Brutal Mario Demo 9.5; Is It Real?

[apology]

You see, the way I know it's real, is because the OW in the demo (final_boss_1.smc) doesn't glitch up and look terrible. If the demo was edited, the sprites on the overworld would look wrong and glitchy, so would the overall graphics I think.

[Buried Alive]

I have a question for you apology. What was you planning to do when you was pretending to be carol. I mean what was you going to do when you said that Brutal Mario was going to be released like the middle of this year. Was you really going to edit Brutal Mario. I mean people could have noticed that somebody else made the bosses when they are not like the other unless you really a good ASM programming. I would like to see your ASM too if you can do any. And how was you planning that Giygas boss to be fought with Yoshi?

[apology]

I have a question for you apology. What was you planning to do when you was pretending to be carol. I mean what was you going to do when you said that Brutal Mario was going to be released like the middle of this year. Was you really going to edit Brutal Mario. I mean people could have noticed that somebody else made the bosses when they are not like the other unless you really a good ASM programming. I would like to see your ASM too if you can do any. And how was you planning that Giygas boss to be fought with Yoshi?

When I was pretending to be carol? Well, I hadn't really planned past the "HOLY FUCK CAROL'S BACK" phase that happened, tbh. But I don't think there was much I could do involving editing Brutal Mario, because most Layer 2 breaks up if you dare touch it with Lunar Magic. I guess I would've made some sort of an ASM demo, add Brutal Mario graphics + music (it works even in the newest version of Addmusic), and just claim it was a new demo. But even then, simply looking in the file would've given me away.

The Yoshi/Giygas photo was faked in the same way I presume the Demo 9.5 photos were.

[KobaBeach]

Well then

I didn't know Carol made that one VIP1 level

(sarcasm, this is most likely fake)

Playing the demo a bit, I'm still not sure.
The remaining segments all look legit. A bit tougher than what we'd expect from Carol, but considering how tougher Athletic Special was compared to some of the other stages...

The usage of "Divin'. lol" in the stage is still strange.

Hmm...
Can someone email Carol about this? I would, but he probably wouldn't reply.

If it's a fake, I'd still like to see the author of the hoax make their own hack, the stages do seem kinda interesting, if a bit on the ridiculous side in terms of difficulty.

And if anyone clicks on the SMWC link, yes, I am the user named "Leomon"

[apology]

Well isn't this an interesting turnout. Of course, despite the horrific timing, I am extremely close to saying this is real, because it is near impossible to edit Brutal Mario due to the severe ASM memory problems which force it to produce garbage on different parts of the game, such as a lot of Layer 2 bosses, and post Cheep Demo, the overworld producing garbage tiles from GFX00.bin.

Anyways,despite the severe length and difficulty, I played the full level. It seems like a bit of a weird level, considering the fact that the ASM is very minimal, despite the fact that it's a Luigi World level. One part I enjoyed was the part with the YI pipe maze, and the surprisingly difficult level with the OFF and ON switches (if you don't press the ones in the open which are probably a debug type thing, it's much harder to figure out how to get to the hidden ones.)

[MercuryPenny]

A friend of mine gave me the demo after getting it from Buried Alive, I just don't see any Japanese hacker using a disco shell hopping segment. The underwater segment is claustrophobic as heck and painfully unfair. i should play smwcp and see it it's like the cave of lost pride I spammed savestates when I tried it and ultimately didn't feel like trudging through the whole thing. It feels like an easy Kaizo hack honestly. But hey, I could be wrong.

I was honestly wondering if it was apology but that's not the case apparently. Also according to my friend, carol changed his email. That seems awful...coincidental but I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

[Alice]

I just don't see any Japanese hacker using a disco shell hopping segment.

See several parts of the romhack S. Mario by the Japanese romhacker Final.

[aterraformer]

I just don't see any Japanese hacker using a disco shell hopping segment

Hyper VI, VIP5, etc. Too many examples but that's what I thought of off hand.

[apology]

A friend of mine gave me the demo after getting it from Buried Alive, I just don't see any Japanese hacker using a disco shell hopping segment. The underwater segment is claustrophobic as heck and painfully unfair. i should play smwcp and see it it's like the cave of lost pride I spammed savestates when I tried it and ultimately didn't feel like trudging through the whole thing. It feels like an easy Kaizo hack honestly. But hey, I could be wrong.

I was honestly wondering if it was apology but that's not the case apparently. Also according to my friend, carol changed his email. That seems awful...coincidental but I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

Who is your friend, exactly?

[CM30]

Sigh. Looks like I've got more emailing to do.

Personally though, I'm not sure. On the one hand, it's the kind of quirky idea that a genuine Japanese hack might use it (albeit for one of their not so ASM heavy stages). On the other hand, it's supposed to be in Brutal Mario, the game which has generally got more and more fancy as it progressed, yet did very little in the way of interesting things with the engine or ASM.

Doesn't that seem a bit suspicious after a world with all three Seiken Densetsu 3 villains as bosses, the Halberd, Bowser's Castle, that 3D ship stage and huge levels with Marx from Kirby, a layer 3 Chain Chomp as a boss and Dr Wily?

But we'll see I guess.

[apology]

Sigh. Looks like I've got more emailing to do.

Personally though, I'm not sure. On the one hand, it's the kind of quirky idea that a genuine Japanese hack might use it (albeit for one of their not so ASM heavy stages). On the other hand, it's supposed to be in Brutal Mario, the game which has generally got more and more fancy as it progressed, yet did very little in the way of interesting things with the engine or ASM.

Doesn't that seem a bit suspicious after a world with all three Seiken Densetsu 3 villains as bosses, the Halberd, Bowser's Castle, that 3D ship stage and huge levels with Marx from Kirby, a layer 3 Chain Chomp as a boss and Dr Wily?

But we'll see I guess.

The only explanation that makes sense is that carol is saving space for the last 2 stages. The reason why I think that could be true is because the Skill demo has barely any freespace left, and considering how ASM heavy the last 2 stages NEED to be (especially considering the final stage has 8 bosses in it if the Megaman portal stage stays).

[CM30]

Sigh. Looks like I've got more emailing to do.

Personally though, I'm not sure. On the one hand, it's the kind of quirky idea that a genuine Japanese hack might use it (albeit for one of their not so ASM heavy stages). On the other hand, it's supposed to be in Brutal Mario, the game which has generally got more and more fancy as it progressed, yet did very little in the way of interesting things with the engine or ASM.

Doesn't that seem a bit suspicious after a world with all three Seiken Densetsu 3 villains as bosses, the Halberd, Bowser's Castle, that 3D ship stage and huge levels with Marx from Kirby, a layer 3 Chain Chomp as a boss and Dr Wily?

But we'll see I guess.

The only explanation that makes sense is that carol is saving space for the last 2 stages. The reason why I think that could be true is because the Skill demo has barely any freespace left, and considering how ASM heavy the last 2 stages NEED to be (especially considering the final stage has 8 bosses in it if the Megaman portal stage stays).

Eh, I'm not sure of that to be honest. People severely underestimate how much stuff you can cram into a SMW ROM.

Especially when you keep in mind a couple of things:

1. Carol's music isn't sampled for the most part, so there are no sample banks to take up tons of space (this is what's caused me problems when making ROM hacks).

2. No dynamic sprites (or at least, few ones). So their graphics don't take up a ton of space.

3. The graphics could be optimised far better (whole exgfx files are used for single boss tilemaps)

4. Carol can easily add new functionality to older sprites without massively increasing the space used.

Etc.

I've had a lot of experience with overly fancy games in the form of SMW mods, and to be honest, every time I try, I'm realising the technical limitations are nowhere near as harsh as I thought they were.

[CM30]

Well, I beat that level entirely. Although I had to cheat when the floor's collision detection stopped working.

Some screenshots from later in the level:















Most areas seemed to be void like places with kaizo elements, although a grass land, haunted house with a Blackout Basement gimmick and a castle area showed up too. Difficulty varied widely across the stage, with the last area actually being the easiest of the lot.

As for whether it's legit... I'm not sure now. On the one hand, it's likely only carol (or someone with a lot of ASM skill) could edit the ROM and not mess the overworld up to hell and back, so that makes me suspect it's likely real. On the other... Brutal Mario was never really starting to become a kaizo hack.

This stage is basically a kaizo level. Seems a bit unlikely a difficulty level jump for the space of a single world, right? And the level itself, as hard and interestingly designed as it is, is neither impossible for a decent hacker other than carol to make (for the most part, I could have made that entire stage myself, albeit with some help from an ASM guy for the DKC underwater background scroll) and perhaps even a bit too... good for carol. Seriously, to go from mostly flat and simple level design to kaizo level stages with a bunch of tricky jumps and fairly clever enemy/trap placement... doesn't seem a bit suspicious?

Also, some interesting things I noiced:

Bowser's Castle has been edited in this version. The first room is blocked off, the second room is entirely deleted. The ASM for it still seems intact.

I've also hacked my way into the special world by using an SRAM file from the demo with the Baseball Boys. No ASM in that stage (although it does exist), but let's see some other changes...

First up, there's now a door to the Bowser boss room in the start of the level. He throws hammers for some reason, and it seems the ASM for the bosses in this stage is intact.

In the other room, I fought the Koopalings 7 Heroes boss. Same old thing, takes too bloody long to defeat and just drags like hell. But what's this? Mario's walking away after beating it?



Yep... and it then sends him to the second room of the 'new' level. Hmm. Seems like carol plans for you to play even more level content after beating the thirty minute battle from hell. Doesn't explain why it sends you to the second part of the new level though, unless...

This isn't meant to be one level. It's meant to be part of two... the Luigi World level and the last part of Bowser's Castle. Would explain the castle design in some parts, and the weird pipes in the challenge level.

There's also an odd vanilla castle with Thwomps and Ball n Chains that takes you to the ghost house with all the breakable bricks. Odd.



Oh, and as for the whole 'no one other than carol would make a level this long'... seriously?

Because VIP 4 and 5's final levels are all this long. Much of Mario Infinity 2 is this long. Half of what SCORPION and Metalgearhunter seem to make in terms of castle stages is this long. Heck, a good chunk of the stages in my own games are marathon levels to an extent they'd make this stage look like cake by comparison.

All in all, it's an interesting 'demo', but I'm still wary about calling it legit, since practically nothing added to this version couldn't have been done by someone else with a decent level of SMW hacking expertise.

[KobaBeach]

Maybe some of the different sections of this level are WIP versions of World 9's stages.
The opening text at the beginning stage mentioned castle, underground and ghost house segments.

The warp to the castle stage after the Seven Koopalings boss is probably a glitch.

Some of the stages here seem to be slightly altered versions of VIP levels too.

Maybe Carol did a few vanilla levels for the VIP collabs when he went as anon on 2ch* and this is a sort of compilation of them, while the original ones (the black and white autoscroll one, the castle segment, the YI pipe maze) are the World 9 stages?

* - VIP2's level list credited his levels as anon, however, his VIP5 stage (Red Athletic) had him credited as "Carol", so it seems that he was an anon back in 2005, but became a namefag (pardon my language, but that's what they call them on 4chan), most likely after Demo 7 came out.

Oh and unrelated, but that DKC2 stage that everyone said was by Carol (Honey Adventure) was actually by the Unreasonable Athletic 1 & 2 and Maze Castle ~ Vs. Morton/Roy guy, beyrevia (his website). The more you know.

[MercuryPenny]

Who is your friend, exactly?

HackerOfTheLegend. Pretty sure you saw him several times during your time on SMWC and I think he's posted on this thread.

Skepticism still makes me think it's not real, but why do we care? The hack really isn't that unique anymore. Western hackers have hacks like Touhou Mario 2 that have a similar amount of insane coding. If the demo's fake, it's fake. If it's real, it's real. What's it matter?

[apology]

One stray difference I noticed is that in the Castle Crush level, if you go all the way to the top to fight that weird eye boss, the music sounds different from the cheap demo version. it has the same melody, but the instruments sound more polished and more rock influenced.

[Sayuri]

What castle crush level? I don't recall such a level like that. If it's in this new demo, I don't know where I could find it, honestly.

[apology]

What castle crush level? I don't recall such a level like that. If it's in this new demo, I don't know where I could find it, honestly.

It's in the desert(?) world, below the snow world. The level is shaped like Yoshi's House. And no, it is not new, it has been in the game since the very first release.

[Sayuri]

Oh yeah, I remember that level. My bad. Yeah, the music is different now; it's a port of Fear Factory from Donkey Kong Country. Also, there is indeed sampled music in the game as of demoOnly1. This was used in a water level in the special world, which can only be accessed in that demo via Lunar Magic.

[apology]

Also, uh, I'm stuck on the Ghost House (first part) section on Test Your Skills. Basically, I hit the switch and got the shell, but I'm not sure where to go from there.

[apology]

I managed to contact the guy who gave Buried Alive the demo, and I asked him some questions.

I have some questions regarding the new demo you've leaked/released.

1. Does carol know about you releasing it?
2. How new is this demo?
3. What is next planned after finishing World 9?
4. What is the estimated release date?
5. Is this linked in any way with demo 9.5 or the hijacking of carol's SMWC account?
6. Does carol have any means of contact right now?
7. What has halted Brutal Mario for so many years?
8. Has anything been planned for the final boss?
9. Is the Megaman portal stage going to be the last level?

Please answer these ASAP.

I received a response only 2 hours later:

Thank you for your questions. I'll answer them to my best knowledge.

1. Of course. This demo was released for two reasons. To show how that the game is being worked on currently, and two, get feedback on a new level. Most of the level was made recently, but some levels are borrowed from previous demos, the water stage in the beginning is from Vip and Wall Mix, and before, was in the first demo from 2005.
2. From 2014, but it was finished Febuary but not released until this month. The level building only took one month due to freetime.
3. Fix the game up a lot. That has already began sort of. The game is English starting from Demo Only 1, and most if not all levels have been translated. The graphics need to be fixed, such like Mario's graphics, which are being drawn by carol. But in the next demo Mario graphics will not be finished, but the placeholder GFX is from SMB2. There's also planned to be a major overhaul of level design on old levels. The levels being replaced are the Forest Star, Cave Star, the sun level, Chomp Panic 2, Ultima's Keep, and Aquatic Special. Levels with level design change are the leaf shield levels, Darklich's Keep, Kirby Superstar, and Lift Go!.
4. We have not discussed yet.
5. No. But this two demos combined will be a demo 10.5, because there is 10 finished worlds and most of a 11th. Like how demo 7 had 7 finish worlds.
6. Not many besides an email which I have been told not to tell.
7. Focus on carol's personal life made this game a side-project. The reason why so much progress has been done is because of those personal issues dealt with currently.
8. Its not Luigi. It could be Mario fighting Mario, we don't know. It's not a thought right now, the only thought now is finishing the Hot Head Bop, Thunder Blues, and Beginning of the End levels and to make starting marks on King Luigi's Keep.
9. No, that was for Vip and Wall Mix part 3, and kept in because the level it was tested in happened to be the level which will become the final battle level.

Thank you for asking me so many questions. Ask more if you want. Excuse me if my English is rusty, I originate from Japan, but I know lot of English.

If you are asking, I found this guy's account because he commented on this guy's video where he showed off the first portion of the level. His name is "whodidyouthinkitwas", and literally he ASKS for people to ask for the demo, so he shouldn't be hard to find.

[CM30]

Oh hey, a few more pictures the guy released:















I think the big test for whether it's genuine will be whether a new demo really does get released on carol's site soon, since it's the only medium we're certain the guy actually controls. Some questions someone on SMW Central asked and got answered:

About the New Brutal Mario Demo.

Hello. May I have the New Brutal Mario Demo and I have some questions too.

1. Who are you and how did you get contact with carol?

2. How complete is Brutal Mario?

3.Is this a other hoax?

4.Are you a troll?

5Why Carol don't update his site anymore?

6. Is this level going to be in the final version of the game?

7 Is you helping with Brutal Mario.?

8.Is you from 2ch?



This is his reply

1. I am me...I got into contact with carol in 2004/2005 when he was first releasing Brutal Mario and working on levels for Vip and Wall Mix part 1. I dont usually help him with his game because I'm not as knowleged as he is, but I've been helping him in recently.

2. I dont have a percent, but by the end of this month all of Luigi World is complete besides the last 2 levels. Also carol must translate all of the game to English (mostly done), replace a few battles, replace bad levels, and add better level design to good levels with bad design.

3. No, but a guy on here told me there was a hoax with Kitiku Mario being released fully, sometime in 2014. I don't understand, but I don't care.

4. I don't understand.

5. He will when the next *official* demo is released. This demo and the next demo are just showing off individual levels, not showing off the progress of the game. Like Demo Only 1 where it had the Athletic Special.

6. Yes. All the levels in this demo and RestL will be in the final game. There are also already a few redone stages ready in RestL.

7. Yes. I'm offering criticism and helping carol translate the game to perfect English.
http://imgur.com/o7LmVKp,cSkRpiq,VrK2tE ... ,0I4xSOv#0

8. I was, but now I am not. I met carol on 2ch however

http://www.smwcentral.net/?p=viewthread&t=72494&page=3

Honestly, I'm slightly more convinced by it now, but I personally think the only way we'll really know is if the website gets updated. Also, if carol's translating it now, why doesn't he get someone who actually knows English somewhat well to help him?

It's not like he'd be short of candidates here or at SMW Central... Heck, I'd do it. I don't exactly know much Japanese, but I can at least come up with more interesting names than 'waterless beach', 'Lightning Zone' and 'Fight Lemmy!'

[Sayuri]

According to this, we've been trolled. These pictures do look kinda legit though.

[KobaBeach]

It's not like he'd be short of candidates here or at SMW Central... Heck, I'd do it. I don't exactly know much Japanese, but I can at least come up with more interesting names than 'waterless beach', 'Lightning Zone' and 'Fight Lemmy!'

Accurate Japanese to English translations of those levels would be:
"Blue Skies, A Sandy Beach, The Sun and..."
"That Was Stunning! I Admire You!" (quote from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood, also a Japanese meme)
and "Hikikomori Lemmy"

Also, Yoshi's text is different.

He actually says:
"Aah! It's Mario!
Run away!!!"

According to this, we've been trolled. These pictures do look kinda legit though.

Guess apology tricked us again. Ah well. (nonononono)

[CM30]

This again? Oh come on. When will we finally get a real update about Brutal Mario rather than yet another crappy hoax?

Makes me wonder how the extra level and stuff was added to the ROM though. Given how much it glitches out when I merely try and move Mario to a different spot on the overworld in the same demo, it makes me suspect this mysterious 'apology' guy might actually have some decent level of asm skill.