I get that, gamma v makes good but challenging rom hacks. Very well designed, bit tougher but fair. Repus is also very good.
Many people here are Mario addicted experts and make games for people like them. Over time that skill just gets stronger and clever so the gap for just good regular players is too big.
No problem. You don't have to make anyone happy but yourself. I'm just saying from the mind of a learning player and friends. This is my meaning of medium Mario.
Originally posted by Coco
I get that, gamma v makes good but challenging rom hacks. Very well designed, bit tougher but fair. Repus is also very good.
Many people here are Mario addicted experts and make games for people like them. Over time that skill just gets stronger and clever so the gap for just good regular players is too big.
No problem. You don't have to make anyone happy but yourself. I'm just saying from the mind of a learning player and friends. This is my meaning of medium Mario.
With all due respect on the point made with Gamma V you cite as an example, I disagree. I've played Gamma V hacks before from Starlight Island Adventure to Bowser's Cataclysmic Trap and I got that distinct feeling that you play one, you played them all because every single one of them felt the same and honestly, it isn't a good thing. Her designs may be fair to many players but exemplify the problem I see with normal difficulty standard hacks.
You also have to understand that Standard: Hard and Very Hard generally do not start out hard from the get-go. TSRPR for instance only builds up its difficulty later on starting with Ice Bomb Bridge. Same with Mario Gives Up 1 and 2, same with Luigi's Adventure, same with JUMP1/2. I play them because they have some of the greatest concentration of creative ideas out there that I think you should give them a chance.Modern Redrawn Mario Bros. 1.5 (last update - February 14, 2023, some new bonus frames, tons of minor touchups to various poses)
On Pixel Art Requests: Depends on what it is and if I have the time for it. If its complex and I don't have the time, don't expect me to accept it.
Projects I support:
I agree with a lot of what you said but I am talking only about Super Luigi Land. The other one was Return To Dinosaur Land which is by someone else, I thought it was hers. Repus as well isn't her but people liked it a lot.
My point is I am very new to rom hacks. None of my friends had even heard of them and they're all gaming nerds so this is just feedback/suggestions and reviews on how these hacks seem to newcomers. If you keep increasing the skills for the same expert players it gets much harder to find new people in your community. If they find and try they just leave after.
Please recommend some Standard:Hard and I will see what people think. We don't want to be spoon fed but a game should be fun and a lot of these titles are aimed at high challenge/skilled mario addicted players. That is what I'm saying.
This is why I rely on my wife and friends to test my game organically. They found my levels, initially, to be too hard and punishing. I didn't, of course; I consider myself to be of above-average skill at SMW and I made levels to challenge myself. Largely with their feedback, I spent a lot of time tweaking the difficulty in a variety of ways, in the interest of establishing a better and more inviting difficulty curve that would make it more appealing to people outside of this ecosystem.
That all said, what keeps me away from the other side? The kids call it a SKILL ISSUE.
I don't have the patience (or skill) for Kaizo. Even with some of the easier Kaizo hacks I've tried, it takes forever for me to make progress and by the time I get halfway through the first level I'm already bored. If I want something with more difficulty I'll play a normal hard hack.
As a player, kaizo is too hard and i dont feel like gitting gud.
as a whatever else, kaizo is pretty cool. u gotta commend that kinda chaos and brutality.
As for traditional or w/e, I just like oldschool mario in general because boomer.My layout has removed you.
Originally posted by Coco
I agree with a lot of what you said but I am talking only about Super Luigi Land. The other one was Return To Dinosaur Land which is by someone else, I thought it was hers. Repus as well isn't her but people liked it a lot.
My point is I am very new to rom hacks. None of my friends had even heard of them and they're all gaming nerds so this is just feedback/suggestions and reviews on how these hacks seem to newcomers. If you keep increasing the skills for the same expert players it gets much harder to find new people in your community. If they find and try they just leave after.
Please recommend some Standard:Hard and I will see what people think. We don't want to be spoon fed but a game should be fun and a lot of these titles are aimed at high challenge/skilled mario addicted players. That is what I'm saying.
I'll oblige. Do look at the Second Reality Project Reloaded (and 2 Reloaded), Super Mario Omega, Kaos Islands, JUMP and JUMP1/2, This Hack Needs A Name, Mario Gives Up series, Super Isikoro Mario World to name a few hard hacks that do not start out hard. I started out playing Super Mario Omega and Kaos Islands outside of Pac's hacks when I was fresh into playing SMW hacks more than 13 years ago for the same aforementioned reason of levels being relatively easy in the earlygames of said hard hacks. The challenge came not long after the earlygame and was it's own reward for bothering to play more of what they have to offer.Modern Redrawn Mario Bros. 1.5 (last update - February 14, 2023, some new bonus frames, tons of minor touchups to various poses)
On Pixel Art Requests: Depends on what it is and if I have the time for it. If its complex and I don't have the time, don't expect me to accept it.
Projects I support:
Thanks, I will take a look at your picks. Want to try a quality rom hack with balance that is challenge but fun.
Starting to get some Kaizo skills now. Been learning using those intro hacks and how to versions and is quite fun. What is amazing is exactly how well coded the Mario sprite is and all the ways you can control him and use him in different scenarios.
These intro hacks all have their own blind spots as well, you need to play a few of them to learn the basics as they all have something missing. Lots of fun though as some of the mechanics are very smart and obviously put together by people who know the title inside out.
Kaizo rom hacks are usually not pacifist friendly, and trying to beat a regular rom hack without killing any regular enemies is already hard enough, and Kaizo rom hacks 99% of the time have that type of stuff as deliberate design choices.
I enjoy watching the pro-level players go through a kaizo hack. I do not like playing them, because, how shall I put it, I am not good at vibeo grame.
Honestly, at my age, I only have so much free time and most kaizo hacks demand way too much practice for way too little reward (at least for myself). So I have no interest in even trying them out. It doesn't mean I won't play anything that's difficult, but I need the difficulty to be worth it. Puzzles are meant to be solved and games are meant to be won. Nothing turns me off to a game faster than the impression that the designer is saying "gotcha" whenever I lose, and unfortunately that's what kaizo feels like to me.
I'm weird in that I like making Kaizo hacks, yet I prefer playing "normal" hacks/games. I have made attempts to make normal hacks but other than Combo Breaker they so far never really went much of anywhere as far as being in a state that I felt was ready to release (probably due to being more preoccupied with Kaizo creativity). Still not ruling out pursuing that further tho. I pretty much think about what would be fun to watch in a video.Legacy custom music A site with a non-useless dislike button SMW hacking channel
It's always fascinated me how people have the patience to play Kaizo games. They look very 'trial and error' by nature and I think I would get frustrated way too quickly. Respect to all the Kaizo players out there, you're really fun to watch but give me a good old Standard: Normal / Hard hack any day to actually play. I don't mind the odd surprise Kaizo level being thrown into a Standard hack, but generally speaking I find it more satisfying to be able to get through a game without having to repeat the same sections over and over constantly https://www.youtube.com/@SamBamPlays
sorry for the slight necro but glad this thread is a thing.
its been said but i think it deems reiteration that the kaizo genre of hack in current year is so devoid of inspiration and uniqueness that its not even funny. most of them are so unbelievably boring. that's not to say they're all that way; recently i've seen "mycelium" which looks pretty cool with its one level concept. i've been waiting on venus uxo because that seems like its gonna fucking slay. but the vast majority of them just leave me thinking whats the point. they're all the same. feels like the age of 1f0 has ended, and the age of "every custom block in that one romhack races/kldc rom base" has begun.
i've felt this for a while but what pushed me over the edge was that i got a recommendation on youtube of juzcook playing a "A Unique Kaizo Romhack"; i started watching it in hope it actually was and had to question if the people making and playing these hacks are lizard people because holy shit, lmao. it didn't look like a "bad" hack perse, but its just the same shit regurgitated over and over.
i'll admit that i haven't played a kaizo hack in a while; nowadays i keep stream comps from people like juzcook and barb on in the background while i cook usually, so maybe i have a very narrow view of the whole scene. that's just my view on the whole thing though.
I think the things keeping me away from Kaizo are having to learn advanced techniques/glitches not typically required for traditional levels.
If I were to practice and learn those techniques, maybe I could enjoy Kaizo stuff then
(Please note, I am not claiming this post as my own. This is a famous analysis posted years ago by glypho_maniac_777 which is no longer available on CrustNET. I am reposting it here for posterity. All rights belong to their original holders.)
The Skimpy Crunch Hop Spectacle: An Analysis
by glypho_maniac_777
We all remember the Skimpy Crunch Hop Spectacle (fondly, perhaps?). It was the first of its kind, back in 2013. A lot has changed since then. Namely:
- Flag Corridor has been on a steady decline
- Memo Stations are now widely available and even encouraged
- Checkpoints are beginning to be more widely explored
- It's (sometimes?) become acceptable to use multiple colors and shapes in sublevels that weren't used in the main or semi-main level
Made by coolsnak, who used to go by the handle mustardSEASON, it follows their usual modus operandi. The distinction between the main and semi-main level were blurred, the corners were unusually rounded and spaghetti shapes were used throughout to ensure proper structure. This was all rather standard at the time, but I know what you're thinking, what does it all mean?
To dive deeper into the artistic intent of the work, we need to familiarize ourselves with its 5 main concepts, or "qualia", as the author refers to them. These are, in non-increasing order of magnitude:
Now that we have understood the five qualia, first explored by smirnov themselves by the way, we can more easily categorize SCHS.
Spirit: SCHS ensures proper Spirit by virtue of being spaghetti-centric and encouraging users to interact with the spunky monkey through an intermediate surface which cannot be penetrated like previous versions from 2012 thanks to BageM's anti-squeeze patch. This displays what it really means to hamper the progress of the third overworld marker (the red one), namely that the game takes much more interactive and sustained mental effort to beat, unless you're counting the non-traditional win conditions we will cover later, which are not counted in speedruns for obvious reasons.
Habituation: This really goes without saying, but coolsnak absolutely refused to habituate and thus indirectly covered it via Sublimity and Tenderness.
Ignorance: A crucial point, SCHS, just like Pizza Savior (by the esteemed Jeremy Pizza), shows a severe lack of Ignorance. This should of course not be taken to mean that the opposite is the case, though one would be forgiven to believe so. As you enter the third semi-main level ("L'Odorat des Pins Jaunes"), this becomes readily apparent, as the main protagonist (for this semi-main level), Jane, claims that she has "seen the edge". The connection between the edge in the context of the Big Cat and the pasted bird pattern has been widely established already and I will not cover it here.
Tenderness: SCHS shows Tenderness to the users via an unconventional method. A port of Last Christmas in intentionally poor quality is used to evoke a sense of familiarity and nostalgia in us, while we are simultaneously confronted with the slippery ice physics that are selectively applied every other frame, depending on whether or not the internal clock of the cartridge is past midnight or not. The semi-main ("Christmas TIM") and main level ("Chrismas") this theme applies to are the greatest example of idiosyncratic complementarism in recent memory of the (c)rust movement and I need to give a big shoutout to my friend Mike for his groundbreaking work in this regard (not to imply he had anything to do with it in the first place, just saying, it's cool he did that).
Sublimity: Not applicable.
And there you have it, my in-depth analysis of SCHS, possibly one of the greatest rust hacks of all time. Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the work and the lovely person behind it, my dear late friend, coolsnak.
