An interesting hack of
Super Mario Bros. 2 came across my desk the other day, which gave me a reason to throw up a blog post (ha ha, it's funny that I said "throw up," because I equate these posts with vomit). Seems that somebody decided to do a graphical/level hack entitled Super Wario Bros. 2.
The title screen is the first indication of a decent job. All the sprites are changed, and they even wrote a new story. The character select screen features Wario (hacked Mario sprite, in Mario's spot),
the Peculiar Purple Pieman of Porcupine Peak Waluigi (hacked Luigi sprite, in Luigi's spot), Mario (in Toad's spot), and Luigi (in the Princess's spot).
Jumping into the game, I discovered it wasn't just a quick graphical hack. The levels have been edited to be HARD, rather hard indeed. Example: After coming through the first door, the first enemy you encounter is Mouser, the World 1 boss. At the end of World 1, you get to fight TWO of him. Wild.
The graphics on our heroes/anti-heroes aren't the only things that were changed. Mario and Luigi control about the same as they did before, and Wario and Waluigi have different attributes. It seems the programmer took Mario and Toad's best attributes and combined them to make Wario, then made it so he skids a whole lot when he lands or stops. Waluigi loses speed but has monster jumping power, and even has a short, Princess-style hover, which can be activated in the middle of a jump or at the peak.
I noticed two problems with the game. There was some minor graphical glitching when I was using Waluigi--namely, a white spot appearing in the middle of his head while carrying an item. This wasn't too distracting. The other was the ridiculous amount of slowdown that I saw; the addition of lots of enemies can often bring the game to a crawl, and fighting two Mousers on a screen full of flying, flashing bombs didn't help much either.
Those problems aside, this is probably one of the best hacks I've seen in a while; If you're into the Mario thing and want a challenge, look for Super Wario Bros. 2. You'll be frustratedly pleased. Myself, I always wanted to see Wario give Fryguy the business. Up his face, yo!
Since I had a taste for Mario 2, I fired up the console in my bedroom and threw in the original, chose
Toad and got to work. While I was playing, I I managed to discover all sorts of glitches that I didn't remember ever seeing before...
-I managed to get the Princess stuck in the middle of a pipe somehow.
-I glitched one of the plants so that you couldn't pull it up.
-Probably the weirdest thing was in one of the sand-digging levels in World 2. I was descending through the sand with a Starman, and, as it ran out, a Shyguy half a screen below me just DIED. He just up and fell off the screen. Maybe his 8-Bits benefit package got cut, or maybe he was one of the unlucky few that Wart had to lay off to pay for all the extra Snifits and
Tryclyde's schizophrenia counseling. Poor
little dude.
