| Name: | Attempt at a Normal Hack |
| Author: | ft029 |
| Added: | |
| Demo: | No |
| Hall of Fame: | Yes |
| Length: | 40 exit(s) |
| Type: | Standard: Hard |
| Description: | I started working on this (almost entirely vanilla) hack in 2016, when I was mainly a kaizo hacker. My design philosophy has changed over the years, but my vision for this hack remained the same: a showcase of creative setups and challenges, without going ham on the difficulty. I hope you enjoy playing this as much as I enjoyed making the levels! There are 40 exits, and the difficulty is Standard: Hard (despite being an attempt at normal). **If you plan on playing the entire hack, I recommend tackling Booser's citadel last.** This hack was released in the Winter 2024 C3, but for version 1.11 I have made some minor fixes since then. Thanks to all who streamed this hack, or pointed out my errors. |
| Tags: | gimmick traditional vanilla |
| Comments: | 15 (jump to comments) |
| Rating: |
Download
1.14 MiB | 1,595 downloads
Comments (15)
From the start to the end the levels are interesting and exciting, and they challenge a wide variety of skills from the player without ever going over the top in difficulty. I enjoyed my time with this hack very much.
Amazing hack. Very creative in every level. One of best hacks that I ever played.
Congrats for your job, ft029. 👍
PS: The second half of the level "Urchin Shaft" is a considerable unfair.
I strongly suggest
Nothing but extremely creative levels without being super difficult, which I admire alot.
I really like how you often put the player in situations where the enemies are so well placed that you're forced to react and adapt. I definitely learned alot from playing this.
thank you for sticking with this project after all this time
I did everything (through 1.10 and modified 1.11 (to access the level I couldn't with the former without replaying levels)), including all 5 dragon coins.
The only level I didn't really enjoy (but is good) is
especially for dragon coins. Also the 1st message box at
Otherwise I had a blast playing it!
Rating: 5/5
Album link: https://imgur.com/a/PUfTBZB
Major issue!
All the overworld level warps (not paths) share the same level tile id, if we use the
By entering the level tile id from one direction, it enables the opposite direction from that level tile id, (that's why
I just updated the hack and tested the overworld with lunar debug. Hope it works now.
Echoing gbreeze below, I too liked that I could tell that obstacles were considered and designed in such a way that you/Mario have to move or react in interesting ways instead of just going through the motions or romping to victory; being presented with novel ideas are a way to create new challenges, and ft is showing us that there are still things to do with the vanilla game that are fresh and creative.
Thanks for making!
I think that sometimes, when it comes to standard hacks with linear / purposeful design, it's easy to make levels that feel too much like you're going through the motions, especially when obstacles involve sitting and waiting to time the next obstacle, or performing linear tasks that don't require creative thinking. One way to solve the issue of linearity is, of course, to make the level kaizo, which immediately opens up the creative possibilities for each setup.
ft solves a lot of these issues in a different way though, without delving into full-on kaizo, by throwing the player into a bunch of goofy and crazy situations that require quick on-the-fly thinking. It's a really good way of doing this style of design - it feels extremely fresh, despite the fact that some of these levels are older than JUMP 1/2, and the levels are highly repayable. Each level is also just absurdly creative. I think that ft shows time and time again just how much he can do with so little - he shows that you don't need giant rube goldberg esque setups with sprites being flung everywhere inside incomprehensible contraptions made of various custom blocks. This hack is often extremely creative in its sheer simplicity - using only a couple sprites or objects and creating brand-new and entertaining ideas out of them.
This hack is called attempt at a normal hack, and I know that ft meant normal as in "normal difficulty", but the design is truly anything but normal. Thank you for making this wonderful hack!