I don't have a job because of disabilities, so I do get a lot of time to spend on these. Right now, it's at a complete standstill because I don't know enough ASM to make a good final boss.
Besides said final boss, the castle is pretty much done.
The first room involves dodging fire-spitting Bowser Statues, Firebars, Dry Bones, and the occasional Fire Bro.
At the end of the first room, you'll encounter a pair of Fire Bros that you have to kill to move on.
The second room, which I have no screens for, involves more Bowser Statues, some of which will jump after you. There are also several Grinders around to cut you off at the pass.
The Tracker Blocks from 7-4 return here, and they're much more dangerous. Try not to get crushed, either by them or the scrolling screen!
Yes, the HUD has changed. The original was a sprite, so it was extremely hard to avoid slowdown or crucial sprites failing to spawn. I ended up porting the ROM so I could use a different Status Bar. My first choice was the SMB3 Status Bar, but that caused an odd glitch where a second Mario would appear in the reserve item box and mirror the real Mario's animation frames. I then ported the ROM [b[again</b> to use the Minimalist Status Bar, like in Super Luigi Land. That almost caused another setback when I got to 4-3.
This is what the Fading Lights UberASM did with the new Status Bar. Yeah, it may look kinda cool/trippy, but it's not what's supposed to happen. Thankfully, I was able to put together a workaround based on the flashlight effect in the second room of 4-4. I just copied the init section of that code to a new ASM file and used that with P-activated palette animation and a solid-colored Layer 2 to get a similar "P-Switch turns the lights on" effect. Because of this, the level looks a little different.
This is when the lights are on, of course.
Back to 8-4
Here's the final room before the boss. It's one of those "Avoid the Bowser fireballs" rooms, but you also have to avoid the skewers.
Quintesson Judge: Silence, or you will be held in contempt of this court!
Hot Rod: I have nothing
but contempt for this court!
- Transformers the Movie (1986)