Review: X-drive

Not a good idea to play a hard romhack just before playing Mario Wonder but hey.

Playtime and number of deaths are visible ingame. Very cool. It took me around 14 hours to 100%

 

Here a romhack I really wanted to play. Why? Because it's made by fellow frenchmen. In fact it is a collaboration hacks of three people. Or more like compilation hack it feels like sometimes.

Underwater bush?

In term of aesthetic and stuffs. The game has custom graphics (nice overworld) but most levels are quite vanilla. There doesn't seems to be any rules for the graphics, anything goes. But overall the levels looks good. You play as Mario, no change in gameplay. There's no story, the bad guy this time is Poubel (get it? "poubelle" means trash) but it doesn't matter. Then the level design, is mostly good Mario platformer, but it varies between levels. Let me explain it:

I like Yoshi's Island graphics in SMW romhacks, it's so cheesy.

It seems a compilation of various level, with some levels being good and some... not as much. Not due to the authors, just some designs choice that are sometimes dubious. Also the game can become quite hard. For the better or worse. Let me explain: each level has a difficulty rating. World 4 (which can be your second world if you want) has the first two 5 stars levels (very hard). You can avoid them if you want, but I played them of course. These levels are radically different in their approach of difficulty. One is classic SMW challenge, with tricky enemy placement but with powerups and enough rooms to get around them and it's a ton of fun. The sort of classic challenging difficulty that I love. Then the one before start in a normal level in the forest with a strange gimmick of invisible bullets, then after a few screens you get in a sublevel and this gimmick is immediately forgotten, you are now in a ghost house "maze" (lot of paths with no way of knowing beforehand which one is useless or not so just guess right lol) and a powerup filter at the start of that section (which remove the powerup you got at the start of the level).  Powerup filter at the start of a level okay, but in the middle, why? That sucks. Especially since that maze still has tricky enemies to avoid. Also some random platforming sections there and there each themed differently, and a midpoint very far. This level is a mess, it's like multiples levels crammed together without though, and that's unfortunate. Too bad, because most levels in the game are alright, and like I said some are very fun and challenging, but you have these weird levels there and there that feels like weren't tested properly, or that sometimes are okay but just too long without enough checkpoints and/or powerups filter inbetween. Also with capes and Yoshi (which aren't filtered properly, as some filter blocks don't remove reserve item) can break some levels. Which is good, it's fun to break levels. I did bring cape from previous levels (best spot to farm cape I found is 2-1) to use in a few levels, but overall tried to do the levels legit, and you should try to, they're fun.

I didn't cheat, I somehow managed to clip into the wall while mounting Yoshi lel.

 

So what's more to say? The level has various level, some with gimmicks to break the pace but overall they are vanilla-like platforming challenges. In general, the hack is fun, there's just a few levels that really aren't as fun as the rest, which is unfortunate. The very last levels which is [SPOILER] three levels stuck together who should have been three separate levels, of varying quality where imo the castle section is the best and only one I attempted "legit" because despite the hard difficulty the setups are better and it has powerups and that makes all the differences, it's extremely fun, while I hate that last section with the fast boos with no powerups and no safe spots and PAUSE BUTTON NOT WORKING [/SPOILER] resume well that feeling.

Take your time and find the right timing.

Rating:

⭐⭐⭐

Good

Just pick another bowser castle room next time lol.

Review: Play to win

 

Finished in 100 minutes.

I wanted a short and easy hack to finish the week-end. Picked one at random on smwc that doesn't looked vanilla, let's see what it has.

Very nice map.

It's as I would call it a hack resourced from smwc, in that most if not all external content (graphics, musics, sprites) are taken from smwcentral resources section. That is not a bad thing, my hack is the same in that regard. The question is how it was used. In the aesthetic department, it's great. The graphics are really nice looking, and the musics good too. Every level has it's own aesthetic and most of the time their own sprites that makes each one unique. Although the hack author must love jumping piranha plants. The choice of custom sprites are also great...

 

Jumping piranha plants, the hack's fetish sprite.

 

Except the bosses. They aren't very good. Using smwc bosses is not bad, but there should fit with the game. First boss is Iguy, but then Mooser? There's no coherence between the bosses, nor between the levels. Only world 3 fits has there's a thwomp boss in a thwomp level. Thwomp boss is lame but at least it's not the old bomb version. Special mention to the piranha plant boss that is just a bad boss and glitchy as that. Please don't use it, this boss is bad.

You suck!

About the level design, it's good. It's linear, platforming romp that you breeze through, and it feels good. And when I say linear, I do, there is literally only one secret exit in the game. I would have liked a bit more, at least 4 for 4 switch palaces. The game is easy, but a bit too much. Especially, there's too much powerups, making enemy obstacles not threatening enough as the levels are full of powerups blocks (with only flowers).

 

Despite the graveyard aesthetic, it's an athletic level!

 

I may sounds negative, but negative points are easier to pinpoint. In reality I liked this hack. It's just a fun romp that you can enjoy without thinking. I wish it was a bit harder and with better bosses or no boss at all, but it was a fun time anyway.

Rating:

⭐⭐⭐

Good

Review: Yoshi's Crack House

 

What the...   (completed in 70 minutes)

 

As I was browsing my "to be played one day" romhack folder in search of a short hack to play, I stumbled into one called Yoshi's Crack House. Not remembering when I downloaded it or what it was about. With a name like that I wasn't expecting much. But...

 

That's the sort of OW I would make.

This was a surprisingly enjoyable hack. It's a "joke" hack in that it has funny and vulgar story and text, but it never goes too far offensive (for me at least). In fact I think it could have went harder some times, especially the ending that was a bit of a wet fart like most joke hack. A funny final cutscene after the final boss would have been cool. But for the rest of the story, it was kind of funny. Not extremely humorous but funny and original enough.

 

Challenging enough.

And the the game part, it's good. The level design is challenging but fair and good platforming. It doesn't innovate but it's strongly decent and offer a good time. There's a bit of a difficulty spike at the end, but the sections are short and there is instant retry. In previous levels there's enough powerups too.

The boss are kind of meh, they are just boss taken from smwc, nothing new. I admit I found kind of funny to have an epic touhou music just for that stupid overused thwomp boss.

bread

Overall I enjoyed my time playing it, it's a good short hack with stupid humor attached to it.

Rating:

⭐⭐⭐

Good

Review: SMW Gaiden

 

World 1-7 in 13 hours (in a row 😵), world 8 in 6 hours, special world in 3 hours (with some feathers)

 

 SMW Gaiden is a collab with a new team comprised of old school SMW hackers, some relatively know. This hack aims to be some old school challenge, let's see what it has. Sorry if I lack details, I made this review a while after I finished the main game.

Yuck! Plants everywhere!

One look into the game and you can feel the old school. Sort of. Let me explain: the graphics are mostly vanilla, with new palette, mostly well done but a few questionable. One thing that I hate, is the music. The game only use musics from SMW and SMB:AllStar for that retro feels. I'm fine with SMW musics but I'm not a fan of SMWAS ones, it get tiring to hear them after a while. Also only the level have retro musics, the OW has nice custom musics, so the contrast really feels weird. It could have made the levels stand out more. The fact that all the level have generic names doesn't help. The overworld is very nice though.

Weird rhino palette.

The game has few custom sprite, and only retro one. And the mark of fabric of this hack are piranha plants / venus fire plant. They are in EVERY level, and I'm not exaggerating. I understand the idea, really. But that doesn't means I enjoy this decision. It's an annoying sprite and having it in EVERY level gets annoying. It's not even a modern one, it's the old school venus that means upside down always ignore Mario and comes out. They could have at least used modern one with red stem venus to mix things / identify them better. About sprites, most common sprites in the games like koopas, spinies, etc. have slightly different properties, in that they are quite faster. This is a nice change to shake things up. Strangely, the exception are the SMB3 hammer bro that throw less hammer than the typical custom sprite. It's an annoying sprite so I won't complain. Also it's green here.

And despite being classic, the final boss is custom. It's a really impressive custom boss, but it makes it contrast with the classic feel of the hack even more.

Even underwater, PLANTS!

But beside the overuse of Venus, the level design is great. It's classic, but the obstacles are well put together, it's challenging but fair. It's the typical linear Mario platforming, but very well polished. If you're good at Mario, seeing all those enemies (mostly plants) and blazing through their fireball is a lot of fun. The game has a few secrets, but overall the levels are simple and neat.

Some postgame levels are a bit of a pain though. Thankfully powerups aren't filtered. You can even bring Yoshi, though they greatly reduced the timer before he eats items in his mouth, so you can't grab a blue shell and fly.

Two plants one pipe?

The hack feels classic but also mixed with modernity, and seeing those modern aspect sometimes feels like missed opportunities, like how the OW have custom musics but not the levels or a few custom sprites. The hack having a fetish sprite (the plants) seen in every levels is kind of interesting but may or may not be annoying. However, the great level design makes for some fun challenge and it is a superb hack if you're looking for good old fun Mario platforming.

 

Even in your switch palace, PLANTS!

 

Rating:

⭐⭐⭐

Good

Fkuc

Review: A plumber for all seasons

 

Finished in ~3h30

 

 A hack that's been on the work for for 9 years. This hack's main feature are the mostly completely custom made graphics by WYE along with some ASM and a neat season gimmick to deliver an unique experience.

WYE love to put his logo into the ground graphics.

 

So first the aesthetic. It's just wonderful, all the tricks were used to make is looks as good as possible. The beautiful custom graphics, but the clever use of layers 2/3, parralax and so on. Each level has a unique appearance that fit well with the seasons. The custom musics are new too. They are nice, albeit some are a bit forgettable. The underground theme is my favorite, while I think the first castle theme would fit better a mountain. Still, very nice.

The snow's getting thicker.

The season gimmick is you have to play 8 levels on an island, 4 times for each seasons. But the levels are completely different between the seasons, only the theme remain. For example the fourth level is a forest level, but it looks different in each season. Light green with flowers in spring, rainy in summer, orange in fall and frozen in winter. Each world has also it's set of new enemies like some flowers in spring, although koopas are present everywhere, and a bit too much of them, but they are the classic enemies. The gameplay is classic SMW, a few change here and here that aren't bad. The cape is replaced with a raccoon leaf, but contrary to other hacks you only need to hold the jump button to fly and fall slowly, which is much better on the hand. The dragon coins (star coins here) are still 5 in each levels, and you must get all of them for 100% completion, which isn't hard and when you collect them once they stay collected forever.

A good raccoon tail finally?

 

The levels are fairly linear, with some detours and small little challenges to get the stars coins which are good. The few secret exits were also nicely implemented. Some levels have unique sprites or gimmick that makes playing them really fun. Even the more classical level, due to the unique aesthetic and season theme are refreshing to play. There was a lot of creative setups, except maybe a bit too much use of blocks on the ground you need a koopa shell to hit them.

I need 99 lives? Say no more fam. I won't spoil what it unlocks.

The game in intermediate difficulty on smwc, which is easy for veteran SMW players. I admit I breezed through most of the level, 100% the hack with it's 41 exists took me only 3h30 to complete, but it was still very fun. If you're looking for a short or easy hack with classic gameplay and extremely charming atmosphere, I definitely recommend this one.

Autumn best season don't @ me.

Rating: 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Amazing, must play

 

Review: The Misfortunes of Little Denise

 I wanted a short rompy hack to play. This one caught my interest. Is it good?

 

 Finished in 2h30

 

 In this hack you play as Denise. The town was invaded by monsters and you have to find the culprit. The story barely exist, past the intro you just go from level to level, defeat bosses characters that are humans too with their own names but no backstory developed. Also Reznor. Near the end you have a cutscene that reveal the bad guy, but it's delivered so abruptly. Whatever, this is not a story hack. Let's concentrate on the level design. Being rated medium difficulty on smwcentral, that means it's an easy hack for decently experimented SMW players, which is alright. I don't mind easy hack, but it's a bit harder to impress since some levels come and went.

 

Only local girl Denise can help.

New playable character, new system. This time it's an health system, you have 10 HP total (that sometimes can be increased to 11HP due to bugs, aka grabbing a +2HP heart when at 9HP) and enemies deals between 1 or 3 HP. It seems to be depending on the enemy, but it's a bit random, no clear way to know which enemies deal more unless after they hurt you. Even then, 10HP is a lot, more hits than in vanilla SMW so it makes the game easier (there's also plenty of hearts that recover HP in the levels). Gameplay is the same, except Cape was changed to Raccon tail of course. There is one change that I HATE, is fireballs can be shot upwards. This is cool, except to shoot upward, you need to either hold up OR hold jump button. That means shooting fireballs straights while jumping is ass because you have to stop holding B before pressing Y. 90% of the time I want to jump and shoot a fireball but the ball goes up and so I get it. Well the game is easy enough that fireballs aren't necessary, still this is frustrating.

Cute squirrels

Graphically it's ok. The new characters graphics (Denise and the bosses) are ok, levels GFX are varied, but there's some instance where it clashes, especially in the enemies graphics. The music choices are great, except the overworld music, there's only one and it sucks. For a submap it would be ok, but why have the whole OW music of the game be that Boo carousel music from SM64. Doesn't fit and gets annoying quickly.

Can't destroy big blocks with the big shells. Meh.

Level design is okay. It's just straight romp, which is what I asked for. There's some parts with item babysitting that wasn't always needed. I don't mind rompy style, but this was just okay here. Nothing original. It gets a bit better near the end. I honestly don't have much to say about it. The generous health system makes rushing through the level not punished enough, so levels were gone so quickly. There's also few levels with secrets exits, except to get switches palaces. And about that, one level had a message box implying that you should have found the key for the secret exit, but you can't: you can only get the key later. That was mean.

Cool effect.

So this is a short quick romp hack. Some little annoyances and lacking potential, but enjoyable.

⭐⭐

Okay

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

Review: Mario in Mushroom Rix Land

 

Finished in ~7h (4h in world 6)

I played Mario in Mushroom Rix Land. This is a hack with no real story, all about the level design. The game also doesn't have any secret exits. Let's see what we have here.

 

BLOCK YOUR CEILINGS AAAAAAAAH!!!

 

The overworld is pretty generic and just serve to place the levels. Some ExGFX could have been good, for the city world for example. The levels doesn't even have original names, they are just "Grassland 1", "Grassland 2" and so on. I don't really like it. The levels themselves are very different to each other, but on the overworld they don't stand out.

That this hack doesn't have infinite lives. They are very finite: very few life farms (I haven't found one until 4-3) and there is no lives in levels except coins. The game save after every levels, so at worst you can lose your midpoint, which isn't too bad (at the beginning). After a level, having Game Over on purpose to refill your lives back to 5 is a viable strategy.

One thing I disliked is no cape. There is fire flowers, but no cape at all in the entire hack. I know cape is OP, but it's fun to use.

 

Even the castle is just called Grassland 5.

 

The choice of aesthetic and musics are nice, no problems here. It's not vanilla, but some SMW foreground and background are used with other elements, that mix well together.

Many sorts of Rexs.

Now let's get to the meat of the subject. The level design. It's quite good. What I like about the game is it has this approach of having a different gimmick every level and also having each level unique in appearance too. The castle levels use a mix of elements of the previous levels in the world.

So many custom sprite are used. All available from smwcentral. They are nicely used. There's just the punching gloves I don't like, but that's just me. Plus the game doesn't explain that's it's better to not hold direction and hold jump when touching one. Could be frustrating if it's the first time you see those.

Blind jumps that put you on grey platforms, forcing you to react quickly.

You could summarize the level design of the hack as quick reaction platformer, where many obstacle are made to be identified and cleared fast. The game use a lot of falling grey platforms and snake blocks to force you to act quickly. Too much in fact. This is nice, but I like to take it easy sometimes too.

One thing I disliked is the game spend too much time at the top of the screen, when you can barely see Mario. It appears too often, and sometimes there's danger at the top you can barely see because it's covered by the status bar.

But overall, I think the level was nicely done, and the obstacle made around the custom elements feels good to play.

There's spikes here. You can barely see them.

So the game is pretty nice huh. The difficulty is good, it's hard but it's some fair and fun challenge...

Yes, until world 6. In world 6, the difficulty take a nose dive and become quickly too overbearing. You will have to start to farm lives to not having to redo the first parts of levels. Let's go into the details of world 6 levels :

First level has moles that spawn in the air you have to hop on. It's seems crazy but is tolerable, except one jump at the end that is incredibly hard and stupid. I could only pass it by taking a hit and by pure luck. Yes, I feels like my victory was only due to being lucky. Maybe there's a trick, but you don't have the opportunity to safely try because it's above a pit and near the end.

Second level is an autoscroll where you have to jump from leaf to leafs... the leafs are 1-tile wide sprites that fall left and right. It is very precise, and requires great execution. You also have to be at the front of the autoscroll to not miss the platforms, so less time to react. This levels took me 90 lives to beat. In retrospective that wasn't horrible, but still not the best experience.

Then a weird level you're forced to be small to go in narrow passage, including a passage blocked by a shell I had no idea to pass it other than using a reserve mushroom. The level wasn't hard, just weird

Next levels are actually alright. A platform level, a thwomp level that way easier than the rest and a bubble level. Those play fine and doesn't feels frustrating like the first two levels.

Then the final level is a bullshit marathon. 6 parts, a midway point only in the middle (before part 4). Each part is the size of an half level (or more), and are the hardest of the game.You HAVE to use savestates, at least one between each room. Trying to do a set of 3 rooms without is pure madness. Although the rooms are a bit creative, too many setups use snake blocks or grey platforms. No multiple midpoints, no instant retry and no infinite lives make it too tedious.

And that is unfortunate. The first 5 world were really good, but the last world is just too hard to be enjoyable, and the quality is uneven (in aesthetic too, I disliked the neon graphics of some levels and the glowing palette of the final level but that's just me).

So I'm gonna rate this world separately because I can.

Have to be at the front, less time to react.

World 1-5:

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Very good

World 6:

⭐

Poor