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[ACCEPTED] "Bowser's Kingdom" by mario and luigi

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Quote
File Name: Bowser's kingdom v1.1
Submitted: 2014.07.11 ~ 12:34:49 by mario and luigi
Claimed: 2014.07.12 ~ 00:33:03 by Counterfeit
Rating: 0.0
Authors: mario and luigi
Demo: No
Featured: No
Length: 6 exit(s)
Difficulty: Normal
Description: v1.1 of this hack.

original plot: bowser took over the mushroom kingdom. mario has already made it onto bowser's lands. can he thwart bowser and get rid of him?

fixes:
-made the overworld less flat.
-made the first level much shorter.
-fixed sprite issues and other miscellaneous things.
Tags: c3 entry, vanilla
Download: Download - 199.89 KiB
18 downloads
The title screen has a nice palette and some ...custom graphics? Custom graphics in YOUR hack? This is unheard of! O_O Anyways, your colorful logo reminds me of these wonderful pieces of my childhood. Of course, I'm expecting the brass buckle and leather belt to be from this hack, and a sure-fire whipping given that dirty Bowser music on this title screen. Also, I'd suggest moving your copyrights stuff down so that it doesn't run right into the menu.

The intro is one hell of a grand entrance: Mario gets shot out of a cannon and right into a Super Mushroom. The environment looks very, very tainted.

The overworld looks quite grungy. My only complaint is the top being really flat.

Yoshi's Place is just his house, but everything is ZOMG DARK AND EVIL.

The Path to Bowser! reminds me that I am on the path to Bowser, as if the map design didn't already hammer that message into my thick skull. I can't get over how strange it is that the cave demonstrates forward progress, yet the pipe you come out of is just behind where you enter it. That first room also has a yucky cloud palette. This is a really long level, even without the side rooms, and there are too many styles going on. The NSMB stuff doesn't fit in with the rest of the cartoony graphics. The level design itself takes too many turns and it doesn't feel cohesive within itself, but there were no objective 'errors' to point out. The happy grassland look of most of the level doesn't really fit in with the apocalyptic overworld, either. So yeah, the level was 'fine' but felt very, very wrong.

The Giant Mountains has a more fitting atmosphere than the last level. I really liked the way of getting the secret exit, although there is no need for the blue Koopa with that kind of structuring. This level was also really long and substantive, but it felt a lot more tolerable and than the last level. There are a lot of neat ideas within the level, but sometimes it's too much - the level feels like it's all over the place rather than one single entity.

The Old Red Button is kind of funny... it's a dark level with a disco ball spotlight and bonus music. Party at the abandoned house, anyone? Anyways, this level is nice because of the simplicity. There's a little slowdown throughout the entire level but its consistency makes it less of an interference than you'd imagine.

Bowser's Arsenal is pretty good on its own and returns to the trend of long, unforgiving levels. The Sparkies and Hotheads distinguish this level from your other castles, which tend to make heavier use of Ball and Chain and Dry Bones than this one. That said, I'm very disappointed in Bowser's taste in weapons.

Bowser's Castle wasn't very climactic - it literally felt like the shortest, easiest level in the hack apart from The Old Red Button. Of course, I feel like the Star run thing was too soon: on one hand, it makes for a great start because it gives you the feeling like you're invading Bowser's Castle like a one-man army... on the other hand, it's like his defenses were already shattered before you even got into the castle. The bulk of the level takes place in the courtyard, which plays a lot like the first level of any standard hack, and the room with the Magikoopa doesn't really do anything with the Magikoopa.

So yeah. I didn't find any severe problem with your levels that should prevent it from having a chance to be accepted, unlike your other C3 entries. It's a shame though, that you have all these lengthy and challenging levels, with an easy, dissatisfying ending.

Difficulty: Normal

Also LIES @ "vanilla"
+1:
MercuryPenny
Wakana
Clemasterable
Everest
Wormer21
Aurel509

Just look above you...
If it's something that can be stopped, then just try to stop it!
Well, it feels a little improved.

To talk about the level design, I'd say it was pretty stagnant. There wasn't any difficulty curve, but I suppose that is better than a reverse difficulty curve like it had before. Each level is long and hard, and overall it felt like it was trying to earn the "normal" rating. I really had no problem with the way everything was structured. Overall, this was decent. Not great, not bad.

No custom music - this is just a suggestion, but this hack could go with some custom music. The vanilla music, it doesn't really fit the graphics.

Aesthetic wise, it was inconsistent. Not quite on Brutal Mario's level of inconsistency, but still, inconsistent. I did't have a problem with how every level looked individually, it's just as a whole you couldn't really mix it all together.

Overall it was a decent hack, didn't have a problem with a lot of it. If the switch palace is an entire level, why do you lock the player out of it? It seems a little pointless to do this.

70% (accept). There are things to iron out here and there but it's accept worthy.
Kinda unsure about this hack. Let's review...

So, the level design is mostly good. It's nice to go trough, I believe it's the classic "acceptable" design. Some sections felt a little unfair from my point of view, but it's not something big; still worth of mention though. The difficult curve felt like a straight line, with occasional spikes of unfairness here and there. An overall nice hack in terms of design, but it could've been much better.

Aesthetics is more or less good. I liked your palette choices, which were pleasant to see in most of the levels. As MP said already, there is inconsistency between graphics, but, from my point of view, nothing too bad. I still judge your GFX chooses good.

As misc issue I'd like to mention that in a few levels, sprite tile limits acted weird. I highly suggest you to use the No More Sprite Tile Limit patch, since it's annoying to see, especially when you get hit by invisible sprites.

The difficulty is normal as overall.

Despite the quality and the lenght of this one, I think this has no problems for a place in the hacks section, so... accept is my final statement.
This hack was pretty good I'd say. Although there are a few things that bug me about it:
1)Can you have more graphics styles than that? Let's count shall we?
-Cartoony Flashy
-Crystals
-Flashy Grass Hills and Shrooms
-NSMB
-32x SMW (which looks neat btw)
-32x SMB3
-Default SMW
-Fancy Castle Style
-Another Fancy Castle
-Polished Outdoors
(those are totally the real names, what are you even talking about)
It makes my eyes bleed that's all.
2)No midpoint in the final level? Really?
3)You could be a tad bit more generous with powerups. The levels are pretty long but there are just a few mushrooms here and there.
4)The overworld and level 1 don't match. The overworld is dark and brown but the level is super colorful and happy.

Now on to stuff that I liked!
1) Really like the title screen.
2) Level design is pretty good, but you have to give up on Yoshi in level 2 if you're doing the secret exit.

Enemy placement can be really rude at times and sometimes there's just too many and they make others despawn. As Wakana said, NMSL Patch should fix that.

Difficulty:Normal. I kept dying but that's because I was being an idiot.
Verdict:Accepted
Tested on SNES9x without save-states.
Back to this hack I see.

It looks like I ordered the chocolate instead of vanilla which is a shame. I demand that the label be changed. Moving past that minor issue, I can clearly see some improvement in certain areas. I am glad to see that glitch from last time was fixed and that paves the way for this hack to be accepted. However, I must go over it first. The first level of the hack is quite long as I mentioned last time and while that is not a bad thing, I still believed it should have been pushed further into the game. The sprite usage in this hack is quite interesting as in some areas, they seem to be placed appropriately not in others. Still, I do not see it as a major thing. The only major thing that could potentially arise from such circumstances are difficulty spikes which do happen from time to time in this hack. Not good. The levels in this hack overall are enjoyable enough to keep me focused on the game although I can sense a slight bit of repetitiveness in them. The final level seems to be the most varied of the hack though I am not impressed with some parts of it due to the structure and the way it uses sprites in certain areas.

The aesthetics of this hack are fine overall though this hack uses custom graphics and as such, it cannot be considered "vanilla" as I said before. Still, it doesn't look bad overall though I would have liked to see some consistency with the graphics although the graphics use do not clash horribly at the very least. Some of the tilesets you have used are interesting such as that giant one though using a SMW and a SMB3 giant tileset for their respective environments is most certainly not consistent. Consistency is the main issue here I suppose. The palettes used are good enough for this hack and are not horrible. The submap is decent enough though it does seem to be a little uninspired. The decoration makes up for it at the very least so I will not hold that against you. The glitches from last time are fixed which is good although I now encounter some disappearing sprites at times (mainly relating to bullet bills). Not major as I did not see it happen often but something to be pointed out. That wraps this review up I suppose.

Difficulty: No change from last time so I will go with Normal.

I guess this hack is acceptable now. Good job mario and luigi despite some questionable areas present.
Nice to see some custom stuff from you. Anyway, let's go.

Your graphics seem to look good, but some of them like NSMB don't fit very well with SMW backgrounds. Also, the original music in non-vanilla levels feels... meh. Not a removal reason. I've noticed some sprite memory errors in the first level (Koopas seem to disappear in the part with Parakoopas and bullet cannons). In the switch palace - check if you can't jump offscreen and walk on the top wall noticing some cutoff. It's also not a removal reason. Your level design is pretty interesting and your levels were good. I quite enjoyed this hack. Your aesthetics were fine too. I liked how the giant level looked like.

Your OW is simple, not bad, but it's palette is too brown-ish. Everything is brown and even the same colour, what looks a bit weird. Try to differ the cliff and grass/dirt graphics to make it look nicer.

I think it's good enough to be accepted. Good job and keep going!

Difficulty: I think Normal will fit.
Tested with Snes9x 1.51

-The path to bowser:
The foregrounds of the level was quite nice and the constrution was good also
I liked this level

-The giant mountain:
I really liked this level, the level design is pretty good despite the location of the sprites sometimes a little unfair that remains playable

-The old red button:
Good idea to switch, interesting enough for me
Except that the second slowdown and a little annoying.

-Bowser's Arsenal:
So it is here that the dificulty starts coming, some passage was a little boring
otherwise the rest little still go

-Bowser Castle:
Frankly, I'm a little disappointed at that level because it is a bit too short
I would have liked that the level is longer but otherwise good rest level and the level design.
But I find unnecessary kamek the last part before the boss

-Overall:
This hack was good I liked the level design
Levels were varied, sprites were pretty well placed
It's a good job that you have provided here by me anyway

Dificulty: Normal
Verdict: Accepted
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