Panga's Kaizo Kindergarten (For Dummies)

quite hard to the end

Been watching Kaizo SMW content on YouTube from GDQ and creators like Barb/Poo/Panga/Dode/many others for a while now. I finally decided to give it a go myself and this hack was the perfect introduction. It was definitely a struggle at first, but completing it was immensely satisfying.

The regrab and juggling worlds were particularly helpful.

This was my first full hack. As some others have stated, it is a bit of a steep learning curve, but personally it was just what I needed to learn the basics, and then some. Did I spend like 2 hours desperately trying to figure out item juggling? Sure. Did the final castle take like 3+ hours to finally beat? Absolutely. But, yaboy knows how to do all the tricks. It may be trial by fire, but this will teach you a LOT if you are unfamiliar with playing Kaizo hacks.

Decent hack, definitely not for beginners. Play 2 kaizo 2 learn as your first hack.

Heed the words of the other commenters. This should not be one of the first hacks you play, I was stubborn and grinded through it. My curiosity for in depth mechanics of SMW brought me to push through with some save states as needed in the more intermediate levels. The video walkthrough was very helpful and appreciated. Thanks for an awesome hack, I definitely learned a lot from it!

GLHF

Beginners please do not start with this hack! I know it says Kindergarten, for dummies and beginnerz all over but its actually incredibly difficult if you havent played before. I started with this in 2020 and I got so discouraged by it saying so many times that its for idiot noob beginners that I didn't come back to SMW for 8 months. At that point I discovered I could already beat many many hacks and this is much better if used to sharpen / perfect skills when looking to move into more difficult intermediate hacks. Please dont give up on Kaizo because of this, like I did <3

Beated any% (not special world). Learned some new stuff. It was not easy! Cool hack.

As a beginner it was a little tough. However, I managed to eek through it and I feel better for it.

As a hack meant to be a primer before Baby Kaizo World or Quickie World, it is a failure, simply too hard. If you can beat the assessments, you're probably ready for Invictus. If you can beat the Prostate Exam, you're ready for any Kaizo Light hack.

As a resource for experienced players looking to improve their technical knowledge of SMW mechanics, it can be useful. Through playing this, I gained a much greater understanding of spin flight, and learned why a strat I was trying in another hack could never work. The information rather than the level design is really the star of the hack.

Panga himself has a walkthrough series on YouTube.

I don't know why everyone likes that hack so much...
So first of all the first levels are quite good, good setups and well explained. But then, the difficulty raises very high after a few levels. The water level and the room 3 of the final castle were too tight for my preferences. The Cape level in the Special World was just janky gameplay ( I know the creator made this on purpose). So I think there a good levels in the beginning of this hack but then the hack gets too hard so I would not say that this hack is for beginners. I'm sorry but I will not continue this hack.

Very nice hack! Perfect to learn Kaizo

Perfect for my learning style. I finally beat that ****ing screen with the double shell jump off a falling platform. It's very clear with its explanations. The assessments are very difficult, and force you to have a decent grasp of the mechanics.

Panga's YouTube series on this hack is indispensable for those trying to learn Kaizo. If you're really stuck somewhere, slow down the video to 0.25 speed and you can observe the nuances. It'll still take forever to get it right, but it feels SO good when you finally get it.

Really grateful to Panga for this. I've put more time into it by now than I've put into some modern video games that I paid money for.

Kaizo games may not be for everyone but this hack will help you make that decision quickly. This is not an easy hack for beginners like myself. The learning has become very difficult and not so fun in the later stages and currently is too difficult for me to continue any further. I will continue to try but I may not finish this hack but I do recommend at least giving it a try to see for yourself, if you want to get into Kaizo.

First and foremost, thank you for unknowingly getting me into kaizo. I've been wanting to do this for quite some time and your hack kinda pushed me to do so even though it was freaking hard! Growing up in the 90's, I casually played smw as a kid but that's it, this is the only hack I played so far and I'm currently in the process of beating the last exit (which is insane btw). This hack covers a lot of different vanilla mechanics and makes sure you get somewhat good at them. I would recommand this to anyone who wishes to get into kaizo (unless you're the impatient type of person to smash controllers). Very well designed, super polished, awesome music, 5/5.

I've added a fixme to this hack. If you're a new player, please play in 1-player mode until a new version replaces this one, and do not worry about the dragon coins. It is an absolutely phenomenal tutorial hack so long as you heed this warning

Super specific hack about all the mechanics in smw kaizo. I wanted to get in to playing kaizo but didn't know where to start until I found this hack. Simply awesome! Also loved the youtube playlist of Panga explaining everything aswell.

This is ,in my opinion the best hack to learn the basics for Kaizo there is. Unlike Learn 2 Kaizo, which throws some random things at you and tests them back to back in the castles, this hack builds from the ground up. Starting with the basics and always stacking on top of it. Yeah some parts are pretty hard, but it needs to be, to make sure you really learn the things this hack teaches you, because every assessement uses things from earlier parts, and stuff like the regrabs are needed all the time, thats why its so hard, you need to learn this. Im very thankfull for this hack Mr.Panga

I am very grateful for what you did Panga, this is very useful, even more for making documents with the texts you put in the game and all the things you used in the gameplay!!

Currently completing the third section of assessment 2 and loving it! Panga, you have truly captured the joy of kaizo! This is my first time learning kaizo, and even though it may be frustrating, it is sure fun!

Personally, i think this hack fails at its main goal. It is vastly too hard as a tutorial hack. Assessment #1 is harder then a lot of levels in actual kaizo hacks for gods sake. It needs to be way more liberal with the check points. Its valuable to at least get that far to learn about regrabs and min high bounces/max low bounces, but after that you're pretty much better served just watching someone play through this on youtube and then actually playing through learn 2 kaizo instead

Dude thank you so much as a person who hasn't done kaizo before. There was another tutorial hack but people complained it wasnt hard enough... when it was a tutorial, and that meant scrapping text explanations. Perfect hack <3

Perfect hack to polish kaizo skills.
Also nice music choices. 5/5.

Very nice hack! Perfect to learn Kaizo!

I recently downloaded this and as i was playing on my SNES. I got to the fourth or fifth tutorial section and where Mario starts (on ground) But, the ground is missing below Mario I ended up dying multiple times. Anyone else having this issue? Any ideas on fixing it?
Thanks for any help you could give me.

This hack is outstanding. It's comprehensive; it introduces topics in a good order; the practice rooms are generally quite well designed. It's a much more appropriate introduction than Learn 2 Kaizo, in my opinion. I have a few gripes, but they are minor in comparison to what the hack does right. Highly, highly recommended if you're starting out.

Making an interactive Kaizo tutorial is a very good idea. I'm a long-time Kaizo fan, yet a good part of your tricks were completely unknown to me! It's very well done as well, as expected of Panga.

I mostly came here to complain, though: in the second room of First Grade's Block Break level, right after a toggleable wall that deactivates as I hit the switch with a shell (or am I supposed to jump on it?), there's an invisible block that teleports Luigi to the overworld map at Mario's starting location (Welcome), making First Grade inaccessible after that. I think there should be a breakable block there instead, as I can't quite reach the next group of blocks without it.
There's also another such block a bit earlier, above a second muncher to the right of a flying Koopa. That jump is doable without replacing it with a breakable block, though.
My emulator is Snes9x under RetroArch, if that's relevant.

I can't get past the Title screen rip...

Oh!

1) Can complete first juggle room without juggling as shell not always kills spinies
2) Juggling between four vines can be cheesed by jumping from the top of second vine
3) (opinioned) coin in vine level too simple, maybe use skytree room to make some challenge
4) (opinioned) coin in assessment 3 is insane, left wall is excessive
5) (opinioned) disco shell coin is too subtle, maybe add throwable block at the end to bring back
6) coin in assessment 6 is too subtle, no indication whatsoever, I didn't event understand how I got it
7) slow flight room can be cheesed by flying into first thwomp, landing on right "pillar" with munchers, using invisibility, falling from it and flying into second thwomp, which reset invisibility, then running to the end
8) star world backward drop shell jump can be cheesed by throwing it forward at right time. If aligned correctly it will ricochet two times and you can jump of it.

Awesome! This masterpiece allows to overcome the fear of attempting kaizo and not being able to complete single room.

Is this like a Kaizo tutorial?

This site does not provide roms, it provides patches. You need your own clean smw rom to patch.

https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=faq&page=1219815-bps-files

I'm very new to SMW hacks and i just downloaded Lunar Magic. when i downloaded this, (Kaizo Kindergarten) it was a bps file which didn't open in my emulator instead of an smc file, like i'm used to. I use OpenEmu and i'm on a mac.

Thank you, Panga.
This was my first Kaizo hack, and having all of the technical information laid out in an interactive set of levels was immeasurably helpful. But the assessments were even more valuable, giving me a taste of what Kaizo hacks had to offer and requiring significant practice. I don't think I would have started playing Kaizo if this hack didn't exist, and I have really enjoyed my time so far.
I hadn't realized it was so newly released when I downloaded it (less than a week old) - when I was stuck on the spin-cape-flight-through-door section on World 6, I searched for a video and found that you had released one that day going over it, haha! A pleasant surprise
Thank you for creating this. The music was great, too

For kaizo, Quickie World was my first, either Quickie is great, Baby Kaizo World, Robfather World. If you're not familiar with SMW physics, just play around with vanilla SMW. There are places to shell jump, practice precision (i.e. jump off a ledge onto a ? block and land on the left corner), play "the ground is lava" jumping on enemies, just tool around and get comfortable. JUMP and JUMPhalf are not kaizo, but still tough.

This hack lays everything out for you, and is an incredible resource, honestly I could see it being almost too much information for a beginning player to absorb all at once. But just understand that if you want to play kaizo, it's all crazy hard, and it takes a whole lot of grinding. You can't really ease your way into it, the best you can do is familiarize yourself with the physics of the game, and jump in and do it."Starter" kaizo hacks aren't easy by the standards of 99% of the gaming world, and neither is this hack. But if you want to play kaizo, jump in and grind it out. Even if a level takes you 4 hours, beat it, don't give up or get frustrated. Watch yourself progress on each jump, each moment where you realize what a subtle change in inputs got for you. If it takes you 2 hours to get to a checkpoint, and you finally get it right as you're going to bed, turn your console off and go to bed, tomorrow you'll get that checkpoint in a half hour, because you've learned, you've figured some things out and gotten better. Quickie World is considered a very easy hack by kaizo standards, I probably averaged 2-3 hours per level as my first hack. Then I was stuck on the last castle before star road for literally 3 weeks. Sometimes I'd play for a couple hours, some days a half hour, some days I wouldn't turn it on at all. But I kept at it, beat it, and after that hack found something tougher to play. But you won't find a kaizo hack that's "comfortable" or "at your level" as a first hack, any first kaizo hack is going to be well above your (or anyone's) abilities, and if you want to play them, it takes patience and lots and lots of dying.

really good hack, my only problem are: dragon coin indicators are glitched and the fact that you can't go to first grade after you collect
40 coins, you have to beat it twice, which is cruel and not cool (who knew you have to pick two player)

What hacks would you suggest trying prior to giving this one another go? (I've managed to clear up to castle three, the platform juggle was giving me some difficulty)

I consider myself a seasoned kaizo player, and I still learned some interesting, cool tidbits and tricks. Very polished and informative! One issue-- the dragon coin indicators are inconsistent, and also a cement block wall appears around dragon coins after completing The Prostate Exam, making them impossible to collect. It would also be very nice if dragon coins could save somehow (maybe ask some ASM people).

This hack was a lot of fun and super informative. All of the explanations were very in-depth, and having the various speed-meter and the input display was just really cool. 10/10 would get held back and repeat kindergarten again.

Kaizo is, by definition, very hard. If you want to learn basic skills, tool around in the original SMW. You could say the same thing about anything advanced or in depth-a "basic mechanical engineering" course doesn't mean that it's easy, or that it's the first thing you should do, you need an understanding of all sorts of math and physics to even comprehend the "basic" course. Kaizo kindergarten doesn't mean it is super, mega easy-if that were the case, it wouldn't be kaizo. There is a whole world of easy and medium hacks out there if you want to work on basic skills. Or, as I mentioned, the original SMW. Use it like a sandbox mode, practice precision jumping, shell jumps, momentum control, etc.

This hack is absolutely a kindergarten/super beginner level KAIZO hack, one that is incredibly in depth, I would have loved to have this around when I was starting out. Thanks to Panga, who obviously put a considerable amount of time and energy into this..nice hack.

Hmm...

Yeah the time is kinda long, I've gotten used to hitting L + R the instant I die to save time.

I'm enjoying this so far, it's clearly much more in depth than L2K and that's awesome! But is it just me or is the time from death to retry seem really long? Is it like this for anyone else or did I mess something up somehow?

I don't understand at all why it's needed to go in 2-player mode to have the full hack

extremely challenging for someone just starting out. I'd say it's more of a kaizo "highschool" or "college". If you're willing to really grind it out, this is probably the most effective way to get good fast...but it is a grind if you're just learning basic skills.

Same! Thanks Panga!

Thanks for making this Panga! I now have carpal tunnel, but I know how to regrab.

This hack was extremely fun to play through, and taught me some mechanics I thought I knew about in even more detail. The harder levels from Send Nudes have been extremely fun to grind, too.

One small thing I noticed with the input display in First Grade, the A B and Y button indicators in Motor Skills, and maybe the other rooms, corresponded to Player 1, and not Player 2, whereas the rest of the button indicators corresponded to Player 2. I don't think I see any patch notes about it, but I am on v1.05.

Amazing hack, and only played 2 levels,i hope i will be able to play some kaizo hacks when I pass this hack and Learn 2 kaizo. Thanks!!

I watch Ryukahr a lot and this hack inspired me to play rom hacks

Dude, this is so amazing and complete. Love it, love it, love it!

Great Hack was much needed for new players only broke it twice but on a side note my dragon coins reset upon a reset of the console Panga you should probably fix this unless it was intended

Nice romhack, Panga.

Seriously, this is a really nice romhack. Not only does it teach you kaizo tricks, it teaches you what's going on with the underlying mechanics of the game to make the tricks happen, and does so with great custom music and graphics. Clearly a labor of love - highly recommended.

@danielsonic Learn To Kaizo by nexus i thinks but not available here

@Romano338 really? Some other kaizo hack tutorial, for example?

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Thank you. I will fix this in a later version.

i do not appreciate the condescending nature of this.

Regarding level 4, sublevel 39. That lava does affect sprites, if you enable sprite buoyancy.

I'm excited to see Veteran players get their asses kicked

Danielsonic 87 > Kaizo tutorials aren't a new thing, it already exists

WOW! I wondering from a many time why a Kaizo hack tutorial doesn't existed, yet... and now IT EXISTS!!
Great, finally I can understand something that I were playing only rarely^^
deserves 5 stars only for the idea, where all of this is based from^^

now i can finally be good at kaizo even though i'm still bad at it

5/7 (a perfect score!) would recommend to anyone wanting to learn Kaizo. It's the tutorial hack we needed, and it's fun!

Nice

Panga, coming in here with starting a new whole point of learning for anyone wanting to try kaizo and get knowledge in both practicing harder full 'exam' levels, and the numbers and inputs needed for the different tricks used commonly. Thank you for this, Panga.

I'll take 12, thanks.