ok, so let's see:
Mario, Luigi, and Peach -
Toad and...who's that? Link!?
Additional Comments:
I had first learned about the SMBX engine some time ago - well before redigit removed all traces from the net - but at the time, I never gave it much thought. After all, it fell into that cesspool that is known simply as "fan games." Bleaghh!! Additionally, coming from a romhacking background, I suffered from this pang of guilt that I should stick with my guns in the so-called haxors-vs-fanboys arena of war. Just more "bleaghh" if you ask me. But then, after some time had passed, I had to ask myself, who cares? A game's a game...s'a game. So I finally decided to download the engine and see what all the hubbub was about. Unfortunately, my decision couldn't have come at a worse time; coinciding with all the mystery and confusion shrouding SMBX's sudden exile from the internet. Dammit!!
But for me, the rash web of lies and intrigue strewn across a vast network of forums, blogs and other bastions of strongly opinionated remarks via posts of unconfirmed rumors, twisted and wrongly regurgitated statements supposedly sourced straight from the developer himself, and more often than not, outright flaming hatred - well, it made me all the more curious in what exactly this engine/game contained. Lucky for me, I managed to sleuth out a copy and gave the game a spin. Of course, the designer in me wanted to check out the editor first. Eh, it's...interesting...but nothing to raise an eyebrow over. Besides, I'm here to talk about the game itself and not the engine's editor, so I'll leave all of that squabble to someone else's unsolicited scrutineering.
Ok, here's the thing. This game surprised me; pleasantly at that! Yes, it has it's problems, namely the physics. They're just awful - rough grit sandpaper awful. They're supposed to resemble SMB3 physics, or so I've read and so it seems, but they're really rough around the edges which I cannot emphasize enough. I never felt confident with a lot, or really, any of my jumps, even by game's end. I was still cringing as Mario leapt into the wild blue yonder, wondering if I had built enough momentum and/or whether or not I'd be able to nail the landing. If only Mario wasn't so damn fat and purposed to be a svelte gymnastics enthusiast I might have some hope. In Super Mario Bros. 3, while the physics could be berated as jerky, I never felt uncomfortable with them - in fact, I rather liked them. I knew what my limits were and I knew what I was capable of performing, even under pressure. Here, I constantly misjudged jumps by mere inches, and no matter how much play time I put in, I just couldn't get a grasp on it. This was also an ancillary factor in why I kept with one character the entire game - Mario.
Speaking of character swaps, despite my lack or will to swap characters, I have to say that I was fairly impressed with the system. I at least tried out every character in a test run to witness the subtle and not-so-subtle differences between each of them. Of course, I've never been a big fan of playing as any other character outside of Mario, especially given that their most popularized physics are based around SMB2 - which I should mention, I rarely if ever swapped characters in that game too. Here, as expected, the extra characters retain most of their SMB2 instruction, although I think Toad plays a tad different. Honestly, I think I only put about five seconds of playtesting into Toad as I will never understand why he's ever been offered up as a playable character in any Mario game outside of the Mario Kart series or any of the Mario Party/sports-themed games. And even in those games I don't like him. And then you have Link. Huh?
Now this is an intriguing concept. Link, à la Zelda II, with the ability to turn into a fairy for a brief time and retain his various sword thrusts. I think it's a radical move to include someone from beyond the Mario universe, however purpose-built levels for Mario-style platforming just don't translate too well with Link's abilities. There's a few sub-levels here and there that seem to have been designed with Link in mind - namely any of the Zelda II level clones, but with such a small amount of tailor made levels, Link is nothing more than a tacked-on gimmick. I got the same feeling with the Metroid-based levels, but unfortunately Samus Aran wasn't a playable character. Unlike most good Mario romhacks that use alternate graphics ripped from a variety of sources such as the Metroid series, the Mega Man series, the Castlevania series etc., those games still build levels keeping in mind that Mario is the protagonist; not Samus, Mega Man or Simon Belmont. But here, it seems these out-of-the-box levels were designed with the original series' hero in mind. It's not necessarily a bad thing if the idea is to stay true to the original game's design; presenting it as a sort of culmination of the various video game worlds colliding together and not purposefully designed around our beloved plumber as if to say all worlds exist solely for one man. But it's a Mario game with Mario physics and should be designed as such...in my opinion. Fortunately though, these levels are few and far between and come as a rather accepted change of pace, so the fact that they aren't exactly built with Mario in mind is of no consequence. The only one I'd likely complain about is the palace section in The Lost Woods.
As far as the levels themselves, I thought there were some well developed ideas in there. However, there were a lot of lulls thrown in there too, especially near the end of the game. I felt like the game hit its peak with The Rawest Forest and then stretched into an uninspired plateau of design from Wet Water Zone on. The end game was a bitter disappointment compared to the first half, especially The King of Koopas. Hate to give away spoilers, but the final level was a total letdown. Sure there were a few interesting levels mixed in there to keep the panache of the preceding worlds, most notably Hardmode Tanks - what a bitch of a level by the way - but all in all, the final two worlds left me with a sour taste in my mouth as I powered my way through just hoping the game would come to a close. Unfortunately, the point at which it did, it's hard to decide if it was appropriate or not - let the game end before it dies a miserable death or try to drag it on for a bit longer praying some inspiration will hit. Meh, in this situation, it probably chose the better route. Maybe it dragged on for too long already.
Nevertheless, I had a lot of fun playing the game - far more than I expected really. Despite it's deplorable control and increasing sensation of mediocrity near the end of the game, I found enough imagination and interest throughout the game to keep me going. There was this certain feeling of "what next?" that I got that I never really experienced with any of the SMW-based romhacks. While I've seen some exemplary things come out of the romhacking world, a lot of it has also been almost...expected? Here, this vague sense of the expected is the unexpected continually pushed the game along. While there wasn't really anything I had never seen before, it still captured this ideal that I truly hadn't seen that before, and the only reason I think I can explain this is because at heart, the SMBX engine is nothing more than a fan made engine, which in my eye is low man on the totem pole in the world of gaming. If anything, this game gave me a new found appreciation for fan games - well, to at least curb my acidic disposition towards them and give them a fair chance before I criticize them with biased remarks.
Rating: 3.5 Billy Guns out of 5
