Let's Play A2MT: The Fixed Edition! - 77g FINAL - We Will Rock You [B-Side]

[Ryrir]

I vote Sagan Leagues Above the Surface yo!

[morsel/morceau]

The sprites weren't there when you came out the pipe from the chest area because there's a bug in smw in which the fag-end of the level sprite table isn't reset in-level (you have to go the overworld). So, if almost a full complement of sprites is used in a level and you return to it from a sublevel the late-positioned sprites are marked as already loaded and won't spawn. I think raocow lost the key somehow before getting the chest and couldn't retry because of this.

I thought it was funny YouTube seemed to think you were actually playing Rayman, judging from the video description. Noting the game's date, I might play along with you if I can emulate it, since video games ended for me circa 1995 and this is one of those treasures from the golden age that I've never actually tried.

[Kshaard]

Man, there's just so much greatness in A2MT that it's a real shame that it has to coexist with rubbish like A Beach. I think a few tasteful level design tweaks and extra midpoints (now that it's been revealed that that is a feature in this game) could make A2MT into an actual good game. (Nope, I'm not offering to do that, nor saying that anyone -should- do that; personally, I can't use ZSNES and I've got to use an old version of LM because Mac. Also, Tobi has still done an incredible job on this thing, and that it even exists means you can't help but give huge kudos to him. I just think that leaving this game as a time capsule of talkhaus level design circa 2011 rather than trying to make it the best it can be is not the optimal outcome.)

[QubicTom]

This is a level that's a prime example of what inspired me to revive A2MT, levels like this have sooo much potential and talent in them that it was such a shame that they we're left in an unfinished mess. Yea, only a few levels utilized second midpoints...it really shows sometimes

Man, there's just so much greatness in A2MT that it's a real shame that it has to coexist with rubbish like A Beach.

This is what really stands out to me - there are levels that are so good, but they are forgotten because of the levels that are so bad. That's why collabs need good management, and this game might become the main argument for strong moderation: "There has to be a barrier to entry, or A2MT happens". EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not knocking all of A2MT, but that it only takes a few bad levels to turn a lot of people off playing a game that's otherwise very interesting. We naturally remember the negatives more than the positives.

I thought it was funny YouTube seemed to think you were actually playing Rayman, judging from the video description. Noting the game's date, I might play along with you if I can emulate it, since video games ended for me circa 1995 and this is one of those treasures from the golden age that I've never actually tried.

I'm sorry to spoil it, but I manually set what game YouTube displays under the description, so setting it to Rayman was totally on purpose! :D
Man, it'd be great is you played along with Rayman! It works fine in epsxe (I'm using the PAL version), although there are a few places the graphics aren't perfect (noticeable on the overworld screen). I warn you, Rayman is a genuinely hard game, with marathon levels starting early, lives being scarce and some cruelly hidden collectables. But please, play along blind and report on your experiences!

And now for something completely different. Except, sadly, Ometeotl's taste in colour palettes.
Ep55a - Tower of Bad Decisions

So, I'm in two minds about this level. The main level has a very clever concept, and that concept is well executed (except for, in my opinion, the bad choice of music). The parrot coin rooms, however, are all essentially their own levels, each with eye searing palettes and wildly varying difficulty. Back in the main level, everything after the midpoint is problematic. The expectations become unreasonable. In fact, I'd speculate that the second half was rushed and untested, since what's expected of the player rarely works for nearly all the obstacles I came across. I'm interested to hear what everyone else thinks of this level, from those who've played it themselves and from those who are just watching the video.

[TaviTurnip]

To critique the critique a bit:

I find it kind of silly (conceptually, not in action) that you are harshly criticizing the levels/authors that are work from as long as eight years ago in some cases. Like, not that they don't deserve it, it's just soooometimes it sounds like you're holding the authors present-day to their choices from back then, and I'm aware that's mostly because you're disgruntled in the heat of playing. It just "comes off" as more immediate and less retrospective, if that makes sense? You have every right to criticize the game whether it's 2009 or 2099, but I'm just making a note here :P Obviously most people involved with A2MT who made mistakes already know they did. I like to think most of them have come a long way since then.

That aside

I definitely hold this level as the single most "wasted potential of a great idea" level in the entire game, and not because the colors are gaudier than a Tumblrina's private profile. I'm all for experimenting with ideas in an unsafe way and suffering the consequences after. But it was a lot of other stuff that squandered this level :< And it's impossible to say at this point how much was on purpose and how much was at the behest of the project runners, which is why I don't hold any of this game against peeps except the secondary cheese route sorry since yeah. And this is funny to me since I forgive like every wrong thing ASMT did and think that it did no wrong anywhere at all until Trial of Iron <___<

[QubicTom]

I find it kind of silly (conceptually, not in action) that you are harshly criticizing the levels/authors that are work from as long as eight years ago in some cases. Like, not that they don't deserve it, it's just soooometimes it sounds like you're holding the authors present-day to their choices from back then, and I'm aware that's mostly because you're disgruntled in the heat of playing. It just "comes off" as more immediate and less retrospective, if that makes sense? You have every right to criticize the game whether it's 2009 or 2099, but I'm just making a note here Obviously most people involved with A2MT who made mistakes already know they did. I like to think most of them have come a long way since then.

Yeah, due to the heat-of-the-moment nature of the criticism I've given, it does come across as overly harsh, especially considering that this was made nearly a decade ago. I know for a fact Ometeotl got better and better at making levels (their Soda Lake level is the only MAGL level that I can remember, because it was so unique), and noseman999 made huge improvements to his A2MT levels. I wish all the old A2MT designers were around because I can imagine them taking noseman999's route and offering updated versions of their levels for the fixed edition. There are a few authors in A2MT that made levels for JUMP, so I'm looking forward to seeing, for example, a Jolpengammler level from 8 years ago to compare to his modern levels.

Ultimately, although this playthrough is a retrospective, I can't help but judge it through modern eyes and without knowledge of the full context of its creation. Assuming this game is now as it was originally meant to be, the main goal of this playthrough is to judge it as a whole, to see if it's a good, fun game. The most frustrating thing about the A2MT levels I've complained the most about are how close they are to being really good. Dairy Disaster could have been perfect, it was so charming, but there was that podoboo jump that made the first half bad and the lack of coin indicators made the secret exit unfair. Sagan Leagues is so good, except after the midpoint. Put the midpoint at the halfway point of the castle climbing section and put a boss immediately through the door at the top.

Is it a good game or is it not? JUMP is a good game, I have recommended it to others in non-internet life, and I've replayed it in my own time. Would I recommend A2MT in the same way? Probably not. You can't run in the second level, which is a bad start. Many players have said that they quit at Coin Town USA out of annoyance. Each world has at least one level that's frustrating because of bad difficulty, but there are common problems throughout the game, such as unnecessary generators, levels that are too long and power-up starvation, particularly in the latter halves of levels. Do all these problems make it a bad game? No. As a talkhauser, to me it's an important game, it's a part of this community's history, and I'm one of many want more from the ASMT universe. So all of us here are going to be somewhat biased towards it (me especially :D ). And no matter how badly the rest of the game treats me, I'll be forever grateful to Tobi555, and now many others, who've made this game a reality. Just keep in mind that the game was made for the talkhaus by the talkhaus, with no regard for reasonable people from the outside

Welp, I wrote way too much! This wall of text isn't all aimed at you, Tavi, don't worry, I just wanted to take the opportunity to give my thoughts! I'm super interested in everyone's opinions on the game thus far. My favourite part of LPing is the discussions that take place after each video, both positive and negative, so I want to encourage everyone reading this to share what they think!

[QubicTom]

Finishing yesterday's interesting level.
Ep55b - The Gift of Grammar

Immediately after this I started recording the Switch Palace, and it went badly! Very fun level, but totally endgame difficulty, and I ran out of recording time before reaching the midpoint. Once the midpoint is reached, I'll be doing the Red Switch Palace. You vote for the level after that, though!

Voting options:
Dark Side of the Moon - Isocitration
Demo's Wondrous Pitfall! - Schnurmanator
Heatstroke - fieryblaze
hey there sewage castle - Cmbheadquarters
Time Will Hide Your Way - Septentrion Pleiades

[TaviTurnip]

I AM SO HAPPY YOU COULD READ WHAT WAS IN THE CHEST

I was very happy with the grammar chest idea, but knew I was walking on coals because trying to depict the word "IT'S" in a tiny graphic space while suggesting it was not desirable was... yeah :D I hoped 3x3 pixel fonts were enough to make it clear. Adding the :( emote in was a bit of cheekiness, but overall, choosing to depict "anti-bad grammar" was the better course of action over trying to illustrate what proper grammar looked like. Even if I added the color green to the apostrophe with red letters it might not register to people as good grammar. I dunno. I'm overjoyed that you understood |D

this has been stupid artist talk hi hello

Anyhow, I appreciate your thoughts re: criticism :P I know you know but I was just putting my own thoughts out there too. You're a pretty brave soul taking on an LP of the whole game, fixed or not. You're probably one of very few people whose feelings on A2MT matter the most, really, since a lot of us are just watchers.

[QubicTom]

I AM SO HAPPY YOU COULD READ WHAT WAS IN THE CHEST

I was very happy with the grammar chest idea, but knew I was walking on coals because trying to depict the word "IT'S" in a tiny graphic space while suggesting it was not desirable was... yeah :D I hoped 3x3 pixel fonts were enough to make it clear.

It was quite clear, good job on getting such a tiny font to work well in A2MT!! I see "its" and "it's" mixed up every day, so I approve of this treasure chest :D

Navy Blue Palace by Jolpengammler. I actually thought it was the Grey Line Art Palace until Ffouks corrected me in the YouTube comments less than one minute after the video was posted! Looking back at it now, it's a very "Jolpe" level; difficult but solid.
Ep56a - Attack of the Donuts

After this I recorded the Red Switch Palace - is that Toothpaste Palace by Wyatt? It's not so clear in the credit list!

Voting options:
Dark Side of the Moon - Isocitration
Demo's Wondrous Pitfall! - Schnurmanator
Heatstroke - fieryblaze
hey there sewage castle - Cmbheadquarters
Time Will Hide Your Way - Septentrion Pleiades

[Tobi555]

After this I recorded the Red Switch Palace - is that Toothpaste Palace by Wyatt? It's not so clear in the credit list!

It is indeed :) In the credits I named the switch palace sections after raocow's video descriptions for them as I'm sure you know Voting for Heatstroke again once you finish Wyatt's section, also something to note I overhauled the red switch palace room in terms of appearance from what it looked like in raocow's playthrough...it was very unpolished. I kept the overall layout the same but aesthetically changed the design.

[QubicTom]

also something to note I overhauled the red switch palace room in terms of appearance from what it looked like in raocow's playthrough...it was very unpolished. I kept the overall layout the same but aesthetically changed the design.

Ah! I'm actually about 10 videos behind for the raocow A2MT rewatch, so if there are changes I haven't mentioned here that's the reason why! I'll be catching up over the next few days so I'll be sure to keep an eye out for that!

Wyatt's Toothpaste Palace (the Red Switch Palace). It was pretty good!
Ep56b - Layer of Toothpaste

So today I finished the Crash Bash 200% playthrough (Playlist here if anyone's interested!), so tomorrow I will be starting Rayman (for the PS1). Should I have a thread here in the talkhaus for that? It's a difficult 2D platformer, and people have mentioned it to raocow a lot as something he might like playing, so maybe I should share the playthrough in a thread for people to discuss it? I'm not sure - let me know your opinion!

Voting options:
Dark Side of the Moon - Isocitration
Demo's Wondrous Pitfall! - Schnurmanator
Heatstroke - fieryblaze
hey there sewage castle - Cmbheadquarters
Time Will Hide Your Way - Septentrion Pleiades

[Tobi555]

Great video today Tom, also, it's not because of your version that the blocks don't spray out. It's the way the game handles exits that messes up the event's since you can choose which palace you want. For example say that switch palace overworld tile is tied to the blue block spraying event but at the midpoint you went for the yellow or any of the other palaces instead, that would mean that despite hitting the yellow switch the game will still use the blue block spraying event on the overworld. There's no way around this with the way it's set up so we just disabled the events using ASM instead. :) The only thing that happens for you regarding switch's is re-entry of the levels but you already know that it's cuz you started with 1.6, and that that's been fixed since then.

[QubicTom]

it's not because of your version that the blocks don't spray out. It's the way the game handles exits that messes up the event's since you can choose which palace you want.

I think you explained that to me before but I completely forgot! I'll explain the real reason to the viewers when we reach the next switch palace!

Dark Side of the Moon by Isocitration. It's a great level and not too difficult, but I didn't have enough time to record the secret exit, so that'll be for tomorrow!
Ep57a - Singularly Good Album

Voting options:
Demo's Wondrous Pitfall! - Schnurmanator
Heatstroke - fieryblaze
hey there sewage castle - Cmbheadquarters
Phase Out - TurboPup
Time Will Hide Your Way - Septentrion Pleiades

[TaviTurnip]

Worst chest graphic in the game 0/10.

Also I really do love gimmicks like that chest room's, but that was the super extreme version of it. In any other game that would be postgame difficulty methinks. Any harder and it would be too much. I love this level overall though, and not just because of how it looks.

EDIT: Oh uh I vote for sewage castle.

[Tobi555]

Voting for Heatstroke Don't have much to say about this level honestly, it's pretty good but maybe a tad long in it's chest route

[QubicTom]

Overall, I really liked Iso's level! Even though it was three levels in one, each of those three were of reasonable length and of good quality. Heatstroke by fieryblaze was just the right length for its difficulty, and I appreciated the abundance of power-ups!
Ep57b - Green Goo and Heat Exhaustion

Voting options:
Demo's Wondrous Pitfall! - Schnurmanator
hey there sewage castle - Cmbheadquarters [last level of Forest World!]
Light and Darkness - muuma
Phase Out - TurboPup
Time Will Hide Your Way - Septentrion Pleiades

[Tobi555]

Voting for hey there sewage castle to finish off Forest world.

[QubicTom]

The gimmick of this level is that doors are replaced with different graphics. It's good, though! :D
Ep58 - Unphased Positivism

This may have unlocked a certain level that I'm dreading. Choose your votes wisely

Voting options:
betrayal rock - raocow
Demo's Wondrous Pitfall! - Schnurmanator
hey there sewage castle - Cmbheadquarters [Last level of Forest World!]
Land of Illusions - Cup
Light and Darkness - muuma
Time Will Hide Your Way - Septentrion Pleiades

[Tobi555]

The gimmick of this level is that doors are replaced with different graphics. It's good, though! :D

Interestingly this level has a very mysterious background, in Lunar Magic this level has entirely second halve's of level for each elemental section which the author has decided not to use for the level itself. Voting for Land of Illusions

[Lockirby2]

Yeah, I noticed that when I respawned in the midpoint room, the area around it looked like a "water" version of the ice area. I was wondering about that...

[MiracleWater]

Voting for Land of Illusions
You can have a break before tackling a certain hard level coming up :D

[QubicTom]

Interestingly this level has a very mysterious background, in Lunar Magic this level has entirely second halve's of level for each elemental section which the author has decided not to use for the level itself.

Wow, so the level could have been twice as big? It seemed on the easy side for an Outer Circle level, so if that was the original plan its placement makes more sense!

Man, I did such a bad job in this level. Not too many enemies, plenty of power-ups, yet I ended up spending nearly an hour here (mostly spent in the slow autoscroll section at the beginning). Have I reached my SMW skill limit? I don't seem to be getting any better at these games
Ep59 - Giant Demo Portrait

[Tobi555]

stuff

Today Lily White dwindles down Tom's spirit I love this level a lot, having touhou characters in the level like Lily White, Komachi and Tewi is kinda cool to me :) The border is also nice tech along with all the custom enemies Voting for Light and Darkness :)

[TaviTurnip]

The smiley face item was, excluding the three grocery list items, my laziest graphic. But on the positive side, the circle is the same one used in Good Grammar, but it's green instead of red of course, so even though it's lazy it has a contrasting relationship with another item graphic and that's neato! Shut up, Rena.

Meanwhile, the illusion graphic was one of my best works generally speaking... but it looks like someone else actually touched it up after I submitted it, or the palette just magically made it look way better than I first did, so that's neat either way. Good job A2MT work people and/or convenient level colors :D

Also this was another of my favorite levels, but the treasure path was so... unnecessary. Kind of misled in the way the obstacles operate, I think :x It's too bad. It's not bad as a concept at all. Just kind of unfortunate.

stuff

Today Lily White dwindles down Tom's spirit :lol: I love this level a lot, having touhou characters in the level like Lily White, Komachi and Tewi is kinda cool to me :) The border is also nice tech along with all the custom enemies :P Voting for Light and Darkness :)

For the sake of "just in case", this level is based on MegaMari, which is in itself based on Mega Man, but with cool side portrait art for Marisa and Alice that changes if you change weapons and uses Tasogare Frontier's cute adorableness art. (If you want less art, Marisa Land had some, uh, well. It wasn't as kawaii desu, that's for sure ;D)

[Sugar]

The level is based on Super Marisa Land.

I sorta gave up on trying to list music, but whatever.

Super Marisa Land - Overworld
Super Marisa Land - Castle

Also, NakaTeleeli/SomeGuy likes that particular track for video speed up purposes, but it wasn't used in that stage.

Super Marisa Land - Underground