining problem: disorganization on the left.

The problem is that CounterPunch doesn’t realize the obvious reason why: intellectual people tend to try avoiding conformity. CounterPunch should understand this, as their founder was praised for s’posedly being gainst the grain, which included his controversial climate-change denialism. The idea that everyone sympathetic to the left will zombie-like become urban labor unionists with the same fervor as Republicans fall into step is delusional.

Democracy Now! makes fun o’ spoiled white people for blaming Latin Americans for not stepping in line to the Democrats, when those honkeys are too busy playing The Last of Us to get off their ass & vote themselves, failing to realize that many Latin Americans are whitebread motherfuckers themselves, like a lot o’ Florida Cubans who couldn’t give a fuck ’bout Mexicans, they just want their tax cuts, bro.

FiveThirtyEight argues that the election was not as close as people thought ’twas this whole time, thanks to making judgments before all the votes were counted ( which is what we’re still doing now, as Sleepy Joe’s victory is still technically a projection ). Honestly, I agree with a lot o’ people, including Naked Capitalism, who expressed skepticism toward a huge landslide. Most pundits, many o’ whom still want to cling to the “both sides” idea, e’en if it’s been debunked, just wanted to believe that most US citizens weren’t low ’nough to support the kind o’ person who outright expressed tyrannical aspirations, a delusion that could be fed only by only associating with their kind o’ enlightened upper-class kind.

Anyway, let us end this week-long voyage thru the strange waters o’ the US’s 300-year-ol’ election system with these words o’ wisdom from our ex-president:

I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2020

These might be as good as such words o’ wisdom as “IT’S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE”, “IF ALL ELSE FAILS USE FIRE”, & “I FEEL ASLEEP!!”.

&, truly, ¿didn’t we all win this election, by a lot, metaphorically?

Well, ’cept Republicans — but those fuckers wouldn’t be reading this now, so fuck them. We can whisper secrets ’hind their backs & there’s nothing they can do ’bout it.

Luigi’s Mansion 3 is an ol’ familiar sweep o’ the rug under your feet. During my 1st 8 or so hours playing it I felt that this game melded the good elements from Dark Moon, such as the secret gems & the rainbow dark-light flashlight that reveals missing furniture, with fixing some o’ the complaints people had gainst Dark Moon, such as the mission system & E. Gadd constantly yapping @ you¹, & adds extra mechanics, like the plunger shot & Gooigi². I began to think that Luigi’s Mansion 3 did as I predicted it could in my comparison o’ the original vs. Dark Moon: easily besting its predecessors by doing the “1 big mansion, lots o’ freedom & exploration” thing. It does do that for the basement & the 1st 2 floors, before you enable the elevator, as these floors connect to each other naturally with stairs, creating a Metroidvania-like up & down that was not straightforward, like the 1st game did. But after that I noticed that the game devolved into simply going from floor to floor, with each floor being its own separate level, like Dark Moon’s separate mansions.

I should add that some o’ these “floors” have multiple floors themselves, which makes no sense, & is inconsistent with how floors 1 & 2 work. If you look @ the map & select floors 1 & 2 on the left, they will show floor 1 & 2 respectively selected on the right & selecting either o’ those right options will select the corresponding option on the left. This is the only time selecting a left option will have you default to the 2nd floor on the right. But if you select, say, floor 7, its right options will be 1, 2, & 3, & selecting any o’ these right options won’t change the left option. So, the right options represent the #’d floors o’ the hotel as a whole on floors 1 & 2, but represent subfloors on any other floor. I can only dream o’ what this game would be like if all o’ the floors connected to each other in the complex way that floors B1 to 2 do, with the elevator buttons as just pieces to that puzzle.

Thus, this game is a return to form to the original game & simply bullshits & pretends it isn’t divided into distinct linear sections, when they most certainly are. That said, Luigi’s Mansion 3 is free from the Super Mario Sunshine Syndrome bullshit o’ having to play thru the same areas in multiple missions just to find all the gems, as in Dark Moon, while having much better variety than both the original & Dark Moon. Still, it would be nice to finally see a Luigi’s Mansion game that was actually nonlinear.

I’m mixed on how the level themes are laid out. As you go up the hotel, floors begin to feel less like hotel floors & mo’ like other places, like a floor that’s a pirate cove, a garden, a desert tomb, & a medieval castle. Tho I defended Dark Moon for mixing its o’erall mansion theme with other themes, such as nature, desert tombs, & snow as being mo’ interesting than the original just sticking with a basic mansion, that game did a better job o’ keeping those levels grounded as mansions, with non-mansion elements feeling like exceptions. Floors like “The Spectral Catch” & specially “Tomb Suites” don’t feel much like they belong in a hotel @ all & feel mo’ like a ’scuse to have standard video game settings rather than be a hotel. But a’least this game has some mo’ exotic themes. While “Tomb Suites” is just a generic desert tomb, which had already been done in Dark Moon, & “Garden Suites”’s garden theme is hardly rare ( & was also done in Dark Moon ), the castle, pirate, disco club, museum, & shop themes feel a bit mo’ refreshing than Dark Moon’s mo’ standard themes; & I like how the game gradually makes floors mo’ exotic as you reach the middle-to-top floors, & then gradually goes back to normal as you reach the top, with the final floor being a normal hotel floor ’gain, as if the middle floors are a drug sequence that Luigi is not sure he truly experienced.

’Nother problem is that this game falls into Super Mario Odyssey Syndrome with some levels — most notably, “The Dance Hall” & “Unnatural History Museum” — way too short & underdeveloped. I wish they’d spent less time copying Dark Moon & other desert levels in bloating out “Tomb Suites” with trite Indiana Jones traps & spent mo’ time developing mo’ deserving levels with mo’ interesting, new themes like “The Dance Hall”. But then ’gain, like Super Mario Odyssey, it says something good ’bout this game’s levels that the main complaint one might have is them being too underdeveloped in a medium where developers try to bloat everything out as much as possible. & most games would probably wish they could have “Tomb Suites” as their worst level.

Still, this game had some interesting levels that did a better job o’ balancing this game’s o’erarching theme with creating a new theme that felt fresh, such as the “Fitness Center” with puzzles ranging from running on a treadmill to reveal items ( a subtle reference to the original Luigi’s Mansion ) to folding & unfolding yoga mats to match posters on the walls or “Twisted Suites”, with its gimmick o’ mixing up rooms so that doors warp you to a completely different room on the floor & rooms that seem to make a puzzle out o’ every magician cliché, from chained-up water tanks to optical illusion mirrors to rotated floors.

& while its mechanical/sewer theme is far from the most original theme, “Boilerworks” uses this theme to create clever puzzles involving you maneuvering Luigi round in an inflatable duck to avoid hitting spikes while Gooigi ’bove has to manipulate switches to open Luigi’s path without getting hit with the water all o’er the place, while also fitting perfectly its place in the 2nd basement floor. Some people may not like the return trip & consider it to be padding, but you don’t redo much o’ the floor on the return trip & I like the way the developers foreshadow this return with inaccessible paths ’hind brick walls. I only wish they hadn’t made the reason for the return trip as arbitrary as E. Gadd randomly sending a Toad there ’lone.

& then there’s “Paranormal Productions”, with its clever o’erarching puzzle involving warp TVs to movie sets parodying movies like The Ring or cheesy spider monster movies. Granted, much o’ the puzzle is technically fetch-questing; but the area is small ’nough that you don’t have to do too much travelling, & the game doesn’t spell out exactly what you need @ each part o’ the sequence like many fetch quests.

I’ve read complaints that the game starts boring with typical hotel floors round the beginning, but I like how the game warms you up to exploring hotel rooms before getting exotic. Also, I like how the basement & 1st & 2nd floors connect to each other, making them feel some cohesion that all the other floors lack.

1 subtle thing Luigi’s Mansion 3 has that its predecessors don’t is the sheer amount o’ destruction you can cause to all property you see. Not only can you suck up all papers or clothing you find, as in all games, but can also use the plunger shot to fling & break all manner o’ garbage cans, shelves, & potted plants. A particular highlight is on the 7th floor when you can grab a buzzsaw & shred thru everything: beds, couches, chests o’ drawers. It’s as if the Halloween spirit made the developers not only want Luigi to be a ghostbuster, but also a normal-sized Godzilla as well ( speaking o’ which: you can also destroy a shrunken set o’ buildings while fighting a ghost disguised as Godzilla ). Honestly, the funnest part o’ the game is just exploring the variety o’ environments & destroying everything you see for money, just like any good entrepreneur does.

Still, while the Godzilla element was fun, the actual ghostbusting is less so: combat has not been made any less arbitrary, only now it’s streamlined ’nough that it gets o’er with faster — sort o’ a less extreme version o’ Ocarina of Time’s “press Z & let the game sword fight for you”. For instance, Luigi can swing ghosts back & forth as he is sucking them in, allowing you to hit other ghosts & prevent them from taking cheap shots from ’hind you, while also whittling down their HP before sucking them up, while also allowing you to break e’en mo’ shit. It’s not meaningful, mechanics-wise, but it is just a li’l mo’ fun. 1 problem this game has that the previous entries didn’t is that the game ne’er tells you that you have to press the A button right as you slam the ghost onto the ground to go fast ’nough to get mo’ slams & cut down on cycles, rather than mashing the A button, as one would intuitively guess, which is actually the least optimal way to handle slamming.

1 element that has become worse is the flashlight, which for some reason has piss-poor hit detection. The most blatant example I can give is when I had my light covering the inside o’ a barrel full o’ rats, flashed, & yet 1 rat somehow didn’t get killed, e’en tho there was nowhere in the barrel the light could have missed. Many bat $ have been lost repeatedly flashing straight up @ bats, only for the bats to not react @ all, e’en if the flashlight beam was right in their face. It’s light for fuck’s sake: it spreads. If the light is anywhere near a bat or rat it should hit it; ’stead trying to flash up @ a bat is like jabbing a thin needle up & trying to pierce one with it — which is to say, nothing like how light works in any sane realm. ’Nother problem, tho 1 that was in the 1st 2 games, is that when you aim your flashlight & then start moving, Luigi automatically moves his flashlight back down for no reason, forcing the player to use alternate buttons for using the flashlight to avoid holding the controller in a weird way to flash upward. Luckily, you can suck up enemies to collect their money, like in the original Luigi’s Mansion. It’s just unfortunate that I ne’er bothered to check since I just assumed the game worked the way Dark Moon.

The dark light, howe’er, has been improved, not only ’cause it’s used a bit mo’ sparingly than in Dark Moon, but also ’cause it no longer o’erheats, which was a mechanic that ne’er added anything to Dark Moon. They also added new enemies that are possessed garbage bins & treasure chests that are defeated with the dark light.

But what makes these nitpicks less o’ a problem in this game is that this game focuses a lot less on ghostbusting than previous games, emphasizing puzzle-solving e’en mo’ than Dark Moon. Since the ghost-catching mechanic was ne’er the most interesting element o’ the series, I consider this an improvement. Unlike Dark Moon & specially the original, which could sometimes feel monotonous with making you catch the same ghosts o’er & o’er ’gain, I don’t think I e’er felt like ghost-catching was o’erbearing in this game, save for maybe in the postgame, when you can just ignore them, anyway.

As mentioned, the game adds new mechanics to give a bit mo’ variety to a series that e’en in Dark Moon didn’t have much but a hammer to solve almost all puzzles. Some o’ these work well, like the plunger & Gooigi, while others feel tacked-on & janky, like the weird blast attack that on rare occassions is s’posed to be used as a wimpy jump, rather than, you know, let the 1 man who can jump better than the king o’ platformers, Mario, jump. Some people have criticized Gooigi for being a “flat character”, ’cause a rational person would certainly expect a Mario game to have the deep character exploration o’ a Henry James novel ’nother hurtfic character who does nothing, like Rosalina. But Gooigi’s character works perfectly for the game mechanics that he is used for, being a copy o’ Luigi who can move thru permeable surfaces, but dies to water, fire, or lasers, which is what’s actually important to a video game. Also, I don’t know, I find his uncanny valley blank-faced robotic behavior kind o’ funny. I found it hilarious that he’s standing round @ the end & nobody, including Mario, asks what this abomination gainst nature is & where it came from. “Sure, my brother just has a clone made out o’ slime that he can possess. Just ’nother day in the Mushroom Kingdom”.

The problem with all these mechanics is that the game is inconsistent ’bout how effective they are. There is no logic to when you can stick a plunger to any surface, what the blast attack can or cannot break & whether enemies are stunned by the flashlight, dark-light, or blast attack. It’s a coin flip whether or not a ghost wearing shades will allow you to suck its shades up or require you to use your blast attack or whether a ghost with a shield will need you to yank it ’way with your plunger or blast it ’way with your blast attack.

Puzzles are hit & miss in this game. There are plenty o’ great puzzles thruout levels, such as the secret brick in “The Dance Hall” that you have to blast attack to jump under & hit to reveal coins like a classic Super Mario Bros. coin block, the weight puzzle in “Tomb Suites”, or most o’ the puzzles in “Boilerworks”, ’mong many others.

Then you have puzzles like the laser statue puzzle in “Tomb Suites”. You have no idea how annoyed I was, dying multiple times & having to wait thru long loading times, ’cause silly me kept trying to stop the lasers by blowing sand to cover them, using the mechanic that made the most sense in this situation & which was explicitly introduced in this level, when the actual solution is just to use your blast attack on all the statues, which I only found after finally judging that the sand method wouldn’t work & just started brute-forcing all my moves. E’en ’mong your moves, the blast attack is the last you’d expect to work on the statues. I still don’t e’en know what that attack is s’posed to be doing, canonically — it doesn’t destroy the statues. I guess these statues are just triggered by harsh blasts o’ air & nothing in the game hints @ this @ all ( well, ’cept for maybe E. Gadd’s hints — but I shouldn’t need to say that good puzzles telegraph their solutions, not tell them to you directly ).

Bosses can also be rather unintuitive. The 2nd phase o’ the T. rex fight expects you to move Gooigi next to the T. rex so that it tries to eat Gooigi, stunning it long ’nough to hit it with an egg. The seemingly very similar method o’ having Gooigi lure the T. rex into shooting shockwaves @ him doesn’t work — then the T. rex will immediately swing its head round after you shoot the egg. Why it can stop its shockwave that fast but not stop eating Gooigi is a mystery, as is why you need Gooigi to be right next to the T. rex to make the T. rex try to eat it, when the T. rex looms o’er you no matter where you are in the room.

I’m also mixed on the hint that Polterpup gives you for the Johnny Deepend fight. I wasted a lot o’ time trying to sneak Gooigi o’er to the switch, only to keep getting sprayed by water, e’en tho I had already come up with the idea o’ smacking Deepend with a volleyball ( the most obvious idea ), simply ’cause Polterpup hanging round the switch seemed like the game was explicitly telling me, “1st you have to get Gooigi to hit the switch”. I had to ignore this hint to figure out the actual solution. On the other hand, you need to distract Deepend with Gooigi to get the chance to hit him with the ball as Luigi, & I guess Gooigi going toward the switch is a way to do that. I still feel as if Polterpup got in the way o’ my progress o’ already figuring out the puzzle, rather than helping in any way, which feels cheap. It’s better to give no hints than give bad hints.

Speaking o’ bosses, they’re pretty weak, which is unfortunate, as a few floors are just a few rooms & a disappointing boss. I cannot fully communicate how sad I am that they squandered the cool theme used for “The Dance Hall” simply for the small intro to a boss that’s just a mo’ simplistic variation o’ the main mechanic o’ the magicians from “Twisted Suites”, which was a fully-developed level. Almost all bosses in this game are Rareware Bosses with phases where you just dodge shit for a while & then you get 1 hit in on them, rinse repeat. ¿Does anyone like these bosses? They’re transparently lazy compared to developing a boss with actually interesting interaction & make fights feel slower & drawn out. They’re basically inherent padding. What makes it dumber is they throw virtually infinite hearts @ you, so there isn’t e’en much urgency to avoid getting hit — which is somewhat good, since some o’ these bosses are cheap. The knight ghost has a magical hit box that makes its jousting stick warp you to its end, e’en when you’re clearly inches ’way from it. ( Meanwhile, it’s a coin-flip whether or not flashing the knight’s face will actually stun it; if it doesn’t, have fun waiting while the knight rides round the edges ’gain ).

I’m close to thinking the best boss is the penultimate Hellen Gravely boss, who requires you to go back & forth ’tween moving Luigi & Gooigi, moving Luigi to keep him safe from the lasers ’bove & Hellen’s attacks & moving Gooigi below to turn off the lasers ’bove so Luigi has room to suck up Hellen, with the urgency o’ needing to act quickly before Hellen turns on the water below & kills Gooigi, forcing the player to restart. It can be annoying & a li’l cheap, specially on the last phase, as Hellen just keeps undoing the progress, which can make what you do feel a bit repetitive. Also, Luigi’s weird explosion attack that late in-game acts as a jump, well, is a shitty ’scuse for a jump with a noticeable delay, which is terrible for trying to dodge a laser that accelerates as it moves, & which needs to be moving fast ’nough to not land back on top o’ it. It feels like something you’d see in a Super Mario World rom hack whose developer realized a mechanic not meant for a certain puzzle can be jankily used for that puzzle. This boss also doesn’t just throw hearts @ you left & right, making it an actual challenge.

But what ruins Hellen is that some idiot decided to make it so that if you lose to the boss, you have to mash thru the whole cutscene ’gain. I stared with wide eyes as this horrific realization came to me the 1st time I died to her. ¿What game in 2019 has unskippable cutscenes @ all, much less unskippable cutscenes after beating a boss? ¿Did nobody playtest losing to the penultimate boss? The problem is that they just make you reload your save when you die ( forcing you to load what you’ve already loaded ), ’stead o’ just letting you restart the boss immediately, as a well-programmed game would do. What makes it most maddening is that the final boss does just restart you @ the final boss³.

It’s annoying ’cause you know if you make this reasonable complaint some douche bag will retort, “just git gud”, proving that they’re too dumb to be worth listening to; but the problem isn’t losing itself, but that the developers contrived some idiotic extra punishment for losing that slows down my playing momentum & just wastes my time. This is a maddeningly common problem in modern games & is why I sometimes prefer games like Lost Levels o’er easier games: a’least Lost Levels doesn’t make me mash thru a bunch o’ bullshit just to retry a level. It’s 1 thing to make me retry a level when I lose: that’s necessary for the challenge to actually work. I’d be annoyed if I died @ a tough level & then the game just warped me back to where I died & didn’t let me try to challenge ’gain properly. ¿But what does seeing a cutscene ’gain have to do with the challenge? ¿Why would anyone e’er want to see a cutscene a 2nd time so soon? Imagine if after every time you died in some classic NES game they made you read the same scene o’ Hamlet. So if you die on level 3 o’ Ghost ’n Goblins a dozen times, you have to read Act 1, Scene 3 o’ Hamlet each time. You’d despite that scene o’ Hamlet by then & ne’er want to read it ’gain in your life. That’s why nobody e’er reads books mo’ than a couple times in 1 sitting & why nobody should e’er have to watch a cutscene — which, let’s face it, is no Hamlet — mo’ than once in the same playthru.

Technically, you can buy bones to maybe avoid the cutscene. I don’t know ’cause I’ve ne’er bought a bone, ’cause they’re otherwise useless, since the game autosaves after every room. These bones are the perfect example o’ a game implementing a mechanic, despite having no use in this iteration o’ the series, simply ’cause an earlier game did. Some may find this 1 convenience clever, but I find it stupid needing to think to buy an otherwise useless item just to avoid having to waste time on a long cutscene.

But the worst boss in the game has to be the final King Boo boss. O’ all the Rareware bosses in this game, this is the Rarewariest. ’Cept in Rare’s defense, e’en a boss as tedious & repetitive as the final K. Rool boss from Donkey Kong Country a’least works solidly & is intuitive. Many o’ the mechanics in this boss, such as tossing a bomb into King Boo’s mouth or pulling on his tongue, don’t work half the time, forcing you to wait thru mo’ generic attacks, like making you run to the 1 spot where they don’t shoot lightning down or making you dodge fireballs, if you miss your chance ’cause throwing the bomb didn’t work or the 1st few times I tried to attack King Boo after I did manage to blow him up, ’cause after I tried to vacuum his tongue & failed, I tried doing other things till, in desperation, I tried his tongue ’gain the 3rd time only to find, to my surprise, that this time I magically worked now. In the final phase, you have a time limit, which means if the bomb just bounces off King Boo’s open mouth or if the motion control bullshit just suddenly swings your aim in a different direction right as you shoot too many times, you’ll have to do the whole boss all o’er ’gain.

This is worsened by the fact that this is the most generic boss in this game, who could fit into virtually any 3D game, it requires you to use Luigi’s Mansion mechanics so sparingly & shallowly. Most o’ the challenge is dodging things, whether it be fireballs, lightning, tongues, spike balls, or bombs. None o’ it is challenging, ’cept for maybe trying to jump o’er the tongues when they rotate toward you thanks to the aforementioned jankiness o’ Luigi’s “jump” & the wonky hitboxes on the tongues, & unlike Hellen, this boss goes back to just throwing hearts @ you left & right, so the only true danger is the timer on the final phase; but you have no idea how mind-breakingly tedious it is to do them o’er & o’er & o’er ’gain. It’s annoying, ’cause it makes this boss’s 1 clever element terrible: during the 2nd & final phase, he splits into copies, only 1 o’ which is genuine & is actually affected by getting a bomb thrown into their mouth. This is telegraphed in many subtle ways, the most prominent being that the real King Boo has 4 teeth, while the fakes have 2 ( a clever callback to how King Boo looked in the original Luigi’s Mansion ). This would be cool if missing out on this fact a few times didn’t make you waste several mo’ minutes dodging fireballs that will ne’er hit me if their life depended on it.

What makes this lame final boss mo’ annoying is the way they tease a much better boss. They have you rescue Mario after beating Hellen Gravely & have Mario lead Luigi up to the final battle, which makes you think you’ll get to have Mario helping you during the final boss, which would be a cool twist to the series.⁴ But for some asinine reason, King Boo just puts everyone back into the painting, ’cept for Luigi simply ’cause o’ a Deus Ex Machina thrown in using Polterpup. ¿Then what was the point o’ rescuing Mario before Peach? ¿Just to trick the player? ¿Why on earth would the developers o’ this game think leading players into thinking they’ll get an awesome boss battle with Mario assisting you only to deliver a generic Rareware boss would in any way produce a positive effect on players?

Many people online criticize Polterkitty as being padding. I agree that the boss itself is unintuitive when you 1st fight them & repetitive on subsequent fights. For some reason she’s impervious to being flashed in the face ’cept when she’s right ’bout to pounce on Luigi. I guess it’s s’posed to be ’cause her paws are right under her eyes as she’s creeping; but they’re right under her eyes just before pouncing, too.

But the idea o’ making you go back & re-explore past hotel floors, e’en making you go thru multiple floors, is a nice ’way to encourage a less linear exploration than the level’s proper gave you. If anything, I think the problem is that they only have to explore 1 or 2 other floors before it ends. I think this mechanic would’ve worked better if they made it postgame & had you explore most o’ the floors & made where you have to explore randomized. That way it’d feel like a sort o’ final exam wherein you have to treat the hotel as a whole as a level, rather than individual floors.

The final question is, ¿how does Luigi’s Mansion 3 compare to either o’ its predecessors? As mentioned, none o’ the Luigi’s Mansion games had good combat, & Luigi’s Mansion 3 a’least makes it less tedious while also offering a few mo’ options to add variety, too. & despite my long rant ’bout Luigi’s Mansion 3’s bosses, it probably still has generally better bosses than its predecessors. The original & Dark Moon, too, had Rareware bosses that were either tedious or forgetful. The only bosses worth caring ’bout were 2 bosses in Dark Moon: the Grouchy Possessor ( the spider ) & the final boss. If not for the cutscene problem, Hellen Gravely would be the best boss in the series, & if not her, the magicians on the 12th floor, Johnny Deepend, or Captain Fishhook would be. E’en with the unintuitive puzzle for the 2nd phase during the T. rex fight, it’s still mo’ interesting than any boss in the original & most from Dark Moon. It says something that tho Amadeus Wolfgeist is a generic Rareware boss, it’s still better in every way than the utterly forgetful & pointless piano boss in Dark Moon, the Harsh Possessor.

Most o’ the internet seems to agree that it’s better than the very controversial Dark Moon, but many still cling to the original for some vague magic that I have heard described in many games that basically just boils down to nostalgia. People seemed mixed on whether or not this game better matches the “dark atmosphere” o’ the original. They’re mixed ’cause the only special “dark atmosphere” o’ the original is made-up in their heads — probably memories from when they were young & had mo’ fragile sensibilities. Yes, it’s shocking that newer Luigi’s Mansion games are less scary now that you’re in your late 20s. The fact is that the original Luigi’s Mansion was just as goofy as the other 2. For instance, its final boss is the goofiest o’ them, involving King Boo dressing as Bowser, putting on Bowser’s head upside down & running round like a Looney Tunes character. & I don’t know what humans these nostalgic people know in real life, but “realistic” is not how I would describe the portrait ghosts o’ the original game. The only halfway creepy thing ’bout the original Luigi’s Mansion is the shadow glitch that appears during the blackout that makes it look like Luigi’s shadow is being hung from the rafters — & that was on accident. If one wants genuine horror, there are much better series to look than the 1 starring an italian plumber with a vacuum who acts like the video-game equivalent to Scooby Doo, including being barely able to talk.

Music is the 1 thing this game may do worse than its predecessors. It, ’long with Dark Moon’s, are definitely weaker than Totaka & Tanaka’s music in the original. While Dark Moon had a catchy main theme, ’twas remixed for every level, lending that game li’l musical variety. This game has the most musical variety in terms o’ styles, — ’nough to almost hide the fact that each level’s melody is round the same, just @ different tempos — but none o’ the melodies stand out as much to me, & the instruments, like Dark Moon’s, are mostly cliché stock haunted instruments, while the original’s music felt unique with its blend o’ horror instruments spiced with hip hop & techno. Still, there are a few highlights, such as the use o’ harmonica & banjos in “B2 Boilerworks” or the slight surf rock to Johnny Deepend’s theme, which a’least feels fresh for a Luigi’s Mansion game. I also like the weird strings in the Polterkitty boss fight, which is the closest this game comes to sounding as weird as the original. “F3 Hotel Shops” & the DJ Phantasmagloria battle themes were the catchiest to me.

The visuals are, ’course, much better than its predecessors from much weaker consoles. & surprisingly, that’s not just my tastes: I was surprised by how many people I saw online who said Luigi’s Mansion 3 before e’en Breath of the Wild when asked which game they thought looked best. I only have 1 caveat: I was always disappointed that the Switch didn’t replicate the 3DS’s 3D capabilites. Dark Moon & the 3DS remake o’ the original were the highlight games for the 3DS’s 3D, as it brought out the strangeness o’ those games’ art design e’en mo’.

Cometropolis

This level started with just the idea o’ a neon palette, the implementation o’ which probably did take the bulk o’ the time I spent on this level. The “palette changes” as they seem to be in the actual game use completely different coding, bending this game’s flimsy ’scuse for a palette system e’en farther. Unlike ol’ consoles & computers, wherein changing palettes was much quicker than changing tiles that many ol’ games would cycle palettes to create the illusion o’ animation, changing the palette in this game requires regenerating textures, which is much slower than just animating tiles. Theoretically it’d be possible to do it rather quickly using shaders; howe’er, SDL doesn’t allow shaders, & it’s much too late in development to switch o’er to the much mo’ complex & much less intuitive OpenGL. What I did do to create the illusion o’ a cycling palette is take advantage o’ 2 caveats to this problem: 1. I can render a rectangle o’ any color that covers the whole screen in no time; 2. SDL allows me to apply the equivalent to Photoshop’s “multiply” blending mode to textures, which, when used with a white & black image makes whate’er is ’hind show through the white while still concealing what’s ’hind the black.¹ Thus, I just set whate’er palette entries I want to show the shifting rainbow color ( which are dark gray & black ) to white while everything else is black.

I had originally planned to use the city theme for this palette, since I felt the city would look nice in neon, but since I had all 4 city slots filled, I ’stead considered making a space level, since that theme has the fewest slots filled & it would fit there, too. I think I played with the idea o’ focusing on dodging horizontally-moving sparks on wire or something; howe’er, none o’ this felt fun, so I shelved it for a while. I don’t remember where my mind went from there, but as some point I came up with the idea o’ dodging falling stars, — probably from the 1 memorable level from New Super Mario Bros., the 1 wherein lava rocks fall from the sky — & then decided to move “Sleet Streets” to the “domestic” theme ( since it’s mo’ ’bout homes than the city ) & make this a city level. Then, finally, I decided to make this a space level ’gain, despite keeping the city graphics, & would just say this was a city on ’nother planet. It’s not as if I haven’t been blending themes together & sticking them into whate’er slot was most convenient, & if any theme deserved to dip into other themes’ slots, it would be the city theme.

The falling stars are just a bit mo’ complicated than just randomly placing them round. To ensure the player could not outrun stars in either direction & that there was a steady supply, I made it so that every time it generated a falling star it not only placed it on the current screen, but also on the next & previous. & to decrease the chance so’ stars congregating in 1 area I made it so that it had to spawn the next star a few blocks ’way from where the last spawned.

Recording the time & gem scores were surprisingly smoothly. I made the time score somewhat lenient to make up for the delays falling stars can sometimes force on the player when they form walls. E’en then, I still couldn’t help myself from just running thru stars when I knew a heart was close ’head, which I try not to do, since I want these challenges to be possible without taking any hits. Shockingly, I was able to record the gem score on my 1st try, which I always found very hard to get during practice. Then ’gain, here you can see me moving as carefully as I can. I should point out that this will definitely replace “Stop & Go Space Station” as the 4th-cycle space level, pushing “Stop & Go Space Station” down to the 3rd cycle, as it is much mo’ difficult.

Learn mo’ ’bout this project @ boskeopolis-land.com.

“I will multiply thy bugs as the stars o’ the heaven…”.

Don’t Touch Me, I’m a Real Live Wire

This level’s main gimmick, electric walls that could only be deactivated with switches in ’nother area, forcing the player to race from the switch to the electric walls, was originally going to be a space level, but I felt it would be better to use this mechanic to spice up an attic maze level idea I’d been toying with, since I feel exploring a maze just to find a keycane or collect a certain # o’ gems had already been done ’nough in this game. This gimmick also helps set this level apart from the attic levels in Cool Spot whence this level takes perhaps a bit too much inspiration otherwise.

I’m mixed on the size o’ this level. I insisted on constructing the maze so that all space is used for something, with no large chunks o’ solid wood ( which the Cool Spot levels also do ). While I feel like I did a rather good job o’ that, I do worry that the level might be too big. Then ’gain, a maze needs to be large ’nough to get lost in & have plenty o’ dead ends to offer any challenge, & players who know their way will be able to beat the level within less than a minute. Still, part o’ me can’t help feeling like some pieces — specially the lower left section — feel like filler that exists just to collect gems.

I like the proportions ’tween the pre-1st-wall & after-1st-wall sections, with the early section being much smaller & having fewer dead ends, acting as a subtle training wheels before the boost in trickiness for the 2nd half. This 2nd half immediately starts with 1-way sections down. If you fail to make it to the 2nd electric wall before the switch runs out, you have to go up a longer path round where you went do to fall back down to where the switches are.

If you’re wondering why there’s switch blocks right after the 1st electric wall with switches on either side, this was just a way to force players to reset the switch after the 1st electric wall. E’en with the warning telling you outright that the switches are timed, I can imagine players rushing & forgetting to reset the switch on their own, which will almost guarantee that the switch, which would be getting low just after passing the 1st electric wall, would turn off long before the player gets close to the 2nd electric wall, which felt too much like a frustrating gotcha to let stand.

The time score is so easy I was able to do it 1st try when recording. I intentionally made it less demanding, since players needed to remember the path they needed to take & ne’er take wrong turns to have a chance to make it in time. The gem score was much harder for me & required an embarrassing # o’ tries. As the video shows, this level has the largest gem score o’ any level so far, requiring 40,000₧, which is 400 individual gems. If you pay close attention to the video, you’ll see that there are many gems hidden ’hind the foreground pipes ( 1 o’ the many elements I ripped off from Cool Spot’s attic levels ). Howe’er, there are so many gems in this level, I doubt you need to collect any. I didn’t go too out o’ my way to collect them & e’en flub up collecting the large star formation o’ gems in the top area, falling down a 1-way area before collecting most o’ them. Howe’er, by that point I’d already reached the required 40,000₧.

I was planning on having this released in September, but was delayed by major programming renovations. Graphical layering glitches in this level, specially when someone dies, was the last straw for this game’s unbelievably naïve layering system inspired by Super Mario World under the mistaken belief that code aimed for a 90s game console would work well for modern computer architectures. This scheme used dumb boolean flags on all blocks & sprites & looping o’er all blocks & sprites twice ’tween map backgrounds & foregrounds, 1st blocks & then sprites without priority, & then blocks & then sprites with priority. To draw sprites ’bove the foreground, I resorted to some hacky virtual function that did nothing for the vast majority o’ sprites.

I completely o’erhauled all this, removing all traces o’ “priority” flags. I replaced this with 17¹ layers o’ lists o’ generic renderable objects, which can render blocks, sprites, or map layers, which are simply all looped o’er every frame. This allows blocks, sprites, & map layers to be on any layer & to be easily moved to any other layer.

To better fit this new mo’ generic system, I also o’erhauled how maps & level files are read: explicit “backgrounds” & “foregrounds” are replaced with generic “layers”, which can be set on any o’ the 17 layers ( tho to make it convenient for me, they default to the default “background” layer & their “layer” can be set to “foreground”, which will put it on the default “foreground” layer ). I also changed the map tile layers to use generic types like “Blocks”, “Texture”, “BlocksTexture”, “Tiles”, & “Fade”, followed by a # that represents which layer it should go on or the strings “BG”, “BG1”, “BG2”, “FG”, “FG1”, “FG2” to simply put it into those default layers so I don’t have to remember their #s. I also changed it so that the BlocksSystem has multiple blocks lists to accommodate this mo’ generic scheme. Since the priority flag is completely ignored now, blocks that should be drawn ’bove the player should be put on a 2nd “Blocks” layer set to “FG”. This new scheme also allows for mo’ opportunities for rendering optimizations. For instance, both block & tile layers ( tile layers are drawn but cannot be interacted with ) can be made textures, wherein they are all combined into a single texture, simplifying them into a single draw call @ the cost o’ not being able to be animated or affected by level events.

There are also some subtler changes I made. For instance, I fixed a glitch that may have seeped into earlier videos wherein the “GAME START” text on the title screen would randomly spread onto 1 or 2 lines. ’Ventually I found out this was caused by a mistake in the look-’head code for the autoline code that would read 1 character beyond the end o’ the list o’ characters, which would be random data. In hindsight, the fact that this clearly involved randomness should’ve clued me in that there was garbage data being read; for some reason, I was stuck for a while on the hypothesis o’ a rounding error in some division or float-to-int conversion. The fact that this only e’er seemed to affect the “GAME START” text & ne’er caused segmentation faults, despite this error technically occurring everywhere there is text, astounds me.

A mo’ noticeable change is that the diamond has been replaced by a spinning card ( I think I also fixed a bug that would cause already-collected cards to still appear when re-entering a level & would only disappear if the player went near them due to optimizations in the block-collision code ), which was a change I had planned for a while, but for some reason had trouble getting the animation right before. Someday I plan on implementing a way to view each level’s card from the o’erworld menu.

Learn mo’ ’bout Boskeopolis Land @ boskeopolis-land.com

Look @ this project’s eldritch code

Since I wrote 2 extensive posts analyzing the level design o’ Super Mario 64 & Super Mario Sunshine ( not planning on doing the Galaxy games, tho — & I wouldn’t be wasting money on this remake if I were, anyway, since I still have my Wii copies ), it makes sense that I would write ’bout this topic.

I have mixed feelings ’bout this remake remaster port cheap emulator & roms worse than what pirates offer. I remember I had 2nd thoughts while working on my analyses o’ Super Mario 64 & Super Mario Sunshine, since I had read the leaked rumors ’bout 3D Mario “remasters” earlier this year & wondered if I perhaps should’ve waited to play these remasters; howe’er, I was skeptical o’ these rumors @ the time & decided that it’d still be better to play thru the originals in their entirety & maybe after the “remasters” come out unwisely waste e’en more o’ my short time going o’er those & comparing & contrasting. Interestingly, I remember my skepticism was ’cause I doubted Nintendo could put out good remasters in such short time & thought that, @ best, the rumors would be that Nintendo would just release Virtual-Console-style ports — ’cept I expected them to be much cheaper. Since it turned out that I was right, it turned out my fears were unfounded & I, thankfully, ne’er have to play Super Mario Sunshine ’gain & deal with its dumb ass “challenges” o’ waiting on boats & ramming watermelons into walls for several minutes. On the other hand, it would’ve been nice to see Super Mario 64 fixed up, as it definitely needs it, & to see if Nintendo could make Super Mario Sunshine not a buggy, sloppy mess anymo’.

I’m probably the only person as mixed ’bout this release, as everyone else is either mindlessly excited or deeply troubled by the caveats that Nintendo pointlessly added to this release, like their scummy use o’ limited release to create “fear o’ missing out” & pressure gamers, who are notorious for their lack o’ self-control & wise financial practices ( but are oft well-paid, despite this incompetence ). I think the reason is that, as I’ve hinted or said outright in some o’ my analyses, I don’t think the 3D Mario games were all that great the begin with. Super Mario 64 was revolutionary for its time, but has aged poorly; Super Mario Sunshine is just flat-out badly designed & is such a mix o’ low ambition & sloppy, amateur mistakes in terms o’ bugs that it should make such a AAA company like Nintendo blush; & Super Mario Galaxy was essentially the McDonald’s o’ video games — good for a quick, mindless play, but derivative & quite sloppily-designed, as well. There are plenty o’ 3D platformers that are better than the latter 2, including Banjo-Kazooie, the original Spyro trilogy, &, hell, e’en Donkey Kong 64, which was a’least ambitious while being sloppy & incompetent, as opposed to Sunshine & Galaxy which were sloppy & incompetent while just copying Super Mario 64 & failing to understand what made that game work in the 1st place. Hell, e’en Super Mario 3D Land & Super Mario 3D World are better, since they a’least understood how to handle straightforward platforming correctly, while Super Mario Sunshine kind o’ butchered explorative platforming & Super Mario Galaxy couldn’t figure out whether it wanted to be an explorative or straightforward platformer & opted to half-heartedly do both @ the same time.¹

The comparison to the Spyro trilogy is fitting, as those games received full remasters a year or so ago, all for $40, with some o’ the most gorgeous graphics there are so far. Now, granted, in my recent playthrus o’ the games I’ve found that these games haven’t aged super well, either, — I would probably rank them all lower than, say, Super Mario 64 or Banjo-Kazooie — & I felt bad ’bout buying this remake, as I feel I was just feeding this remake/rehashing obsession that is starving the artistic world o’ new ideas². So you can imagine how Super Mario 3D All-Stars has crossed the line into definite no-buy. Still, it’s hard not to be embarrassed to see Nintendo, who were once the greatest game publisher in the world, get their asses kicked by some nobodies called “Games for Bob” & fucking Activision.

Some people may brag that this is a great business decision on Nintendo’s part, & they’re right; but Nintendo fans should realize that this great business decision, like many great business decisions, came @ the loss o’ Nintendo’s dignity & reputation. Perhaps Nintendo has no reason to care ’bout this, but people who invest so much o’ their life dedicated to this corporate god o’ theirs should, as the only thing mo’ pathetic than worshipping a faceless corporation is worshipping a faceless corporation that makes crap now. Granted, Nintendo’s been making crap for the past few decades, as one can see from modern Mario & Zelda games & pretty much every home console since the Super Nintendo, including the Switch, which is so bad, Nintendo was sued o’er its crappiness.

I should point out that, from what I’ve seen, the ports look worse to me than probably to others. While people try to give Nintendo the most pathetic o’ “you tried” trophies for their higher-resolution UI elements in Super Mario 64, while not improving any o’ the other textures, I think having a mix o’ high-resolution & low-resolution textures looks mo’ jarring & cheaper than just sticking to consistently low-resolution textures. I’m also very doubtful that Super Mario 64 will play well on the Switch. The Switch has o’er-sensitive control sticks that make slight nudges negligibly different from full yanks, making everything in every Switch game feel slippery. I don’t know why they would make them that way, as it renders useless the whole point o’ having control sticks with different levels o’ force you can apply, but the N64 & GameCube didn’t have this problem. The Wii-U control sticks were the same, & I played the Super Mario 64 Virtual Console port, which feels way too slippery ’cause o’ that, so I have li’l reason to expect different from the Switch’s version. Not to be that guy, but you truly have to play Super Mario 64 with the original N64 controller to make it not feel like ass. I still think buying a used N64 & Super Mario 64 would be a better deal than this remake, e’en if it comes close in price, since the other games aren’t worth much, anyway.

What makes this remake’s timing e’en worse is that it came out so soon after the unauthorized release o’ the disassembly o’ Super Mario 64 into C code ( made easier thanks to Nintendo’s incompetent failure to apply optimizations on their C compiler, which caused slowdown in areas, such as “Dire, Dire Docks”, where there wouldn’t be with the optimizations ) & the proliferation o’ ports ( including a PC port, which I regret not using when I made my analysis o’ Super Mario 64’s level design, as I could’ve had widescreen screenshots ) for just ’bout every system & mods — including the switch already. Nintendo fans had beaten Nintendo’s own port months ago. These ports have many extra mods, including texture upgrades, that you could only dream o’ getting in the “official” release.

This leads us to a particular anomaly: here we see superior versions o’ works made for free that are forced into the underground — effectively censored — ’cause they were not “officially” sanctioned by the “owner”, while only the mo’ imperfect product is legally allowed to be bought & used. ¿Does this not go gainst both our artistic & economic goals to encourage efficiency, to encourage the production o’ the best products? & yet here the law is outright preventing the best work o’ art from succeeding — trying to prevent it from existing. But someone well-versed in economics could easily find the answer: the cause is a monopoly — to be specific, a government-sanctioned monopoly known as “copyright”. ’Cause Nintendo owns the game, they don’t have to compete in making the best version; they only need to legally outlaw any competitors.

Thus, rather than creating an environment where works are refined to their best, most consumer-pleasing version, consumers are left with nothing but imperfect versions competing with each other, as the only way to compete with an imperfect work o’ art is not to refine it, as would be the rational way to make it better, but to make a completely different work that trades imperfections for other imperfections. This is also inefficient in that it forces people to “reinvent the wheel” & recreate art slightly different to avoid being struck down by the government rather than work on the parts that need to be improved. Hence why we have such absurd bootlegs like Yooka-Layley, rather than a new Banjo-Kazooie game. ’Course, programmers who are familiar with how open-source software would recognize this all too well: it’s the same reason why proprietary Windows & OSX users have to tolerate the quirks in those OSes while copyright-free Linux users can change anything they don’t like ’bout their OS or download from the variety o’ competing options.

’Course, pointing out the simple fact that, yes, copyright has elements that are simply bad for the world o’ art & the economy, would enrage ( which is odd, since it’s not as if we’re @ risk o’ the law changing, so they should be feeling very safe ) worshippers o’ their favorite corporate gods, who have produced much propaganda in defense o’ copyright, much o’ which is inaccurate³, but which has nontheless latched into people’s minds. This is probably ’cause the extreme version o’ copyright that currently exists in the US doesn’t have much to stand on, logically: e’en economists, who tend to be pro-ownership, can’t keep themselves from cynically calling it the “Mickey Mouse law”. After all, while one could maybe argue that if Nintendo didn’t hold a monopoly on a new game they make, they wouldn’t be able to make money & continue funding development o’ new games ( tho this makes one wonder how so much great open-source software was funded ), ¿will Nintendo fans be so delusional to argue that Nintendo could not produce games if they couldn’t keep gouging people for games they had already spent their money making decades ago? ¿Were artists not perfectly able to make a living creating art with only 14 years to profit off a work o’ art centuries ago? ¿Why do owners suddenly need mo’ than 90 years now?

Still, I’m less angry than some people, not only ’cause these games aren’t that good to begin with, but also ’cause Nintendo’s attempt to sell this game in a corrupt way is so self-defeating, I can only laugh, & that ungenerous part o’ me kind o’ thinks that the people who fall for it are so dumb, perhaps the world is better with them having less money. For instance, I might be mo’ horrified by Nintendo trying to exploit “fear o’ missing out” if we weren’t talking ’bout decades-ol’ games that people have already missed out on. & while Super Mario 64 was revolutionary for its time, Super Mario Sunshine & Galaxy’s impact on the industry is minimal. The only game I can think o’ that Sunshine influenced was some indie game called A Hat in Time, & the only game I can think o’ that Galaxy influenced were bootlegs, like the illustrious DuLuDuBi Star. The truth is, when these games came out the rest o’ the industry had far mo’ interesting games to pay attention to, like Grand Theft Auto, Halo, & Resident Evil in 2002 or… Actually, looking it up, it seems 2007 was a very dry year, as well as 2006. In hindsight, I’m no longer so sorry that my poverty made me miss out on the newest games in the late 2000s — it seems they were mostly crap, anyway. Anyway, I can bet almost anyone who hasn’t played these 2 games hasn’t played other games that are far mo’ significant & better.

In fact, I would go far ’nough to say that while Nintendo is gouging players for these half-assed ports o’ rather half-assed games, they slipped thru much better games for close-to-free ( well, so long as you’re already paying for Nintendo Online ): the original Super Mario All-Stars. My recent playthru o’ the 3D Mario games ( I played Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 round the end o’ 2017, so it wasn’t that long ago ), I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re not nearly as good as the classic 2D Mario games. While 64 hasn’t aged well & Sunshine & Galaxy weren’t that great when they 1st came out, the original Super Mario Bros. & Super Mario Bros. 3 are still excellent & make me remember after decades o’ mediocre Mario games how Mario came to fame in the 1st place.

Also, it’s not as if Nintendo’s the only company in the world to o’erprice outdated work simply ’cause it has a well-known brand’s face on it: Apple’s been gouging people on computers with outdated specs fore’er. I could e’en see someone who is rich ’nough that they can’t be bothered to care that they’re o’erpaying paying $60 to try these games. Hell, I wasted $50 on that new Zelda game wherein you just wander thru empty forests, fight the same generic fantasy monsters with sticks, & wait every few minutes for Link to catch his fucking breath ( I guess that’s where it got its name ); compared to that ol’ games that are a’least actual games & not inferior simulations o’ wandering thru the local forest looks pretty good.

What makes me truly feel bummed out ’bout this release is how excited everyone is ’bout it & how much it reveals how li’l standards & self-respect video game fans have — admittedly not a new epiphany, since “gamers” have been flaunting their cultural & general intellectual paucity ( as well as corporate servility ) for decades; I mean, we’re talking ’bout a demographic with such fragile egos that they feel the need to give themselves the label “gamers”, as opposed to fans o’ any other art medium, who don’t embarrass themselves so. Immediately after I had read ’bout the Nintendo Direct ( the only time I have e’er given a shit ’bout these corporate advertisements, since, as mentioned earlier, I had an actual interest in these remakes beforehand ), my YouTube recommendations — as recommended by the robotic equivalent o’ that friend 1000 IQ points lower than you who thinks quoting ol’ video games is funny & whom you wonder why you e’er associate with them in the 1st place — was inundated with the most embarrassing selection o’ videos o’ corporate fellatio ( if you want proof that capitalism has usurped Christianity as the dominant religion in the west for the moronic masses, just gaze ’pon the zeal o’ worship so many people cast ’pon their divine made-up legal entities — while these same hypocrites who demand that video games be respected as art have so li’l respect for the actual flesh-&-blood artists who did the actual work that they could probably ne’er name a single programmer if their lives depended on it ), accompanied by thumbnails with bearded young white male #13892 mugging the camera with some wacky expression.

’Cause I’m drunk & surly, I’m going to spend the rest o’ this article breaching online etiquette & make fun o’ these goons:

For instance, the 1st video I found was titled “Nintendo Just Won 2020 With their Mario 35th Anniversary Direct”, whate’er that’s s’posed to mean — I guess that Nintendo’s better than rival game development companies. Keep in mind that this is the same year Sony & Microsoft are releasing new consoles. I haven’t played a Sony console in decades & probably haven’t played a Microsoft console e’er⁴; but e’en I have to admit that if you think new consoles by Sony & Microsoft are less impressive than half-assed ports o’ ol’ games, you must have drunk the Nintendo Kool-Aid & have given up all independent, critical thought. Imagine how sad it would be that you think regurgitating out shit Nintendo made decades ago is the best thing o’ 2020. If I thought this rehash was 1 o’ the best things video games had to offer, I would just dislike video games, period.

& I don’t know why YouTube keeps recommending me videos o’ Grover from Sesame Street talking ’bout Mario games, but he’s apparently obsessed with Paper Mario. Well, now he’s talking ’bout Super Mario 3D All-Stars with a video titled “The Mariosplosion Was REAL”. The only explosion I saw was Nintendo shitting themselves in the pants, & then offering their fans to buy it for $60, which they gladly did — proof that Austrian-schoolers’ “mud pie” argument gainst the labor theory o’ value is backward, as only in a capitalist society could you succeed by selling people mud pies.

Amusingly, IGN, 1 o’ those sites who throws 10s like candy⁵, is being surprisingly nitpicky, with its title, “Super Mario 3D All-Stars: Mario 64 Speedruns Won’t Be Nearly As Fast”. O’ all the problems a remake could have, “speedrunners can’t exploit a glitch anymo’” is far down the list o’ relevance. Usually people praise companies for fixing bugs, not criticize them for failing to leave them in.

Perhaps the silliest video is the video by Nintendo’s own channel called “We Played Super Mario 3D All-Stars!”. No shit you played it, dipshits — you made it.

Our next video features a gamer dude so generic he’s wearing a Star Wars baseball cap. This as well as his very creating channel name, “Geeks + Gamers”, let’s you, fellow gamers &/or geeks know that he is, also, what you humans call “gamers” & “geeks”. He doesn’t show his face, howe’er, as he’s facepalming next to the title, “People Are Still Complaining About Nintendo Despite Super Mario 3D All Stars Announcement”. ¿Can you believe that the peasants have the audacity to criticize our great Lord & Savior Nintendo, e’en tho they gifted us with 3 games they already made decades ago ( 2 o’ which were ne’er that great, e’en for their time ), when they should be bowing down & giving themselves up to the sheer sacrifice Nintendo’s stockholders have done to sell fanboys 3 half-assed ports @ an inflated price that are worse than what fan hackers have made for free?

Gainst all good reasoning, I took the time to watch the video & had to laugh near the beginning when I heard him say that, “[T]ime has been very good to Super Mario Sunshine”. Yes, time has been good to that game where I just randomly clip thru floors, blue coins clip thru walls, Mario randomly spazzes out while on ledges, minigames handle failure in inconsistent ways, cutscenes have Mario in 2 places @ once & 1 cutscene has Peach with her own eyeballs as earrings, — & those are just the unquestionable bugs, much less the mo’ subjective sloppy level design — says man who has clearly only read other fawning praise o’ the game & has ne’er played it himself.

Pictured: game that time has been good to.

His whines are nothing mo’ than that Nintendo has made limited releases before, so that means it’s OK now. Give this man an A+ in philosophy. Personally, I couldn’t care ’less that this is limited release, since it’s not worth the price it costs @ any time. I would love to hear someone give a reason why it’s a good idea. Granted, as someone who has actually studied economics watched that Jim Sterling video where he complains ’bout this game’s limited release & knows such concepts as “false scarcity” & “FOMO”, I know all too well why it’s a good reason for Nintendo’s wallet & a bad reason for consumers — which is why smart consumers will avoid buying this garbage, thereby pressuring corrupt businesses like Nintendo to either stop being corrupt or go out o’ business. ’Course, pro-market economists are wrong that consumers in market economies are smart, so I expect to see plenty o’ idiots gladly throw their money ’way to corrupt corporations, thereby causing scam artists to flourish — ¡just like how these scummy YouTube channels thrive on their cheap clickbait titles! It’s like that joke from The Simpsons wherein Lisa does that experiment on a hamster & on Bart, but with Bart replaced with gamers: while the mouse learns to stop trying to eat the electrified cheese, gamers while go after that electrified muffin time & time ’gain.

& then we have a billion videos by GameXplain & Nintendo Prime. Nintendo Prime I am almost certain are paid shills, with their switch giveaways & pathetic jabs gainst Sony as if Nintendo Life are elementary schoolers still babbling that “Nintendo Does What Genesisn’t”.

Like “Gamers + Geeks” ( who, now that I think ’bout it, is probably also a shill, since certainly no genuine fan would be so generic ), or whate’er that clown called himself, the 1st video I found from them was 1 wherein they whine ’bout the existence o’ people who s’posedly don’t like this remake. Hilariously, the pinned comment o’ the video is Nintendo Prime admitting that they utterly fucked up understanding what the original Super Mario All-Stars was: they claim in the video that ’twas just ports o’ the original NES games, rather than remakes with totally new graphics &, in the case o’ Super Mario Bros., completely reprogrammed from the ground up ( not for artistic reasons, but ’cause Nintendo lost the original source code⁶ ).

But my favorite argument by Nintendo Life is in a comment farther below, wherein they demonstrate that they completely fail to understand what reviewing is:

However, that doesn’t change what this is, factually. It’s a collection pack, and it should be judged for what it actually is, rather than what you would rather wish it was. That’s where I have an impasse with some reviewers, they are knocking it for not being something else entirely rather than just judging it purely based on it being a collection pack.

Critiquing a work is nothing mo’ than comparing a work to what is expected o’ it & evaluating whether or not it has met or exceeded those expectations. If we take this argument to its logical conclusion, reviewers should just rank any work o’ art with the binary “good” for being what it is, while with this philosophy it’d be impossible to rank a work as “bad”, as “bad” would be defined as a work not being what it is, which is a paradox. “Yes, Bubsy 3D is ugly, sounds like the computer is constantly burping, & has cumbersome controls; but people need to respect Bubsy 3D as a game that is ugly, sounds like the computer is constantly burping, & has cumbersome controls, rather than judge is based on what it is not, a game that looks good, has music a sane human would find pleasing, & actually responds to your button presses in a way any reasonable person would expect”.

& most people I’ve seen do judge this game as a collection pack: they judge it as a bad example o’ 1 that’s beyond the normal market price o’ collections. They also judge it’s price as the outcome not o’ a fair market, but o’ false scarcity & monopolistic behavior.

’Course, we couldn’t have clickbait without a li’l bait-&-switch title that hints @ an audacious claim that is obviously wrong, & Nintendo Life dutifully delivers that with their “Super Mario Galaxy 2 Teased By Nintendo for 3D All-Stars”. In the top pinned comment, ’course, they admit that they think the chance o’ Galaxy 2 being released as DLC is “20%”. What formula they used to calculate that seemingly arbitrary chance is a mystery.

But the most horrifying video Nintendo Life unleashed on us is this 1 titled “That Mario Nintendo Direct Was Superb (If Predictable) – Super Mario 3D All Stars” showing bearded man with creepy jack-off face while the somewhat less horrifying Super Mario 64 Mario face with its crusty polygonal eyelids gazes @ the viewer like a banshee. All this surrounded by the big, bold text, “A SUPER MARIO DIRECT ACTUALLY HAPPENED”. ¡Holy shit! ¡A glorified advertisement… for a Mario game? ¡Such an event happens only in a blue moon!

GameXplain is a bit less clickbaitty ( just a li’l, tho ) & a li’l mo’ obsessive, offering dozens o’ videos obsessing o’er the different title screens & menus & the version differences for the opening cutscene in Super Mario Sunshine, which GameXplain themselves admit is pointless, since the Switch version is using a crappy, compressed video from Twitter that looks worse than the GameCube version ( also, spoilers: in the Switch version Mario is still in the clip o’ Bianco Hills they watch in the airplane, before they 1st take foot on Bianco Hills, just like those Superfriends episodes wherein Aquaman joins the others in going out to rescue Aquaman ).

They don’t offer any analysis, which would require some intelligence on their part, but just show every clip they can find. It’s 1 thing when fans obsess o’er footage from an upcoming game in development; but this is shit we’ve had for decades. & it doesn’t look any better. It’s the same shit. ¿What kind o’ neurotic fucking idiots get obsessed o’er ol’ shit being released with a few textures looking slightly less blurry?

That’s not to say that GameXplain doesn’t have clickbait, such as the blatantly false “Super Mario 3D All-Stars Go Beyond “Simple” Ports – Here’s the Evidence!”. People have already looked into the game & found that Super Mario 64 & Super Mario Sunshine are emulated ( Galaxy’s main code is recompiled to native Switch, but GPU & audio are emulated, for some reason ). This reminds me o’ when Polygon so slovenly asserted that the models in those new Pokémon games were totally not rips from the 3DS games ’cause the developers said so as if they were the New York Times parroting the US military, only for many hackers to actually compare the models & prove that the models are so similar that if they weren’t ripped, the developers wasted their time plagiarizing their own work. But one should ne’er let reality get in the way o’ one’s mindless worship o’ their favorite corporations.

As expected, this video has a huge pinned comment by GameXplain wherein they try to move the goal posts by redefining “emulated” as “not done by Nintendo”, making this an ad hoc argument, since the whole argument is whether Nintendo’s doing better than unofficial sources ( which GameXplain for some reason calls “public domain”, which is inaccurate, since they involve copyrighted material ). GameXplain actually shows mo’ ignorance regarding the “public domain” work than 3D All-Stars ( which is no surprise, since there’s no money in it for GameXplain to shill for nobody hackers ). For instance, they claim that Galaxy’s recompiled source code is something “you wouldn’t see in the public domain”, e’en tho recently hackers were able to disassemble Super Mario 64 into C code, allowing it to be recompiled into many different ports without any form o’ emulation — a case wherein, bizarrely, the hackers have mo’ resources than Nintendo themselves, since Nintendo did have to emulate it. GameXplain also claims that Nintendo was able to update textures from sources that only they had, which has 2 problems: looking @ the video, only a tiny minority o’ the textures are improved ( which, as I said, looks worse than if none o’ the textures were changed ), so they clearly didn’t keep most o’ them ( which is no surprise: the fact that Nintendo had to emulate Super Mario 64 implies that they lost its source code ). But this is also untrue as many o’ the textures were stock, which hackers have been able to find, such as the backdrop to “Wet-Dry World”, not to mention how fans have been able to make all-new custom high-definition textures for the whole game ( which, granted, are mixed in quality to the point o’ uncanny valley — that Peach, uh… needs a bit mo’ work ).

But these videos can’t compete with Metacritic in terms o’ gallons o’ jism being flung on you like Nickelodeon slime by so many “critics” stroking Nintendo’s long, hairy dick. Granted, now’s an unfair time to do this: the only reviews out are by critics given advance copies by Nintendo in return for giving Nintendo easy high scores — which is to say that none o’ these “critics” have any credibility, anyway. Luckily, Metacritic has no standards for whom they count as a “critic”, so we don’t have to miss out on the sugary cum.

For instance, Cubed3, a website I’ve ne’er heard o’ with such bad web design that I think it’s being run by a Russian who has ne’er played a video game before, starts by praising Nintendo for doing “the utterly expected”, as opposed to doing what was just expected. ¡This was utterly done! Unfortunately, if I complained ’bout every way this writer twisted the English language into the equivalent experience o’ eating scorpion tails, we would end up with a section longer than the review itself. Let me just point out that this wordsmith called the game the switch’s “rectangle of delight”. This is why critics should stick to just mentioning important elements in the game & analyzing how they effect the experience o’ the game — you know, what readers came for — rather than subject them to their shitty attempts @ poetry.

I must admit I almost missed how idiotic the opening line is: “Why are you looking at this? Go and play Super Mario 3D All-Stars now!”. This review came out before the game was released — your readers can’t play it yet. I don’t think you could find any better proof that this reviewer didn’t put an ounce o’ thought into what they were writing.

I’m most amazed that this review is only a few paragraphs, but still wastes its time saying the same things, such as asserting in as many ways you can that you should buy this game, while barely analyzing the game itself. This reviewer, who has apparently ne’er played any other game in the universe, is astounded that Nintendo put so much sweat & blood into making an opening FMV. No other video game has e’er accomplished such a feat. Clearly Super Mario 3D All-Stars is the real Schindler’s List o’ video games.

Also, this:

Menus are bright and filled with titbits [ sic ] that any information-hungry fan is going to lap up and appreciate every time they start up one of the three titles included. [ Emphasis mine ]

@ 1st I was going to make fun o’ how this reviewer apparently has ne’er heard o’ Mario Wiki or thinks their audience is too dumb to have heard o’ it ( considering what that audience is willing to read, that’s a fair assumption ); but then I noticed that typo & realized why Mario fans are so excited now. As they say, “sex sells”.

A lovely addition that nobody would hold against Nintendo leaving out of the package is the addition of each soundtrack.

Nobody would hold it gainst them ’cause you can find this music on YouTube & this is the stupidest way to deliver music to people. Nobody’s going to be lugging their fucking Switch round like a boom box just to hear Mario music. If Nintendo wanted to actually be useful, they would’ve just given buyers FLACs they could put on their phones or music players ( or hell, put it on Spotify — ¿why don’t game companies try to make a deal with streaming services so they can make extra money off their soundtracks rather than do nothing & watch as game fans just upload their music to YouTube for free? ) — you know, how real human beings listen to music.

After admitting that they got lost choosing ’mong the jungle o’ 3 whole games, — ¡that’s 1 mo’ than this reviewer has learned to count up to yet! — the reviewer offers a whole 2 paragraphs spewing cliches ’bout these games without a breath o’ real analysis. E’en then, this reviewer finds a way to waste words on irrelevant shit, like the SNES Super Mario All-Stars, ’cause this reviewer is truly hopeless @ formatting their thoughts & has ne’er graduated high school.

What’s funniest is that this reviewer goes so far in praising this remake that they outright contradict themselves in praising it, claiming that Super Mario 64 is “all represented here pixel perfectly”, when obviously it isn’t — ¡Nintendo improved some o’ the textures! Apparently this remake is so great that it has broken the laws o’ logic & is both improved & exactly the same.

’Course it wouldn’t be a bad review without getting basic facts wrong, — proof that this reviewer didn’t really play these games that are apparently God’s own golden vagina juice — claiming that in Super Mario 64 Mario “still relies on the standard hop, skip, and wahoo to get the job done”, when Mario can do many mo’ things, like punch, kick, dive, carry things, swim, grab chains & climb round them, fly… Also, Mario doesn’t skip in this game — tho if Nintendo did change it so that he did, I would bump my view o’ this remake a point or so higher.

Master these here and it becomes a lot simpler to grasp the level design and approaches for the rest of the journey through the Mario vault.

No it doesn’t, ’cause as anyone who has actually played these games knows, Super Mario 64’s level design is radically different from Sunshine’s & Galaxy’s — that’s why there are such strong arguments o’ Super Mario 64 vs. Galaxy, etc.

With its excellent level design, infinite replayability, and perfect soundtrack, it’s easy to get lost in Mario 64 for months and never want to leave.

“Infinite replayability” — that’s not ridiculous hyperbole by a reviewer with Nintendo’s cock so high up their throat it’s reaching their kidneys. This reviewer might as well claim that playing this game will cure blindness while they’re @ it. ¿& “perfect soundtrack”? Don’t get me wrong, the Bowser theme is 1 o’ the best Bowser themes e’er, & “Bob-Omb Battlefield” was such a good song that it’s e’en the best song in Galaxy 2; but we’re talking ’bout the same game with that obnoxious “Slider” song — ’cause I love my clock & rainbow castle levels sounding like a fucking hoedown.

& don’t bother going into any detail regarding said level design, since it’s not as if different people have different opinions regarding what makes certain level design bad or good — which is important to note, as despite what this reviewer thinks, Super Mario 64’s level design is actually controversial. No, I’ll just take your word for it, reviewers so unprofessional you didn’t e’en bother to get a security certificate for your website that is probably bloated with ad JavaShit.

Spoiler alert: it is.

Leave you must, however, in order to jump into one of the most unique⁷ platformers Mario has ever headlined…

This reviewer is talking ’bout Super Mario Sunshine, which those who have actually played it know is just Super Mario 64 but with a water pack. I can think o’ plenty o’ games with Mario in it mo’ exotic ( & just generally better ), such as Yoshi’s Island, Super Mario Bros. 2, Mario vs. Donkey Kong, Mario Pinball Land, Mario Party Advance. This is why I hate Sunshine fans: they’re like rock fans who think they’re super avant-garde ’cause they listen to Pink Floyd.

Nintendo, in its infinite wisdom, was always going to mix things up and this left many players a bit wary.

If you think Super Mario Sunshine “mixed things up”, you have clearly ne’er played a game other than Super Mario 64 & Super Mario Sunshine.

Yes, Nintendo ( a company, who are not real organisms, & thus cannot have thoughts @ all ) has “infinite wisdom” & has ne’er made a mistake — that’s why they got their asses kicked hard during the GameCube era, ’cause the people playing PlayStation 2 & Xbox were all thinking, “¡Whoa! ¡Mario with a water pack! ¡That’s too radical for me! ¡I’m going to stick with my dumb 1st-person shooter that radically redefined how 1st-person shooters play or that dumb car-theft game that redefined the open-world genre Super Mario 64 created & with which Super Mario Sunshine did nothing new”.

Having never taken the plunge first time round, owning a GameCube but getting a dungaree fix from Mario Kart: Double Dash instead, it is interesting to come at Sunshine with fresh eyes.

OK, ignoring the hilarious dangling participle implying that the abstract concept o’ “coming @” ( a very accurate malaprop — this reviewer is, indeed, cumming @ Sunshine ) Sunshine with fresh eyes played Mario Kart; ¡this person talks ’bout the history o’ Sunshine as if they’re an authority, & then admits that they didn’t e’en play it when it came out, e’en tho they had the perfect opportunity! ¿Why? Probably ’cause they didn’t want to waste their money, ’cause they knew back then deep down how crappy it was. But now that it’s hip to love the game, now they have to go out & pretend they love it like all the other drones.

Also, I tried looking up “dungaree fix” & Google just stared @ me in confusion & Duck Duck Go told me to Go Fuck Fuck myself. All I know is that dungarees are a type o’ pants.

Much like the popper trousers of the time, it now ranks as one of the biggest regrets missing out initially.

¿Why is the reviewer so obsessed with pants & can they keep their creepy fetish ’way from our discussion o’ Mario games?

It should never have been in doubt, going by the triple A standard of Nintendo, but Super Mario Sunshine is superb.

“Nintendo is defined as making good games, therefore this game that they made must be good. I have very independent thought”.

Tasked with cleaning the island of Delfino, using Mario’s new sprinkler-cum-best-friend, F.L.U.D.D., exploration is a delight.

I’m in awe @ what a mangled mess this attempt @ English was. I think my favorite part is that they call it “the island of Delfino”, rather than its actual official name.

F.L.U.D.D. brings with him a whole new traversal scheme and allows for what would easily have been the most innovative level design that had ever been seen at the time (more on how it was topped later).

Nintendo’s most innovative level design was when they put that blue coin in that random place in the water or when they put 4 blue coins on 4 underwater pillars that all look the same.

Also, your attempt @ a cliffhanger would work better if there wasn’t just 1 game left to talk ’bout. “Duh, clearly ’twas Mario Tennis for the GBC that tops it”.

After mo’ faux-poetic superlatives that do not offer concrete details & could easily be written ’bout any game, it’s so generic, which includes such amazing accomplishments as “platforming over multiple levels”, which no platformer has e’er had the technology & brilliance to achieve before this Citizen Kane o’ video gaming, the reviewer — hold on…

It all proves to be never frustrating

Not e’en Sunshine fans would say something so blatantly untrue.

and is frequently overshadowed by other outings for the digitally rendered Bob Hoskins

¿What the fuck is this s’posed to mean? ¿Does this reviewer think every other Mario game is just an adaptation to that crappy Super Mario Bros. movie? No wonder they have such a lofty view o’ Sunshine.

Interestingly, in the reviewer’s single-minded obsession to give nothing but praise for this remake, the reviewer starts bashing Galaxy 2:

The decision to leave out Super Mario Galaxy 2 was always going to raise a few eyebrows but, as mentioned, it’s arguably not as good – don’t worry, just move on.

( Note: this wasn’t mentioned before in this review ).

It’s “arguably” not as good, but we don’t need to actually bother arguing. Just move on, guys, & just accept what I say without question.

Nintendo has also taken the time to simplify the Wii controls and allow for easier planet-hopping by mapping the often-frustrating star spin to the Y button. The Joy-Con set is the control scheme of choice, however by utilising the gyroscope in the Pro Controller, Star Bit collecting mid-galaxy hop is just as comfortable with all control schemes.

So, using motion controls is frustrating, but the best way to control this game is… motion controls… but it’s just as comfortable using any control scheme.

Galaxy also has the esteemed honour of introducing easily the best female character to ever grace a Mario game, in the form of Rosalina.

Rosalina is a hurt-fic character who does jack shit ’cept warp me ’way from the level I want to go back into to collect mo’ stars so they can tell me some stupid bullshit I don’t care ’bout despite s’posedly being a god that would get you laughed out o’ any creative writing class. That’s much better than characters like Goombella or Bow, who have actual personalities & volition. Truly Nintendo’s bootleg Disney princess who does nothing is the apex o’ feminism.

By the way, I just noticed this reviewer is italicizing video game titles, something that most people don’t bother doing, tho it technically makes sense to, since that’s the recommended way to style book, movie, & TV show titles in pretty much every style guide I’ve e’er read & is what is usually taught in school. That this typo-ridden article that barely managed to accomplish coherent English sentences manages to get this pretentious detail right only confuses me mo’.

Nintendo is never going to be accused of not taking innovation to another level […]

Yes, they are: I do it all the time.

[…] but it’s here that sends the company into the outer atmosphere (excuse the pun… no, don’t actually – it was great!)

Go fuck yourself.

Every galaxy explored offers a unique challenge […]

Yes, that Bowser lava level is totally different from that other lava level.

with even groan-worthy additions like the Bee Mario Suit being used to good effect…

Wait, ¿why is the Bee Mario Suit o’ all things groan-worthy? ¿’Cause it’s annoying to use? ¿Then how is it used to good effect? By definition, if it’s groan-worthy, it has a bad effect, ’less you think groaning is — you know what, let’s just hurry up with this shit.

I am baffled that this 1 detail that I could not e’en bother to qualify as good or bad I was so apathetic to it is the 1 flaw in what is s’posedly an otherwise flawless gem. Not pachinko or those dumbass boat rides with Yoshi in Sunshine; not e’en the Spring Mario power-up, which e’en people who love Galaxy regard as uncontrollable.

After saying nothing o’ substance ’bout these 3 games they s’posedly love so much, the reviewer mentioned the “giant Goomba in the room” regarding the limited release:

In truth, if this was any other company then there is no way this would be accepted […]

That’s ’cause they people who like those companies actually have standards, unlike Nintendo fanboys, who would buy a jar o’ toenail clippings if Nintendo plastered Mario’s face on it.

[…] yet when you objectively look […]

You haven’t looked @ anything objectively, you twat.

[…] as well as really thinking about whether or not consumers are going to pick this up […]

“If it sells well, it’s good”. Most reviews are written with the goal o’ encouraging or discouraging sales, so this is some circular logic here.

It shouldn’t have happened […]

It shouldn’t have happened, but e’en people with “infinite wisdom” sometimes make mistakes.

[…] but anyone who has an interest in this collection is likely to pick it up as soon as it’s released

Imagine how stupid this argument is: anyone who is interested in games that were released decades ago will only be interested in buying them immediately after they’re re-released. I mean, sure, people have been interested in playing Super Mario 64 for 24 years; but after March 2021, nobody will e’er have any reason to want to play this game.

Just be sure to not get taken in by scammers looking to charge over-the-odds when expecting a shortage. There won’t be one.

& this has been proven to be false.

Sorry for how long that went on, but that was the worst review I have e’er read in my life — perhaps e’en worse than that review o’ a video game book wherein the reviewer just complained that the writer was fat & was sad that his grandparents died. It still astounds me that there exists… some creature as stupid as this writer. You may bring up some alt-righter who pretends the world is flat or something, but they have a cynical motive for that shit, & they actually oft do the best they can with what terrible material they decide to work with. ¿How can you do such a shitty job selling 3D Mario games? ¿Did Nintendo pay this guy? ¿Why? ¿Who would look @ this review & think it’s worth money? ¿Did this guy do this by his own volition? Then that means he was trying to be completely genuine, which means they are genuinely this stupid. ¿Was this a 12-year-ol’? ¿Why would a review by a 12-year-ol’ be on Metacritic? ¿& how would they have the sophistication to set up so many Google Ads? I genuinely have trouble believing a human like this exists & that this isn’t some social experiment I don’t comprehend.

It’s hard to top that review, but I must carry on. Our next target is a li’l mo’ professional: a newspaper called The Sydney Morning Herald.

Mario defined the rules for the era of 3D movement in games, just as he defined the rules for the previous era of 2D sidescrollers […]

Well, this is partly true: Super Mario 64 defined 3D platformers, but Sunshine & Galaxy didn’t define shit. By that point nobody gave a shit ’bout 3D platformers, & if they did, they probably took mo’ influence from Banjo-Kazooie & Rare’s games. & Grand Theft Auto III had taken leadership for open-world games a year before Sunshine came out & underwhelmed anyone who might expect a Mario game on the same level o’ quality.

[Y]ou might find them eccentric by today’s standards, but the charm, craft and imagination on display is timeless and undeniable.

If their timelessness is undeniable, then why do they look eccentric by today’s standard. This is basically a tone-deaf way o’ saying, “If you think these games haven’t aged well, fuck you, they have. So there”.

For the uninitiated, 1996’s Super Mario 64, 2002’s Super Mario Sunshine and 2007’s Super Mario Galaxy are the red-capped everyman’s first 3D adventures.

No they’re not. Technically, Super Mario 64 isn’t e’en, since Super Mario RPG was arguably 3D. Mario had many 3D “adventures” thruout the N64 era, before Sunshine came out.

In the next sentence, this professional newspaper makes a typo & spells “depsite” “despite”. Remember this next time newspapers try to brag ’bout how they’re so much better than blogs & deserve their bloated subscription fees.

Compared to the previous trainwreck, this review looks downright decent in comparison. It a’least gets the facts right, & e’en acknowledges the wonkiness in Sunshine & its rushed development & mentions the inclusion o’ elements from the obscure “Shindou” release in the Super Mario 64 port. ’Course, they could have just researched that; but it would’ve been a miracle if the previous reviewer had bothered to do any semblance o’ research. Granted, I’m confused how they could claim that Galaxy, which is probably the most repetitive o’ the trilogy, has much slower movement than Super Mario 64, & is bloated by e’en mo’ pointless, unskippable cutscenes than the others, “makes the previous games look slow and repetitive by comparison”. This game you have to 100% twice, but as a green character the 2nd time, just to complete & which expects players to do many missions a 2nd time, but with only 1 hit point the 2nd time, sure isn’t repetitive @ all.

But I think my favorite part o’ this review is the way they had to qualify their main thesis ( buried in the middle, for some reason ):

but as it stands these are the best officially available versions of three incredible games [ emphasis mine ].

E’en they can’t lie & pretend this remake hasn’t gotten its ass kicked by what fans have done.

Metro.uk.co demonstrated Newgrounds-level scoring dissonance, providing plenty o’ examples o’ how flawed this remake is while ranking it 10/10. 10/10 is “as important a cultural achievement as Citizen Kane or Ulysses”. I don’t like to insult people for liking things, but the socially-responsible part o’ me has to say that if you think Mario jumping round galaxies & collecting stars is as culturally important as Citizen Kane… well, you’re the reason nobody takes video games seriously as an art form. Their logic is that Super Mario Galaxy is so great that it by itself merits this collection a 10. Spoiler: they don’t go into any detail ’bout why this is the case, save that “the movement and controls are so crisp you can almost taste the salt and vinegar”, which doesn’t make any sense. What they don’t mention is that e’en speedrunners who constantly play Galaxy games admit that Galaxy’s controls are finicky & that the physics sometimes just outright bug out, like sometimes making you go down when you hold up.

This is in contrast to their claim that “every jump in Mario Sunshine feels like a leap of faith”, which e’en I think is hyperbole. I mean, you have a jetpack for most o’ the game: e’en if you miss a jump by an inch, just hover the rest o’ the way. O’ all the complains I had ’bout Sunshine, not being able to land on platforms was not 1 o’ them. Well, ’cept for rope on poles; but that’s just ’cause if you try to hover after you grab it, Mario does some dumbass spin-flip that serves no purpose. But that’s rare & is offset by the fact that these ropes have hit boxes so buggily generous that they just warp you on top if you get close to them.

’Course it wouldn’t be a wank-fest for Galaxy without mentioning “the patented Nintendo magic”, which is the elusive way to say, “I have irrational nostalgia for this game & have no critical reason to like it”. That’s cute if you’re just a normal person, but makes you unfit as a critic for a video game, where having critical thought & being able to actually analyze the game with concrete points is a necessity.

The closest they come to concrete examples is when they bring up rolling on a ball or a level assembling itself as you move round ( which isn’t a real gameplay gimmick, just a visual effect that’s distracting & detrimental to gameplay ), which they claim “other developers would make the basis of an entire game”. ’Cept, no, they wouldn’t, ’cause these gimmicks are lame. If they’re impressed by these, I can only imagine they would explode if they saw a game with actual creative gimmicks, like, say, Donkey Kong Country 2.

Also, this review gets some facts wrong. For instance, they claim that “That wasn’t organised in a couple of months from someone’s bedroom”, when, in fact, it has been proven that this game took only 6 months to develop.

I do have to give them credit for having spine ’nough to admit Sunshine was a shitty game.

in Mario Sunshine we rarely felt anything other than mild irritation and frustration.

In the game’s defense, I would personally add “amusement @ such bad design & programming”, but I think I just have that taste for crap that other people can’t tolerate ( as these reviews o’ bad reviews demonstrate ).

1 thing all these reviews have in common is that none o’ them actually try to prove their point with examples & are so scant with details that anyone who has ne’er played or seen these games would have no idea what kind o’ games these are. This is typical for game reviews. I remember when I considered trying out Witcher III, ’cause I heard ’twas s’posedly great, but could not find any information on what kind o’ game it is — including what its genre was ( my best guess is that it’s an RPG, which means it’s probably as fun as spending a whole day sitting by an ant hill & smashing my thumb down on each o’ the million ants that come out ). The only hint I received was that it seems to have some cliché fantasy schlock writing that would get you laughed out o’ a speculative fiction writing guild — which is to say, typical video game writing. All I’ve e’er been able to learn ’bout The Last of Us games is that its story involves people zombified by mushrooms ( basically, an idea ripped off from EarthBound, ’cept its writer was smart ’nough to realize that this is a silly idea unworthy o’ drama ). This plot you’d find in a cheap airport novel in literature is considered 1 o’ the best video games e’er written, as said by a gamer community whose idea o’ “literature” is Star Wars Expanded Universe novels. No one e’er says what the actual gameplay is. ¿I guess you shoot people? That’s ne’er been done in video games before. It’s amazing to think that video games have such huge artistic opportunities, & yet all anyone wants to do is make shooter & platformer games ’bout genre-fiction schlock or make VR shit so people can stare up anime girls’ skirts. ( Incidentally, Anime Girl VR is the next Casablanca o’ video games ).

I want to just point out that in my asides ’bout these games I have delivered mo’ concrete information ’bout these games than these reviews do. If I only knew Galaxy by what these reviewers say, I’d only know that it had “big bosses” & a woman character that some random person thinks is the best woman character written, but apparently doesn’t care ’nough ’bout them to give any details, including their fucking backstory & that this game looks beautiful in the opinion o’ the reviewers. Considering the # o’ game fans who think barren wastelands that look like everything got peed on are gorgeous next-level visuals, I wouldn’t e’en take this assertion for half a grain o’ salt.

Super Mario 3D All-Stars has already outsold all other games on Amazon, which is to say that despite gamers’ complaining, they still couldn’t keep themselves from buying it, e’en tho there’s millions o’ better games out there for cheaper, ’cause they’re just that stupid. Look forward to the 40th Mario anniversary when Nintendo sells a limited-edition disk o’ Donkey Kong that has stains on it ’cause the intern used it as a coaster for his drinks during the months before release. I can’t wait for the GameXplain videos detailing how these pixels are extra pixellated & are 2.8% mo’ saturated.

But ’cause you’ve suffered ’nough thru this longwinded article full o’ cyberbullying & soapboxing irrelevant political opinions ( ’less I cut those parts out — if so, pretend I ne’er brought it up ), I offer you some actually great YouTube videos I found on the subject:

SAY THE LINE, MARIO.

Here we have the best summary o’ Super Mario 3D All-Stars. Just look @ what amazing comedic timing there is, with the long drawn-out pause, just the right length, & then the switch movement @ the end. That’s slapstick worthy o’ classic Tom & Jerry.

I Wanna Be Your Vacuum Cleaner

Accompanying music

I’d been toying with the idea o’ a “race ’head o’ the screen” type level ( distinguished from typical autoscroll levels by the ability to go as quickly ’head as you want, rather than locking you back & forcing you to wait, which I hate ) since near the beginning o’ this project. As that article shows, the original idea was a basic saw. Howe’er, not only is that idea cliché, ’twould also use a factory level, & I already have all 4 o’ that theme’s slots filled, while the new domestic theme has plenty o’ slots to fill.

Having decided this, I for some reason came up with the idea o’ a giant cat chasing you, but then realized that that would be far too difficult to animate, so I changed it to a vacuum, which I could just slide forward without any animation. & ’cause I was extra lazy & too unskilled an artist to draw a tolerable vacuum, I just used a photo o’ my vacuum. I actually like how it looks in all its sloppiness: it’s like the indie video game version o’ a B-movie monster — a B-video-game monster.

Ironically, I would then waste far too much time drawing & tinkering with all the other graphics, including the spinning fan, which the player will barely see, since they’re racing past it just to survive.

Beyond that, the trickiest task was pacing out the level. As I try to show in the video, I paced out the level just so that the player wouldn’t have to e’er stop, which is a philosophy I like to take with level design, inspired by Donkey Kong Country 2. That’s tricky to follow for this level, as the main challenge is s’posed to be holding the player back so they’re @ risk o’ being devoured by the vacuum. When I 1st designed the level, I designed it just like that, with jumps & falls tightly packed in horizontally so that the player couldn’t help but bonk into walls if they didn’t stop. Feeling that that was just annoying, I spread them out a bit, so that it’s possible to not bonk into walls while going straight forward, but in some cases ( such as the staircase midway thru the level ), it requires tight jumping, as there’s li’l space.

Part o’ me still worried that some parts may be unfair for those who aren’t familiar with the level, such as the optimal pattern o’ running under the 1st bouncing ball, jumping o’er the 2nd ball, & then holding the jump button just long ’nough that you can reach the top o’ the block just after & run under the 3rd bouncing ball. On the other hand, I didn’t originally design this setup this way, I just figured it out as I played this o’er 100 times in the process o’ testing & developing it, & I wouldn’t be surprised if a speedrunner could find a better way to beat the score. Indeed, tho this video shows 32 as the score requirement, I lowered it to 30 afterward, as it seems you’re almost guaranteed to get 32 if you’re not intentionally lagging ’hind. & yet I’m just as worried that this level may be too trivial to beat normally. It’s very rare that the vacuum has e’er been able to catch up to me when not intentionally letting it or going for the diamond. This & the fact that the attic level I’m working on may prove to be too complex for the 2nd level o’ the game, I may move this level down to the 1st cycle, rather than the 2nd cycle it’s in now.

I also feel like the diamond isn’t in the most creative place. Howe’er, I wanted to keep the whole level within the screen vertically, so that left nowhere to hide the diamond, other than past the keycane, which is a trick I already used for “Brier Flier”. Anyway, the ease o’ finding the diamond is balanced by how hard it is to grab it without the vacuum catching up to the player — tho this is balanced back by the fact that you don’t have to beat the level to keep the diamond, so you can just grab the diamond & let yourself die. Unfortunately, by balancing the vacuum’s speed to allow you just ’nough time to grab the diamond, this makes it easy to reach just the keycane before the vacuum catches up, as stated earlier. But maybe this all works better if I go ’head with making this the 2nd level.

Read this source code that should be vacuumed up
Learn mo’ ’bout this project @ boskeopolis-land.com

Sandwiched ’tween 2 o’ the greatest video games o’ all time, it’s easy for Super Mario Bros. 2 to be forgotten. While many talk ’bout how Super Mario Bros. 2 is viewed a black sheep o’ the series, usually by people praising the game, unlike Super Mario Sunshine, I have rarely seen this sentiment 1st-hand. It did only sell 10 million copies, which while amazing for most games, was nearly half o’ what Super Mario Bros. 3 sold — tho that was also during a chip shortage.

What I can say for certain is that I ne’er liked this game as much as 1, 3, World, or e’en Lost Levels, but this is primarily due to Super Mario Bros. 2’s slower, awkward gameplay & mechanics & its wonky physics & controls. I still find it odd that people call Luigi’s slippery controls in Lost Levels unplayable, but have no problem with the fact that everyone is slippery in this game, specially Luigi. I ne’er liked how easy it is for characters to clip into blocks or how they bounce all round when they get hit.

Also, the decision to make your character shrink when you only have 1 hit point is idiotic, specially with the half-assed way they implemented it ( in the NES & SNES versions, a’least ): they don’t actually change your hitbox; they just make your graphic smaller, so it’s less representative — so it’s a lie. Making your character’s graphics non-representative o’ your hitbox is a cardinal sin o’ bad game design, & it’s shocking that an official Mario game would have such a thing. ¿Why’d they e’en need to shrink your character with 1 hitpoint? Despite the lazy repainting o’ Doki Doki Panic’s hearts to mushrooms, your health is still nothing like health in Super Mario Bros. — hell, despite the trouble they went to to make your character visually shrink, they didn’t bother to repaint your hit points on the side o’ the screen from diamonds ( & for some reason used hearts in the SNES & Game Boy Advance remakes ). Furthermo’, Super Mario 64 didn’t have mushrooms or growing & shrinking @ all, & that game was mo’ beloved than Super Mario Bros. 2, & Super Mario Bros. 2 was just after the 1st game to have the grow-&-shrink mechanic, making it probably the 1 game that most get ’way from the deviance to this “pattern”.

I also ne’er liked how the characters all feel like they have many weaknesses rather than a strength: all but Toad take way too long to pick up things, so that it’s very easy for Birdo to throw off cheap shots you’re vulnerable, unable to dodge as you’re character’s too busy slowly grabbing an egg for, like, a whole second, which is made worse by how slow Luigi & Peach fall, making them mo’ vulnerable while up in the air. Meanwhile, Toad is almost useless @ jumping & Mario is almost useless @ everything. Also, I always found it nonsensical that Toad runs fastest when holding something. Since jumping is still the most important element o’ this game, specially with skipping section, this means most players will probably prefer to stick with Luigi & Peach & just stomach the fact that they suck @ anything regarding throwing or digging & use Toad in the rare places where jumping is less important than throwing or digging. Thus, the game somehow manages to fail @ encouraging balanced use o’ characters while also making e’en the best characters feel crippled.

Most importantly, I always felt the whole Subcon health upgrade system, which, giving you extra health, played an integral part o’ how difficult the game was, was too much o’ a trial-&-error guessing game.

But Super Mario Bros. 2 had 2 strengths: it had memorable graphics & enemy designs & had catchy music. Moreo’er, tho, Super Mario Bros. 2 had underrated level designs that evolved from the 1st Super Mario Bros.’s linear left-to-right pattern to mo’ complex layouts that twisted in all kinds o’ shapes.

20. World 6-1

4 worlds after world 2, which already used the desert theme, we get yet ’nother desert level with the same litany o’ Cobrats & Pokeys. & unlike the other desert levels, which usually make the 2nd half be a cave with sand-digging, this level makes the 2nd half be a cave with… e’en mo’ Cobrats, but popping out o’ pots. I actually don’t know if I should be glad for this “twist” or find it worse.

Actually, I do know: it’s much worse — that 2nd cave involves a genius puzzle wherein you have to trial-&-error thru all 21 pots to find the 1 that has a key @ the bottom to unlock the door @ the end o’ the cave. E’en better: There are 4 pots with sand areas in them, but only 1 o’ these sand areas has the key @ the bottom, so you have to tediously dig thru each to see whether or not each has a key.

This level sucks & I’m baffled why any human would think it could be entertaining to play.

19. World 2-1

Desert levels in Super Mario Bros. 2 fall into what I will now call “Jolly Roger Bay Syndrome” harder than Jolly Roger Bay: it doesn’t truly matter that much which came 1st; the fact that all these levels feel similar brings them all down. & like “Jolly Roger Bay” makes it worse by having it apply to tedious water levels, Super Mario Bros. 2 makes it worse by applying this to desert levels with the sleep-inducing digging mechanic, which just involves rapidly pressing a button & maybe moving every so oft to make sure a Shy Guy doesn’t fall on you — all as a contrived way to make Toad feel mo’ useful, e’en tho he already has advantages when fighting bosses ( & just moving faster for speedrunners ), so these sand sections may actually make the game less balanced.

All 3 world 2 levels follow the same pattern more o’ less: 1st section is stretch o’ sandy outside area full o’ Cobrats & maybe Pokeys, followed by a cave section full o’ sand you have to dig thru. 2-1 has the least interesting sand pattern, being just a rectangle with a few holes with cherries in them. If you preserved your cherries well, you can time it so that the last cherry gives you a star & then rush thru the last stretch & kill Birdo with it. Other than that, there’s nothing else to say ’bout this level.

18. World 2-2

Same pattern as 2-1. This level’s outside area has mo’ intricate terrain that isn’t all flat, but it looks jankier & less natural. Sand just stops gainst a pot with cut-off round the pots edges.

The underground sand section in this level is mo’ interesting, with a branching path. Howe’er, 1 o’ the 2 paths just leads to a dead end. This section is notorious for possibly leading to a softlock if the player, for some reason, removes all the sand there so that they can’t get back up.

17. World 2-3

Similar pattern to 2-1, but with spawning Beezos in the outdoors section & just 1 Cobrat & Pokey each.

The underground section is also mo’ interesting. Rather than just digging down to the bottom o’ a sand pit, you dig to the bottom to grab a key & then race up to the locked door in the middle while avoiding Phanto. This sand patch also has a branching path, but both branches end together @ the same door.

There’s also a short non-sand section @ the start with a branching path. The right path is full o’ enemies, but gives you a POW block for your troubles, while the left path is just an empty hole. The Game Boy Advance remake uses this split to be cheap assholes & put an ace coin on the left, so if you happen to take the right path ( or miss the ace coin floating slightly to the left o’ the left path ), you have to kill yourself or restart the level.

16. World 6-3

This is the least uninteresting desert level that follows the “outside area with Cobrats & Pokeys followed by cave full o’ sand you have to dig up” pattern used for 4 o’ this game’s levels. Actually, while this level has sand you can dig up, there’s no reason to, ’less you’re desperate for cherries or bombs. Your main focus is 2 rock walls you need to blow up with bombs to continue. Not the most interesting challenge, considering you’ve already had to do this in previous levels.

If you want mo’ challenge, you can waste your time blowing up many mo’ rocky walls to get access to a mushroom or some coins, but it’s not worth the effort, not the least o’ which since not screwing yourself o’er is trial-&-error: there’s a 90% chance you’ll accidentally grab the potion, which is just an arbitrary grass in the middle o’ the main route forward, lost ’mong the bombs, which is long before you’re ready to get the mushroom ( or get mo’ than a few coins ), wasting it. E’en better, you can easily get yourself stuck in a lower area if you’re not careful, forcing you to commit suicide to continue.

The 2nd half o’ this level is a climb up to the top o’ a cloudy area to find a pyramid in the sky. While the pyramid in the sky is amusing, I guess, & I like the rare autumnal red vines, the challenge itself is just a mo’ bloated, less tricky version o’ 5-2’s vine section, despite coming a full world afterward. If they had made the section a bit mo’ relevant to the desert theme — a’least have Cobrats or Pokeys, ’stead — this section would be much stronger & feel less like just a generic section that could fit just as well as in any other level.

This level’s strongest element is the secret @ the beginning o’ the level: quick sand that goes under the left wall, which you can use to go under the wall to a secret door on the other side. This door takes you right to the pyramid in the sky @ the end o’ the level. Since, as I’ve written here, nothing you’ll skip is o’ any interest, this is the recommended route ’less you’re the kind o’ poor sap going for the ace coins or Yoshi eggs in the Game Boy Advance remake.

15. World 1-3

This level falls victim to introducing mechanics done better in later levels. It starts with logs falling down waterfalls, which are fun if not impressive jumping challenges, which are perhaps properly formidable in its simplest form for the 1st boss level — a great place for a slight difficulty spike.

After this we have a factory area that gives you a longer-form version o’ grabbing the key & dodging Phanto, introduced in 1-2. Howe’er, since you’re mainly falling downward with the key, it’s still easier than later varieties. The only problem is the last fall, which is blind: the left side can make you fall into spikes, & the only way to avoid that is to know ’head o’ time to avoid the left side.

Other than that cheap blind fall, tho, this is a solid level for where it is. Unfortunately, all other things being equal, the early, introductory levels usually end up being the least great levels.

14. World 3-1

Tho the 1st part is mostly just basic cloud jumps with enemies, the waterfall theme is refreshingly rare. The use o’ the Pidgit straight up the final part o’ the waterfall section builds on World 1-2’s challenge; while that 1 let you easily weave round the Beezos’ paths, here you have to weave ’tween their paths.

The next section builds on the challenge o’ the Pansers. Whereas 2-2 & 2-3 had them o’er flat land, here they are o’er short platforms o’er a pit. Granted, being fiery plant enemies, they don’t fit the sky as well as deserts. You can skip this section with a door past a wide gap if you’re playing as Peach ( Luigi might be able to reach it, too, with clever jumping ); but this section is so simple, you may not want to bother, specially since you need to bomb down a rock wall in the shortcut, anyway. Speedrunners don’t e’en bother taking this “shortcut”.

The mushrooms in this level are dickishly placed before their respective potions, & the 2nd mushroom isn’t worth the effort: you can’t climb out with the potion, leading the player to doubt the designers would put a mushroom outside o’ that li’l cave area, which means that e’en if the player knows where the mushroom is, they have to race up the ladder & onto the mushroom — making sure not to o’ershoot their drop & run right off into the pit — before Subcon kicks them out, leaving no extra time for grabbing coins. Worse, after this you need to climb up the ladder with the Panser back, hovering o’er you.

I’m not sure how to feel ’bout the secret @ the bottom o’ the waterfall, under the 1st platforms. While putting rewards down where players expect death is unintuitive, designwise, I guess it works as a consolation prize for those bad ’nough @ the game to fall down by accident.

13. World 1-2

Widely known as “the Pidget level”. Pidget is surprisingly underused in this game, & e’en mo’ surprising, this level may be the best use. This mechanic is e’en better since the game doesn’t tutorialize it: it just shows you a pit that’s obviously too large to jump past ( ’cept maybe with Toadstool — I’ve ne’er tried ) & a bird on a flying carpet & expects the player to fill in the squares themselves. I like how the Beezos seem a threat; but since you can freely fly anywhere, not really, since you can just fly o’er them. &, ’course, I can’t ignore the clever way this game lets you skip the whole underground section with careful use o’ the flying carpet.

The underground section introduces breaking rocky blocks with bombs to get thru. It’s just 2 walls, but they did still implement a shortcut: the main path actually involves going up a ladder round the 2nd rocky wall that doesn’t have any bombs in front o’ it & tediously blowing up all 3 rocky blocks to the right with the bombs up ’bove ( you can’t go down the ladder with bombs, so you can’t just break the bottom wall ) to drop back down below the rocky wall below. Howe’er, you could also just go back to an earlier part o’ the underground section, grab a bomb, & then race to the 2nd bottom rocky wall to break it & bypass the whole upper area.

12. World 5-3

This may be 1 o’ the most bizarre-looking levels in the original NES version, thanks to its bizarre palette with the lime grass & yellow dirt accompanied by eye-searingly red hills with dark blue borders. To be honest, it looks tacky, specially with the log platforms that blend in with them — some o’ which are missing their left face for some reason, leading to jarring cutoff. This is 1 o’ the few times I prefer the remakes making the palettes mo’ consistent with other levels. That said, I do like how the hills continue down into the underground area — e’en if they don’t quite line-up, technically.

This level introduced Bob-Omb-dropping Albatrosses, with rocky walls that said Bob-Ombs can break ’pon exploding, just like regular bombs, tho you have no reason to bother, since you can easily jump o’er them. This pattern continues to the end o’ the 1st area, where you have 2 rock walls that hide a secret mushroom you can just jump round to get to the next area, which starts with a lower section blocked by rocky walls you can skip, which only hold coins. Considering the game forces you to break rock walls with regular bombs as early as 1-2 ( or 3-2 if you skip that section using Pidgit — which takes mo’ forethought that skipping these rocky walls requires ), it’s odd that they don’t force you to use the Bob-Ombs anywhere in this level.

Inside the tree-hill thing has clever challenges timing dropping down block-clogged passageways while dodging the spinning Sparks, with 2 subtle shortcuts with a single-block space o’er the Shy Guy producing pots that a ducking character can slide thru with the right momentum. Then there’s a climb up short platform steps while dodging the fireballs o’ Pansers moving down the steps & a long outside area with the last Pidgit in the game & a bunch o’ short jumps with enemies.

This level goes on a bit too long & tapers off the rails o’ its theme @ the end. This level has a lot o’ good ideas, but some are wasted by making them pointless & many o’ them don’t belong together in a single level.

This level may have the most blatantly obvious warp secret in the game, with that pot right up there where you can clearly see it & a potion right next to it.

11. World 4-3

This level begins with the most iconic puzzle in Super Mario Bros. 2: a benign Birdo whose eggs you need to ride past the gaping hole right @ the start.

After that you have vertical versions o’ 4-1’s Flurry dodging challenges, going up, & then down, with half o’ the downward section requiring you to carry a key to the bottom.

The downward section also starts with a short challenge forcing you to ride a Shy Guy or Tweeter o’er spikes. It’s less memorable than 4-2’s cannon o’er spikes, but arguably trickier, specially in the Game Boy Advance remake, as you have to jump off the enemy before the long fall to reach an ace coin on a small alcove that in all other versions o’ this game has no purpose. You can skip 1 o’ these long sections with Luigi or Peach by jumping o’er a long gap ’tween the entrance & exit o’ the palace.

I don’t know why the crystal ball room is designed the way it is. It’s just a crystal ball followed by a small hole you have to try to fall into & the hawk entrance, but there’s a high-up place with a single Flurry & nothing else. Maybe it’s there to create the ( cheap, bullshit ) risk o’ the Flurry falling on your head as you move for the Hawk head, but it’ll probably fall off before you e’en reach the jump, & a dumb challenge e’en if it worked.

10. World 5-2

The 1st half is a clever layout o’ rising & falling Hoopsters you have to weave thru, followed by the most interesting vine-climbing section in the game, forcing the player to weave ’tween both Hoopsters & Snifits.

Then the level ends with a bullshit drop where you have to weave ’tween spikes you don’t have nearly ’nough time to move round before you see them, making this section trial-&-error. The floor @ the very bottom e’en has holes o’er bottomless pits. Also, the Game Boy Advance remake has an ace coin in a very unnatural place you’re almost certain to miss the 1st time, with no way back up but suicide or restarting the level.

Fighting Birdo in a waterfall area with hopping Trouters ’stead o’ in yet ’nother cave is refreshing, a’least.

9. World 1-1

This game’s 1st level is subtly clever, with both a variety o’ themes that don’t feel contrived — including a cave you enter & climb up to reach the top o’ a mountain, which ends @ a vine that you climb up as the mountains gradually end while the clouds come into play. The level has a U shape, entering from a door in the middle o’ the sky ( which is night in the original NES version, for some reason ) & dropping straight down, going straight right on a seemingly normal grassland, & then climbing up a sky area to the fight with Birdo in the clouds.

The level also subtly introduces mechanics, such as the hill that stands out near the otherwise flat beginning that hides the 1st potion, to the short log-rolling section you can skip if it’s too hard for you so soon, to the POW block just after, & then the cherries spread out that the player will likely collect & likely see the star appear. The level weaves them together into what feels like a normal level, rather than breaking them out into conspicuously separate areas like a modern game would do.

This level also provides 2 shortcuts for mo’ skilled players, such as a way to jump the mountain in the main room to skip the cave or the door in the cave hidden ’hind a rocky wall that requires timing a bomb throw before it to break the rocks, allowing the player to skip the whole 2nd half o’ the level.

8. World 4-1

This level introduces the ice theme unique to world 4, which starts by honing your skills dealing with slippery physics with a simply but challenging section wherein you jump from ice-block bridge to bridge, weaving ’tween Flurries who slip round back & forth, trying to follow you & oft o’ershooting their mark thanks to their low traction.

This is followed not by the typical Birdo fight, but by a long battlezone littered with Flurries & cannon-manning Shy Guys, who shoot you with fireballs as you try climbing up the high ice towers.

7. World 5-1

World 5 is to world 3 what world 6 is to world 3 in the original Super Mario Bros., with world 3 having a vague tropical waterfall & hill during the day & world 5 having the same theme, but @ night.

This level may have the cleverest use o’ the Panser, challenging you to cross both o’er & under it while dodging its fireballs.

Most o’ the level takes place in front o’ underground waterfalls wherein the player must hop ’cross falling logs & hopping Trouters, the only time this game requires the player to cross waterfalls in such precarious ways with no way round it.

Tho the mushroom halfway thru the section is just a plain platform just after the potion, the last mushroom is a clever puzzle that requires the player to hop up to the ceiling & grab the block to fall down so that the mushroom can fall down when you go into Subcon. Howe’er, this puzzle loses points for having 2 blocks up there, forcing the player to either risk going up & doing it ’gain for the other block or try 1 block & hope they guess correctly.

6. World 6-2

This level has the gimmick I ripped off in Boskeopolis Land’s “Dark Sahara”: ride on the heads o’ flying Albatrosses ’cross the pits far too large to jump o’er. Howe’er, this original version’s has a simpler layout, but still feels much harder thanks to Super Mario Bros. 2’s slippier controls. This gimmick is unique to this level; but since Albatrosses are enemies who have appeared in other levels, & riding enemies heads is something you’ve done many times, if only to pick them up, this gimmick feels like a natural variation to this game general mechanics.

This is the only desert level to take place @ night on the original NES version — tho 2-1 seems like it’s s’posed to be dusk with the stars in the sky. I’m not sure why they didn’t continue the day/night scheme from the 1st Super Mario Bros. that this game uses for world 5 vs. world 3 for world 6 vs. world 2.

This level’s birdo seems harder than it is, a green ( eggless ) Birdo in a cramped room with just 2 mushroom blocks. Howe’er, Birdo standing on a dais gives you an advantage in that you can just duck on the bottom floor as Birdo shoots fireballs ’bove your head while you wait for Birdo to pause & hop to get up & grab a block or throw a block you’re holding.

5. World 3-3

While many people complain ’bout 4-2, 3-3 is arguably worse & is definitely the largest difficulty spike in the game.

This level introduces bomb-dropping Albatosses, but there are only 2 o’ them o’er a flat plain, so there’s not much to say ’bout them. Perhaps it would’ve been better to keep them to the levels that use them mo’ thoroughly so that they would feel fresher in those levels.

The inside factory area is where the game just fucks you in every way. There are 3 doors, 2 o’ which are unlocked. The top door leads to the key, @ the top o’ a room you have to go up & down, full o’ pots that repeatedly generate Shy Guys. The other door leads to a room that seems to end in a dead end @ a tall cliff you can’t reach — that is, ’less you bring the Ninji from the bottom up to the top, wherein if you stand on his head & high-jump off @ the top o’ the Ninji’s jump, you’ll be able to bypass half the key room. That half you skip is full o’ clever arrangements o’ blocks & Sparks, but a pain in the ass to navigate.

Just after this shortcut is a door whence the key door’s area meets up with this room. What’s bizarre is that if you go thru that door trying to go farther up from the key room leads to ’nother dead end before a tall height gap before farther up in the level, which you can’t skip this time, making this dead end useless. You have to continue upward, which will re-meet with the key room higher up, past the key room’s dead end. ¿Confused? Imagine trying to play this.

E’en if you take the Ninji shortcut, you still have mo’ tricky Spark arrangements & possibly the hardest Panser challenge wherein you have to dodge 2 Panser’s fireballs while slowly climbing up a chain & then go side to side on chains, trying not to slip off with these chain’s wonky hit detection wherein you need to be right in the middle to be able to climb them.

This is certainly a cleverly constructed level, & I e’en quite like the strong castle aesthetics thruout the whole level. But there’s something questionable ’bout having possibly the hardest level in the game before the half-way mark.

4. World 4-2

The 2nd ice level evolves 4-1’s simple but challenging beginning with a simpler but e’en mo’ challenging — a notorious roadblock for players — mostly-flat icy bridge that throws Beezos @ you from every vertical position, forcing you to duck & jump with quick timing to weave ’tween them.

My only problem with this level is that your character’s dumb ducking high jump mechanic gets in the way: you’ll usually want to be ducking & sliding to keep higher-up Beezos from hitting you & only jump ( while still ducking to minimize the chances o’ a higher Beezo hitting you will still waiting to land back to ground ) before Beezos @ the very bottom; but ducking too long lengthens your jump height, which not only changes your jump height, but also keeps you in the air longer, where you’re vulnerable to Beezos with li’l you can do to control whether or not you get hit.

This section is followed by a unique area with whales as platforms, who spit water out o’ the blowhole, which you can use to reach the top section o’ the area. Their tails can also act as platforms & hold this area’s mushroom. While I love this unique theme, & can certainly understand the whale’s water hurting you if you hit it from the side, sometimes the water hurts you if it hits you from below if you don’t jump before it rises under you, which just feels arbitrary & cheap. Presumably, they programmed its hit detection with the same janky “¿is the player’s vertical speed greater than 0?” check that the original Super Mario Bros. uses for testing bonking enemies on the head.

The last section o’ this level requires you to jump on the cannon-manning Shy Guy, throw the Shy Guy off, & ride the cannon rightward past the spike pit. Don’t try riding past the spike pit with the Shy Guy still on, as it just goes back & forth & you’ll just get knocked off the cannon by the low-hanging ceiling thanks to the extra height the Shy Guy gives you.

While these 3 sections don’t fit seamlessly together, they do a’least all fit the ice theme. My only complaint is that I feel this level squanders a’least 2 great ideas for 1 level, when they could’ve replaced a superfluous desert level — or e’en just replace a superfluous desert world with an ice world, since it’s clear they had mo’ ideas for ice levels than desert levels.

3. World 3-2

This level has an intriguing path shape, with the main room having a unique o’erground/underground counterparts in the same area. The main path involves going to the far right or halfway thru the ’boveground area & then down to the far right o’ the top underground area & then go down e’en further, going down & up ladders as you make your way to the left end o’ the underground area. Howe’er, halfway thru the top underground area there’s a gap going leftward that Peach can float ’cross, skipping a whole room full o’ rocky walls you’d need to bomb thru.

My only complaint gainst this level is that the 2nd mushroom puzzle is bullshit trial-&-error gameplay. The mushroom is under 1 o’ the 2 rock-blocked alcoves, which is to be expected, but the area only gives you 1 bomb, so you need to guess & hope you’re lucky or look up the answer.

2. World 7-2

This level starts with a series o’ outside cloud platforms with an onslaught o’ column-helmed Snifits, who are far from the trickiest layout, but a fitting warm-up.

The bulk o’ this final level is a factory maze with branches here & there, most o’ which act simply as alternate routes to the same end, tho there are 2 that lead to rooms with mushrooms ( as well as bullshit bomb plants, which are surrounded by towers, making it pretty much impossible to throw it & not have it blow up in your face ). Other than that, the way the mushrooms are hidden within this giant maze is a fitting way to make players work for their extra hit points in this end-game level.

All o’ this level’s main rooms revolve round block & Spark arrangements — tho oddly, none are as challenging as the kind found mo’ than half the game ago in 3-3. Many o’ the rooms present li’l danger, such as the drop down the mushroom block bridges or, e’en odder, the chain climb wherein most o’ the climb you can go straight upward without the Sparks e’en e’er able to hit you. The long climb up conveyor belt platforms @ the end o’ the bottom path & the climb up the teal blocks on the upper path with the upside-down T block & Sparky formations can be tricky, tho. This early the developers had already figured out what is now known to every rom-hack developer: that marathons make for particularly challenging levels. Howe’er, 3-3 was already something o’ a marathon itself, & the tameness o’ these rooms dampens the danger o’ e’en redoing many sections. Unfortunately, many, like the room with the Sparks & mushroom blocks, are mo’ boring to have to redo than difficult.

The hardest part o’ the level is the Birdo on the conveyor belt near the end, holding a key needed to reach the end rather than a crystal ball, specially thanks to this game’s bullshit wherein eggs hurt you e’en after they’ve hit a wall & are falling offscreen.

But ’tween the locked door & Wart is a cleverly designed room with just a crystal ball & hawk face, ominously littered with 2 mushroom blocks & no enemies @ which you’d need to throw them — that is till the player runs into the infamous twist: the hawk face, rather than peacefully opening its mouth & letting you inside as it does on every other level, starts flying @ you in wavy patterns, forcing you to throw a mushroom block @ it 3 times to tame it & continue to Wart.

Unfortunately, Wart himself is mo’ tedious than challenging. While the bubbles he constantly spits out are easy to dodge, the speed @ which he spits them makes it hard to toss a vegetable into his mouth before he spits a bubble out & breaks the vegetable, which usually turns this battle into a stalemate, which is worsened by Wart’s bloated 6 hit points.

1. World 7-1

While this game has had cloud sections here & there, including the 1st level, 7-1 is the only level 100% dedicated to its cloudy theme.

The 1st main area is a shorter, less straightforward variation o’ 6-2’s gimmick, which requires the player to ride an Albatross o’er the left wall & past the large gap after it. While most players need to go all the way to the far right to where they can climb up on a hut’s roof to get high ’nough to reach the Albatrosses, Luigi can high-jump up to 1 right @ the start, skipping most o’ this section.

The next section involves a cloud maze full o’ pots that repeatedly generate Shy Guys that zigzags down to go under a tall pole — tho Luigi can just jump o’er the pole by jumping off the Snifit on the pole to the left o’ it.

The 3rd section involves climbing up cloud sections littered with circling Sparks, including 1 section that requires the player to stack Mushroom blocks while dodging Sparks if they’re not Luigi. This is slow & annoying, howe’er, so you should just play as Luigi.

This is followed by short ladder climbs guarded by Snifits & Hoopsters, — a less-developed but better-looking version o’ 5-2’s vine climb — which ends @ a hut @ the top.

Inside the hut is the least accommodating green/gray Birdo in the game, with just 1 mushroom block with which to throw all 3 o’ Birdo’s hits & tight space to grab it while Birdo shoots fireball after fireball @ you.