4/28/2009 - Super Mario Bros. 1 Drag & Drop

I will say this for the Wii: some of the titles have been pretty innovative in their approach to using limited technology and a unique control scheme. I mentioned Super Paper Mario last time for its 2.5-D gameplay. Super Mario Galaxy has a rather unique 2-player mode, or I should say 1.5-player mode since the 2nd player doesn't control a character like Mario or even Luigi. Instead, he or she uses the Wiimote to collect and use star bits to help out the first player. It's not exactly hardcore competitive or even cooperative gameplay, but it is an accessible feature that can be fun for non-gamers or newbie gamers.

This next mod may have taken some inspiration from that feature in Super Mario Galaxy. It's actually a pretty cool concept that surprisingly hasn't made it into an actual game. Imagine being able to have a second player have the ability to manipulate live gameplay by having an all-powerful drag-and-drop cursor. I guess it's similar to the Little Big Planet level designer, but I predict that it will make it into some game as part of its main gameplay.

4/11/2009 - Mugen - The Super Mario Bros. vs. RonaldMcDonald

Because of Super Smash Bros., it's not unusual anymore to see Mario and Luigi in a fighting game. But Ronald McDonald? Yeah, that's pretty strange:



Boy, these MUGEN programmers can be really strange. I mean, I don't know where anybody would even get the idea to put Ronald in a fighting, much less giving him a Japanese voice... at least I think it's Japanese. And you have to love Grimace and the Hamburglar surrounding Ronald's fallen body when he's defeated. Sometimes I think the MUGEN people put the strangest characters they can just to make a YouTube video out of it and get more viewers. And you know what? It works.

11/22/2008 - Mario vs. Air Man

Having a working Super Mario Bros./Mega Man 2 mashup is impressive enough, but there are a couple of things that makes this one so impressive. First, the play mechanics did not change from Super Mario Bros. The programmers could have easily just put a Mario sprite in place of Mega Man and people wouldn't think the less of them. But Mario is all about stomping, and unless you have the Fire Flower, that's the only way to kill the enemies; thus making this game particularly difficult compared to a Mega Man game where you have an arm cannon. But what tickles my fancy about this video is that it has an 8-bit rendition of the song from one of my previous Mega Man favorite videos (http://youtubeaddict.blogspot.com/2007/07/7152007.html), the one where Air Man is supposedly impossible to beat. I hope the programmers continue to make more levels, or maybe even other mashups.

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:

7/31/2008 - Super Chuck Norris bros

I don't know how Chuck Norris got such a reputation for being a badass. I've never watched Walker: Texas Ranger, but I can't see how being a pretend kung-fu sherrif can elevate you to such a world renowned force of destruction. He did fight Bruce Lee in Return of the Dragon and while it was an epic battle, he eventually lost. By that standard, Kareem Abdul Jabbar should have the same kind of status as Chuck Norris. Oh well... you might as well have fun with the idea of being able to obliterate everything in your path and make a video game out of it:

6/18/2008 - The Ultimate Perpetual Mario Machine

I teased it yesterday and here it is... based on the Japanese viral video mash up is another "Perpetual Mario Machine" video that follows so many others I have blogged about. I really don't think that there will be another that tops this one though:



P.S.: I'll be back after my vacation at the Iron Man of Gaming 2008 competition!

2/12/2008 - Mario Meets Halo

In the history of video game crossovers there have been a few standouts: Battletoads & Double Dragon, Marvel & Capcom, Capcom & SNK, and the latest being Mario and Sonic finally together. The Mario/Sonic crossover is such a big deal because Nintendo and Sega were such bitter rivals in the console wars of the Nineties. Sonic was supposed to be the "anti-Mario" that would be Sega's answer to Nintendo's popular sidescroller. Sega was pretty successful with the Genesis, but couldn't overtake the Super Nintendo during its reign. Once Sony entered the market Sega's decline really accelerated and they ceased becoming a hardware company.

Now there's a new console war with Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. While Nintendo's mascot is still the ever-loving Italian plumber, Mario, Microsot's decided their mascot would be the silent soldier of Halo fame, Master Chief. Since the console war is still ongoing, of course, it will probably years until we see a Mario/Master Chief crossover, if ever. That is, unless someone were to program such a game on their own:

2/2/2008 - Perpetual Luigi Machine

I've featured a handful of "Perpetual Mario Machine" videos on this blog, and something seemed missing... Oh, that's right, he has a brother, Luigi! Mario is such a big star in the video game world that it's easy to overlook Luigi. After all, he was just a color swap of Mario in Mario Bros. and in Super Mario Bros. (and they were both the same color if you caught the Fire Flower). He finally became a distinct character in the U.S. version of Super Mario Bros. 2, being taller and skinner than Mario, and he was able to jump higher than Mario, but he is slower and harder to control. However, in Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World, Luigi loses these distinctions and becomes just a color-swap of Mario again. This was probably because our version of Super Mario Bros. 2 wasn't recognized in Japan until after part 3 came out. Luigi was then unceremoniously dumped from the 3-D Mario games, Super Mario 64 and Super Mario sunshine. He did get is own game in Luigi's Mansion, but he might as well have been a stepbrother of Mario instead. Luigi returns to glory in Super Mario Galaxy, with his unique controls from Super Mario Bros. 2. It's time that he got the recognition he deserves, and to celebrate, here's a "Perpetual Luigi Machine" video:

1/20/2008 - Bizarro Super Mario Bros. (2 videos)

Most gamers have played the original Super Mario Bros. so many times that they can play through Stage 1-1 with their eyes closed. Oh wait, here is an example:



But wait... as cool as it is, this is not the video I wanted to feature today. It's just an example of how we can be hard-wired to complete a stage of a video game through repeated play. I can time my jumps on the multiple-coined blocks to collect the maximum amount of coins, for example. I know where the 1-UP is after the fourth pipe. I know when the invincibility wears off after collecting the Star-Man.

Well, what if someone took Stage 1-1 of Super Mario Bros., recreated it, but completely made it hell to play... ESPECIALLY for those who is all too familiar with the game. For example, instead of spawning a power-up mushroom by hitting a certain block, how about spawning an enemy instead. That's just one of the dozens of devious, dastardly changes in this Super Mario mod:



The missile coming out of the flagpole is just plain evil.

1/10/2008 - super mario galaxy DS !!!

When I first saw this video, I said "Whoa!". When I heard later that this video was a fake, I said "Whoa!" I mean, if that's a fake, it's probably the best fake I've ever seen. Most of the time when people create fake videos through clever video editing, you can see the seams and you can tell it's a fake. It's like that Superman video I featured earlier with Tom Welling in costume. You can tell it his face was superimposed on Christopher Reeve or Brandon Routh. In this video, I can't tell where the seams are. Everything looks like it would be if Nintendo themselves produced it.



Not only does this video look real, it plays on the hopes of all the owners of Super Mario Galaxy out there that this kind of functionality with the Nintendo DS was there in the first place. Supposedly, the Wii was going to be a hub for the DS to download demos or even full games from. The PS3 has that kind of functionality with the PSP, so why not the Wii and DS? And before the videos was revealed as a fake, I'm sure people were excited by the notion that progress on the DS version of Super Mario Galaxy would translate into Wii points. Something like this would make a lot of sense. Gamers have plenty of incentive to finish a game and unlock all the extras, but winning Wii currency would be pretty sweet.

12/7/2007 - Yoshi

Say what you want about Nintendo being geared to the younger crowd of games, you can't deny that they know how to handle their mascots. Mario, Link, Samus are universally known video gaming icons and first party titles with them as the main character are almost always classic games. Nintendo has also created an industry with some of the spin-off characters from these games. Who would have guessed that a fatter, uglier version of Mario called Wario would have his own successful line of games (or I should say microgames)?

Perhaps the most popular spin-off character from the Mario series is Yoshi, the cuddly dinosaur with a long tongue and lays eggs. Yoshi first appeared in the SNES launch title, Super Mario World, as a sidekick for Mario... perhaps his first sidekick other than his brother Luigi. In the game, Yoshi wasn't that much more than just another power-up. It would let you kill enemies by having them be swallowed with its tongue, but this can be considered as an attack power=up for Mario. If you were hit by an enemy Yoshi would run away, but you wouldn't lose a life. So, in effect, Yoshi was just another notch in your "life bar". This is not to say that Yoshi did not have an impact on Mario or Nintendo in general. It proved that cute and cuddly could still sell games, even in a market of an ever-changing and aging population.

Yoshi would go on to be the main character in many games. Yoshi's Cookie was a puzzle game for the NES, Yoshi's Safari was a light-gun game for the SNES, and Yoshi's Island is considered by some to be the best 2-D platforming game on any system. Not bad for a spin-off mascot. He's also the star of this brilliant parody video:

11/9/2007 - Mega64: Super Mario Bros. 3

I think there really might be something to the theory that the creators of the Super Mario Bros. games were on something when they were making the games. When you have a mushroom as a power-up item, that's a pretty clear sign. Super Mario Bros. 3 gives us another good example, Kuribo's shoe. What is Kuribo's shoe? It's some kind of man-sized shoe that Mario or Luigi climb into and use it to stomp on enemies that they couldn't normally stomp on (spiny-shells, for example) and it gives them the ability to traverse on hazardous grounds. Oh, and the "shoe" has a wind-up control on the back for some reason.

Now, how ridiculous is this concept in real life? Well, they boys of Mega64 shows us:

9/30/2007 - Super Mario Galaxy Trailer : RETRO Version

I don't own a Wii, but if I did, I would probably get Super Mario Galaxy. It wouldn't be because I am eager to see how the Wii controls would work for a Mario platformer. In fact, I'd be apprehensive about how the game plays based on the videos I've seen. No, I'd buy it just to say that I have every Mario platforming game for every Nintendo system I've owned: Super Mario Bros. 1, 2, and 3 for the NES, Super Mario World 1 and 2 (Yoshi's Island) for the SNES, and Super Mario 64 for the N64. The NES and SNES games are definite classics and have reached legendary status in their genre, while Super Mario 64 pretty much defined how 3-D platforming should be like. I don't have a GameCube, so I can't really give a review of Super Mario Sunshine, but from what I've seen and read, it was only an evolutionary step up from Super Mario 64 (and heck, the name sucks).

It's actually heartening to hear that Super Mario Galaxy is the "first true successor to Super Mario 64" because that means they've acknowledged Sunshine's shortcomings, and it means that Galaxy had better be that damn good. I mean it had better be a revolutionary step up from the N64 and GC games, rather than just Mario Sunshine with a better name and Wii controls. I would just hope it had the same kind of magic all the older Super Mario games had. Being a nostalgia junkie, I couldn't resist highlighting this next video that's similar to that Super Smash Bros. Brawl trailer made with 16-bit sprites. Of course, this one is for Super Mario Galaxy:



I do have one question, though: WHERE IS LUIGI?

9/21/2007 - Hare Hare Mario

Excuse me if I totally geek out right now. You know I've been highlighting these Super Mario World mods that show "self-playing" levels and the Hare Hare Yukai remixes that are also popular on YouTube. I never thought the two could combine into a mashup. So imagine my delight when I saw that a modder did just that:



That is simply one of the greatest things I've ever seen. Not only is it a decent self-playing level with some intricate cause and effect happenings, but it's all synchronized to the tune of the Hare Hare Yukai! I can only imagine just how long this took to map out each note of the song to the appropriate sound effect in the video game. And then to force the sound effect to play in a self-playing level? Damn.

9/16/2007 - Super Mario World Rube Goldberg

Oh man, I love these Super Mario Word mod videos. Here's another one that emulates a Rube Goldberg machine with great, uh, craftsmanship. I like how the green shells were timed to get caught in the coin blocks after the timer on the switch box runs out. How Mario doesn't get killed at the 38-second mark is a wonder. Oh, and Yoshi makes it through this time. :)

9/13/2007 - SUPER MARIO BROS 2 Review

Like it says in my profile, I got addicted to YouTube after watching the Angry Video Game Nerd reviews. I'm pretty sure I've praised the work of James Rolfe enough, so I won't repeat myself here. However, he no longer posts videos to YouTube anymore because he's an exclusive for the video gaming site ScrewAttack. So if you're looking for an AVGN alternative, the "Irate Gamer" may be the next best thing. His reviews are in the same style as the Nerd's (some have even say he plagiarizes) and he has some pretty high production values.

I'm featuring his review of Super Mario Bros. 2 here... not because I don't like the game. In fact, I disagree with his review here, because I thought it was a pretty good game. The controls for SMB2 were leaps and bounds better than the controls for the first Super Mario Bros. Just go back and play the two and I think you'll agree. I also thought the gameplay mechanic of picking up and throwing objects was pretty innovative... just as your ability to choose four different characters with different abilities.

However, I didn't realize that the games was actually a remake of a Japanese game. The Irate Gamer explains this bit of trivia pretty well. Oh, and since his reviews are profanity laced, hide the kids...

9/9/2007 - Line Rider Super Mario Bros. 1-1

If you've never played with Line Rider, it's worth at least a try. It's a simple Flash "game" where you draw an slope for the "Line Rider" penguin to travel in its sled. You can draw the slope in any manner you wish... you can include loops, gaps to jump over, obstacles, etc. It all pretty much follows the physics of gravity and friction, so it looks fairly realistic in motion.

There are plenty of Line Rider videos on YouTube, as you can imagine, some with insane stunts and courses for the penguin to navigate. Today's video, however, puts the penguin in some familiar territory: the first level of Super Mario Bros! I don't know how the artist managed to achieve this, but for nostalgia purposes, this is the best Line Rider vid.

9/3/2007 - Self-playing Super Mario World Level

I've said in a previous post how awesome Super Mario World was for the Super Nintendo... especially considering the fact that it was a pack-in game. I mean, I really would have paid $50 for it (standard fare for the time) and still would have been happy with it. One of the things that made it great was the play mechanics of the game. It took all of the best gameplay elements of the first three Super Mario games and added a myriad of new ones without making it overly complicated. One modder (or probably a group of them) wanted to showcase these elements by fabricating a level where Mario does absolutely nothing but stand while the level itself moves him around and eventually completes it. It's easier to show you than to describe it:



I know everything is contrived, but, WOW. It truly is an amazing thing to see. Everything is placed so perfectly that anything that's even a millimeter off would mean death for Mario (unfortunately, Yoshi didn't survive). Rube Goldberg machinists should definitely take note of this video as this is even better than most of those contraptions, no matter how complex they are.

6/11/2007 - Super Mario Kart 2 player match

One of the biggest things that Nintendo has over its rivals is its use of its mascots, particularly the Mario license. For example, if it weren't for Mario being in Super Mario Kart, a lot of us probably wouldn't have discovered the game and it would have been a lost gem, or an interesting experiment or something. I mean, would you play it if it didn't have the Mario characters and was called Super Buster Kart or something?

Well, it's a good thing they didn't do that because Super Mario Kart deserves its status as one of the greatest games of all time. At the time of its release, of course, Mode-7 racers were nothing new. F-Zero came out at the launch of the Super NES, and it was pretty darn good. It wasn't designed to be a realistic racer, but without a true 3-D engine for the Super NES no racer could really be.

So when Nintendo did their next racer, they said "to hell with realism" and created a racing game where you really do battle against other players and this time with WEAPONS! And really, that is the big hook of the Mario Kart series is being able to derail your opponents with shells or bananas and other items. The best weapon, of course, would be the red shell. If you could get the timing down to select the red shell when you hit the Question Mark, you would be a god. And that's what we have in this video:



This is the famous Battle Mode of Super Mario Kart (which I believe is still the best version out there) and the Mario player here can amazing choose the red shell at will! Not only that, he fires it in a way that it doesn't hit Bowser, rather it merely circles around Bowser. Playing Mario Kart battle mode hundreds of times, I can attest as to how rare this occurs, so to see it done consistently is pretty darn spectacular.

5/30/2007 - Mario Yeah!

It's quite remarkable that gaming's most famous icon and one of the most recognizable mascots in the world is a chubby Italian plumber named Mario. If you look at his live-action counterpart as played by Captain Lou Albino on the short-lived Super Mario Bros. Super Show, you wouldn't think that he could save any kingdom:

And yet, he has endured as Nintendo's flagship mascot, thwarting Bowser's every scheme and getting in a good game of tennis or soccer here and there. And if you think about it, Mario's unassuming image does give him kind of an everyman type of quality that people can relate to. Interestingly enough, Shigeru Miyamoto's design for Mario came not as a desire to portray a blue-collar hero, but out of technological necessity. This is from Mario's Wikipedia article:

The design was strongly affected by the technical limitations of the hardware, which permitted only 16x16 pixels for the main character. The mustache was easier to represent than a mouth, and formed the image of a large nose. The multicolored clothes provided contrast with the black background, and the overalls served as a distinction between the body and the arms, so that one recognized their movement. Because of the cap, it was not necessary to represent the movement of Mario's hair if he jumped.

And thus Mario, or Jumpman as Shiggy first called him, was born. Today's video compiles pretty much every commercial featuring our favorite rotund plumber, even some from Japan (which includes a very creepy peeping-tom Mario).