| Name: | Aeron's Golden Cookie Quest ~ Director's Cut |
| Author: | Anorakun |
| Added: | |
| Version History: | View |
| Demo: | No |
| Hall of Fame: | No |
| Length: | 10 exit(s) |
| Type: | Standard: Very Hard |
| Description: | Aeron's Golden Cookie Quest ~ Director's Cut is a massive update that aims to bring improvements and quality of life changes. It aims to be as consistent as possible with its upcoming sequel, Ganbare Aeron and as such, I spent the entirety of January and February working hard on it. This Director's Cut version makes some substantial changes to level design, removes some janky aspects from ASM stuff, rebalances most boss fights, addition of new graphics, cutscenes and much more charismatic NPCs, although most of them are hidden. This hack has been refined as best as I could, please refer to the changelog to see the changes (there are MANY changes!!). And now, I can rest in piece knowing that the overworld layer 3 icons are not vanilla. -> ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION: Aeron's Golden Cookie Quest is an old-school styled hack, that has inpiration in various video games including: Kirby, Mega Man, Castlevania, Ganbare Goemon, Shinobi, Mario and others. Instead of inspiring myself in any hack creator, I wanted to make this project as a love letter for videogames and I plan to achieve that with this hack. It's a weird hybrid of traditional and chocolate. While this hack has a lot of ASM, its level design is more focused all in tackling obstacles than innovative level design. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel or anything, just to be clear, so don't go with the wrong expectations, when playing this hack. Much like an old game, it has some bullshit moments, but a lot of good and rewarding gameplay. This hack has lore, but it's not too wordy or too wacky. It's very easy to understand. Slightly inspired by The Second Reality Project 2 Reloaded. What this hack contains: - A custom player sprite, drawn by Deeke. - Various patches aimed for quality of life experience, to make the platforming even more fun; - 10 tough levels; - 11 secret rooms that contain funny NPCs; - Save areas, this game doesn't save automatically; - Neat selection of custom musics; - Tough platforming; - A few "gotcha" moments; - Simple and challenging bosses; - Bumpties (Segment1Zone2 angry noises); - Hot Dino Rhinos; - Cutscenes; - NPCs; - A new checkpoint system + Instant Retry; - A slightly suggestive final boss; I hope you have a great time with this hack. Cheers! :'D |
| Tags: | aeron asm bosses crossover custom character exgfx hdma music non-mario story traditional |
| Comments: | 27 (jump to comments) |
| Rating: |
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Comments (27)
Enjoy!
A special thanks to all the amazing musicians of the SMW Hacking community, otherwise, this video or my hack wouldn't be possible.
Author names are listed in the description.
Enjoy!
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This is an insanely tough hack, and it'll feel rewarding when you manage to complete each stage.
The way the levels are designed, I was really glad with its instant retry system and how generous this hack is with extra lives, perhaps a good in-game sign of how difficult it's going to be. I thought that Kyushu Long Bridge was one of the more fun ones that it features.
On a different note, the work done on the graphics and plot is really great! Especially with the interactive cutscene rooms.
This hack will be a huge shock if you're too used to traditional hacks honestly, but for the amount of levels that it features, it's worth a try.
The first updates were rough, but once I implemented instant retry and added more lives, the hack felt much more fun to play. It was something I figured out while working on other projects and collabs, to some extent.
Also, yeah, Kyushu Long Bridge is meant to be a breather, after two really tough levels: Forgotten Library and Yamato Bamboo Path.
Please disregard, there wasn't actually a soft lock, except in my brain.
So, this hack absolutely stomped my ass, as expected. I had to rely on rewinding a lot in order to progress. I don't count this as a negative, the hack is intended for audiences who are either elite platformers or simply very patient. There were a few times I died and it felt unfair, but for the most part, I died because I'm simply not elite and I mess up a lot. As someone who played plenty of unintentional Nintendo Hardness back in the day, I appreciate what you're going for. In all honesty, it felt more fair than your average nightmare hard NES game. The level design is very, very good, every level is huge, jam-packed and unique. The obstacles and enemy arrangement constantly throw new challenges at you, and even though the levels are long, they don't feel tiresome or boring. I found the boss fights to, generally, be a little easier than the levels themselves, but not easy, and I was on my toes every time.
The aesthetics of your hack are gold. I enjoyed the graphics a lot, and the OC designs for items and enemies was imaginative and high quality. Aeron himself is a cool design unlike anything in any other SMW hack. Just great look and feel all-around. Music was very well-chosen and definitely added to the atmosphere. The enemies are a mix of vanilla and chocolate and used with a lot of care and thought. I loved the baseball bat.
So yeah, I had a great time getting smacked around so far. I applaud your effort, you've made a great hack!
You can open my rom and extract them from there, since the Exanimation is optimized. I personally don't mind.
This my longplay of this hack:https://youtu.be/vC6T44YrBHw
Thanks so much.
UPDATE: As turns out, I had to fix a few more things, oops! Please download the current version. Thanks.
By the way what game exactly is the Ghost Lady from or is she a made up character because I really liked facing off against her.
I love the presentation of the hack, graphics and music are just wonderful throughout. It's great how every level has a unique theme, and everything revolves around it including enemy graphics.
Levels are so-so. Almost all of them are slow paced, with a lot of tough jumps through spikes or requiring item management (for example bringing shells along to pass the next obstacle). Often times this works great, like in stage 1, but other times it can feel frustrating having to redo these kind of obstacles over and over due to the length of segments without checkpoints. In particular, the required item management can get frustrating when you accidently destroy a shell or a goomba that is needed to pass the next obstacle.
The bosses are the weakest point of the hack in my opinion, mostly because they are very hard (some of them feel spammy with enemies as well) and don't have a checkpoint before them. I found myself savestating through most boss fights for this reason.
Overall I would recommend this hack since it is very unique and has more positives than negatives, but you ARE gonna suffer and potentially get frustrated when playing it, so be prepared for that.
Just spent 10 minits in the first level and it's still not beaten because I play like potato.
It's hard but in the good kind of way.
I've been following this on discord for a while and I admire your works because you seem to enjoy yourself a lot, a bit like a mad scientist
Also, frick bumpties.