Super Demo World: The Legend Continues

[BobisOnlyBob]

The room with the keys was actually good. Like not even ironically good.

seconding this, that could've been absolutely toxic but was implemented well with a real obvious tell (and the lock wasn't on one of the tallest keyramids)

[Dragon Fogel]

Editing the first post in this thread on Talkhaus is broken, so have this completely unnecessary post that is unnecessary.

Super Demo World - 24 - the maltese monkey
- BIG BOO WORLD 3
- BIG BOO WORLD 4

I did a test and I was able to edit the first post of one of my threads. (I didn't actually change anything.) So maybe it's fixed now?

If not, maybe a mod can try editing it for you.

[Sugar]

Editing the first post in this thread on Talkhaus is broken, so have this completely unnecessary post that is unnecessary.

Super Demo World - 24 - the maltese monkey
- BIG BOO WORLD 3
- BIG BOO WORLD 4

I did a test and I was able to edit the first post of one of my threads. (I didn't actually change anything.) So maybe it's fixed now?

If not, maybe a mod can try editing it for you.

Yeah, uh, from what I can tell FTS table is corrupt which prevents me from editing the thread. That said, I managed to change the title by preserving word "raocow" in it

[Petzi]

DK! Donkey Kong! DK! Donkey Kong is here!

[J. J. W. Mezun]

The room with the keys was actually good. Like not even ironically good.

seconding this, that could've been absolutely toxic but was implemented well with a real obvious tell (and the lock wasn't on one of the tallest keyramids)

3rd this. I also liked the level with the floors that transformed into Boos as an interesting gimmick — tho kid me hated that level for its difficulty.

[FPzero]

Here we see what must be another instance of "60 levels in 60 days", i guess.

Seriously, I'm really surprised by how many filler levels exist in this hack. I did not remember them being so plentiful.

[Kewne]

Here we see what must be another instance of "60 levels in 60 days", i guess.

Seriously, I'm really surprised by how many filler levels exist in this hack. I did not remember them being so plentiful.

There was a lot of filler in this hack, but I don't think these levels really count. The fake block level was a funny enough joke that could've easily overstayed its welcome but was thankfully cut short, and the little 'gotcha' boo sprite transformation was probably hard to implement by 2002/2003 standards. The other is a gatekeeping level that (poorly) checks whether you found all of the switches and found all of the keyholes in the boo world levels, and doesn't really count as a level in the first place.

[Le Neveu de Rameau]

I regret to report, raocow, that the Big Boo battle was disappointing and anticlimactic even back in the early days of SMW-hacking. Making bosses anything other than completely inconsequential was a struggle for many years to come, and Mario the Mugger would remain the castle-end standard for quite some time.

[Grounder]

what a turd of a last level

like, i can see they were trying to do a pit of 100 trials type thing, but it just does not have the level design to back that up

[Dragon Fogel]

The only thing I remembered about the tower was the one spot where you have to spin-jump on a Thwomp to reach the next floor, because I was completely stumped there for a while. This was the first SMW romhack I ever played so I wasn't used to spin-jumping on everything all the time.

[AlchemistHohenheim]

Big Boo's Tower being such a huge gauntlet with no midpoint until the boss was quite rude, but given that it's the special final bonus level that you have to go out of your way to even get to in the first place, I kinda get it (also I'm going to assume that the multiple midpoint patch wasn't a thing in 2003).

There's definitely a lot that can be rightly criticized about Super Demo World, but for a glorified tech demo I'm going to say that it has actually aged pretty well.

[TiKi]

I regret to report, raocow, that the Big Boo battle was disappointing and anticlimactic even back in the early days of SMW-hacking. Making bosses anything other than completely inconsequential was a struggle for many years to come, and Mario the Mugger would remain the castle-end standard for quite some time.

Something that would be relatively easy to make is to buff the boss' HP and put a generator sprite in the room that spawns other sprites depending on the boss' HP. So like, it starts out with spawning eeries, then cheep cheeps, then torpedo teds, then lightning... it would do a lot to make up for how unthreatening big boo himself is.

Though for early SMW standards I found Black Plague to be pretty creative since you have to get to the switch in each room and there's actually different stuff happening in each. It's a shame that Reading changed it to a boring ordinary floaty big boo in the revision though

And on the worse end of that, Bowser wasn't inconsequential in that hack due to having underwater mode and the end level when sides are touched setting. I kind of wish it was its own level and not stuck onto his castle though... though I guess long gauntlets have always been those hacks' deal.

[PSI Ninja]

I wonder how accurate the "60 levels in 60 days" message is, but I see no reason why FuSoYa and Zero-G would give themselves that kind of arbitrary deadline. I suspect that it's just a joke, given how surreal that sublevel was. Would be cool to find some work-in-progress posts on the old forums, if they still exist. Anyway, some quick comments on specific stages, and then my final thoughts on this game:

Big Boo World 4: I like the Boo Block floors, and the way that the Boos pulsate left and right, especially in the longer sections, is really cool visually. Though I still think it's weird to see the Crystal Snail background completely bare like that. It only pokes out in a few places in the actual Mega Man X2 stage.

Big Boo World 5: A pretty trolly stage, but the traps only work once. I thought it was funny when raocow died to the fake door.

Big Boo World 6: They should have made the muncher run a bit more interesting here, especially since Secret Star World already had the same thing (just running to the right).

There were various problems with certain levels in this hack: some blind jumps, item babysitting, complex samey mazes, and slowdown issues, to name a few. But despite these problems, I really enjoyed watching this series. At first, I intended to watch for the nostalgia, but as the game went on I realized that I didn't remember most of the levels that were played. So I found myself watching just to hear raocow's take on the level design, given all of his previous SMW hack experience. There was an impressive amount of tech shown off, some of which I didn't even know originated with this game. And it was good to see the solid-to-Mario "Cool Goomba" blocks again - I'm so used to seeing the yellow translucent blocks that show up a lot in modern hacks (I'm still playing through YUMP 2).

I think this hack had a certain charm to it, like it was the product of an innocent, bygone time where people were still experimenting and trying things out without worrying about adhering to standards. That's why we saw lots of silly things like the long pipe mazes, the pyramids of keys, and levels completely made out of Boos. It sort of reminds me of back then, when people used to share their weird RM2K demos in communities that sprung up around Don Miguel's unofficial translation. I don't think most people really cared if the games were good enough, they just wanted to see what others were capable of. They were content to just make them for themselves. Maybe the same was true for early 2000s SMW hacking.

It's been fun to reflect on such an old hack with 2020 hindsight.