Breakfast time: Let's Play Super Demo World: The Legend Continues!

By opening the hidden passage here, we find a key and return to the main chamber.



If you toss an object up and hold Y while climbing, Mario can “catch” the object and continue to carry it while climbing. Somehow. This non-intuitive trick is essential for moving keys and P-Switches around in many romhacks.



We drop our key off at the message block…



Then head back to the ice-encrusted Spin Panel and collect our switch.



At least there’s a platform up here that will carry us through the chain-jumping sequence.



Using the second P-Switch at the key dropoff point reveals a hole in the ceiling. (Ignore the blue door; it’s a red herring.) Grab the key and run along the ceiling…



…Until you find the keyhole.

Yellow Switch Palace



The Pyramid’s secret exit leads to the Yellow Switch Palace, the first of four, just like in the original game. We’re going to need all four eventually, making two trips through the goddamn Pyramid sadly necessary.



The idea in the Yellow Palace is that you’re supposed to use a regular P-Switch to release a silver one, which you can use to turn the trapped enemies into coins. That seems like a lot of work to me, though…



Just like in the original, tripping a Switch Palace turns all the outlines of that color into solid blocks. The Yellow ones also give Mushrooms when hit.



Pyramid, take two…

This time, we need both P-Switches at once, so we collect the one in the blue corridor first and drop it off here, then go for the one at the end of the chain-jumping sequence.



We need to carry both P-Switches through this pipe, but if we carry one through, the other will disappear when we go back for it (and going back for it causes the first one to disappear as well). To proceed, we’ll need to use another SMW trick: Carrying two items at once.

If you “stack” two items on top of each other so that they overlap near-perfectly, Mario will pick up both when he grabs one. This is annoyingly difficult to do, but I’ll take it over Switch-hunting any time.



Anyway, you might recognize this area as the place we found the key. This time, though, we use the first P-Switch to open the secret passage, and carry the other one on through.



Next up, we have to ride a platform through this gauntlet of Balls ‘n’ Chains and spikes, lugging our switch around all the while.



Cutting it a little close, here…



This is why we need the second switch. Unless you’re insanely good with the Cape, it’s basically impossible to get down here before the first P-Switch wears off, which is why you need a spare.



And we’re still not done! We have to fight Reznor! Not that he’s much of a challenge, but still! Repeat after me, class: Fuck the Pyramid.



Before tackling the Castle, we head back to the secret and open up the gray block for a yellow shell.

Desert Castle



The Desert Castle is much like the Misty one: It’s filled with lava and sharpened logs. It contains a new twist in the form of spiky platform rides, but for my Pyramid-hardened self it’s barely even a speed bump.



Note: If you’ve got a Koopa shell in your item box, it will release a live Koopa, not an empty shell. Be careful.



Anyway, you can see where this is going, right? Kick the shell through the Goomba blocks to reveal a P-Switch…



…turn the floating coins into platforms…

…and proceed through the rest of the castle to the exit.

Like Misty Castle, Desert Castle’s secret exit leads to another Star Road entrance. Also like Misty Castle, we’re going to pass on it until later.



Evidently going through Desert Castle the normal way is so boring that I didn’t even think to screenshot it. Here’s Morton, by far the easiest of the Koopalings.



He’s so easy, in fact, that you can kill him before he “attacks” once.



Egg #2 in hand, Mario prepares himself to battle the last survivors of a flooded world for the last patches of dirt left on the godforsaken planet. And find more breakfast eggs, as well.

Next time: Oceanic

I disagree, at least with the point that fireballs are useless. While on land the cape is definitely the best item you can use, hands down, I found that the fire flower is the most useful power-up you can have when you go underwater. Since slow-descent isn't really much of an issue anymore for those levels, it comes down to which can take out enemies more efficiently, and the extra range of the fireballs coupled with the fact that most underwater enemies are weak to it make it ideal for exploring those areas.

Granted, I don't really have enough experience with this ROMhack or any of the others to say this still applies here, but in the original game I'd swap the feather for the flower as soon as I'd reach a water level (certain castles aside). It had its moments.

And it's not even the worst stage in the entire hack, is it? I'm so, so sorry.

ROM hacks are always better ideas than they are in reality. This one looks to be better than average, but I think I'll leave playing it to you.

Have you ever messed around with Zelda Classic? That is another thing that I love the idea of, but every "quest" I've attempted has left me frustrated and disappointed.

Maybe you can run through that when you are done suffering this game?

I'm so happy I'm not doing this. I would have quit at the pyramid. No way I'm carrying switches all over the place.

I love how you hit this block, heh.

Oh, god, no.

Hey Tanto, have fun in the stage with all the... yeah. =)

This strange sounds frustrating enough on it's own but having to duck fly though a tiny opening while the screen is scrolling? NOT FUN.

And carrying a key while climbing, picking up two items at once? How are you supposed to know how to do this stuff?! I would have never of guessed it was even possible.

Is it just me, or does this hack have way too many bloody P-Switches? I've been playing along with you, and it's getting irritating.

And that's the root problem with most hacks. They take something that was a secret and/or glitch in the original, and force you to master it and do it again and again and again...

I'd be super happy if more people would just create more levels for a game without feeling the need to get clever and challenging.

All true, but you have to consider that there are maybe a half-dozen underwater levels in the whole game, and half of those don't have any enemies that are weak to fireballs. As I recall, that's about the same percentage as in the original game. Fireballs are just so, so limited in what they can do compared to the Cape.

Heh, no. Our first level that's worse than the Pyramid will come in the update after next.

Actually, that's just a duck jump. If you hop a lot while holding forward, you can squeeze through one-block openings. Not that this devalues your point in any way.

I actually have a theory as to why this is, which I will talk about once I get to the next P-Switch-heavy stage.

man, I have no idea how I put up with this hack long enough to make it as far as I did.

just revisiting these levels vicariously through Tanto is making me angry!

Welcome back to Let’s Play Super Demo World. When last we left off, we banged our heads against the Pyramid for a while. Luckily there isn’t anything quite that infuriating this time around. Let’s go for a swim!

Water World 1



I have a confession: I hate water levels. They’re slow-paced, the controls feel sluggish, they’re frequently overlong, and they’re usually boring. The original SMW had only a small handful of pure underwater levels (and it included them in between long stretches of normal levels), a fact for which I am eternally grateful, but most romhacks feel like they need to have a dedicated water world somewhere. There’s no quicker way to get me to throw my hands up in disgust than water worlds.



Water World 1 opens with a cryptic clue explaining how to find the secret exit.



The most dangerous underwater enemy is Rip Van Fish, seen here. They swim at approximately the same speed as Mario but are more maneuverable, so they can be treacherous in close quarters. Thankfully, fireballs, the Cape, and Yoshi can all defeat them.



Water World 1 is a tremendously boring, straightforward level. Nothing to see here.



As for the secret exit, it’s easy to find if you know where to look. After you exit the pipe leading to the goalpost, turn around and go back in, and it’ll spit you out right at the secret exit.

…I have a love/hate relationship with secret exits. I understand their value — they allow for non-linearity and let players control their path through the game to some extent — but actually looking for them is frequently a chore, particularly because romhackers delight in making them as obscure as possible. The worst kind of secret exit is in levels like this one, where you have to play the level again normally and do something slightly different at this end. Most romhacks aren’t fun enough to justify playing these levels more than once.

Moreover, many secret exits lead to nothing more than slight variations on the main path, doing nothing more than allowing you to skip a level or two. Water World 1’s secret exit, for example, leads to Water World 4, which itself has two exits. Water World 4’s normal exit just sends you to (I think) Water World 3. Looking for secret exits of this variety feels like a waste of time.

(Yes, I realize that both of these criticisms can also be leveled at the original SMW.)



I did play the bonus stage perfectly, though! Go me!

Water World 4



We’ll take the secret path first, since we’ll just have to double back anyway.



It took me a while to figure out where I recognized the background to this stage from. Turns out it’s actually from the underwater levels of Donkey Kong Country. Actually, you could get a pretty rousing game of “Name that background!” going in most romhacks.



Water World 4 has a handful of these Jelectrodes from Mario 3. I figure they’re actually retiled Munchers, because Yoshi can stand on them safely, and silver P-Switches turn them into coins.

Anyway, note the keyhole here blocked off by Goomba blocks. The only way in here is via a screen scrolling pipe, but…



…The other end is covered in both brown blocks and Jelectrodes, which means that we need both a silver and a normal P-Switch (and the key) to get through here.



The silver P-Switch, at least, is easy enough to get. It’s in that Spin Panel.

We head through the pipe in the north to snag a shell, carry it back through, and release the silver P-Switch.



We hit it and begin clearing away the ex-Jelectrodes blocking the pipe.



The P-Switch is a little south of the keyhole. You have to backtrack a bit to find it, but it’s not hidden or anything.



Step 2… It’s levels like this that make me appreciative that Mario swims faster when he’s carrying stuff. I actually giggled a little when I saw that they brought it back for Mario Galaxy.



The key, meanwhile, is near the very beginning of the level, so we have to head back for it.

I’ve noticed that different romhackers seem to have a fetish for certain types of puzzles. FuSoYa, as we’ve discussed, likes having you lug switches and keys back and forth across the levels. (I’m convinced he won’t be satisfied until he’s designed a level in which Mario must circumnavigate the globe in eighty days… while carrying a P-Switch.) FPI, the designer of the TSRP games, on the other hand, likes mazes and other levels that make you perform a series of obscure actions in a particular order before you can escape.

The amateur romhacker delights in arbitrary P-Switch usage, placing invisible doors and bridges in spots you’d never think to look. The technical-minded hacker likes puzzles that toy with the game’s engine somehow, with custom blocks and other new level gimmicks. More progressive designers use the original engine, but twist it in ways you might not expect. (The Treasure Hunt is the archetypical hack in this vein.)

The common thread is that the puzzles the designers “like” tend to get a lot of detail and screen time, while others, if they appear at all, will seem half-assed and simplistic by comparison. I’m not sure what this indicates, if anything, but I imagine it probably has to do with the singular nature of romhack designs. Most romhacks are designed by a single person or a small team of two or three, so it’s probably only natural that their favorite gameplay situations will tend to come to the fore…



One of Mario World’s weirder glitches is that sometimes you’ll slip through curved walls, especially if you’re flying or swimming. We’ll see more of this type of thing in World 5.



I don’t think I’ll bother with the Water World 4’s regular exit. It just leads back to the main path, as I’ve mentioned, and it’s pretty boring: Just go right after hitting the silver P-Switch.

Water Secret



Water Secret looks pretty normal…



It’s got your normal array of treasure boxes, and the gray block contains a message block. Each level in the game has two potential messages that you can get depending on where you place the block. The messages tell you everything from the location of secret exits to trivia about the design and development of Lunar Magic and Demo World. It’s pretty interesting stuff if you can be bothered to look for it.



Water Secret also has, of all things, a secret exit. If you get on the roof with a Cape and Yoshi, you can fly up to this platform, which contains a blue shell. Blue shells give Yoshi the ability to fly vertically (the Cape can go up only so high from the starting position), so we swallow it and head up.

Of course, the secret exit is so far up that Yoshi will swallow the shell before you get up there. So, instead, you have to make a pit stop on this small platform, spit out the shell (down + Y), then swallow it again to continue the flight…



…To where a secret exit awaits!

A secret within a secret… And you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. As we get into the later parts of the game, we’ll get even more recursive, with secrets within secrets within secrets.



Water Secret’s secret exit leads to a pipe which carries us all the way to World 7, Pipe World. We’re not ready to tackle this challenge yet, though, so back to the main path we go…

Water World 2



It’s lucky that we needed Yoshi to find the Water Secret’s secret exit, because having him along allows us to cheat outrageously at Water World 2 and 3.



Water World 2 is a blatant ripoff of one of the levels in the original Super Mario World… Vanilla Secret 3, I think, the one with the Dolphins. The only variation is that this version contains the rising and lowering tide found in only a handful of levels in the original, notably the Special World’s Mondo.



You’re supposed to ride the Dolphins here while dodging Porcu-Fish in the water below, but Yoshi can bounce off the spiky foe with no ill effects, so I prefer to ride our irritable friend to the exit instead.



Dolphins were your friends in the original, but romhackers use them as obstacles as often as not, having them carry you into hazardous ceilings or lining the bottom of the screen with spikes to keep you on your toes.

Yoshi can eat Dolphins for some reason… I’m not quite sure what to make of that…

Water World 3



Water World 3 steals its general idea from one of the levels in Mario 3…



…In that it’s a maze of sorts, swarming with Jelectrodes. It’s also autoscrolling.



However, as mentioned, Yoshi can stand on Jelectrodes for as long as you want, making this level a snap if you brought him. Riding him is a rather tight fit through some of the small gaps, but he can make it to the end no problem.

Ship Graveyard





The Ship Graveyard is one of the very few levels in this game with Boos and other undead, with Eeries floating every which way and tons of Boo Chains and regular Boos to dodge.



We are not helped in this by the fact that the ship is continually rocking up and down as the level progresses. For all that, though, this level is among the easier ones in the game.

You’re supposed to ride these winged treasure boxes across the water here, but with the Cape you can just fly over them instead.



The Ship Graveyard’s last room is a “puzzle”. I put “puzzle” in quotes because there isn’t anything all that difficult about it. The exit is surrounded by blocks, but…



…The P-Switch is right there in plain sight, sitting in the corner.

Nice effect with the vines as seaweed, incidentally.



Onwards…

Water Castle



The Water Castle is the first in which we don’t have to do any homework (by which I mean bringing in an item from the outside) to find the secret exit.



The first part of the Water Castle is mostly underwater, but instead of dodging fish and Urchins we’re dodging Fishbones and Balls ‘n’ Chains.



There’s a P-Switch to be found early in the level, but it’s a red herring. It’ll get you into a secret room containing a 1-Up, but you have to be small Mario to get there. It’s not required for finding either exit.



Annoying section ho!

The platform above our heads here is peppered with holes, and to cross we have to fill in those holes by revealing invisible coin blocks. Problem is, we can’t get up there without the aid of the rising tide, and it takes its precious time rising high enough that we can get to the blocks. As a result, this segment takes forever. It’s not actually difficult, just tedious, but it’s definitely another one of those segments where you can sort of see where FuSoYa was going with it, but you can tell he didn’t actually think on whether or not it would actually be any fun.



Anyway, we finally finish patching the bridge and head right.



The secret exit in this level is found, irritatingly enough, by dropping into this nondescript pit. No, it doesn’t make any more sense to me than it does to you.

Blah blah blah Star Road blah not yet blah blah.



The Water Castle’s boss is Lemmy, who attacks with two crudely-constructed decoys to throw us off the scent. Of the four boss patterns in Super Mario World, Lemmy and his sister Wendy’s is the easiest to make more difficult, as you can not only put such things as fireballs, Bullet Bills, and even Magikoopas into the room, but you can also alter the duplicates’ sprites so that they look exactly like the originals.

FuSoYa didn’t bother with any of this, however, so Lemmy goes down in three quick hits. So quick, in fact, that I didn’t think to take any screenshots, catching this screen as it was fading out.



Note that the background for this scene is the same as the original’s, which took place in a cave. The next castle actually is in a cave, but it still has the normal background as well. Some hackers mix up the boss order for this reason.



Into the caverns we go…

Next time: Did anyone bring the Magnet Mines?

He could eat them in the Japanese version of SMW, too. It's suspected this was removed in localization to prevent you from removing dolphins you might need to complete a stage, leaving yourself in an unwinnable state.

Of course, that's hardly an issue for Sadistic ROM hackers!

What the HELL was that? [/stewie]. I feel like I just died a little inside. Rom hackers are bad, bad people for doing that to Mario.

That didn't even look fun. I mean, the part where he falls down and has to land on that specific floor? How would you even know which one to land on?

Floor 5. You can't get it by the elevator, and the info box mentions that. I suppose that's why he has to enter the same pipe 5 times at the end. But I agree, ridiculously cryptic.

Ah, makes more sense. I noticed that 5 clue, but knowing myself, I would've just explored floor 5 over and over in frustration. There are totally people that thrive on this kind of nonsense though.

Because no one's done it yet...

Dry land is not a myth! I've SEEN it!

Anyway, before I get sacked for that lemme say that I remember playing this hack awhile ago. I finished it too (cheated a lot, mind). I certainly agree about a lot of the level designs being kinda 'eh', but as it was my first complete SMW hack I ever played I was just so dang impressed by all the nifty things it had to offer.

Mario Adventure, the SMB3 hack you mentioned, was also really cool for how it was set up. Magic Mario is absolutely broken, true, but I can forgive that.

This thread seems to have a lot of SMW hack enthusiasts, so I figured I'd ask this here: Does anyone know where one could find a download of this hack?

Awesome LP. ROM hacks have always intrigued me, but I've never been particularly compelled to play any. They strike me as the video game equivalent of fan-fiction, albeit with way more effort required on the part of the creator.

They were edible in one of the US releases, but I don't remember if it was the SNES or GBA one (or both).

It occurs to me... I spend too much time sitting at my computer already to want to spend all day playing with emulators, but I do have an R4 for my DS now. Is there anything like a ROM hack DS scene? Where would I find it if it existed?

Welcome back to Let’s Play Super Demo World. We’ve reached World 4, which means that the game is done messing around with us. It’s at this point that the levels start getting really obnoxious.

Enter…



…The Crystal Caverns.

Crystal Cavern 1



All the Crystal Cavern levels use some variation on the foreground of Crystal Snail’s stage from Mega Man X 2. This looks nice enough in still shots, but it causes amazing graphical distortions and incredible slowdown. (There’s nothing quite like seeing all the crystals jump about an inch to the left whenever you pound the ground.) So, cool idea, but not so much in practice.



Getting the secret exit in Crystal Cavern 1 is a little obtuse. First you have to fly up into this little alcove and enter the pipe.



This spits you out near the key. If you’ve got Yoshi, you have to ditch him at this point, because Yoshi can’t carry stuff through pipes the way Mario can.



Then, turn around and head back into the pipe you entered by. This will take you to the keyhole, which is accessible no other way.

Crystal Secret



Thankfully, the Secret in this World can be found right away after entering.



The grey block in this world contains a ? Block, and that ? Block contains a Spring. I’m not sure why FuSoYa couldn’t just cut out the middleman here, but…



The annoying thing about Crystal Caverns is its trial-and-errorness. Low-ceilinged tunnels filled with Spike Tops or Mega Moles virtually require the Cape, not that you’d know going in. A few levels require forced damage to continue. And pretty much every jump in the whole world will see you getting blindsided by a Swooper. It’s about this point that a player playing through the game legitimately will say “No, fuck this” and reach for his old friends, Mr. Save State and Ms. Restore State, and for good reason.

Anyway, Crystal Cavern 1’s regular exit is a pretty straight shot if you can put up with the cheap enemy placements.

Vacant Ghost House



This is the only Ghost House, vacant or otherwise, in the whole game…



As its name implies, the Vacant Ghost House is completely deserted. It’s quite a large area, but one completely absent of any sort of hazards. The level is even nice enough to dump the key right into our laps at the beginning of the level.



The keyhole is rather deviously hidden, though, although it doesn’t take much effort to get to. Just fly straight up from the start point.



This is actually — and I’m loathe to use the word — a plot point. The occupants of this Ghost House have actually relocated to Big Boo’s World, the game’s super-secret, super-hidden, super-hard tenth world. It’ll be our last stop in this LP, but until then the Boos will remain conspicuously absent.

Anyway, see that window in the bottom-right corner there? Does it look a little off? That’s because…



The keyhole is behind it.

The Vacant Ghost House just allows us to skip Crystal Cavern 2 and 3. And if I weren’t committed to showing off every level, I so would.



Whoo-hoo, arbitrary door puzzle. The second room of the Vacant Ghost House is a hall of doors, and you have to enter the correct ones in the correct sequence to exit. To get out, enter the third door from the left, and then the first door on the left. Entering any other door can result in your getting lost for quite some time.

Crystal Cavern 2



See what I mean about the Crystal Caverns? This is the first screen of Crystal Cavern 2. A sweep of the Cape can knock away this Mega Mole easily, and I think Yoshi can eat them, but without one of those you have no option except to take the hit.



Remember these things from the original Mario World? You probably don’t, because they appear in exactly one level, I believe. These platforms will head right until the number painted on them drops to zero. The original barely used them, but they’re all over the place in most romhacks. Some romhackers get their evil on by erasing the number, making sure that your only indication that the things are about to fall is them collapsing beneath your feet.



The end of this level contains a long floor of Munchers, and the only way to get past them is by scoring a lucky bounce of a Paratroopa. If you can’t do it, then your only option is to fall into the Munchers and hope that the mercy invincibility lasts long enough to get you to the exit.

Crystal Cavern 3



I hate this level. Seriously. It sucks a fat one. And it’s not even the worst stage in this world…



Yoshi can’t enter this pipe, so he is effectively barred from this level. He makes it too easy.



Anyway, the idea here is that you have to ride Mega Moles over these long fields of Munchers. The problem is that you have to clamber all over mazes of blocks to do it while keeping your Mega Mole in sight. If the Mega Mole moves offscreen, it disappears, and you’re stuck.

In addition, you have to constantly hit P-Switches in this level to keep your Mole moving in the right direction. If your timing is even a little off, you’re screwed.

Enough about this level. I don’t even like thinking about it.

Crystal Cavern 4



Crystal Cavern 4 is a pretty boring level in terms of design, but…



It sure is pretty, isn’t it? Snort.

Crystal Cavern 4 doesn’t have a gimmick or anything, but what it does have is whole swarms of annoyingly-hard-to-spot Swoopers. Jump at your own risk here.



This jump is actually harder than it looks. The overhang here will knock you back to the ground floor if the angle of your jump isn’t just right. It does this because it hates you.

Crystal Cavern 5





Crystal Cavern 5 is mostly underwater. As if underwater levels weren’t slow and boring enough without adding graphically-induced slowdown into the mix.

I think these waterfall graphics are from the All-Stars version of Mario 3. I think they look pretty nice… Creating waterfalls with the Mario World graphics is pretty damn ugly-looking.



Crystal Cavern 5 is another one of those “lug Switches all over the damn place” levels. You have to go almost to the end of the level to get to this P-Switch…



…Then backtrack a ways to get the silver P-Switch from the other side of these blocks…



…Which then allows us to clear away the Munchers guarding the exit.

Crystal Castle



Worst level in the game? Could be. It’s at least in the top three or so. Makes the Pyramid look like a cakewalk in the tea-park.



Crystal Castle’s first gimmick is a long segment containing a raising/lowering ceiling. SMW had a few of these, but they were mostly short “race to the finish” segments, where you had to get to the exit before the ceiling touched down. This level, on the other hand, has to moving from On/Off switch to On/Off switch, and you have almost no margin for error. In addition, the hitbox for the spikes extends quite a bit lower than the sprites for the spikes does, so you’ll often be conned into thinking you can proceed forward safely, only to take a cheap hit. (I presume this is the case in the original as well, but the original never made you cut things that close.)



It’s also basically impossible to take this stage as anything other than small Mario. You’ll be crushed if you try it with a large one.



But, because this level is extremely poorly-designed, you actually do have to be large Mario at one point to spin jump through some Spin Panels. Just a horrible, horrible stage — and we’re not done yet.



See, to get to the next area in this stage, you have to get to the midpoint, then let yourself die. FuSoYa almost never gives you a midpoint in a stage where it might actually be helpful, but here he’s made it a necessary component to your progression.



The end of this room is a giant lava pit that you can’t jump, but the midpoint will cause you to respawn on the other side of it. Seriously, I’m at a loss for words to describe how stupid this is.



Next up, we have Thwomps and spiked columns, which are plenty tough in normal conditions…

But to exit, you have to jump over one of them while carrying a P-Switch. (The spiked columns only go up so high, so if you wait until it’s as low as it can go, you can do it. It’s still ridiculous, though.)



The reason you need a P-Switch is because the red door is on the same layer as the spiked columns, and moves up and down in time with them. You have to turn the coins into a platform so that you can enter the door when it drops down.

This level is so obnoxiously difficult that I can’t even bring myself to go do the secret exit. You have to play the level normally, which is hard enough, then continue past the red door to find the key, then head back, jump the spiked column again, then jump several more spiked columns while running along the ceiling to find the keyhole. Hell is being forced to play Crystal Castle over and over again.



At least Ludwig is just as easy as always, though. Actually, he’s probably the hardest of the Koopalings… Not that that says much.



Fuck you, Crystal Castle!



Next time: Skyline