I don't think you need to completely revamp the pottery; I'd just recommend changing the cracked ones to something else, as I think it would benefit both our levels to have more distinct decorations. The larger cracked one might be better served replaced with a sort of bowl-like vessel as seen in the second photograph above; the smaller with one of the pointed-lidded vessels as seen both
in the center here and in the first photo above, as I seem to recall seeing those everywhere on the aforementioned mountain.
Anyway, concerning this version:
- The second coin
does strike me as a bit too easy; its neighbor, the mushroom, is now both readily visible (giving the player obvious incentive to go on this ledge) and effortlessly accessible, thanks to the bridge. I'd recommend having the ledge only be accessible by invisible coin block (as seem in earlier drafts) and perhaps hiding the mushroom more completely (or putting it in that little ceiling alcove above this section, and making that area correspondingly accessibly through a hidden block and the like).
- Is there any reason why the water is now green in the first section (but no elsewhere)?
- The first P-switch in the second area (screen 17) is arranged in such a way that the jump can be a bit annoying on account of one's being unable to see exactly where one's landing. What's more, a miss will very often cause one to fall down upon a breakable bridge section below, and land in the spikes.
- Incidentally, I think there needs to be a powerup in one on the blocks near this first switch. As things stand, there's too much of a gap between the first and second powerups...
- A certain mysterious gentleman in the second section has some
unintentional purple highlights in his hair...
- There are still a few areas in the second and third section where a broken rail sits above a solid bridge. Indeed, in the third section, we even have the opposite:
...where a solid rail also sits above a breakable section of bridge. This actually screwed me up several times during testing.
- The water's drunk? And apparently picking fights with people? Is Norveg running a distillery up there?
- The polluted geysers are
extremely difficult to see at present--almost invisible. I know the final version is going to look quite different (from a series of monochrome tiles) and be animated, but for the testers' sake, it would help if they were a bit easier to spot.
- Oh, that wacky layer priority.
- Both in this version and the last one, I've been getting an extremely bizarre bug where one of either this Paragoomba or the shellless Koopa either before or after it (but only one one these) will suddendly become non-interactable, that is to say both harmless and invincible. Any idea what might be causing this? (Also, more rail/bridge inconsistency.)
Concerning the sprites in this stage--I tried throwing in a few Ninjis in the second level, and they seem to work reasonably well in all except a handful of cases, so there's no reason you shouldn't be able to fit in a few in the second section for a bit of variety, if you like. Alternatively, you might want to update to a newer version of the base ROM (your is, admittedly, pretty ancient), and see if perhaps there's a custom sprite there which might be able to suit your needs.