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The title screen shows Mario walking in and standing on a rope above water. The menu text eats the title, but the background and music are good.
The intro starts with a text message. After pressing up, HOT KETCHUP AND MUSTARD. Something more gentle for those hills, maybe, like pale yellows and greens?
The overworld is shaped fine, but there are some oversights in the cliff where it's not smoothly dual-tone and some areas where the lines suddenly end. The grass shades have too much contrast and it'd look a lot better if the shades were closer together. The next island has a wonky perspective on the right side and a weird palette.
Toadstool Castle has three Yoshis in eggs - not a good idea since you can drop down a powerup and grow a Yoshi and trigger a glitch where adult Yoshi's face is overwritten by baby Yoshi graphics. Inside the castle, the Toad graphics are crude - their bodies blend into the background since there are no outlines. There are rips of Toad from other games in the ExGFX section and I believe the NPC sprite comes bundled with some Toad frames. The outside background is really harsh like the intro's. Also, giving the player all 3 powerups at this point of the game? I dunno about that (also holy shit it's the return of the deformed green zombie pistol o_o)
Pleasant Plains has a good background palette - it takes the foreground land tiles, but it makes them very easy to distinguish as background objects with the subtlety and similar color tones to the backdrop. The foreground palette is kind of gross, though: the shadow is reversed and the bush outline is white. The level design is not bad: it's simple and focused, and gives powerups where appropriate. One problem is if you lose your cape before the big gap which you're expected to fly over or go to the clouds above, I can't find any obvious way to the clouds or around the pit. It might be a good place to stick a pipe and a little room that leads you around that, or use coins to point out where the hidden blocks could be.
Pear Hills has a foreground with too much contrast, and a background that looks borderline NES. Each mountain should use a similar shade from the center to the edge. The foreground would probably look fine with a darker green. There's a cutoff problem caused by putting coins on layer 1 dirt - they can't overlap like this and it's easiest to build around the coins. Clouds placed on top of dirt ledges instead of ledge tops is really unappealing too; there's no purpose for the dirt so I'd have free-floating clouds instead. The level design doesn't really take advantage of the Pokeys except when you have an area of five blocks where the Pokeys can close in on you and almost guarantee damage if you don't get out in time. This level is full of coins. Coins, coins, coins.
Neon Mushrooms has a good FG and BG palette, but the enemy palettes are messed up in the first room. The tide rooms have a problem with the tide scrolling with the camera - if you can execute the level without vertical scroll, that's one way of doing it. The other way is using this sprite. I feel like the platform-type enemies in the first room could've been taken more advantage of to lead you to other places, and that the two tide segments felt the same. I'd cut it down to one tide room, and use the mushrooms in such a way that the jump paths of the enemies are less predictable and more dangerous.
Berry Cove has a lot of repetitive platforms in the start and that water segment floating in the air later on. Volcano Lotuses are either laid out along flat stretches of land, or used in a cool manner underneath ? blocks. This level has a big cutscene, and it should set the timer to 0 during these cutscenes so you can't die, and it should disable the status bar so we can see all the words. Palettes here need some work, such as the green cement blocks beneath the Toads and the airship, and the Power Coin itself.
Ship Chase goes from Barney Hide-and-Seek easy to Contra hard when the flying fish generator comes in. The level design is a lot of water, timed lifts, and fish. It's very bare-bones, and manages to be boring at first then frustrating later with no fun in between. I like Chrono Trigger, though... so I enjoyed the music. The goal post was too short for the sprite's movement.
Cannon Lagoon has that tide problem and it interferes with playability because it's so deceptive. The level design is enjoyable apart from that and the music is kick-ass. I personally would've switched the cannons' palette row to make them grey/black but their palette is still sensible.
Pirate's Way has a bad background execution: the clouds are repetitive and the blue area doesn't look at all like water. The door to the cutscene seems like a weird way of doing things - while it does give the player the option to skip the cutscene, it masquerades as another room in the level. I feel like it'd be better to force the player through the cutscene because it's short and let them potentially press another button to skip right to the main level with a custom block. I noticed now that balls come out of the ass-end of the cannon (yes, I realized how bad this sounds.) The layer 3 tide contributes to a lot of slowdown in the more sprite-heavy areas, which makes me think you should just use layer 1 water. In both rooms, there's some grey on the wooden part of the ship which looks bad (maybe you have to move some stuff around but I see no reason why it can't be brown.)
Bay Down Under has a low FG/BG starting position. There's too much swimming through an uneventful sea of fish until you get to the pipe. The underwater portion has a good BG palette and a poor FG palette (I believe the bright green parts in the dirt are supposed to be darker. Having platforms that have only one tile of space in between the floor and the top cause some wackiness when big Mario hits the ceiling because he moonwalks backwards through the tiny space. The level design was so-so - it didn't offer a lot of exploration or variety but the coin placement and the fish did just enough to make it passable.
Reef Coral has the right foreground palette. YES! The background palette is erroneous, though. This level is too wide open and thus it's hard to absorb its intricacies, as everything is easy to circumvent. There's a P-switch you need to get through a pipe at the top of the level, so feeling out the corners of the level is important in the end of the first room. If you fail it, you have no alternative route, so I think making the level more closed-in would be very helpful. Going into the ship, the pipe and wood floor and barrels have weird palettes. The cannons blend in, and the background has a huge black bar. This room is also too wide open and feels low-substance and repetitive. The level also desperately needs a midway point, as a slow-moving underwater level of this length is frustrating to repeat.
Ship Inside is the first level with two exits. Dry Bones has mismatched graphics between the collapsing and the upright frames. The second room feels very flat and plain along the bottom route while the top has enough action to keep interest.
Ship Inside 2 has mismatching Rex tiles: the crushed frame doesn't match with his other two statuses. There are some palette problems with the foreground in all rooms.
Haunted Dock breaks the game entirely because of a bad custom song, thus the hack has to be removed. It can not be completed with an accurate emulator. I recommend upgrading to AddMusicK, as it will refuse to insert broken songs. Design-wise, it feels boring because of the huge amounts of uneventful back-and-forth to get to the door.
- Mario has an incorrect frame on his feet while swimming.
- Buoyancy is often not enabled in underwater levels.
- Palettes need a ton of work - you can copy palettes from one level to another, as explained in the palette editor of Lunar Magic. I can personally help you fix palettes as I really like working with colors.
- Avoid repeating segments or too much back-and-forth in levels
- Try to close in your water levels more to establish a clear direction
- Use the sprite linked under "Neon Mushrooms" to fix the tide
- AddMusicK. ZSNES is fine to play hacks with but never to test submissions with because it lets things that don't work on SNES slide through.
- You've established a great story. The flow of gameplay reminds me of Revenge of MetaKnight, except less blowing up parts of the ship on your end and less complaining from Captain Klondike's crew's end.
Difficulty: Easy
+1:
Wakuku
AnOkukuGoomoo
Just look above you...
If it's something that can be stopped, then just try to stop it!
Quote
Logo looks a little messy.File Name: The Amazing Super Mario Bros. 2 Legend of the Rare Coin
Submitted: 2014.08.10 ~ 01:18:51 by MCJ32
Claimed: 2014.08.12 ~ 15:18:52 by Counterfeit
Authors: MCJ32
Demo: No
Featured: No
Length: 20 exit(s)
Difficulty: Hard
Description: The sequel to Amazing Super Mario Bros. The Mario bros must figure out the mystery of the rare coin.
Tags:
Rating: 3.3
Your rating:
Download: Download - 294.74 KiB
32 downloads
Submitted: 2014.08.10 ~ 01:18:51 by MCJ32
Claimed: 2014.08.12 ~ 15:18:52 by Counterfeit
Authors: MCJ32
Demo: No
Featured: No
Length: 20 exit(s)
Difficulty: Hard
Description: The sequel to Amazing Super Mario Bros. The Mario bros must figure out the mystery of the rare coin.
Tags:
Rating: 3.3
Your rating:
Download: Download - 294.74 KiB
32 downloads
The title screen shows Mario walking in and standing on a rope above water. The menu text eats the title, but the background and music are good.
The intro starts with a text message. After pressing up, HOT KETCHUP AND MUSTARD. Something more gentle for those hills, maybe, like pale yellows and greens?

The overworld is shaped fine, but there are some oversights in the cliff where it's not smoothly dual-tone and some areas where the lines suddenly end. The grass shades have too much contrast and it'd look a lot better if the shades were closer together. The next island has a wonky perspective on the right side and a weird palette.
Toadstool Castle has three Yoshis in eggs - not a good idea since you can drop down a powerup and grow a Yoshi and trigger a glitch where adult Yoshi's face is overwritten by baby Yoshi graphics. Inside the castle, the Toad graphics are crude - their bodies blend into the background since there are no outlines. There are rips of Toad from other games in the ExGFX section and I believe the NPC sprite comes bundled with some Toad frames. The outside background is really harsh like the intro's. Also, giving the player all 3 powerups at this point of the game? I dunno about that (also holy shit it's the return of the deformed green zombie pistol o_o)
Pleasant Plains has a good background palette - it takes the foreground land tiles, but it makes them very easy to distinguish as background objects with the subtlety and similar color tones to the backdrop. The foreground palette is kind of gross, though: the shadow is reversed and the bush outline is white. The level design is not bad: it's simple and focused, and gives powerups where appropriate. One problem is if you lose your cape before the big gap which you're expected to fly over or go to the clouds above, I can't find any obvious way to the clouds or around the pit. It might be a good place to stick a pipe and a little room that leads you around that, or use coins to point out where the hidden blocks could be.
Pear Hills has a foreground with too much contrast, and a background that looks borderline NES. Each mountain should use a similar shade from the center to the edge. The foreground would probably look fine with a darker green. There's a cutoff problem caused by putting coins on layer 1 dirt - they can't overlap like this and it's easiest to build around the coins. Clouds placed on top of dirt ledges instead of ledge tops is really unappealing too; there's no purpose for the dirt so I'd have free-floating clouds instead. The level design doesn't really take advantage of the Pokeys except when you have an area of five blocks where the Pokeys can close in on you and almost guarantee damage if you don't get out in time. This level is full of coins. Coins, coins, coins.
Neon Mushrooms has a good FG and BG palette, but the enemy palettes are messed up in the first room. The tide rooms have a problem with the tide scrolling with the camera - if you can execute the level without vertical scroll, that's one way of doing it. The other way is using this sprite. I feel like the platform-type enemies in the first room could've been taken more advantage of to lead you to other places, and that the two tide segments felt the same. I'd cut it down to one tide room, and use the mushrooms in such a way that the jump paths of the enemies are less predictable and more dangerous.
Berry Cove has a lot of repetitive platforms in the start and that water segment floating in the air later on. Volcano Lotuses are either laid out along flat stretches of land, or used in a cool manner underneath ? blocks. This level has a big cutscene, and it should set the timer to 0 during these cutscenes so you can't die, and it should disable the status bar so we can see all the words. Palettes here need some work, such as the green cement blocks beneath the Toads and the airship, and the Power Coin itself.
Ship Chase goes from Barney Hide-and-Seek easy to Contra hard when the flying fish generator comes in. The level design is a lot of water, timed lifts, and fish. It's very bare-bones, and manages to be boring at first then frustrating later with no fun in between. I like Chrono Trigger, though... so I enjoyed the music. The goal post was too short for the sprite's movement.
Cannon Lagoon has that tide problem and it interferes with playability because it's so deceptive. The level design is enjoyable apart from that and the music is kick-ass. I personally would've switched the cannons' palette row to make them grey/black but their palette is still sensible.
Pirate's Way has a bad background execution: the clouds are repetitive and the blue area doesn't look at all like water. The door to the cutscene seems like a weird way of doing things - while it does give the player the option to skip the cutscene, it masquerades as another room in the level. I feel like it'd be better to force the player through the cutscene because it's short and let them potentially press another button to skip right to the main level with a custom block. I noticed now that balls come out of the ass-end of the cannon (yes, I realized how bad this sounds.) The layer 3 tide contributes to a lot of slowdown in the more sprite-heavy areas, which makes me think you should just use layer 1 water. In both rooms, there's some grey on the wooden part of the ship which looks bad (maybe you have to move some stuff around but I see no reason why it can't be brown.)
Bay Down Under has a low FG/BG starting position. There's too much swimming through an uneventful sea of fish until you get to the pipe. The underwater portion has a good BG palette and a poor FG palette (I believe the bright green parts in the dirt are supposed to be darker. Having platforms that have only one tile of space in between the floor and the top cause some wackiness when big Mario hits the ceiling because he moonwalks backwards through the tiny space. The level design was so-so - it didn't offer a lot of exploration or variety but the coin placement and the fish did just enough to make it passable.
Reef Coral has the right foreground palette. YES! The background palette is erroneous, though. This level is too wide open and thus it's hard to absorb its intricacies, as everything is easy to circumvent. There's a P-switch you need to get through a pipe at the top of the level, so feeling out the corners of the level is important in the end of the first room. If you fail it, you have no alternative route, so I think making the level more closed-in would be very helpful. Going into the ship, the pipe and wood floor and barrels have weird palettes. The cannons blend in, and the background has a huge black bar. This room is also too wide open and feels low-substance and repetitive. The level also desperately needs a midway point, as a slow-moving underwater level of this length is frustrating to repeat.
Ship Inside is the first level with two exits. Dry Bones has mismatched graphics between the collapsing and the upright frames. The second room feels very flat and plain along the bottom route while the top has enough action to keep interest.
Ship Inside 2 has mismatching Rex tiles: the crushed frame doesn't match with his other two statuses. There are some palette problems with the foreground in all rooms.
Haunted Dock breaks the game entirely because of a bad custom song, thus the hack has to be removed. It can not be completed with an accurate emulator. I recommend upgrading to AddMusicK, as it will refuse to insert broken songs. Design-wise, it feels boring because of the huge amounts of uneventful back-and-forth to get to the door.
- Mario has an incorrect frame on his feet while swimming.
- Buoyancy is often not enabled in underwater levels.
- Palettes need a ton of work - you can copy palettes from one level to another, as explained in the palette editor of Lunar Magic. I can personally help you fix palettes as I really like working with colors.
- Avoid repeating segments or too much back-and-forth in levels
- Try to close in your water levels more to establish a clear direction
- Use the sprite linked under "Neon Mushrooms" to fix the tide
- AddMusicK. ZSNES is fine to play hacks with but never to test submissions with because it lets things that don't work on SNES slide through.
- You've established a great story. The flow of gameplay reminds me of Revenge of MetaKnight, except less blowing up parts of the ship on your end and less complaining from Captain Klondike's crew's end.
Difficulty: Easy
+1:
Wakuku
AnOkukuGoomoo
Just look above you...
If it's something that can be stopped, then just try to stop it!