8/30/2008 - Super Kaizo Mario World part 4 speed up

I've played plenty of difficult games before... the original Ninja Gaiden series comes to mind. And of course there was the scourge known as Battletoads (the fact that some people have actually completed that game still blows my mind). While these games are hard, they were still good games and made losing at them less of a hair-pulling experience.

There are, however, "fan-created" games that are purposely designed to be near impossible to play. There was a PC shooter that was on display at the Iron Man of Gaming where most people couldn't survive the first level. And then there are games like Super Kaizo Mario World based on the SNES platformer that is truly impossible to play through without the use of save states. With save states, you can stop the game at a point where you survived a harrowing obstacle and return to that spot even after you die. Yes, it's basically cheating and would normally diminish the fun of playing the game because there is no consequence of dying if you can just reverse that death with a push of a button.

But with Super Kaizo Mario World, you simply have no choice. Watch any "speed-run" video of this game and you can see that it was created by the devil himself. These videos aren't even possible without recording only the parts facilitated by the save states. Here's one of these recording sessions of the game along with "commentary" from the player. Because it was so long and tedious, the video was sped up, and it's actually funnier that way. Listen carefully and you can still make out the profanity: