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Pandora's Box ~ The Grand Revival

KaizoTool-Assisted

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)

As I said a hot minute ago on Discord, the squares give me a mesmerising nostalgia...

The tool kaizo scene is kinda dead lately, so this hack's revival is a pleasant surprise. I get you in the sense that you're so stuck to a style that you eventually run into a creative block, I sense that sometimes. Please do finish this!! It's been my childhood dream since day one.
Originally posted by Sokobansolver
In this day and age, making a hack like that is a rebellious act.

I'm not totally sure I agree, but I guess we'll find out when this hack is nearing completion and ready to release.

Originally posted by Katerpie
As I said a hot minute ago on Discord, the squares give me a mesmerising nostalgia...

I hate to crush your dreams but I'm thinking of going back to the normal corners :<

Everything about this hack is in flux though, I might change my mind back again. We'll see.

Originally posted by Katerpie
The tool kaizo scene is kinda dead lately, so this hack's revival is a pleasant surprise. I get you in the sense that you're so stuck to a style that you eventually run into a creative block, I sense that sometimes. Please do finish this!! It's been my childhood dream since day one.

It's difficult for me because I feel like I'm juggling a lot of different inspirations and I don't really know how to juggle them all and have things come out looking somewhat cohesive. But hey, I'll try. And yeah, I'm gonna do my best to finish this, if not for the sole reason that it feels like it's constantly looming over me begging me to complete it so I can move on to other things. But also I wanna have fun and create something awesome.



As far as progress on the hack goes, there hasn't been a ton but I did manage to come up with a neat gimmick for stage 4. Used UberASM that lets you move Layer 2 up and down with L/R to create an room that'll be great for walljumps and tight platforming.



I think for now I'm gonna shift my focus away from stage 1. Whenever I start working on a hack I have a tendency to work on the first level and overthink shit because it's "setting the tone" and shit. I'd rather let my creativity run rampant so for now I think I'm gonna work on some mid-game stages where I don't have to worry as much about doing things a "certain way."
Japanese Custom Music Archive 2.0 (Incomplete)

Originally posted by Xulon
I hate to crush your dreams but I'm thinking of going back to the normal corners :<

No
Not on my watch
Originally posted by Xulon
Originally posted by Katerpie
As I said a hot minute ago on Discord, the squares give me a mesmerising nostalgia...

I hate to crush your dreams but I'm thinking of going back to the normal corners :<

c'mon sam the square corners are iconic. you can't jut take them off like that 😭😭

Commented a lil' on Discord from what you have shown me but yeah altough playing this is NOT for me I will follow its development. Some of the levels you've shown me have pretty ingenious gimmicks. That green subarea in particular is pretty evil. Goodluck!! :>
Please check out BOWSIE!
My C3 museum.
Lately I've been really obsessed by this Kaizo hack series from back in the day called Irrational Number Mario [1] [2] and it got me thinking. I decided to redo the baserom and downsize a little bit when it comes to custom blocks and stuff. I'm still gonna use custom resources in this hack but watching these batshit crazy levels made me realize that despite SMWC existing for literally 20 years now there's still a lot of gas in the tank when it comes to exploiting vanilla gimmicks, so I'm gonna shift more of my energy to getting the most out of what the base game already has to offer.

As for some progress, I've come up with the obligatory gag plot:


I'm also reworking the first level, here's what I have so far:

Japanese Custom Music Archive 2.0 (Incomplete)

Crazy Kaizo
My nice jumping dead block,Did you take down his Tool-Assisted in the file package?


After a few weeks of focusing on other stuff I finally finished this room of the hack. Part of what took me so long is that last section required a lot of trial and error. That last jump into the pipe is way harder than it looks because when I use the generator to turn off the boos/make fishin boo go away it'll either move to one side of the screen or the other depending on what side of the fishin boo you're on, and getting it to go to the right was surprisingly hard. I kinda discovered this bit of functionality on accident though and despite how hard it is I wanna keep it in the level because I think it's kinda sick.

Will try to get more progress done soon but between preparing music for C3 and getting ready to go out of town next week (plus work/school) it'll remain to be seen how much more of this I get done in the near future.
Japanese Custom Music Archive 2.0 (Incomplete)

Oh my! I'm actually willing to try this. This looks awesome!

KaizoTool-Assisted