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[REJECTED] Another Mario World by Super Stiviboy

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Link to submission.

What do we have here? It's another full vanilla hack which tries to emulate SMW's original design.
The hack overall was... decent. It's no doubt a good one, but I honestly feel like it's too generic and too standard-ish to be defined featured. There aren't particular aspects that stand out in an incredibly way or something, everything just keeps in the norm; pretty much what you'd expect from the original SMW.

I must admit though, the first world's levels were neatly designed and very fun to go trough. Sadly, past world 2, more or less, there's this slow drop of quality in the levels, where everything starts being way too flat and boring for the supposed difficulty curve of the overall. I wish you kept going with neat ideas and sections like you did in the first world... it feels like that, at a certain point, you ran out of ideas, and ended up designing pretty standard-ish levels with not many memorable parts, if not at all.

Not to mention, the hack also has some technical issues. This being the worst one I faced during my run. There are rare sprite tile limits issues; sometimes, sprite tiles flash weirdly; no idea what this is caused by, maybe you used just too many sprites in certain parts. Outside of this, there are also many small cutoff parts which could've been easily avoided imo. A relevant mention is this one pointed out by Mirann in her comment, which is really bad to see. It's also weird to see Mario while going inside the pipe, since he disappears suddently during the fadeout animation.

So yeah, don't take me wrong, this is a good hack overall, but I don't feel like it deserves to be featured. I'm leaning toward a rejection.

Deadline: 22nd January.
This seems to be one of the many Super Mario World sequels on the site to date, with the same old storyline and goal. While there isn't anything necessarily wrong with that, I still think that the author could've done a better job.

Overall, the hack was well designed and fun to play through. The levels felt similar to SMW's original levels, but also felt different at the same time. However, as I progressed through the game, it started feeling a little bit repetitive; this mostly being the case in the later worlds.
What I also noticed is that there wasn't really any consistency in the level design either, meaning that some levels were either pretty long, or very short. Croissant Valley 4 is a good example of a level being a bit to short.

The difficulty was kind of weird in this one. While I do definitely agree on this hack having the "Normal" difficulty, I felt like the levels in the game were only getting easier as I went on. Having a few tough jumps or some annoyingly placed enemies here and there isn't all that bad, however, that really wasn't the case here. At times, I could just run through a level without any of the enemies halting my momentum. This is something you really do want to work on, because a game is only supposed to become slightly harder over time, and not easier.

I would like to add that I found the switch palaces to be rather unique about this hack. Having an actual goodie you can collect makes the experience a lot more fun, especially if you don't even know what you end up getting.


Despite everything mentioned above, there are unfortunately a few flaws I've found. These being level designing flaws to broken graphics.

Seeing as you were limited to only SMW's default assets, a lot of tiles were cut-off such as question mark blocks being placed in the middle of the dirt, pipes being connected to stone, dirt going straight into the side of a pipe, tree trunks placed on top of ledge tiles, etc. While the original SMW may have done some of these few things, I personally think this should still be prevented as much as possible. [1]
Apart from that, some levels reset the music upon entering a sublevel that uses the same song. Why this happens is a mystery to me, however.
Before I get to the flaws in some of the levels, there's a little typo in this cutscene. "lat" should be "last" here. [1]

Starting off with Vanilla Island 2, there are some blue coins that lead to a trap, which, I must add, can not be seen beforehand. There's also a dragon coin right above the Munchers, which can be tricky to obtain without getting hurt, but it shouldn't be too difficult to do that. [1]
Also, just one minor nitpick in the same level; it'd look a lot better if you connected this little bit of elavation with the floor below it. [2]

Vanilla Island 3 had a dragon coin that was obtainable, but wasn't reachable unless you take a forced hit. Immediately turning around while shooting out of the pipe won't turn you around in time to actually land on the pipe itself. [1]

In Larry's Castle, there are some spikes that go all the way into the floor, but will still hurt you regardless, making it impossible to collect the blue coins that are above it unless you take a forced hit. [1]

In Croissant Valley 2, players can somewhat exploit this level by swimming underneath the ground here, this could also get you stuck once you've activated the green switch, and if you're small Mario. This can easily be prevented by placing solid tiles under the ground, which you did do later on in the level. [1]

I'm assuming you forgot to place the rest of the pipe in Croissant House. Entering the pipe will make Mario visible as he goes down and dissapears the moment the screen transition occurs. [1]

Croissant Valley 4 suffers from severe slowdown because of all of the dolphins and the Porcupuffer. The reason I pointed this out specifically is because this is the only level where I've encountered this kind of slowdown.

Teacup Forest 4 has without a doubt the biggest issues when it comes to sprite memory. The large green bubble that appears at the end almost has all of its graphics missing due to the large amount of Boos on the screen. [1]

And the final flaw I've come across is the fact you can jump over the stage in Cream Fields 2, and end up getting stuck in the grass as shown in this image. Again, this can easily be prevented by placing solid tiles on top. [1]


It was fun playing through this hack, and it's definitely one of the better hacks on the site. Unfortunately though, seeing as the hack isn't necessarily unique, and doesn't really have anything new when it comes to gameplay, style, graphics, music, etc, I'm voting for this hack to be rejected.
Another hack with a rescemblance to Super Mario World. It feels pretty inspired by the original game, though I'm not saying this as it it was a bad thing; I prefer my hacks simple.
It's what you can call a 'pure vanilla hack' merely the overworld and the levels are the only things that change. The aesthetic departament isn't something you can really comment on, because it's pretty much the same as Super Mario World. So are the bosses; while it's not a bad thing to have the original ones (considering that almost every custom boss sucks...) it would at least be nice if hex edits were used to enhance the experience and make them more fun to (re)play.
The overworld is really good, and it's a show of the potential of what one can do with SMW's overworld engine, with nothing custom but still good. The landmass is really good, but one thing I got to say is I'm disappointed there is/are no special world(s) in this game.
The difficulty of this hack also ressembles Super Mario World, being pretty easy but starting to get a bit demanding with the platforming sections until the end. It's a nice difficulty curve, although I prefer hacks with more of a challenge.

But in the end, the one thing that holds more value for the featural; the levels.

Generally really good, some even manage to deliver a really different experience than in the original game, such as the outdoors ghost house and castle. The switch palaces are nicely executed; it's a good chance to win powerups, or even more lifes.
I already talked about the difficulty, and something I really need to mention is the lives and coins. Every level is really lenient with the amount of lives, and especially, of coins. Be it blue or be it yellow, there are lots scattered in every level, allowing you to easily farm lives.
Some other levels felt really uninspired, with obstacles that serve no purpose, enemies scattered with no rhyme or reason, terrain formations which hold no purpose, and come on this levels is a blatant edit of Vanilla Secret 3. And oh man that level's secret exit is totally ridiculous, keys should never be hidden offscreen in level without vertical scrolling...
Overall, not bad, but can be done better; Return To Dinosaur Land is a good example.

Now let's talk about some issues.
- You can break the last part of vanilla island 3 by pushing on the question blocks. (example result)
- The game freezes when you get a cape offscreen in autoscrolling levels, forcing you to reset.
- Minow cases of slowdown in some areas.
- Sprite memory issues, the one I can remember off the top of my head is Teacup Forest 4.
- Blind drops.
- You can get crushed by the pipe in teacup secret if you jump and don't press up.

In short, a decent hack if you want to waste some hours, and it has some creative parts. However, nothing that really makes it stand out; this is why I choose to reject the feature of this hack.
There is at least 1 level with Dragon Coins but less than 5 of them. The first level in the second world only has 3. This is in addition to everything already said about the hack. reject hands down.
Another Mario World is yet another hack that aims to recreate Super Mario World. While there's nothing wrong with the concept itself, this kind of hack is surprisingly hard to pull off correctly. It's easy to end up borrowing too much from the original game and end up making most levels too similar to the originals (what we call blatant edits). Plus, the "alternate SMW" style is nothing new, and at this point it takes really well-designed levels to make a hack like this memorable.

The hack starts off strong - the first level is fairly nicely designed, with interesting obstacles and reasonable difficulty. The first world does not stray far from what the original did, but still managed to keep itself interesting overall. A few areas were slightly lacking in polish, though - the blue coin mechanic, which alerts the player about enemies and other obstacles, wasn't introduced well enough, which could lead to a cheap hit at the beginning of the first cave level, for example.

One of the biggest flaws with the hack is that it seems to lose steam as it goes on. From Cookie Mountain onward, in particular, the overall design quality falls a lot. Levels quickly become repetitive, reusing gimmicks frequently and barely differentiating themselves from the original SMW's levels at points (the Layer 3 tides level Erik mentioned is a good example).

Castles and Ghost Houses suffered the most from the repetitiveness. Most castle levels focused way too much on Thwomp and Thwimp placement, in particular, and didn't do much otherwise. Ghost Houses in the original game were one of the most interesting level types, with creative puzzles and a really different design style - here they're too short to be memorable, usually.

One of Super Mario World's highlights was the expansive overworld, with many alternate pathways, optional levels and two secret worlds. A healthy amount of secrets is extremely important to a good SMW-style hack, so seeing a fairly linear overworld here is disappointing. Secret exits were either hidden in plain sight or obscure enough that I actually had to check it on Lunar Magic (as was the case with Croissant Valley 4). Plus, actually getting them was usually very unrewarding, as they either lead to Switch Palaces (which were very underused) or "reverse shortcuts" which really didn't add much as there's not much reason to backtrack in first place.

Definitely not a bad hack, but my verdict is reject.
And it's a reject.
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