FLAMING SNOT!!! What in the name of Magikoopa
happened here? This thing is incredible!! I admit I haven't
really been fair, showing the worst hacks first, but if you were
writing this, what would YOU have done? Too bad it isn't quite
finished yet. You might notice there's no title on the title
screen.
The majority of graphics in what little lies here are lavishly rendered, and there's even an attempt to create an original
opening beyond the usual exposition panel. This isn't finished
either, though, and the scroll zooms by in half of a second,
incomplete. What's Bowser's only hope?
This is equally impressive..."just another Mario hack"
my foot. Even more surprising was the fact that after I played
it, I found out I've known the guy who programmed it for years.
When I saw the name "Juggling Joker" I thought nah,
that can't be the same guy...then it turned out it was. He's even
the moderator on the SMW World hacking board of ACMLM, the home
for rom hackers. I had no idea of any of this until I mentioned
this hack in an AIM chat and asked if "Juggling Joker"
was a reference to anything, because apparently two Net users had
the same name. They didn't. He can
explain more about this game than I can, probably, so let's put him on...
JJ: "It all started with the vain hope that I could replace
every single graphic in the game with stuff I drew myself. What you
see is a result. This is actually an old, crappier version of my hack.
I would hazard a guess that it is about 17 times better now that I've
completely rehauled the graphics. I don't like to brag, but hell yeah
I'm awesome."
Now I'll tell what I know of the others....
Mario's Chance: I don't know much about this one specifically, but it
doesn't surprise me. Since Lunar Magic (the SMW editor) hit the scene,
every idiot with a computer and a rom has put out his own rom hack.
These usually fall into two categories: So easy it hurts, and so hard
that your face explodes. There is, unfortunately, no happy medium.
Chaos Complexx: Haha, this hack is awesome. Around last April Fool's
Day, a bunch of hackers thought it might be a good idea to make "joke
hacks" or "hacks that are so intentionally messed up it's funny". If I
remember correctly, if you play this one until the Donut Plains, the
joke is revealed in a text box.
Super Wario World: You might think this is a hack along Chaos
Complexx's lines. You would be way, WAY wrong. This guy made like
50 hacks of equal or lesser quality than this one. Play them at your
own risk. Seriously.
Atma's Hack (the first one on the second page): The graphics are
pretty (not custom by the way, but ripped), no doubt about that, but
gameplay is really bad in this one. It's a perfect example of failed
potential. Atma still hangs around the scene, but I don't think he's
released anything recently, so this is as good as it gets.
Oh yeah, and "known"
is the grammatically correct usage here, not "knew."
You might want to fix that sometime...
*cough*... that's not the most embarassing typo I've made. I'm like a typo machine.
Super Mario's Crystal Island Adventure has
another few interesting ideas. That's a cool shot, though I don't
know where Mario is. If it's part of the island, why are there
Mario-esque statues? Maybe it's like all those old cartoons where
someone meets a group of natives and they bow to him because his
appearance coincidentally resembles the statue of their deity.
Then they live off the con for a few months until they have to
stop a volcano from exploding and start panicking, but stop the
volcano through sheer comedic luck and....yeah, let's move on....
The "power-up station," here the Crash Site, also lets
you go back to switch palaces (which you can normally only go to
once). The only places you could save your game in SMW were by
finishing a Switch Palace, or a castle. The Dreamcast has no save
states, so this wireup is appreciated....
THIS one is exactly like the original, except you play as a
shell-less Koopa. Will Peach still kiss your nose?
In Super Mario Story, you have to apparently prevent Big Boo from
taking off in his new battleship. This only has one level
finished, but it's an interesting one....
 |
It's a recreation of the very first
Super Mario Bros. level! Ahtough the hacker couldn't seem
to make his custom bricks hittable for some reason. |
If you say so. To get the full comedic effect, you
have to be able to see the Zycloboo's head. He's got one
interesting hacked face...
Training?? Mario didn' need no steenking training!
The ability to eat flowers and shoot fireballs out your nose as a
side effect can only come from birth. And I was going to point
out the illogicality of the American Flag being on the title
screen of a Japanese game series, but then I remembered Mario is
supposed to have come from Brooklyn. If he did any training in
between plumbing jobs, it would have to be there.
So Mario must have enlisted in a "superhero training
camp," which I'm sure is in New York somewhere. And these
exercise grounds must have been in Central Park because there's
no other place with that much green in it.
Waaaait...a Dude Ranch?? Where the heck IS he? Pretty tough
challenges though. Can Mario leap those four cactuses
successfully? Aw, guess not.
"Password Entry" is interesting; it's just an area with
three pipes and the letters A, B and C by each one. I'm not going
to play long enough to see what the password is; there's no
guarantee the game was programmed that far. And that Shy Guy exploded like a Bob-Omb.
This one's simply called "SMW: The Hack." In addition
to assuming your name is "Granthis" and you weren't
born on Earth, Yoshi has been "capured to."
This is just what's been done
with Super Mario World; there are even more hacks for NES titles.
Stay tuned for more showcases soon, and in the meantime, don't
eat wild mushrooms.
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