Is this thread where I go to leave my thought that Charles Martinet’s voice acting in the Mario games is a wrong that can never be righted?
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Anyone who wanted the mechanics of randomized guns in Borderlands to be Actually Interesting: play Mothergunship.
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yeah i’ve always really, really hated it for personal reasons, but objectively it’s also utter nonsense.
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I don’t blame Martinet for it. He’s a voice actor and he was given a job: to reduce (stereotypical Italian-accented English) human speech to video game sound effects. For what it’s worth, he did it.
And it will be with us forever.
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I just wish you’d saved some of this for Buttcon 3 so I could wrassle you about it
i remember reading that he apparently just always talks this way now, though, bringing out the voices all the time. which isn’t necessarily me saying i think he’s a bad person, so much as i’m intrigued by the idea that doing the voices for Mario has melted his brain. the karmic forces of the universe work mysteriously.
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SMB3 is fantastic.
7-1 and 7-6 kinda suck though. The game isn’t designed around vertical movement and adding obnoxious puzzle pipes or those weird platform switches makes the levels worse.
Oooh actually 7-1 is one my favorite levels because of how different it is from the rest of them. The pipes aren’t really puzzles; they go exactly to the other end of the pipe they’re connected to. At worst it’s a maze, and with a little observation you can pretty quickly figure out which way to go.
I have a huge fondness of the horizontal loop wrap-around in that level. It completely changes how you think about the geometry of the level. Jumps that look impossible are now relatively easy. That’s wild! And it fits in with the navigation theme of the pipes.
I also love the atmosphere of that level; the dark background and twisty pipes make you feel like you’re deep in the belly of expansive sewage system. The dark background and the horizontal loop also seem to be a callback to the original Mario Bros.
I do think 7-6 is weaker, because it’s main gimmick is the same as 7-1, just with harder platforming. I do appreciate the difficulty, though. As a whole, world 7 always felt rather oppressive to me. I like that the plant enemies, which were rather simple to avoid in previous worlds since they were relegated to the odd pipe here or there, have thrived and overran this world where pipes are everywhere.
The whole world is a struggle and 7-6 is a sort of a climb out of the darkness, a step towards getting out of this tangled damp pit of a world.
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Relatedly, my favorite level is probably 5-2. The vertical drop in that level is so fucking ominous, especially your first time through. As an inexperienced player, you’re certainly going to fall in the pit, and you see some sign at the top right that maybe that wasn’t where you were supposed to go.
You fall and fall and fall, much further than any other level, and you land in a deep black pool at the bottom. It’s so dark down here, that the water is nearly indistinguishable from the pit’s walls. You go through the pipe, and a deluge of water sends you tumbling even further down. The green cave walls are alien and uninviting. You see an enemy you’ve seen before, but this time they’re much more aggressive, picking up blocks and throwing them directly at you. These caves are a cramped, brutal, and terrifying gauntlet.
If, however, you successfully land on the tiny platforms and claw your way up the right side of the level, you’re treated to some breezy slides, passive enemies, and a gigantic box with 3 one-ups inside. Jesus, what a contrast!
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definitely bookmarking this for mario maker studying
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Good Mario Maker tips that will force you into better levels when starting: try to limit yourself to only a few elements per level. 1) The level reads better because the player isn’t overwhelmed trying to figure out what’s coming next and 2) limitations breed creativity; with the low number of elements, you’ll be forced to combine them in interesting ways.
Mario 3 levels have a very solid sense of setting. The pyramid level, the rising water level with the giant fish, the level where go through doors to toggle between small and large enemies. The best levels tell a story, like 5-5, where you wind back and forth in a tower, and finally take a pipe into the clouds. A sense of progression is a good way to make a memorable level.
(Confession: I didn’t make many traditional levels in Mario Maker 1, but I thought about it a decent amount and I think these are solid tips. I plan to make more in MM2!)
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and this has been missing in every mario game since
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Look at this fucking level: https://nesmaps.com/maps/SuperMarioBrothers3/SuperMarioBros3Map2-4.html It doesn’t make any sense; it’s beautiful!
I played the game for years before I knew there was an upper area (I may not have been a particularly observant child)!
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3D World certainly has it. 64 and Odyssey as well albeit in a not entirely comparable nonlinear way.
SMW has quite strong storytelling in a sense too, but the focus there is on the meta story of the world map rather than the relatively slack levels themselves.
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I’m an infinitely renewable resource
Yeah, but Worms 2 was pretty good though
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As I’ve played through Super Mario World and other later 2D platformers, this has been something I’ve thought a ton about. So many games have stages where… things just show up and happen. Just about every SMB3 level can be described as being “about” something and uses a narrow range of tools from the toolbox. They’re bite-sized,but they’re coherent.
Contrast to Kirby for the NES. It’s a game I like, but its stages have no real discernable rhythm or sense of progress. Each door could seemingly lead almost anywhere.
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Okay, I just played through the whole game, and I’m pretty confident 4-2 is the weakest level in the game. It’s not “bad”, it’s just really boring! It uses a slight water rise/fall mechanic, but that had been used twice already in better levels. 3-3 and 3-8 both have rising water and feature a big fish. 3-8 is the most interesting, because it incorporates vines and the water goes much higher.
4-2 is pathetically easy, has basically no secrets, doesn’t introduce anything new, and doesn’t even look that great. In general, I think world 4 was weaker than I remembered. In context in the 90s, those large sprites were really cool, but they just sort of look cheap now.
Other than 4-2, I basically like all the other levels. The platforming starts to get satisfyingly difficult around world 5, and doesn’t let up in subsequent worlds. World 5 might be the best world in the game, because it has a very strong theme (climbing a tower to get to the sky), and all the levels there are pretty damn good individually.
Also, I think I overstated the effect of the wrapping in 7-1. It didn’t really use it much, and was more of an intro to vertical levels. 7-6 refines that concept, forces you to the use the wrapping, and the platforming is more engaging too. I think it’s the better level of the two, but they work well in tandem.
7-Fort1 was a standout level that I’m pretty sure I always skipped as a child cause I couldn’t figure it out. It’s one of those levels that essentially loops until you figure out which way to go, but the really cool part about this level is that there isn’t a single enemy, except for the boss. The second area really sells this, because there are ghost platforms without ghosts, candles without flames, and the rotation ball for fire bars without the fire itself.
It’s spooky running around an abandoned fortress, with little idea of where to go. Mixed with the puzzley nature of the level, it almost feels like a proto-ghost house.
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In the context of Mario Maker levels which are generally full of extravagance, I feel like every attempt at a “traditional” Mario level comes across this way.
As soon as you talk about an abandoned level I remembered it in its entirety. I always wait for something to happen and nothing does, it’s spectacular and would not work anywhere but worlds 7 or 8. I love it.
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