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Super Mario Archipelago

Super Mario Archipelago

Download link : https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=21493

Super Mario Archipelago is a hack I completed quite a while ago, but never created a proper thread here to release it. It features over 30 levels of moderate to reasonably high difficulty with a special system introduced with hacks : as you advance through your game, a counter will limit how many times you can attempt clearing levels. Every time you die or break a goal tape, the bonus star counter advances by a set amount and when it reaches 100, you will go to the Game Over screen. At this point, you will be able to read your score on the board according to how many coins you have collected. To help this, the hack features a 5 digits coin counter and a few modifications such as moons being worth a number of coins, or collecting all yoshi coins being worth extra coins. There are also multiple save points that save everything except for your life count, which gets reset to 5 on loading.

This is a view of the Overworld as it appears once you have access to the main map, before uncovering any paths or levels :



It features multiple paths that divide from 2 main paths to the end of a loop, which you can freely explore in the order of your choice in order to collect as many coins as possible before you must leave the archipelago as your Star counter reaches 100. The following is a view of the starting beach where you can already choose between two levels and subsequently advance left or right, into different paths on the overworld :



Now a few screenshots showing what some of the levels may look like :



In addition, here are a few youtube videos that showcase Super Mario Archipelago :



Finally, this is a view of part of the level that you will be put in at the end of a run (a Game Over level), where you can finalize your score and read your rank on the background :



Reaching the higher ranks would require uncovering most of the many secrets and managing to do so while losing very few lives, as your attempts are counted to collect as much as you need to score this much! Any extra lives that you still have after Game Over will be turned into bonus coins after hitting a block in this level.

This project took me quite long to complete and I made several long breaks before I finished. I got help for graphics and for coding by Bob, Krigorn, Technius and Ragey. I am happy with the result, although I could make the following comment or advice for level design work : I think it's better to complete the ASM part and make the entire system fully workable before iterating on level design to balance it as perfectly as possible by continuously testing using the final ASM hacks. I have pondered whether this hack was sometimes a bit too difficult accounting for the objective proposed to the player. In any case, this should be a good challenge and an interesting use of the coins as a scoring system, while incorporating moons lives and dragon coins into it as well. By the way, breaking the goal tape of a level higher rewards with some more coins!

Any feedback appreciated, and if you have completed runs on this hack and recorded your score, you can post it here and I might even make a leaderboard. If you bring any proof of your score such as even a video recording, even better, but if not, I'll try to put it on some leaderboard anyway. GLHF
I made the hacks Tsunami Island and Super Mario Archipelago
Check them out !