Same Sprites, Different Levels

i forgot if it is supposed to render a path or not, but yeah i really don't know why i just made the whole star and special world not do the main gimmick of the hack, thats my biggest regret

A really enjoyable hack and it was fun to see the familiar enemy placements of SMW in a completely different (and arguably better) context.

The one and only pet peeve I have is that the two special worlds go against the gimmick. I won't deny that the levels themselves are probably better off for it (especially Star World 3), but 13 of the stages not being Same Sprites, Different Levels feels a bit off.

7/10


btw, is the normal exit in "more clouds whoa" supposed to not render any path?

dm them

at what point are you in the hack?

thank you good to see people still enjoying it

Among the very best hacks I've played of SMW thus far!

this is a really neat idea, and the level design is really awesome.

"I really enjoyed this hack. It's a chill experiment with vanilla SMW that increases the difficulty enough to keep it interesting without punching you in the face."

Nothing to add, vanilla, hard but not too hard, almost chill, a very enjoyable realease.

thanks! also yea i probably went overboard with the decor on collision chaos

I really enjoyed this hack. It's a chill experiment with vanilla SMW that increases the difficulty enough to keep it interesting without punching you in the face. I feel like this would be a good one for someone who's only played SMW to play for building up some Mario fundamentals in a fun way.

Despite the creator saying Void of Vandalism was lazy, that was a really fun spin on Star World 1. Star World was generally harder than vanilla but not by a ton. The same goes for Special World. The last two levels of Special World were a blast, especially 'not really kaizo'. There were a few levels I wasn't super hip on. Collision Chaos was rough, blue background pipes next to blue foreground pipes. The music choices were fantastic.

This took ~3.5h to finish. Video of playthrough: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqvIHerHvauuh2oPpwuzIvE6Lfrd0KicK

thanks!

Loved the hack. As a newbie to hacking, I can tell this hack shows off a lot of vanilla tricks. Good music, great visuals (though some bg elements did catch me off guard--pipes, e.g.). It was fun to predict what the next level would be, and I think that's a telling sign that you've made a great hack.

thank you!

This is one of the best hacks I ever played, hands down. I Left a comment here in order to be able to leave 5 stars.

thank you! also, the hack's classified as hard because of the special world (even though i really toned it down)

Really neat and cool concept that was executed pretty well. The aesthetics were pretty amazing as well as the level design. I also really liked the music choices in some levels. Though, in my opinion, I feel like the difficulty should be categorized as normal instead of hard. If it's stated and confirmed as a hard hack, then this is one of the easier hard hacks I've played

whoa, thanks!!!

For sure the best vanilla hack i ever played, 5/5
The aesthetics are 11/10 ngl

Amazing concept. I should know, I used it myself (and it was much worse) in Wacky World. The level design on display here is all excellent. A+, 5/5, 10/10, 8/8 whatever you need.

yea, actually! it was a single level i made in one sitting one summer night basically
toned it down for this hack though
thanks for playing!

great game. didn't you release "not actually kaizo" as a demo maybe 2 years ago? i hadn't realized you were the same person until i got to the end of the special world and was like whoa i remember really liking this level!

great hack !

thank you all! i don't think i'll update it again unless there's a major glitch, though

Looks great visually and gameplay! nice rom hack!

I played the older version of this hack and i beated it again, very good smw hack for me, good remake levels, the hardest level to me was the last level of the Special World ''Not Really Kaizo'' That i used some savestates to complete it. Im just positive, i like every SMW hack if the hack have more than 50 exits and Playabale levels so i gave to SSDL 5 Stars

Sorry for my bad english ;)

Any time, to be honest I never really found anything wrong with the Hack for some reason when I played the full thing. Don’t really know exactly why that is but all I can say is that it’s a really great Hack and I really enjoyed playing it. Great job. .

thanks!

I really liked playing this game, also really liked the Mini Game theme tune on the bonus game from Kirby’s Dream Land 3. Hope to re-download it when it’s fully updated and finished and re-submitted. .

thank you a lot! (these two ""softlocks"" are intentional, though, on the skull level the point is to follow the platform and the player is meant to be careful with the P-switch in that part)

Just beat this in one sit last night, I liked it a lot.
There's a saying that limitations often leads to creativity and this hack is the very proof that this is true.
You were very creative with the original smw sprite placements and also smw's vanilla limitations.
This hack also has a very "abstract" theme to it that makes for some entertaining worlds later on.
The only feedback I can provide is that there's two softlocks where the player can get traped and forced to kill himself, the first one is in a skull platform fire cave themed level, where it's possible to make the skull platform go offscreen and don't respawn in one section.
The other is on the ghost house on world 7, in the room with the secret exit, if you don't use the pswitch correctly you get locked there.
I think puting a reset door can fix both of them.
Great hack
4.5/5

thank you! the background stuff looking solid is fixed in the upcoming update

Just finished all 92 exits. Had fun with this. Had a few issues with decoration and color choices throwing me off (spikes in some ghost houses really blended in the background, for instance, and some decorative background blocks looked a little too prominent and looked like they should be solid when they weren't). Overall though it was a good hack. A lot of work clearly went into this. 5 Stars.

also, about the note blocks - i don't really wanna fix it honestly, i already did fix the most notorious sprite glitches and it's just such a pain for a small detail

i'm aware about the note blocks, but what do you mean by pallete fixes?

Nice hack so far but really needs some palette fixes and the level "whoa what?!" Note blocks are glitched when jumped on.

updates kinda taking forever sorry i uh, got lazy

thanks!!

Still my favourite romhack I've played on this site. Return to Dino Island is the only other one I have up there with this one. You have a great aesthetic sense. Look forward to your next work.

the red switch thing is probably something with conflicting events, i'll look into it, but no promises because i kinda forgot some overworld editing stuff and i think i'd have to like change half the events in the game to fix that
also, i've changed some message blocks in the update i'm making - hopefully the top secret area being in another level will be more clear

I found the exits! Okay.

Does the Ghost House 2 have a secret exit? Been trying to find the Super Secret Area and it's super annoying. Also, seems to be a glitch – I passed the special world before getting the red switch. Now, when I went to World 3 to get it, it seemed to show up already flattened and I can't get in.

thank you! and as for the exits, i tried to mix stuff up

Loved the hack! Fantastic concept, and very psychedelic.

Biggest gripe – why not 96* to match the original? I'm at 88 and don't know where to go to complete.

I completed my first SMW hack, this hack is awesome the levels, the songs, beautiful 7/10 because in some levels Mario looks different, gramar errors and the difficult in some levels are ridiculous that i used savestates to complete it.

In my opinion the hardest level of the entire hack is the last level of the special world ´´Not really Kaizo´´ i used a lot of savestates to complete it bruh.

good in my book!

..yea i forgot about the 2nd castle
also in snake creater i had to do that to get the background to show up properly, it's kinda hacked together (pun intended)
thanks for the approval though, and i'm glad you liked it!

A very interesting hack here to say the least. I had fun, although, there are some polish issues I think you could resolve in the future, mainly that in some levels such as the second castle, you can see glitched sprite errors, in this case on the noteblocks. It can also be achieved by sliding into Bowser fireballs to kill them. Also in "Snake Creater" the status bar goes behind the foreground which is super weird.

i'll only update it again if there's something else to fix, otherwise it'd be too spammy

eltiolavara9, Thanks for updates and fixes.
I finally got all dragon coins! \o/

PS:
Now, the level "Level I But Hard" has 6 Dragon Coins. I don't know if it was intentional. But nevermind.
In the level "... and back!" you still can be softlocked on secret exit area if you jump over the wall with no key.
You can add a hole on the side of the lock to fix it.

first of all, thank you! i'm glad the mood i wanted to convey with some of the levels worked as well
sorry though, but i'm not gonna add a coin/moon marker, but i will fix the dragon coin issues (man, i REALLY never noticed them..) and the exit stuff
and as for the bowser fight freezing, i'm afraid that can't be fixed; i had to use a custom sprite for the bowser fight since the sprite tile limits patch i had broke it, and the only thing it changes is that the game freezes for a bit on transitions, but i can't do anything about it

I beated it. No save state. I got all exits. Nice hack!
Some stages is so ludics, like a dreams/nightmares. Awesome!
Almost all stages was easy to beat it. The Star World has the harder stages.
The last 2 Star World's secret stages is kaizo level.
The weird grammar of the texts in general bothered me. But it was intentional in this game.
I hope to see more large hacks from this author.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
I noticed some bugs/errors:

This hack don't have coins/moons marker on map.
The 3º World don't have any number indication sign for it. [fixed]
The level "clouds or something" has 6 dragon coins.
In the level "... and back!", you can be softlocked on secret exit area.
The level "... and back!" has only 4 Dragon coins. [fixed]
The level "Lavender Loathing" has only 4 Dragon coins. [fixed]
The level "Under Construction" has only 3 Dragon coins. [fixed]
The 7º World don't have any number indication sign for it. [fixed]
In the level "Slammin' Fortress 2", one of the Rhinos Bosses freezes on screen after beat it.
The level "Level I But Hard" has only 4 Dragon coins. [fixed]
This hack game has 92 exits.
The final boss level temporarily freezes the screen many times on Bowser fight.

Nice! Thanks!
Can you add a coin/moon marker to the stages, please?
I want to know in which stages I got all the 5 coins and moons.

thanks for reporting the missing dragon coins, but the level names and weird misspelling and such are intentional

thank you!! i was planning on making a small expansion actually (as a separate hack), with the star world and/or special world levels having the same sprites gimmick too
EDIT: oh yea i should do that one fix update that i kinda forgot to do

Having now found all obtainable exits, I wanted to give this one a rating. I absolutely loved this, and had so much fun playing through it. The difficulty of this was perfect, I loved the palettes used, as well as the level design. I had a lot of fun with all the special levels, and would love to see more in the future from this creator. 5/5.

Just finished this with all 90 exits, very fun hack.

thanks for your feedback! (also i know you from raocow's comment section lol)
i'll try to adress these when i get to my actual pc (i don't have lunar magic on this laptop)
EDIT: also, about the exits: i'm not sure if something's glitched or if there's a obscure one, but i put 91 since these were the ones i counted, but then when the mod played there were 90 i think, but i think there are 92? it's really weird

I just co-op played through this hack, and found a few things probably worth mentioning.

In "Moisture, Inc" (world 3 fortress), there's a spot fairly early on where you can swim at the top of the screen, but there are apparently spikes/munchers up there, which can cause the player to take a cheap hit from an unseeable hazard, and that doesn't seem fair at all.

In "SKULL RAFT INFERNO!" (in world 3), there are multiple Yoshi-unfriendly overhangs while riding skull rafts, which I had issues with, as I had gotten to that level with a Yoshi. (Maybe that level should've been a no-Yoshi level.)

Upon clearing the normal exit of "more clouds whoa" (on the west side of world 5), there was no path revealed leading east to "INTO SPACE!" like I would've expected. And, even weirder, when I cleared that exit, the turn didn't pass to my co-op partner afterwards. My partner had gotten the secret exit there first, in case that matters (which did properly reveal the path leading south).

In Lavender Level (first level of world 6), there are places with vines, munchers, and different-colored but still solid-looking terrain, except that terrain isn't solid at all. I went to land on a piece of that terrain, and just fell right through to my death.

Also, there seems to be fewer than 5 Yoshi coins in some levels (unless we just sucked at finding them all), such as the aforementioned "more clouds whoa", where we only found 2.

And finally, upon fully completing the game (Special World included), we had a grand total of 92 exits, which is more than the stated 90 here. (Did the mod who made the edit to the shown exit count here miss a couple of exits?)

Damn. (thanks)

I TEMPORARILY STOPPED PLAYING FORTNITE TO PLAY THIS ENTIRE HACK

good hack

thank you so much! i hope you enjoy the rest of the hack (no seriously)
what did you like about the creepier levels, btw

I played this on my stream yesterday and we all had so much fun. I really enjoyed it. Some of the creepy levels were so well done, and the levels in the last stage were delightfully difficult. I look forward to finding all the other exits (only did 77 yesterday). Anyway, thank you for making this!

thank you!

i played 3.0 and i must say this is a well made hack overall.

there are cutoffs here and there and while the graphic design choises are a bit weird sometimes, it can be also quite charming at the same time.

felt a bit too rompy while playing it, but that could be because of the sprite restriction.

still, the level design was very solid, with some slowdowns, but nothing too bad.

i'm at castle 7 atm, got almost all secret exits and will beat the game 100% at some day for sure.

4/5

first of all, thank you for playing, and also, sure! if people want (although some puns only work in english) / gracias por jugar, y claro! si la gente quiere (aunque algunos juegos de palabras solo funcionan en ingles)

Awesome! Cool! Beautiful sprites! Great game! Thank you!
could you make a patch in spanish!!! ;) Thenk you so much!

thank you!

I'm really liking this so far. I'm doing a let's play of it, first part should be up tomorrow. (If my video editor doesn't screw it up)

yea, done

Then you should delete the other file in the waiting files

A wonderful hack based on a great idea (same sprites with totally different graphics), which brings a mix of nostalgia and renewing =]

The difficulty is OK, starting from easy and reaching the hard level in the special world, with last level being even harder, however all 92 exits are beatable without using any savestate.

10/10 (5 stars) Thank you very much =]

i was going to update the hack soon, so i'll add in a hint in the jk room while i'm at it
btw, the solution is to throw a shell through the red ? block, but i can see now why that's very hard to figure out

I started playing this yesterday and I was really enjoying it, until I got to the first ghost house (something hollandaise? can't remember the level name). I could not figure out how to proceed, so I finally looked up a video playthrough and I saw that you have to spin jump on the ghost(s) to get up above where a pipe leads to the exit. But this pipe is blocked off, with floor sprites. I've tried everything, hitting the red switch in the next room, taking the green shell with me through the door to the jk death room, all manner of random shit - and nothing unblocks the pipe. It's infuriating to me because I *want* to play the rest of the hack, but I can't, and the player in the video I watched just went straight up to the exit pipe without doing anything extra in the level. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Up until that point it was 4/5 stars.

same!! also, if i made a update, would it have to be approved too or..? the self-made island guy made me realize the first level's bonus room is broken, which... isn't a good impression to be making

Glad to see this finally accepted!

Fun hack. Accepted as "Hard" difficulty because late-game and star world venture beyond "Normal" difficulty.

Is one of the best rom-hacks i've ever seen, the palettes, the overworld, the level design.

But the cherry on the cake is the music. I love it! My favourite ones are from the star world, special world, main overworld the rift overworld, it night and the bulletdome.

I dont only hope you make more like these, I also hope this gets accepted!

A very beautiful hack. Well built. Deserves much more than 5 stars

unless a major issue pops up i'm happy with calling 3.0 the final version

oh yea, forgot about that, you can't even update it if it's under moderation. however, i can remember one time messing up badly and posting the wrong rom and then messaging the moderator and sending the right one, because i realized VERY late i posted the wrong rom. (actually, a friend had to tell me)

but let's just hope that never happens to you lol

..lavender lamination was fixed already, unless i'm missing something

What niko said is right, you can update it how many times you want *before* it gets claimed. After it is claimed you can't update it anymore (like, not because there's a rule per se but because the claim prevents you from updating it), so get your updates out before the hacks gets claimed.

ohh alright thanks for clarifying then

i personally think you can update it 1000 times, if it's not under moderation, because we are not the testers and won't have to play it several times because of the updates to test it again, nor whould we need to stop playing the hack just because of an update. imo you should update it now BEFORE it get's under moderation, updating it again while it is whould be rude to the moderator.

thank you!
but man i thought i fixed the slowdown with fastrom and all that, maybe i was too used to it from testing
what levels had it worse?

also i'll fix lavender lamination (if there's something else to fix, i don't want to get too spammy with updates)

im almost done with the hack and i have to say its a beautiful one.
this "its familiar" feeling is really something positive. several levels have a "everything besides the outlines is black" design, indeed simple but effective.

some of the autoscrollers are a bit too slow, but other than that i really like it. i'd say its a bit harder than the original smw (but thats hard to judge as i played the original about 15 times) and the darker artstyle reflects that.

the music is also very beautiful, sometimes not quite fitting.

i dont think the special world will change my opinion so im going to say its a 4/5.


the biggest complaint i have is the slowdown. it happens OFTEN!
too often.
one thats not a complaint but i wanna mention it is that some levels have more than 5 yoshi coins

and "lavender lamination" has 2 exits but its a yellow level.

ok lo acabo de arreglar gracias

en el nivel dry, dry mountain al entrar por el tubo (el unico que tiene) y salir de el te lleva a una muerte directa

what part did you have the trouble with

Normal?? more like very hard

This comment section really shows what good critisism can do and reading it made me very happy.

After reading the hack now is really good, i give it a try also when i find the time.

thanks! but also, the camera doing that on Totally Original is intentional
idk what other level has the wrong camera but i don't think i'll update this again, at least in a while, since these are some really minor issues (also fixing the note blocks in whoa what would break other graphics)

I'm happy to say that my thoughts on Same Sprites, Different Levels has much improved now, with this update. I replayed worlds 6 up to special world - The endgame worlds are far better, especially for the Star World and Special World; slowdown is much better now, as in there's way less. It's still there in the worst levels, but it's nowhere near as bad as before.

There's still minor issues like incorrect note block tiles when bounced on in several stages, incorrectly placed starting position camera in a level or two, and some minor cutoff I spotted in the Special World - but those don't affect the overall gameplay experience and I would let those slide. But as far as this hack goes now, I'm very happy that I can call it a mostly enjoyable experience from beginning to end.

Changed my rating from 2, to 4 stars out of 5. This hack is totally going on my list of games I'd replay every now and then just for fun.

IT'S OUT!! hopefully this update fixes the bugs, ugly stuff, slowdown and everything people didn't like (not just that, there have been a lot of tweaks)

that arrow sign has been fixed, also RGB-CMYK was also my least favorite one so i replaced it with Totally Original which i'm gonna make a little harder (nothing insane though), and i'll swap some stuff around
tubular 3 or whatever got made less obnoxious (aka there are like twice as much p-balloons and taking a single hit doesn't mean you have to do it all over again)
there is no switch is getting mostly remade

LAVENDER LAMINATION:


Don't forget that arrow sign problem.

This hack is good btw

Tubular 3 had some really tight spots in the middle, where it's sort of hard to squeeze through the barrage of baseballs in time. And probably my other least favorite level has to be RGB-CMYK. The look of the level is the whole point, that's not the issue. Rather, the Porcu-Puffer is extremely irritating to deal with. Basically, too many of the jumps from water lead me to my death because the gaps to get into are either too small, or I don't have time to think about them because the dang fish is seconds away from getting me. Call it my personal bias, I was never a fan of that sprite in the slightest, but I'd say its placement there was rather poor.

right so sorry for being spammy with comments but aside from the star road megamix, which post-game level was the worst? i'm planning to replace one but i'm not sure which one i should

ok i think the star world's better now, none of the levels have HUGE changes (except the end of that one castle with moving water) and the first level had some sense slapped into it
i added some more powerups to the second level and made the floor not bouncy

it's really really not intentional, i'm very aware that level is broken, i accidentally pasted a copy of the title screen on that level's slot and didn't notice until it was too late

INTO SPACE! aside, the cloud world was half and half for me. Right off the bat, it wasn't clear to me that you could pass through the walls of the clouds; I thought they were solid because I noticed the Koopas in the pit at the beginning would turn back at the walls. But no, they're passable, and I had a few deaths from that. Maybe make it a little more clear that you can pass through the walls?

And in "more clouds woah", I personally think the section around the middle with the Munchers on clouds is a little boring; it's just jumping from cloud to cloud. Not much better than 1-tile jumps. And "AND BACK!" is just sort of there. But now that I replay the level, I notice it's literally the same as DO NOT ENTER!!! but with a different palette and enemies (and it actually has a normal exit, unlike DNE). Was this intentional? A little odd if you ask me.

it's fine
also what was everyone's opinion on the cloud world (aside from what's already been said)

This is great to hear! I'm happy you're taking in our feedback. I apologize if my review came across as too harsh, but like I said, this is a really cool idea for an SMW hack and I really want to see this executed in the best way it can! I'll look forward to the first update.

star road megamix will also be completely reworked, i had a level lying around that has the same difficulty but much better

ok so i've been working on fixing all these issues
i put on the fastROM thing and a "optimized for speed" compression thing, along with removing some stuff from levels that slowed down the game to a halt
the last part of the first star world level now makes more sense and i'll touch up the second one a bit, third one i think is fine but i added some coin indications, No More Neon is getting a rename and a changed second section
NOW YOU'RE THINKING was moved to the final spot, made more fair (more than 2 capes) and i'll probably add something where you need at least 3 switches pressed, i have a cool idea
i'll try to get rid of all slowdown in into space, clean up reflux forest and improve mint athletic and slap some sense into the special world AND improve world 6
i've also fixed the last screen of the blue switch palace, removed the message box in thunderbumper, etcetc

INTO SPACE!, mint athletic, Reflux Forest- and most of world 7, honestly. The Special World, like Physicist mentioned, is very poorly designed especially. I think the Star Road is sort of mixed, it's okay, but I would put a lot more attention into the lategame levels, world 6 and beyond.

Okay, so there is a lot of stuff I love and hate to death in this hack. The concept by itself is very creative and has a lot of potential. Also, not being the biggest fan of humor in my SMW hacks, I actually appreciated the humorous messages in the message boxes. Your execution was spot until, well, world 5 and on. A good chunk of the late game levels seemed poorly tested and/or designed. Now you may be asking, what specific levels made you think that? Well, to simply put it, about 90% of the levels in the star and special world seemed rushed to hell. Not to be harsh here, but what were you thinking when you designed the Star World Megamix?!? My suggestion is just flat out redoing that level in its entirety. Another major flaw, as many reviewers of this have pointed out, is the SLOWDOWN. I lost count on how many times I've died because of it. The last problem I have to address is that Lavender Lamination should have a RED DOT instead of a yellow.

I was quite upset with how this ended up turning out. This hurts me to do this, but 2/5 for now.

what were your least favorite levels aside from the megamix?

i enabled fastROM (somehow i had no idea that it was a thing you could do ), hopefully it + removing some stuff will work, but if not, then yea it's the only option i guess

Far as I'm aware that's correct so you'd have to patch SA-1 onto a clean rom and then port everything over from this hack to the SA-1 rom. At least it'd be worth it in the end though.

the problem with SA-1 is that you can ONLY add it to a completely clean ROM i think, and this rom is the complete opposite of clean

On SA-1, I wonder this too...
I tried to add SA-1 on my vanilla hack because the slowdowns on some point... but all now is glitched on the screen... so I used a previous rom to re-obtain my hack like before... why this happens??

thank you for your criticism! i did try to test this hack as much as possible, but some stuff either eluded me or i forgot about it, due to all the stuff in this hack
i'll release a update later today trying to address all these issues
EDIT: is it possible to just patch this with SA-1 straight up without having to do any weird workarounds? that's what i was worried about
EDIT EDIT: OH GOD I FORGOT TO REMOVE THE INTRO LEVEL COPY I'M DUMB

I got all but two of the 91 exits (the remaining two are explained later). I want to like this hack, I really do, but it just has so many little things that I'm either not a fan of, are too frustrating, too obviously tested with savestates, or maybe not tested at all.

Now if there's something I can definitely say I liked, I do appreciate the humor in the message boxes, I got some good chuckles. The hack also certainly shows itself as a "remix" of the original game, for sure; it's very evident in the overworld especially, many of the core paths or design are the same, like how the Lavender Island is... just Chocolate Island. Now, you did switch some things around, like how the Top Secret Area is under Lavender Island instead of in the Donut Plains, which is appreciated as a nice change.

The core idea is very intriguing! The vanilla sprite layouts, but with different LEVEL layouts built around them? I genuinely think the first four worlds pull this off very well, and the levels are very fun! I had a great time. Unfortunately, the quality starts to take a dive at the beginning of Lavender Island. The levels are too obviously built from vanilla SMW. Like, the sprite layouts, sure, that's the point. But the level layouts themselves. Some of them are just sections straight from vanilla SMW, which wouldn't be a problem if they didn't stick out so much. The later levels aren't much to smile at either. They become frustrating slogs, more or less. One level that comes to mind especially is the "true" final level, STAR ROAD MEGAMIX. This level was clearly, so obviously tested with savestates. At least three of the jumps in it are SO precise, you're given SO LITTLE time to spin jump off the grinders (the level is auto-scrolling which does not help), and it was very irritating to play. As far as slogging through goes, however, it's made all the more worse by one of my biggest dislikes in this game - the SLOWDOWN.

Oh my lord. The slowdown in this hack is horrendous. I don't know how you could possibly bring yourself to test this in the state it's in. Half the game seems to suffer from it! I believe the absolute worst level for it is INTO SPACE!. I'm not kidding when I say nearly every screen had excruciating slowdown that eventually forced me to use fast-forwarding because I just couldn't take it anymore. But you know what really stung me the most? The fact that you were aware of this. Now, I am not a hack moderator, but, and please forgive my harshness, I must say that this is unacceptable. You have several means of mitigating this, none of which you seemed to bother with. FastROM, reducing the amount of enemies in levels (original sprite layouts be damned; removing slowdown is more important), using SA-1 (this hack is 90% vanilla so you can easily get away with just using that). It really makes me wonder what your testing process for this project was.

Before I get into miscellaneous errors, I want to address the biggest problem, section-wise, that is already going to get this hack rejected unless you fix them before a hack mod claims this. Two of them:

1. During my playthrough, I opted to get the secret exits in the cave world at a later time. But when I came back, the Red Switch Palace button ("THINE SWYTCH PALACE") was already pressed, locking me out of pressing it, and also out of an exit. Check your level events - this likely means that you mapped a later level's completion event to the same number as this palace's destruction event.

2. The normal exit in DO NOT ENTER!!! is impossible to get. The secret exit is fine, but the normal exit cannot be attained. I searched forever until I finally gave up and looked at the level in Lunar Magic- one of the screens has a screen exit set that leads to the room containing the normal exit, but there is no pipe or door placed in said screen. The rest of the level is a dead end unless you care about the Yoshi Coins.

Now, my final mentions: Examples of smaller problems that, while not game-breaking, are certainly easily fixed and indicative of the amount of time that likely went into testing this. These are in no particular order:

(1) Broken OW vine tiles after passing the Special World.
(2) The note blocks in "whoa what?!" have glitched graphics. This is a very common issue in many hacks caused by incorrect sprite tileset usage. This is actually in a number of levels, but whoa what?! is the level that comes to my mind immediately.
(3) Similar to the above issue, "#3 BOILING POINT" has bouncy turn blocks with glitched graphics.
(4) Another common error. Bonus levels (specifically level 0 in LM, I checked) do not have their cameras set properly, allowing Mario to see beyond the first screen. Either disable both vertical and horizontal scrolling, or get rid of every tile in screen 01.
(5) Incorrectly tiled Torpedo Ted launcher. EXTREMELY minor, but you can tell from the pure black squares, and this is in several levels.
(6) Don't use message boxes in levels with layer 3 crushers. Or layer 3 in general.
(7) Nothing but a sigh to give with the last screen of the Blue Switch Palace, as well as this.
(8) Whatever event that's supposed to spawn the level tile for THE GRAVITRON!!! is broken and does not spawn.


Like I mentioned, many of the above issues permeate throughout a lot of levels and makes me wonder just how much this hack was tested.

I was having so much fun in most of the first 4 worlds, and it sucked to see it nosedive so much. I can tell you put effort into this, I won't deny it. But it's misplaced effort. The idea is surprisingly great, executed nicely in the first few worlds, but then it's like you just lost your muster and started getting lazier, or overcompensated and made levels that are way too difficult, even for endgame (and especially for playing on console).

As it stands, I'll have to rate this game a 2 out of 5. I will certainly think fondly of the first few worlds, but the nosedive in quality and fun afterwards just sucks most of my enjoyment and chucks it out the window, and that's a damn shame.

Good hack, great job!