Review: Super Isikoro Mario World

 

World 1-4 4hours, W5-6 5h, W7-8 8h30, SP1-7 4h, SP8-10 2h30 (with cheats)

Total time: 24hours

I've seen this japanese hack on smwc and wanted to give it a try. It's more recent than the japanese hacks I usually played. And apparently it gets really hard in the end. Let's see how it goes.

Switches are extremely useful in this game. Don't miss them.

This is a japanese hack. The hack is in japanese language. But the language barrier isn't a problem. There's doesn't seem to have important plot (spoiler Bowser is the good old bad guy). 

Time for deforestation! (notice the icon that indicate secret exit, as all level dots are yellow)

Presentation:

The graphics are nice. Mostly from smwcentral. They are nice sure, but sometimes there's some clash with the BG/FG, and sometimes some backgrounds could have been made prettier (I feel some backgrounds should have used parallax). A good thing is every level in the game has it's own aesthetic (graphics and music), which is nice variety. It's not always good but it's varied. The enemies for the most part are the classic SMW enemies with some classic custom sprites. However the bosses are all original and the boss fight are fun, but classic "dies in three hit". In fact the hack structure is like classic Mario, with classic level themes, classic level names "xxx world 1". A bit too classic for my taste.

This is a japanese hack, but it's kinda weird. It use some tropes of old japanese hacks, but is mixed with modern/classic smwc hack elements, if you know what I means? Like it's not as janky as I'm used to in japanese hacks. This hack is a mix of old JP hacks and classic Western hacks, but it doesn't take the best of both sides. I also found multiple glitches, cut-offs and other errors in the hack. According to the credits Isikoro was the only tester of the game. That explain it.

 

Nice cut-off.

 

The classic swimming under the level into going inside the ground.

 So the game. In jp hacks fashion, it start easy (extremely easy) and ends up hard (extremely hard). As you can see in the completion time at the top of the article, the first worlds go by quickly and the latest ones...  not so much. Yes the first levels are easy, but frankly, I find them boring. Because the game is classic-like, with easy difficulty it's just uninteresting. However in the later worlds, when the difficulty picks up, it makes for some fun challenges, albeit sometimes frustrating. But still, the last worlds feels good to play. Starting world 5 or 6, you will need to go back to farm lives (there's a good spot in 2-2, and 2-3 has good powerups at the start). About powerups, this game is changed so you don't get small immediatly when getting hit while fire/racoon mario (oh yeah, cape was replaced with racoon and I hate floating with racoon Mario), so you can have 5 hits in total before dying. And because some levels start getting very difficult, I started going in previous levels to farm powerups a lot.

Many kinds of plants in this hack.

Each levels are differents in appereance, but unfortunately in fun too. Some levels are challenging and fun, some are frustrating, some are very easy compared to the previous ones. So like I said, start of the game is underwhelming, second half is alright, with some fun levels there and there. There's also some levels that are funs only if you have powerups, without they are more annoying that anything. Exemple is 9-5. It's difficult, I died a lot, but it's a really fun level where you hop on flying beetles. If you have a racoon tail to help you that is, without it would still be possible, but be more precise, and probably more frustrating. And with this high difficulty, I expected 9-6 to be a thing, then I completed it in two lives. What a letdown. And what about the postgame? Well...

The blaarg move along layer 2.

POSTGAME SPOILER START

So first to go to the postgame (special world) you have to find the entrance. I won't tell you where it is. You have to clear a puzzle, that I found to be really clever. Then the first postgame level (aka SP1). The first level you have to carry a shell through the entire level without killing it. That's honestly so dumb, that I opted for the second option which is keep a leaf in reserve box to fly over the wall at the end instead. The post game difficulty is much higher, but like the main games there's some anomalies, some levels that are way easier than the rest SP2&7. The levels are honestly pretty interesting, the problem is because it's postgame it was decided that the levels will not have midway points. But still the same length as the average levels. With postgame difficulty of course. So while some levels are good, I really, really wished there was a midpoint in the middle. Especially SP6, despite finding it kind of fun, took me 1 hour and a half to complete!

But well, all fun must ends. SP8 is a giant f***** maze. It's not hard, but it's HUGE. And there's some required doors that are somewhat hidden. After 45 minutes, when I was walking in circle for a while, I ended up looking at the solution (provided by Isikoro itself, when you download the hack there's a folder with image of the rooms of SP8). I feel kinda bad for not finding two doors myself but whatever. Then SP9 is...  a 100 ROOMS CHALLENGE LEVEL!!! You have to traverse over 100 hard rooms, with limited hits (you start with 3 and get 1/2 every 5/10 rooms). Also in this level the invulnerability timer is drastically reduced, so you can easily get hit multiple times!! And I said 100, but there's a few more bullsh** after those. I tried a bit, but after a short while I was like "...no". I cheated to give myself 80 hits, and even then this wasn't enough for the last obstacles. I just wanted this game to end. Also there's a SP10, not hard but also very very long level so I also cheated using rewinds like 5 times because I'm not replaying all this for the start. I totally cheated the last 3 levels and I absolutely don't care. I don't feel bad about it, and when you don't feel bad about cheating in a game, that means there's something wrong with the game. But yeah it was just those last 3 levels, every other levels prior to that (even the other postagames levels) were fine.

If you want to edit the mushroom count too, it's in RAM $63

It's actually 106 but it overflowed lmao.

POSTGAME SPOILER END

This is a game with an extreme difficulty curve (start way too easy, ends way too hard), some levels are fun challenges but some are either frustrating or just average. Overall, after world 3 (which was too easy and boring) and before postgame (which was too hard and frustrating), this was an enjoyable game.

Rating:

⭐⭐

Okay