When I was 12 I had to read a book about Greek Mythology over the summer and I grew very fascinated with the story of Pandora's Box. At the time I was very into Kaizo hacks back when it was much more niche, and I thought naming a hack after Pandora's Box—a story about a single box unleashing carnage and destruction—would be fitting for a Kaizo hack. That was almost 12 years ago, and in that time I tried many times to make a hack inspired by this vision... but life got in the way.
I was able to release a one level demo in 2016, and designing this level took me close to a year because my home life at the time wasn't great and my parents were extremely controlling about basically everythihg. After I got this demo out, my life kinda went to hell and I lost motivation to continue. Several years later during my absence from the site, I attempted to reboot the project several times but to no avail. This was partly because being banned from the site made it difficult for me to be motivated to work on a full length hack (especially in a style that seems to have gone out of fashion), but more importantly I had since developed a crippling sense of perfectionism and I honestly lost joy in creating things. That made it pretty much impossible to really complete anything.
Well, the times have changed once again. I'm back on the site and I'm not leaving any time soon, and I'm starting to break down that horrible sense of perfectionism that's plagued me for years. I think it's finally time for me to start and complete this project, and I'm getting comfortable with the fact that it might take some time. Between having a busy personal life and this hack requiring a lot of precision (as well as me getting skilled at making stuff for SMW again), this hack could take multiple years to finish, but that's okay. I've refused to let this project die for over a decade so completing it just feels like destiny being fulfilled.
~~~~~
Pandora's Box is going to be a tool-assisted Kaizo hack that's intended to be an homage to a specific style of Kaizo hack that was popular in the early-mid 2010s. Think of hacks like the Mario Must Die series [1] [2] ][3], Abuse and Die 2 and 3 (the latter of which being one of my favorite SMW hacks of all time), Facedesk, Mario is Screwed, and to a lesser extent Cool or Cruel. Also some more obscure gems like π Mario and Mario's Mistake. These hacks occupy a unique space, they're not quite Pit hacks because the setups aren't so absurdly frame perfect from moment to moment, but they're also considerably harder than the original Kaizo Mario World (or a lot of Kaizo hacks today) and are more than likely not able to be played RTA due to the rampant abuse of glitches and extremely precise platforming. Some of these hacks might even be considered "kuso" by today's standards. This genre of Kaizo isn't totally without it's fans in the current day but it's not quite as popular as it used to be, but because this is the era of Kaizo I grew up loving I plan to bring it back with Pandora's Box.
That being said though I also want this hack to be an expansion upon what these hacks provided. I've been very inspired by a lot of current day Kaizo hacks as well like Odd Sands (another all-time favorite for me), Casio Mario World, Send Your Regrets to the Czar, Jigoku Mario World 3, and even some hacks that aren't overtly Kaizo like Naughtyworld and Nonsense. On top of all this, so many new interesting resources and innovations in SMW have been created in the past decade such as enemy stacks and more customizable sprites and I plan on taking advantage of these as well.
As of right now I'm planning on there being ten stages. The big mistake I made in previous years was coming up with a super concrete vision and trying to stick to it religiously, but that inevitably lead to me feeling a little too confined creatively. Instead of trying to focus on completing this project, I'm gonna try to treat it more like an art piece that will reveal itself to me over time the more I work on it.
~~~~~
Enough of me yapping, here's what I have so far:


Here's a video preview as well
I don't know what to name the first stage yet, but I'm going for an abstract/night theme and it's mostly gonna focus on tight platforming and glitches.
~~~~~
Just for fun, here's the old userbar I made for it back in the day:

I'm gonna update this at some point.
Japanese Custom Music Archive 2.0 (Incomplete)

I was able to release a one level demo in 2016, and designing this level took me close to a year because my home life at the time wasn't great and my parents were extremely controlling about basically everythihg. After I got this demo out, my life kinda went to hell and I lost motivation to continue. Several years later during my absence from the site, I attempted to reboot the project several times but to no avail. This was partly because being banned from the site made it difficult for me to be motivated to work on a full length hack (especially in a style that seems to have gone out of fashion), but more importantly I had since developed a crippling sense of perfectionism and I honestly lost joy in creating things. That made it pretty much impossible to really complete anything.
Well, the times have changed once again. I'm back on the site and I'm not leaving any time soon, and I'm starting to break down that horrible sense of perfectionism that's plagued me for years. I think it's finally time for me to start and complete this project, and I'm getting comfortable with the fact that it might take some time. Between having a busy personal life and this hack requiring a lot of precision (as well as me getting skilled at making stuff for SMW again), this hack could take multiple years to finish, but that's okay. I've refused to let this project die for over a decade so completing it just feels like destiny being fulfilled.
~~~~~
Pandora's Box is going to be a tool-assisted Kaizo hack that's intended to be an homage to a specific style of Kaizo hack that was popular in the early-mid 2010s. Think of hacks like the Mario Must Die series [1] [2] ][3], Abuse and Die 2 and 3 (the latter of which being one of my favorite SMW hacks of all time), Facedesk, Mario is Screwed, and to a lesser extent Cool or Cruel. Also some more obscure gems like π Mario and Mario's Mistake. These hacks occupy a unique space, they're not quite Pit hacks because the setups aren't so absurdly frame perfect from moment to moment, but they're also considerably harder than the original Kaizo Mario World (or a lot of Kaizo hacks today) and are more than likely not able to be played RTA due to the rampant abuse of glitches and extremely precise platforming. Some of these hacks might even be considered "kuso" by today's standards. This genre of Kaizo isn't totally without it's fans in the current day but it's not quite as popular as it used to be, but because this is the era of Kaizo I grew up loving I plan to bring it back with Pandora's Box.
That being said though I also want this hack to be an expansion upon what these hacks provided. I've been very inspired by a lot of current day Kaizo hacks as well like Odd Sands (another all-time favorite for me), Casio Mario World, Send Your Regrets to the Czar, Jigoku Mario World 3, and even some hacks that aren't overtly Kaizo like Naughtyworld and Nonsense. On top of all this, so many new interesting resources and innovations in SMW have been created in the past decade such as enemy stacks and more customizable sprites and I plan on taking advantage of these as well.
As of right now I'm planning on there being ten stages. The big mistake I made in previous years was coming up with a super concrete vision and trying to stick to it religiously, but that inevitably lead to me feeling a little too confined creatively. Instead of trying to focus on completing this project, I'm gonna try to treat it more like an art piece that will reveal itself to me over time the more I work on it.
~~~~~
Enough of me yapping, here's what I have so far:





Here's a video preview as well
I don't know what to name the first stage yet, but I'm going for an abstract/night theme and it's mostly gonna focus on tight platforming and glitches.
~~~~~
Just for fun, here's the old userbar I made for it back in the day:

I'm gonna update this at some point.
