raocow's talkhaus

Ashan wrote: ↑5 years ago So was there any funny business on that last screen or are you just so used to the wind physics by that point that you forget how to play without them?

Quick look through Lunar Magic, the clouds are tile 106 from Map16. Unless there's ASM, no funny business, outside of the "is a slippery level" flag being set

I mean, removing the wind for the last few jumps there is actually kind of an original trap. The player is so used to the wind physics at that point that they're almost guaranteed to mess them up.

It's a clever idea, I'll give Haimari that.

Can someone refresh my memory: Was Hyper V nearly as bad as this hack seems to be? Seemed like the reception to that one was more mixed rather than the general consensus now that this is a garbage series of hacks.

Zach808 wrote: ↑5 years ago Can someone refresh my memory: Was Hyper V nearly as bad as this hack seems to be? Seemed like the reception to that one was more mixed rather than the general consensus now that this is a garbage series of hacks.

I've been wondering about this too. I remember it getting really hard, but not in such a sadistic way. (It also took raocow until the bonus world to use states, instead of the bowser world.)

I'm thinking that part of it though, is that raoocow played a lot more 'middling'-quality hacks back then, so Hyper didn't seem that egregious in comparison. It was just another thing that raocow was playing through. Nowadays, raocow plays a lot more 'professional' quality games and even official Mario games, so the modern audience isn't really as used to accepting bad stuff like this.

Zach808 wrote: ↑5 years ago Can someone refresh my memory: Was Hyper V nearly as bad as this hack seems to be? Seemed like the reception to that one was more mixed rather than the general consensus now that this is a garbage series of hacks.

Hyper 5 was much easier. Not easier by any means, but somewhat more practical to beat savestateless, with level design that bordered on unfair but didn't go anywhere near as far as today's level (or the fortress level from a few days back).

Both of Hyper 7's demos are easier too. So yeah, Hyper 6 was just designed for masochists.

Anything in Hyper 5 that was as hard as in 6 was in the special world, and tbh the special world of 5 had some levels which were worse than 6 because they were even more buggy and schizophrenic.

I'd like to see Raoman try the Hyper 7 demos sometime after this, since a final version is unlikely...

Leet wrote: ↑5 years ago

Zach808 wrote: ↑5 years ago Can someone refresh my memory: Was Hyper V nearly as bad as this hack seems to be? Seemed like the reception to that one was more mixed rather than the general consensus now that this is a garbage series of hacks.

I've been wondering about this too. I remember it getting really hard, but not in such a sadistic way. (It also took raocow until the bonus world to use states, instead of the bowser world.)

I'm thinking that part of it though, is that raoocow played a lot more 'middling'-quality hacks back then, so Hyper didn't seem that egregious in comparison. It was just another thing that raocow was playing through. Nowadays, raocow plays a lot more 'professional' quality games and even official Mario games, so the modern audience isn't really as used to accepting bad stuff like this.

That does make a lot of sense. I guess SMW hacking has gotten so much more streamlined that the old stuff is just shocking. I remember playing VIP 3 and thinking it was the best thing ever when it was kinda new. Fast forward to raocow's redo in 2016, and I see a guy commenting that the last level is so unforgivable that they legitimately wanted to punch the designer in the mouth. My, how times have changed.

It also probably has to do with ROMhacks garnering a larger audience since then, with new people from outside of the scene that watch raocow - heck, even just on a perspective ankered on raocow's channel, I have to imagine that some B-Side games attracted some people to check the A-Side hack videos.

Since ROMhacks have become a lot more of a saturated "place", a lot of people have been very jaded by the old grounds that are rethreaded over and over as well, and due to the nature of the medium, it's only natural that a lot of it is swimming in mediocrity. Not only *that*, but the SMW ROMhacking community always had been a little split. Difficulty had always been a "focus" of really, really heated sentiments between many "clans", and that in turns just ends up spreading out all around within the community, even reaching people outside of it.

Haimari's hack are just easy for people to point their finger at for being too hard, when really, the hack is just extremely inconsistent with its quality, regardless of the difficulty of any given level. Bad levels are just way more felt when a level is so hard that someone has to spend hours on it, because, well, if you're actively exposed to something mediocre or bad for hours on end, you're going to feel its toll, no matter if it's easy or hard.

I definitely would not complain, though. raocow knew what he was getting into P:

I've been wondering lately what Haimari has learned through making all these successive hacks if the sixth one has these kinds of issues with feasible playability. Has Haimari been listening to feedback after each hack, or just making the sequels in isolation?

And the wind levels reminded me of the final level in S. Mario:

Well that's where I would have given up/total savescummed I think

I can't see Haimari even recieving much feedback to begin with given how many hack players at the time used savestates. IIRC even people in the japanese mario communities complained about Hyper 6, maybe that has something to do with why what exists of Hyper 7 is so much easier?

Too bad it was never finished, prob never will be.

What's really amazing to me is how short this all feels without all the deaths.

The level starts with 700 seconds on the timer. raocow reached the midpoint at roughly 555 seconds.

Just 150 Mario seconds, except it's dragged out because he kept dying on one of the first screens.

It's probably a similar amount of time on other levels he's struggled with, but it just feels particularly striking today. So little actual content, just a bunch of padding because of extremely cheap obstacles resulting in a lot of deaths with no progress at all.

This level would've been at least a bit more tolerable if it wasn't assuming you're already an expert in the gimmick despite it literally just being introduced in this level. Just removing those stupid spiny egg shooters (and probably the spikes on the wall, with how glitchy it is they're kinda superfluous) would have made it at least somewhat tolerable without making it trivial.

I personally consider the first room one of the worst areas in the entire hack. At least the wind level had clever bits and you can kinda feel it out, but the spiny droppers really complicate things here and it just is not in any way comfortable to deal with.

could have skipped the last puzzle today. The last staircase was only for the 2 gems, you could have undercut all that.

Otherwise, very good job today with everything else!

Didn't I hear some complaining in this thread about how short and hard levels would be preferable over long levels?

Well Hai Mari granted this wish.

Man, at first I was expecting this hack to be around Luigi’s Adventure in terms of difficulty and bullshit.

I was wrong. This is the 2D equivalent to the utter horror that is Super Mario 74: Extreme Edition.

A lot of the levels in this game feel like if you polished a few things and fixed the jankier gimmicks they'd be, like, honestly super good. But this one more than any of the others felt to me like unsalvageable garbage.

If nothing else, it's kind of cleverly self-aware of Haimari to hide a P-switch in a place you'll only see if you die in a particular spot.

A lot of the levels in this game feel like if you polished a few things and fixed the jankier gimmicks they'd be, like, honestly super good. But this one more than any of the others felt to me like unsalvageable garbage.

Hyper 6 in a nutshell.....

The first quarter of that level was actually pretty neat, barring a couple of shitty jumps. Seems like Haimari used the gimmick fairly well.

The second quarter was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen in SMW. The glitched Koopa/Goomba at the end is such a slap in the face (though I guess the majority of that section is).

Yeah, I think rao was pretty comprehensive with the commentary today.
That spinjump failing because of gravity seemed reasonable so I also assumed that the sparky jump would similarly fail.
Jumping out of water with regular gravity is something I already dislike, so I'm sure that part would have felt terrible.
Apart from the somewhat buggy feel coming from non standard controlls the first part seemed cool indeed;

Shame the second part had that good old "all you need to do is know things ahead of time" aka learn by dying gameplay.
Then again as rao mentioned, ironically disrupted by dying multiple times, imagine having to redo the first part everytime you die.

I'm happy we had the savestate, I really liked the video as is and am afraid angry/sadcow would have been less fun.

I'm quite impressed that Haimari manage to introduce a decension glitch of all things...

So, this "gravity" gimmick.

It's just vertical wind, isn't it?

If this was all 1 level with the glitchiness removed and the 2nd part much less bullshit, along with a midpoint, this could've been a good level. But once again, Haimari just doesn't know when to stop.