Accompanying music

For once the layout & programming took mo’ time than the graphics — probably ’cause much o’ the graphics are reused from other “pirate” themed level. & for once this is actually pirate themed & not a beach or bathtub.

It’s hard for me to get difficulty right ( or I fail to get it right ), since I’m bad @ games, so I can’t tell if I made a level too ridiculous or if I just suck. ¿Does dodging some o’ these anchor bullets require luck or just sharp eyes & reflexes? I considered lengthening the minimum shoot delay, since it seems like the most seemingly unfair hits were when it shot just after shooting, but decided not to, since I figured I was just reacting too slowly.

Anyway, the gem & time scores are lenient & I’m quite sure all o’ the trouble I had gathering the footage for this day’s video was due to sloppy playing. The time video here particularly shows that off, as after near flawless playing through the 1st half I flop round as if my fingers were covered in butter & hesitate as if I developed Alzheimer’s & still make the time score — though right on the last second.

The ladder shafts & the final stair climb are so saturated with anchor bullet sprites that it caused slowdown, so I had to fiddle together some optimization tricks. The 1st 1 I did had nothing to do with sprites, but eased the level’s run load so much that it made up for it: many o’ the tiles are background tiles, & I noticed that none o’ those tiles animated or changed. I’ve realized for a while that drawing all these li’l blocks is probably 1 o’ the most inefficient things this game does, since it calls the SDL_RenderCopyEx function for each block, which valgrind has consistently told me is slow. ( This is what led me to realize many updates ago that loading a small image & tiling it for a background is slower than manually tiling it into a large image & just loading & drawing that large image once per frame ). So I created a branch o’ the background tile code & created ’nother version that @ the beginning creates a texture o’ all the level’s background tiles & just draws the portion o’ that that’s on the screen every frame, turning what could be o’er 200 SDL_RenderCopyEx calls per frame into just 1 per frame.

That seemed to get rid o’ the slowdown. But I still wasn’t sure or satisfied, so I made 1 other quick & easy optimization that was actually relevant to sprites & I should’ve fixed a while ago. When a sprite is killed off, it’s simply erased from the vector o’ sprites. I’ve read on the internet that vector’s erase method shifts all entries after the deleted entry backward to fill the space & still maintain the order o’ entries. Unfortunately, I don’t care ’bout sprite order — it’s arbitrary, anyway, based on whatever order the map reader finds them, which isn’t tied to the order the player is likely to find them. Moreo’er, this is slow — I believe worst-case O(n). So I changed it so that it now just replaces the data o’ the sprite to be deleted with the final sprite’s data & then just pop off the final sprite.

I must confess I didn’t come up with this idea myself, but learned it from this chapter on “Object Pools” o’ the book Game Programming Patterns. In fact, I’ve known ’bout it for years & used it in earlier programs I’ve made, which is why I said I should’ve used it earlier.

As an extra maybe-optimization that didn’t hurt is I set the sprites vector to reserve 50 spots @ the beginning to hopefully avoid going past the size o’ the vector & having to slowly reallocate memory, move the data, & delete the ol’ data. When considering this optimization, I considered changing the vector to a classic C array, since I wasn’t sure if vector e’en allowed you to delete any entry without automatically shifting other entries; but realized it didn’t matter, since the sprites are held as unique pointers, so I could just release the last entry’s data & reset the unique pointer o’ the sprite to be deleted to that data. I decided to stay with vector for the greater size flexibility it gives. I prefer the balance o’ safety & speed I can get by having a vector with a moderate # o’ space reserved so that having to enlarge the vector is unlikely, but still gives me the chance to enlarge the vector if absolutely needed, for some rare outcome that I can’t predict.

’Course, the fact that sprites are held as pointers & not data itself means that this vector can’t take advantage o’ data locality, — which I also, coincidentally, 1st learned ’bout from a chapter o’ Game Programming Patterns — which is also a rather big inefficiency. However, fixing that would take a lot mo’ work — I would basically have to refactor all sprite code so that it uses discriminating unions — which are both racist & socialist, so neither side o’ the political spectrum likes them — ’stead o’ polymorphic sprites. In hindsight, I would’ve preferred using discriminating unions for this & a few other reasons, but it’s too late; so we’re stuck with slow & stupid polymorphic classes. I could think o’ many other optimizations I could make, some big & some so small it’d be a waste o’ time — & some big, but would require me to reprogram large parts o’ the game’s integral code. This isn’t so much “fix all inefficiencies I can think o’”, which would make this project take decades to finish, but “fix inefficiencies that are obvious & ridiculously easy to do”. I’ll save these bigger ideas for the sequel, where I can start from scratch. Now I want to just get this sloppy mess finished & out o’ my sight.

Anyway, these optimizations not only seemed to clear all slowdown in “Good Ship Lifestyle”, they also seemed to fix the slowdown that has been in “Value Valhalla” for probably o’er a year. ( Didn’t fix most o’ the sprites disappearing after a loop, though ). Why this happens, I can’t understand, since this level has neither any background tile layers nor sprites that are deleted.

& I must say, this level’s music is a true banger. This time it isn’t by Kevin McLeod, but by a band called Blue Wave Theory, found on Free Music Archive, released under Creative Commons ( & thus OK for me to use ). It’s surprising how much high quality music you can find for free — which is great for people like me with absolutely no musical talent.

Final Fun Game: Try & find the minor graphical ( technically, level-design ) flaw I made & didn’t notice till after I already recorded the video this time.

Here Is Where the Bad Polymorphic Classes Can Be Found

I finished this level a while ago — I just forgot to do a video on it till now. I think I was planning to do a bit mo’ graphical polishing. The volcano enemies still don’t look so good, & I just noticed while looking o’er the video that its fireballs sometimes go ’hind the cliffs due to some graphical shenanigans o’ how those cliffs work. Also, I waffled o’er what color I wanted this level to be. @ 1st it was bright yellow; but then I realized a desert being bright yellow @ night didn’t make sense & that I already have plenty o’ yellow in this game.

I’m not so hot on this level. It’s probably way too derivative o’ Doki Doki Panic / US Super Mario Bros. 2. Furthermo’, the bird-riding makes most o’ the level basically an autoscroller & the fireballs the volcano enemies spit out are random. Ironically, it’s ’cause Super Mario Bros. 2’s Pansers, whom this volcano enemy is obviously ripped-off o’, works the same way that I argued that ’twas all right. But I’m still not sure if I just have slow reflexes or if this is just unfair. I actually hope for the former, since I’d rather be bad @ playing video games than designing them.

I also got to steal from myself by taking that bird enemy’s graphics from 1 o’ the sprite comic episodes o’ Boskeopolis Stories. That makes this enemy & their mechanic technically inspired by a comic inspired by a video game. So Boskeopolis Land is the equivalent o’ Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game, or whatever it’s called.

The gem score, like many o’ the recent levels I’ve made, allows a few gems leeway, since getting all the gems is pain ’nough as it is. The time score isn’t much, either, since much o’ this level is autoscroll & gives you li’l control o’er how fast this level goes.

Man, this level sucks. I should’ve stuck with the idea o’ ripping off the bull level from the Rabbit Rampage game, ’stead. A’least nobody cares ’bout that game, so nobody would notice my plagiarism. Hell, e’en the name sucks: I don’t e’en think this level’s environment is saharan.

Downloading this code will infest your computer with malware till you get 999,999,999 points in this game.

It’s been long since last update, but that was ’cause I for no known reason waited till I got these 4 levels sorted through. Thus this update took long ’cause it’s 4 updates in 1.

Foul Fowl Farm

The 1st mountain level, as the music & background hint. I originally planned to have it be the 2nd mountain level, with “Milky Mountains” as the 1st, but I’ve found this level to be much easier than that level, & it fits better, difficulty-wise, like that. It doesn’t fit as well theme-wise, since it’s strange that a straightforward mountain level would be 2nd & the level that twists the theme a bit comes 1st, but that’s not as important. Plus it’s a bonus to start strange, so the audience doesn’t get bored before the good stuff comes. Always put the best 1st & last & the weakest in the middle; & though I don’t consider “Milky Mountains” to be bad, I consider it on the lower end, & worse than “Foul Fowl Farm”.

This was, indeed, a level that took much mo’ time drawing the graphics than coding it, since the goal gimmick was already mostly coded for “Playing Railroad”. I e’en had to make a program to generate the tiles for the barn roofs, since they comprise to many blocks for me to have the patience to do that manually.

However, it did take mo’ recoding than it appears. 1 lame thing I had to do was make copies o’ all the Pollo no Noko enemies, since the originals respawn after they die — & need to stay that way for “Milky Mountains” to still work right. In this level, that clearly can’t fly, since you could just respawn & killing the same chicken. E’en if my counter was smart ’nough to account for that, which would be mo’ effort than just copying & pasting, it would be annoying for the player to have to remember which chickens they’ve already bopped. Much simpler to just keep bopped chickens bopped.

I also had to create a new slope template, since the 1 I I’d just made for “Stormy Skyscrapers” only accounted for different slope widths, while the barn roof needed a super steep slope 2 blocks high. Since ’twas so different, trying to wrangle the already-existing slope template wouldn’t have been worth it, so I just created a new template.

It seems I was mo’ lenient with the time scores with these levels, since the video o’ my winning attempt to get the time score is full o’ weird flubs. The gem score, however, requires you to get all o’ them, which is fair, since this is a short & easy level.

Frostbite Mines

I was mixed on this. For a while I wanted to make a spiral-shaped level as part o’ my strategy o’ basing level maps ( more o’ less ) on simple shapes; & as simple as this level is, I like how it works. You may notice that a common strategy I play is to sometimes give levels 2 gimmicks when 1’s too modest¹, so the level isn’t too pedestrian. In this case, just sliding under spikes & dodging falling snowballs by themselves aren’t compelling ’nough for their own levels; but mixed into 1 level gives the level mo’ depth. It feels mo’ like Donkey Kong Country 2 & less like Donkey Kong Country 3.

However, this & the next ice level I’ll write ’bout uses up all the ice level ideas; & I still wanted to have a snowy mountain level. That’s why I waited till I finished the other ice level to confirm whether I wanted these both. ’Twas during this time that I came to my solution: just move the ice mountain level to the mountain theme. However, this pushes me into deciding ’tween mo’ levels: the ice mountain vs. that dumb level where you just don’t press anything for 30 seconds vs. the volcano level idea vs. ’nother desert level I’m working on ( since all o’ these ’cept the ice mountain could potentially be desert levels ). But that choice is easier.

Technically, I finished this level’s graphics last, since I decided to use the ice-mine blocks I made for “Chillblain Lake” ’stead o’ the regular mine blocks. But the main design was made 2nd. Besides, as I’ll rant ’bout, I neglected to finish the graphics o’ the next 2 levels.

’Cause this is a rather difficult level for this game, this is a 4th-cycle level. It’s easy to be a li’l off on your budging when near spikes or next to the falling snowball to get a li’l too close & taking a hit, & there are no hearts. That said, this is 1 o’ the few short 4th-cycle levels.

I think I intentionally made the time score for this level somewhat lenient, since it’s a rather difficult level, as I usually do. I think the gem score lets you miss ’bout 1 gem ( which, sadly, doesn’t include the 250₧ bright gem @ the bottom o’ the slope o’er spikes ).

The Amazon Jungle

This is not a jungle level, but what is planned to be the 2nd factory level. The name is based on a 2-part pun based on the warehouse company Amazon that the city near to me, Seattle, has a love-hate relationship with for being a great job-creator for jobs that are miserable to work & a classic novel, The Jungle, known for its gruesome depiction o’ factories, which inspired regulatory acts by the Theodore Roosevelt administration in the US. I fiddled with names that involved the word “warehouse”, including the truly dreadful “Warehouse o’ London”, which makes no sense, since this game obviously takes place in the fictional city o’ Boskeopolis, not a real British city. I finally decided that the current name is mo’ clever than any hokey Rareware alliteration on “Warehouse”.

The level is mainly based round moving trucks carrying what I s’pose are packages. I actually made these sprites a while ago for a city level I rejected; but ’stead o’ having packages on their backs, they had… whatever the backs o’ big trucks are called. I think they were called “Anguri Trucks”, based on the Japanese way o’ saying “angry”, for some reason. They’re basically just Mega Moles from Super Mario World that are a danger if they run into you, but can help you by giving you a moving platform o’er spikes. Not only is it a ripoff o’ that, but making them trucks is clearly inspired by the VIP rom-hack series, which changed the Mega Mole graphics into some obscure truck meme.

I find this level questionable, mainly due to all the parts that slow you down, such as the part where you have to ride the truck & the part where you have to stay ’tween 2 trucks in a long line o’ trucks to slowly make your way to the end. I don’t like autoscrollers, as they make you wait, & waiting is boring. I guess these aren’t too bad, since you don’t have to wait too long ’tween actions for the riding section, & it’s not long, & you have to constantly time your budges forward to keep yourself from falling too far back & hitting the truck ’hind you or going too far forward to hit the truck ’head o’ you, so you’re not just waiting. Plus, one could take the long line section as a satire on traffic jams — an idea I’ll admit I just came up with now. A’least they’re broken off with free platforming sections.

I’m also not sure how to feel ’bout that section that kills you if you stay on the truck as it lets it rise up. I tried to indicate that it’s death by putting a skull in the background there; but that just makes one wonder why it’s e’en there. The obvious answer is as a joke — but it’s still weird. O well: better games got ’way with worse bullshit.

Since this level constrains your movement so much, I know I intentionally made the time score lenient, as seen by my still-winning flubbed-up video. Like “Frostbite Mines”, the gem score lets you miss a few gems, but not many.

I always hate it when I spend so much time trying to make sure the presentation o’ a level is as polished as I can make it before making these presentations & being able to move on, only to realize after already making the video that I didn’t finish everything. ¿How could I forget to put a string on that package that raises you to the top? Actually, I didn’t e’en notice that till I noticed that the package lacked any kind o’ shading & realized that I ne’er got to polishing that sprite @ all: I just drew the simplest design that looked like a package I could & commensed with making it work how I wanted ( as is wise to do: e’en worse is wasting time polishing design for something you later realize doesn’t work & must be tossed aside ), only to forget to do the polishing part.

Chillblain Lake

Though I originally planned to make this a 3rd-cycle ice level, I may make this a 2nd-cycle — or e’en 1st-cycle — level & move “Frigid Frigates” to the 3rd cycle, since I feel like it’s harder than this level. E’en “Ice Box Rock”, which is in the 1st cycle, might be harder than this level.

This level is heavily inspired by Wario Land 3’s “E2 The Frigid Sea” green treasure, wherein you start out with water, giving you access to the chest, but not the key, so you have to go hit a switch to turn the water into solid ice, giving you access to the key, but not the chest, which means you have to go back & hit the switch 1 mo’ time. As arrogant as it feels to say, I feel my design is better than Wario Land 3’s, since there’s less backtracking: in Wario Land 3, you go through the same path twice to the switch, while this level makes you go in a figure 8, with the 1st path to the switch in the water that leads to the chest, & thus blocked off after turning the water to ice, & the path to the key going onward to the switch in ’nother way.

I particularly like the way the 2nd path leads to a cliff o’er the switch. When you 1st reach the switch, you’ll likely see it, ’specially if you grab the tantalizing gems ’bove the switch. But you can’t reach up there ( nor can you reach the very topmost tantalizing gem ). It’s only on the way back to the switch through the other way that the player learns the mystery o’ the cliff too high to reach & can finally nab that too-high gem.

The diamond was originally just in an alcove on the key side o’ the water, sort o’ parallel to the main path in the chest side o’ the water. However, I felt that was still too easy to find. I wanted to involve the water-ice gimmick in some way, so I made it so that you couldn’t quite reach the diamond ’bove the water, but could with the ice. But then I remembered that ice is solid, so you can’t go through it to reach the diamond. So I made a somewhat secret passage ’bove the spikes @ the end o’ the curve upward & made a ladder passage ( which, unlike “Stormy Skyscrapers” & “Foul Fowl Farm”, has a top that you can climb up to, but can’t climb down, making it 1-way ) back up to the curve, since the ice path is still blocked off. My only problem with this is I don’t think this passage is secret ’nough. I pushed it back ’nough so that you couldn’t see the other side o’ the wall with the kind o’ natural camera you’d have when you reach the spikes; but as you jump up the curve on the normal path to the switch, you’re guranteed to see the secret passage opening.

You may notice the sliding under spikes gimmick from “Frostbite Mines” used here, but in a much easier, shorter way. That is ’nother technique I use sometimes: gimmicks reused in later levels in much less prominent ways as either a short tutorial for the real threat, as used here, or mixed with ’nother gimmick as a mo’-challenging twist on the gimmick, as seen in “Crying Lightning” with the fading-in & fading-out cloud platforms from “Cotton Candy Clouds” ( a gimmick that was also taken from Wario Land 3 ) mixed with the chasing lightning cloud enemy for a short bit, challenging the player to time jumps gainst the 2 gimmicks simultaneously ’stead o’ just 1.

Sick o’ the mine blocks used in so many levels already, I made an icy version, mixing the ice tops o’ the ground blocks from “Frigid Frigates” with the mine blocks, which I then decided to add to “Frostbite Mines”. I also changed the also-o’erused rocky mine background ( I’m still not sure if I’ve finished that background or if I’m going to ’ventually try adding wooden frames to it ) to a background totally not heavily based on a Wario Land 3 background from the same level this gimmick was taken from, but I didn’t use that background in “Frostbite Mines”, ’cause I found ’twas too hard to see with that level’s much brighter palette, made brighter by the white fog. I also opened the roof & added sunlight streaming in from the top. I e’en made this level’s name “Chillblain Lake”, ’stead o’ its original name, “Chillblain Caves”, which is mo’ fitting, since this level’s main focus is the lake shifting back & forth from being liquid or solid. All this is a way to try minimizing the mines aspect o’ this level, since it feels weird having half the ice levels be mine levels, too, when we already have 3 mine levels.

Despite all this polish, I realized too late that I ne’er bothered to make the fish enemies have mo’ than 1 animation frame or not look like something I sloppily drew out in a couple seconds, which is what I definitely did. Worse: this isn’t e’en a new enemy, but 1 I made way back for “Soupy Sewers”. Why I still haven’t given that enemy worthwhile graphics is beyond understanding.

However, I did think to make these fish boppable underwater, as the video shows, proving that I took my critique ’bout not being able to hit enemies in water levels being a contributing factor to those levels’ popular hatred in my article ’bout Super Mario Bros. Deluxe to heart for my own game.

I just realized I’ve been forgetting to update the readme, so this readme was publicly revealing planned bugfixes I’d already solved for months.

Accompanying music

This may have been the 1st game I owned, as opposed to the 1st game I played, a family-owned game, ( Super Mario World ), ‘long with Pokémon Silver with my new Game Boy Color back when I turned 9.

@ the time I was surprised & somewhat disappointed. I think I remembered my older brother saying ’twas like Super Mario All-Stars, a game we had but somehow lost, but it turned out to just be a remake o’ the 1st Super Mario Bros. — what a philistine younger me considered to be the weakest o’ the ol’ Mario games, since it’s much mo’ limited in powerups, didn’t have any kind o’ map screen like Super Mario Bros. 3 or Super Mario World had ( Super Mario Bros. Deluxe does, but it’s just for aesthetics & showing score requirements for Challenge Mode levels ), didn’t have spin jumps, didn’t let you revisit beaten levels, & didn’t e’en let you go backward in levels. So, basically, young me wasn’t thrilled ’cause ’twas hard & I sucked @ video games & I preferred the hand-holding o’ Super Mario World &, to a lesser extent, Super Mario Bros. 3.

I did warm up to it though, leaving me with the nostalgia I have now. I also somehow not only beat the classic mode, but also Lost Levels — or as they called it, “Super Mario Bros. for Super Players”. Granted, this game let you save & resume from game o’er on every level, so ’twas much easier than the NES / Famicom originals.

This was also the 1st time I saw the original NES version’s graphics, or graphics very similar. I remember how, um, less impressed I was with how Bowser looked in the originals. If Bowser sounded funny ’cause he had a cold in Super Mario Sunshine, he must’ve looked funny in the original Super Mario Bros. ’cause his face got in a car accident.

Now I’ve somehow gotten better @ this game to the point that I can 100% it & e’en beat classic mode without getting game o’er.

Indeed, the mo’ I play it, the mo’ impressed I am @ how well this classic game holds up, e’en if it didn’t have Deluxe‘s trinkets & doodads — proof that truly good games stay good for eternity. Sure, levels are mo’ oft just flat land with a bunch o’ enemies than later Mario games; but we could already see cleverness in the enemy designs, such as the Koopas that could be both a weapon & a risk if you stomped them. In particular, the way later levels combined enemies created an interesting kind o’ difficulty impossible to realize with enemies ‘lone: hopping Koopas become much harder to maneuver round when you have to time your jumps or dodges with randomly-generated Bullet Bills.

& then you have Hammer Bros., which are unquestionably the hardest enemies, but are interesting if you get to understand how they work. I remember years ago when I 1st learned how to rather consistently get past them in 8-4 by counting to 6 or 7 & then running toward them — which is right when they should start jumping. The only trick here is if the hammers they throw are in a bad position, which may force you to hop ‘tween some ‘fore running past them. ‘Nother, riskier, strategy is to stay near in front o’ them so that their hammers go o’er your head, making sure to keep distance so that they don’t move to close & kill you with their touch poison that all video game enemies seem to have.

Mo’ importantly, the original Super Mario Bros. has 1 strength that none o’ its children have: it’s consistently fast-paced. You almost ne’er have to stop throughout the entire level, & times when you might are caused by an enemy being in an unfortunate place ( usually in the underwater levels, which have some o’ the worst physics & where every enemy moves randomly ). Contrast that with e’en Super Mario Bros. 3 & Super Mario World, great exploration games that are, unfortunately, infected with far too many tedious autoscrollers ( fun fact: 1 is too many autoscrollers ). Honestly, Super Mario Bros. is probably the only good action / challenge platformer Mario game ‘cause o’ this. ( Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, Yoshi’s Island, the Super Mario Land & the Wario Land don’t games count: they’re exploration games that focused on puzzle solving & collecting & are baby-easy. Super Mario 64 had the distinction o’ being both fast & an exploration game that was baby-easy, so it’s e’en better ). This is probably why Nintendo’s attempt to flirt with challenging gameplay ‘gain in the New Super Mario Bros. & Super Mario Galaxy games was so awful: it just gave you the slowness o’ Super Mario World, but made you go through it multiple times if you happened to die. Well, that & ‘cause New Super Mario Bros.’s idea o’ “challenge” is making me beat a ghost house ‘gain whenever I want to save — something much harder games like Super Meat Boy didn’t devolve into ‘cause that game was actually designed by people who gave a shit.

Though Lost Levels has questionable level design decisions, I like how e’en in its 8-3 they put clever ways to help get past Hammer Bros. in the form o’ bricks camouflaging gainst brick walls that you can stand on to get clearer height o’er the ground-bound Hammer Bros. ( only to later force you to get through 2 Hammer Bros. without any helpful blocks ).

People oft pump up 8-4 as the ultimate challenge ’cause it’s the last level, but it actually might be 1 o’ the easiest world 8 levels, ‘cept for maybe 8-1. Other than maybe figuring out the maze through trial & error, — a much simpler & easier maze than any o’ the earlier castle mazes, too — it doesn’t truly get hard till the Hammer Bro & Bowser @ the end. Then ‘gain, none o’ the castle levels are as hard as most o’ the noncastle levels.

8-3 has an interesting dynamic to its difficulty: it’s oft considered the next contender for hardest level, & it’s certainly harder than 8-4, but it offers plenty o’ powerups — but only if you take the time to find them in the many bricks surrounded by Hammer Bros. This leaves players with 2 possible strategies: take the harder route o’ fighting off Hammer Bros. to earn a powerup to make later parts easier or rush through & skip the powerups. If you weather the 1st 2 pairs o’ Hammer Bros., you can get a fire flower, making the rest o’ the Hammer Bros. trivial — & thus the rest o’ the level. These 2 pairs are easier than the later ones, since they have brick floors you can bump them under, while the others are on the ground, their hammers right in your face & their heads constantly guarded by hammers. Thus, the powerups make the level much easier: when I discovered them, which was surprisingly late, I found the level became much easier. In general, Super Mario Bros. is great @ rewarding taking the time to explore by making things easier while using the natural reward that is the thrill o’ going quickly to seduce mo’ skilled players to go mo’ quickly. Only the Donkey Kong Country games seem to do as well ( & e’en then, only maybe 75% o’ the time ) @ giving players both exploration & speed by giving players a lot o’ control o’er how quickly they want to move.

If anything, it’s the water levels that are the worst. Water levels are always infamous in video games, but I can’t think o’ any that are worse than the original Super Mario Bros.‘s. Everything feels out o’ control: Mario’s movements feel inconsistent, ‘specially when falling ( the fact that pits awkwardly change how fast Mario plummets doesn’t help ). & all the enemies move randomly & can’t be killed ‘less you have a fire flower. E’en Hammer Bros. can be killed by hopping on them or hitting them from below.

You know, ¿why did they decide that landing on top o’ an enemy in air should kill an enemy, but not underwater, & why does every platformer just copy this arbitrary rule? The fact that water levels oft cripple your abilities & make you move slowly is surely why water levels are so despised, e’en though water has the potential to make you mo’ mobile by letting you move freely vertically, too. I’d like to see a platformer make you mo’ powerful & have freer movement underwater so people actually prefer water levels — that would be a nice surprise for once.

Super Mario Bros.‘s reputation as a hard game always confused me. I don’t mean the view that it’s a hard game in general, or comparing it to later Mario games, which are certainly easier; but people act as if e’en for its time ’twas hard, which is certainly not true. For an NES game, Super Mario Bros. is strikingly easy. I can beat it without getting game o’er, whereas I can’t beat a single Mega Man, Castlevania, or Ninja Gaiden game. Compared to 95% o’ its contemporaries, Super Mario Bros. was a baby-easy game, as was every Mario game compared to its contemporaries. It’s only nowadays that adult gamers with the selfishness o’ young adults expect that Mario games, meant for all ages, should be made specially for 30-year-ol’s with decades o’ experience playing games.

Super Mario Bros. Deluxe was a particularly good remake in that it didn’t just “improve” its graphics by making them mo’ technologically advanced but with less heart ( looks @ 3DS Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga ), but mainly adds to gameplay. You don’t just get the classic Super Mario Bros., but also, as mentioned earlier, Lost Levels, as well as a photo album, a minigame where you race a Boo through levels with switch blocks¹, a challenge mode, & a bunch o’ random trinkets, such as a fortune-telling game & a bunch o’ weird pictures you can print if you’re 1 o’ the probably 5% people who actually had the Game Boy Printer @ the time. Indeed, I was so impressed by Super Mario Bros. Deluxe‘s extras that I was disappointed by the later Super Mario Advance remakes, which didn’t have nearly as much.

That’s not to say that Deluxe didn’t screw some things up. 1 flaw they couldn’t help but have due to the hardware is the smaller screen, which made it harder to see what’s round you, & thus harder in general. This is worsened by the fact that this is a straight remake, & thus the levels were made for the larger screen. To make up for this, the game lets you scroll the screen a li’l bit ‘hind you, as opposed to the original NES game, which didn’t let you scroll back @ all.

Though I wouldn’t necessarily call it an unquestionable downgrade, the physics are slightly different from the original NES game’s — though not as off as the All-Stars version’s. I’d read a long time ago that Nintendo lost the original source code years ago, so they’ve been reprogramming the game in approximations each remake ( or emulating the original ); thus it’s not too surprising that they couldn’t get things perfect each time. Still, in some ways I think Deluxe‘s controls feel better, though that may be just ’cause I’m used to them. They feel tighter: Mario & Luigi don’t feel like they go flying when you jump forward & you have greater control o’er your movement in air, making it easier to back up while in the air if you jump forward. Block collision also feels less janky: trying to fit big Mario or Luigi into a 2-block hole is surprisingly challenging in the original Super Mario Bros., making hitting the beanstalk block in World 4-2 much trickier to hit than in Deluxe.

On the other hand, sprite hit detection feels better in the original than in Deluxe. Both have somewhat glitchy hit detection, but Deluxe more oft screws you o’er with it. Sometimes when landing on an enemy I would get forced into them & hurt. Springs are much mo’ consistent in the original, making random deaths far less common, & mushrooms don’t kill your jump if you jump into them, unlike in Deluxe. & the upside o’ Mario & Luigi going flying forward faster when jumping is that you can move mo’ quickly while speeding through levels, making Deluxe feel slightly slower.

But these are nitpicks that most players probably won’t e’en notice.

Super Mario Bros. for Super Players

1 flaw that they could help was the fact that the included port o’ Lost Levels is god awful — the worst there e’er was. Many critics bring up that it only has the 1st 8 worlds, no world 9 or A-D ( though partially-finished versions o’ these levels are hidden in the cartridge, so they probably planned to make them but ran out o’ time ). They might e’en bring up that the graphics are regular Super Mario Bros.‘s, ‘cept the Poison Mushroom, which is some weird new graphic with colors used nowhere else in this game, or that Luigi’s physics are just like Mario’s.

What they’re less likely to bring up, but which is the absolute worst, is that there’s no Koopa hopping. See, while people claim Lost Levels just just a “Mission Pack Sequel” to Super Mario Bros., it did actually have some difference in terms o’ physics — foremost that ’twas the 1st to allow Mario & Luigi to hop off enemies, rather than bump ineffectively & fall like in the original ( indeed, landing on an enemy kills your momentum ). Deluxe keeps the original’s lack o’ enemy hops e’en in Lost Levels, e’en though Lost Levels‘ levels were built based on it. This makes some parts way mo’ ridiculous than any part o’ the Famicom or All-Stars Lost Levels had — it feels like you have to do some kaizo trickery to get through them.

For instance, in 8-2 there’s a brick you have to hit to make a beanstalk come out which you need to climb to beat the level; but it’s positioned in a way where you’re s’posed to jump on a convenient Paratroopa under it. But you can’t in Deluxe, ’cause the programmers fucked up. @ 1st, the only way I figured out how to beat this was to be small @ this point & run & jump under it @ a certain point — if you’re big, your face will bump the brick & you’ll fall into a pit. Now, the trickier part is that you need to be big to break bricks & reach a pipe earlier to get here. I only happened to luckily stumble on the fact that I can break the bricks & then have a Buzzy Beetle fall on me so I become small after breaking the bricks to beat this level. Later I found a simpler, but trickier way to do it by running & jumping onto the Paratroopa when it’s just near the block @ a certain spot so you can squeeze ‘tween the 2 & bump the block, while hopefully getting ‘nough air to reach the other side. I had to be big to do this, as every time I did this I got hurt by getting pressed into the Koopa in a strange way as I bumped gainst the brick.

You vs. Boo

I have a lot o’ nostalgia for the “You vs. Boo” race, but I have mixed views ’bout actually playing them. It’s sometimes an addicting challenge to see how much you can beat your earlier times & see if you can unlock a better boo to race gainst, sometimes infuriatingly cheap. & they’re all trial-&-error gameplay, as you need to know ‘head o’ time what state a switch block will be when you get to it to act ‘head & minimize delays.

The levels with timed blocks are all right, as they’re a’least consistent. The only exception is the last level, which is long, full o’ spike traps, & has a cheap part @ the beginning where you have to know ‘head o’ time how it’s setup to avoid stopping or getting hit, as you have to hit 2 switches before you e’en see a spike pit that requires them to be hit.

The levels with the auto-switching blocks are some o’ the worst, however — which ironically includes the 1st level, which is maybe the 2nd hardest level after the last. This is ’cause Boo is a cheap asshole, who, in addition to being able to fly through everything, can switch blocks whenever they want, which can fuck you o’er gainst your control. For instance, the 1st level has a few places where there is a wall o’ switch blocks past a switch block. If the boo hits the switch right after you pass it, you have no choice but to go back & hit the switch ‘gain, slowing you down so much that you’ve probably already lost the race. Thus, it feels like e’en if you play well, you still need to be lucky to do well. Add to that an e’en worse camera than in classic mode: @ the start o’ the 1st race level, Mario or Luigi reach the right side o’ the camera before it gets the idea that maybe it should move ‘long with them, perfect for making me run into a pipe @ the start dozens o’ times.

It’s not like you accomplish much in this minigame. The best you can get for beating races is unlock newer colors o’ boos, which are harder to beat. You start with the standard white boo, then unlock a lime boo, a pink boo, & then the elusive Black Boo with a neon yellow outline, who apparently moves as quickly as your fastest time. It’s cool to unlock, & e’en beat the Black Boo, in a level; but a pain in the ass. They don’t e’en give you a photo or something for doing so, either. Finding Black Boo is surely mo’ worthy o’ celebration than finding a 1-up Mushroom in a hidden block.

The Photo Album

The Photo Album is sort o’ like an early version o’ an achievements system, while also acting as a way to try to get people to buy the Game Boy Camera by offering a way to print the photos. The 1st page o’ photos were big medal award photos you got for major accomplishments: the Mario Award for beating classic mode, the Bowser Award for beating the star levels o’ classic mode, the Peach Award for getting all the medals in all levels in Challenge Mode, the Toad Award for getting a million points total in high scores in Challenge Mode, & the Yoshi Award for beating Lost Levels. I always found it bullshit that Luigi doesn’t get an Award, e’en though Lost Levels is heavily associated with him. ¡That dumb horse Yoshi isn’t e’en in Lost Levels! ¡What the fuck?

You also get photos for minor accomplishments, such as finding a beanstalk, getting fireworks, or playing multiplayer with somebody & using that weird infrared link thing the Game Boy Color had, the latter 2 o’ which are impossible to get in the Virtual Console version. Great job, Nintendo. Some are redundant: you get a small photo for beating classic mode, in addition to the big Mario Award photo; you also get a small photo for getting the red coin, score, & Yoshi egg medals in all levels, each.

In fact, this game has a major glitch wherein if you get the last o’ 2 types o’ medals @ the same time, you get fucked out o’ a small photo. Back when this game 1st came out, Nintendo went far ‘nough to offer you the chance to send in your cartridge so they can just hack the lost photo into your save — a particular primitive form o’ patching out a bug. This bug still exists in the Virtual Console version; but now Nintendo just tells you to suck a dick if you ask them to fix it.

You also get a photo for each enemy type you kill & 1 for each castle’s Bowser when you kill them with fire — so long as they’re on screen when they die. For a long time I thought this game had a glitch where sometimes killing Bowser didn’t give me their photo, till I realized ‘twas ‘cause I was a spineless wuss who hid far ‘hind & fireballed Bowser to death from offscreen. You have to see Bowser turn into his “true form” to get the photo.

Challenge Mode

But the most compelling mode is Challenge Mode, which challenges you to collect 3 medals in every level. ( You can only try levels you’ve beaten in classic mode, in any order you want ). There are no lives or game o’er, but you can’t get a medal ‘less you beat the level you’re trying. The 3 medals are the red coin medal, which you get for collecting 5 coins hidden in the level; the score medal, which you get for matching or beating a chosen score when you beat the level; & the Yoshi egg medal, which you get for finding a Yoshi egg hidden in an invisible block somewhere in the level.

‘Nother challenge Challenge Mode offers is a total score counter @ the bottom, which holds the sum o’ high scores you have in all the levels. Get 1.2 million or mo’ points — which is mo’ than all the high scores needed to get the score medal in all levels combined, so you can’t just get all the score medals to get it — & you get a Toad Award photo in your album.

Depending on the level, either the red coin or Yoshi egg medal are the easiest to get. The Yoshi egg medal is only challenging in terms o’ finding it, which could be hidden anywhere. However, when you find a’least 1, — which is made easy by the fact that the manual that came with the game revealed where it is in the 1st level — you unlock a roulette that shows you the screen o’ a random level where it’s hidden. I have clearly played this game too much, as on a recent playthrough I have yet to need this roulette. ¿Who needs math knowledge when you can memorize where all the Yoshi eggs in a video game are? The red coins are ne’er in hidden blocks, but are sometimes hidden in ?-blocks or bricks. Worse, some are hidden in multi-coin blocks & make you get a’least 10 coins in those blocks to make it pop out. If you hit a multi-coin block, but not ‘nough times, you’re permanently screwed out o’ that coin & have to restart the level.

But the true challenge is getting the score medal on each level. The scores they ask for can seem ridiculous for early players — indeed, Nintendo must’ve found them ridiculous, as Nintendo lowered many o’ the levels’ required scores in the Japanese version ( for some reason, this game was released in the West 1st ). You have to play near optimally: maximize the enemies you kill for max points ( hint: kick every Koopa you find ), triple-hop Goombas for exponential points, get all the powerups & the Yoshi egg, waste as li’l time as possible, & make damn sure you hit the top o’ the flagpole & get 6 fireworks ( hint: start running from the leftmost edge o’ the top o’ the stairs when the timer ends @ a 9 ). If this isn’t ‘nough, you can try kicking a Koopa shell gainst a wall & jumping on it & kicking it ‘gain as it comes back repeatedly for all your excess time to maybe get some extra points. Bopping a Koopa & kicking it gives you 500 points, so this can be a nice way to rack up points, but requires consistent timing.

I do truly enjoy the score medals in this game, though. It forces you to analyze levels critically for ways to optimize points. ¿Are those coins worth the time it’d take to grab them? Coins & game seconds are both worth 100 points, so if it takes mo’ than a game second per coin, the answer is no.

Though, thanks to them not having a flagpole to worry ‘bout, & usually not having many opportunities for gaining points, being so linear, castle levels are e’en easier than normal levels for getting the medals than they are in classic mode.

There’s a glitch that only David Wonn in his amazing glitch website e’er mentions, wherein you can rack up quite a lot o’ points in challenge mode. Usually, if you try the Koopa-hopping trick on the staircase, you’ll rack up point gains up to 8,000 points before the enemy dies. However, the programmers messed up & saved the # o’ points you get so that if you stop after getting 4,000 points & then let the shelled enemy go to the bottom & do the hop & kick them gainst a wall repeatedly trick I wrote ‘bout earlier, ‘stead o’ getting 400 points per kick, you get 5,000 points per kick ( that is, so long as you jump on the shelled enemy as you kick it; otherwise, it seems to just give 400 still ).

However, if you can pull this trick off well, you’re better than I am. It just so happens that every staircase with a falling shelled enemy has li’l room near it to kick the enemy’s shell & bop them ‘gain without getting hit or permanently losing the shell. Wonn lists 7-1 as the easiest level to do this in, which is pure bullshit, as that level gives you a 3-block space in which to kick the Buzzy Beetle, 1 block o’ which has an invisible block ‘bove it to block your jump. The easiest is 1 he doesn’t list, 5-2; & e’en that only gives you 5 or 6 blocks o’ space, & if you miss once, you lose the Koopa shell.

Wonn also claims you can get o’er 5 million points with this trick, but I don’t see how, ‘less he found many levels that can use this trick. Using save states with this trick in 7-1, I was able to rack up ‘bout 200,000 points with very li’l extra time left on the clock when beating the level. That is, indeed, a lot; but you’d need to be able to do that in almost every level to get mo’ than 5 million points total.

I should point out that Super Mario Bros. Deluxe‘s score & red coin challenges were the main inspiration for the gem & time challenges for my game, Boskeopolis Land.

Vs.

This is just “Boo vs. You” but ‘tween 2 players linked together with a link cord.

Records

Super Mario Bros. Deluxe saves your high scores for Classic mode, for the regular or * levels. As mentioned, getting mo’ than 100,000 points beats Boo’s score & unlocked “Boo vs. You” & getting mo’ than 300,000 points beats Luigi’s high score & unlocks “Super Mario Bros. for Super Players”, or “Lost Levels”.

If you’re playing on the original Game Boy Color, you could use that stupid infrared square @ the top o’ the system to trade scores. Why they made this require that dumb thing ‘stead o’ just the regular link cord, which does work for playing a Vs. game, is beyond my comprehension, other than that Nintendo wanted to ruin this game’s longterm playability for the sake o’ advertising a gimmick nobody cared ’bout.

Toy Room

This is where Nintendo threw a bunch o’ random shit they made when they were procrastinating adding worlds 9-D to “Super Mario Bros. for Super Players”. It sort o’ reminds me o’ a primitive version o’ WarioWare Twisted‘s souvenirs.

Calendar

A rudimentary calendar that let’s you mark days with messages & an icon.

Why they added this to this game o’ all things, & not any later Mario remakes, I’m not sure; but my theory is that it’s related to abandoned plans Nintendo seemed to have for making a “gaming smartphone”, which would have this game built-in.

Fortune Telling

Pick a card out o’ 5 & get a random fortune-cookie message with a label telling you how lucky you are & a picture o’ a character that corresponds to that luckiness.

• Extremely Unlucky: Bowser
• Unlucky: Koopa Shell
• Lucky: Luigi
• Very Lucky: Mario
• Extremely Lucky: Peach

This otherwise pointless minigame does have 1 significance to the general game: if you find Peach’s “Extremely Lucky” fortune, a “10up” message pops up. From then on any new save you make for Classic Mode or “Super Mario Bros. for Super Players” will start you with 10 lives ‘stead o’ 5.

I don’t know how the “algorithm” for determining what fortune message you get relates to the luckiness level you get, if they relate @ all, but oft I’d find messages I’d get don’t sound as lucky as they claim to be.

With as many times as this game lets you make your own messages for things, it’d be nice if you could make your own fortunes.

I present to you the best o’ the fortunes I received:

Yoshi Is Here!

This is the aforementioned roulette that shows the general vicinity o’ a Yoshi egg in a level for Challenge Mode.

Mystery Room

This is a table that fills with Toads & ‘ventually Peach as you rescue them in Classic Mode. For each 1 o’ them you get weird pictures you can make messages for & print if you had a Game Boy Printer. These images range from blown-up grayscale pixel-art o’ Super Mario Bros. sprites to Nintendo logo banners to pixelated versions o’ official art for this game, to weird splash images you can set to replace the title screen splash image.