ASMT 11th Anniversary LP - Hey There Guy

[PSI Ninja]

The Castle That Goes Up And Down and AN ECHOING CALL are two of the levels that I remember from the old LP and my own playthrough shortly afterwards. So far I think I only remember about 50% of the levels that have been played, most of which are the gimmicky ones.

Here's a roundup of my comments for videos 10-14. I think I'm getting a bit carried away with this... I ended up writing paragraphs for some of these levels! I can't help it, it's fun.

Demos:

(then: 10, now: 6) Yellow(?) Switch Palace
(then: 3, now: 1) the hardest lvl
(then: 0, now: 0) Pipe Sprint
(then: 9, now: 45) A Honeypot Trap (main stage)
(then: 6, now: 2) A Honeypot Trap (boss)
(then: 0, now: 3) hey there charlie (normal exit)
(then: 4, now: 0) hey there charlie (secret exit)
(then: 16, now: 23) Pressure Point
(then: 1, now: 0) AFTER THAT SHELL! (1st half)
(then: 15, now: 12) AFTER THAT SHELL! (2nd half)
(then: 2, now: 0) Color Crave Cave
(then: 12, now: 3) Panic In The Outhouse (normal exit)
(then: 2, now: 2) Panic In The Outhouse (secret exit)
(then: 0, now: 0) Night of the Living Charlie
(then: 0, now: 0) The Idiot's Ice
(then: 5, now: 2) The Castle That Goes Up And Down (main stage)
(then: 7, now: 0) The Castle That Goes Up And Down (Rumia)
(then: 6, now: 3) AN ECHOING CALL (1st half)
(then: 9, now: 15) AN ECHOING CALL (2nd half)

(then: 220, now: 163) Total demos

2010 observations:

Yellow(?) Switch Palace: raocow died to what looked like an invisible sprite near the frog statue. The Thwomp at the very end seemed to be broken, so he hit rewind several times to try to figure out what was going on. Also, he went back through the pipe in the Yellow Switch room and found a 3-Up.

the hardest lvl: I don't think raocow noticed that the goal was solid back then.

A Honeypot Trap: I'm not sure what happened in this level that made things so different. A big chunk of raocow's deaths were from falling into pits in that "swarm" section, so I'm guessing he was more hasty back then, preventing himself from getting walled in by too many bees? Or, he could have just gotten lucky with sprite placements. I'd probably need to watch both playthroughs of this level again to get a better idea.

Pressure Point: The first message box (that raocow didn't read in the current LP) said: "The richer you are, the faster you swim. Now, people who hold A, they swim slower.. -- Some guy who watches people swim all day". It's funny how SomeGuy pointed out that he missed this message box in the comments. And yes, it seems like back then, the level didn't automatically reset his coin count, although a weird thing happened at the 10 minute mark where his coins started depleting when he died. Also, he didn't seem to get angry when he was playing this level back then; in contrast he was pretty happy throughout.

AFTER THAT SHELL!: The first shell chase took raocow 3 attempts back then (same as this time), and the second shell chase took him 5 attempts (6 this time). We didn't see the winning run for the first shell chase. He missed the midpoint twice in the autoscrolling section.

Color Crave Cave: Before the reset pipe in the first section, there was another pipe that led to a bonus room. Towards the end of the level, raocow solved the puzzle differently because he kept insisting on getting the springboard at the upper left (which we didn't see in the new LP), that was meant for the raocoin near the goal (which he didn't get anyway).

Panic In The Outhouse: This was the first one-level video in the old LP (I'm counting split a/b videos as a single video for one gameplay session). The P-Switch also had trouble spawning, but we only saw that happen on-camera once. raocow used science in a couple of places to see what the effects of the P-Switch were.

The Castle That Goes Up And Down: Towards the end, raocow got trapped by the elevator when he was in the middle passageway below the silver P-Switch and above the raocoin, so he used rewinds to get out of it. Spikes were added in the new version to prevent this situation from happening. In the boss fight, the top and bottom cloud layers were slowly moving in opposite directions, and there was no moon in the center. When Rumia does her final attack, the clouds start scrolling really fast, which is an amazing effect. It's too bad that was removed from the current revision of ASMT.

AN ECHOING CALL: Cirno frightened raocow when she first showed up. Those underwater telephones in the first half of the level killed him several times, but he managed to hit a couple without getting propelled all the way down. He died from getting crushed in the same one-tile high gap as seen in [21:37] today, but the difference back then is that he thought it was funny. When he found out that the yellow pipe near the end was a reset pipe, he used rewinds to back out of it. Just before the frozen goal post, he did the jump the proper way by bouncing off of Cirno. Inside the big ⑨ at the end, there was an extra "Help! " that was removed in the version he played today.

[KobaBeach]

巨大な角氷

also while i was looking for the term for ice cube in jisho i found the sentence "私はホットコーヒーに氷を入れるのが好きです。大抵熱すぎるので。" or "I like to put an ice cube into my coffee, because it's usually too hot." and im like ???? iced coffee is a thing yes but coffee with ice cubes? i guess cultural differences

ronco regretting his levels is how i feel about the muncher garden. magl1-3 replay when. lowkey glad i never finished my maglx (a sort of scrap heap galaxy of miscellaneous platforms a la mario galaxy) and jump (a mechanical castle that's shut down at the beginning, second part has mario activate it and its intruder removal mechanism also last battle t260g plays) levels cuz they would have been bad due to my inexperience.

i remember my maglx stage had a sequence of like. a wood train with npcs on top of it as a reference to the digimon frontier opening but that and the parodius psp collection brilliant 2u music choice were the only good things about my stage

i should make a tiny hack on lm for fun while i still havent finished my editor tbh

When I first played this hack, I had no idea who Cirno was, nor what the Lakitu replacement was supposed to be in this level. Probably some sort of pig doll. Who throws ice cubes for some reason. It made about as much sense as any of the other graphic replacements.

honestly i only knew about the 2hus because i was already exposed to touhou through megamari (i was a megaman nerd circa mid to late 2008) and marisa stole the precious thing back in like 2008, and because of that i was also a huge touhou nerd starting at 2009, at the ripe age of fucking 12 years old.

i started playing eosd and the games up to subterranean animism and later, the ufo demo (including the pc98 stuff) in late 2008, so 11 year old koba (2008) still had a bit to learn

[AuraLancer]

A wizard did it

[HTFCirno2000]

Yeah, raocow was absolutely surrounded

[Kilgamayan]

I appreciate the jarring cold officialness of Black Mage compared to all of the cutesy homemade sprites for all of the other enemies/objects/whatever.

[raocow]

Yeah, raocow was absolutely surrounded

finally inspired me change my signature in years

[HTFCirno2000]

finally inspired me change my signature in years

I feel honored to have inspired you ^^
I'm really enjoying the LP, thank you for playing again

[Grounder]

how it feels to be a flat earther

joke

[KobaBeach]

Yeah, raocow was absolutely surrounded

finally inspired me change my signature in years

the feng shui's all messed up (sig's too large) but honestly cirno's pic is funny so you are pardoned samuel

how it feels to be a flat earther

joke

[Crow]

iirc world 6 is basically a long string of marathon puzzle levels right? looking forward to the first one-level video soon

aaaand there we go. of course it's the raocow level

[Ashan]

I'm assuming the blue on Demo's face is just a palette issue but I like it cause it kinda looks like frost

[camwoodstock]

if shadow the hedgehog was your stopwatch he'd set your time to 0 and keep it there. infinite time to record. you could bang out the rest of asmt in one go!

i am gonna disagree that the black mage does NOT actually look "cold and creepy" next to the sprite replacements of asmt, though that may just be bc i always found the black mage design to be kinda cute in a weird way. just a lil' shadow dude in a pointy hat and cool robe. nothin' wrong with that!

as for the level itself, uh. it sure is. raocow himself put it better than i could with "raocow, what were you thinking?". thinking it was pretty cool at the time, evidently. but yeah this level has. pretty obviously aged quite a bit. i DO like the music and the secret area with the floaty spikes is pretty neat, but in terms of design it is. pretty rude. though it is kind of the start of a tradition (as raocow puts it) where raocow would just create. the most daft levels in compilations that he knows he'd play eventually (though in the future he was more deliberate in making sure it was the interesting kind of weird level)

there's also some sort of irony that the first 1-level video in the replay is by raocow himself, i think?

Yeah, raocow was absolutely surrounded

finally inspired me change my signature in years

truly a historical moment. very glad to have been there

[Crow]

Yeah, raocow was absolutely surrounded

Here's How Demo Can Still Survive (Thread):

[Kilgamayan]

i am gonna disagree that the black mage does NOT actually look "cold and creepy" next to the sprite replacements of asmt, though that may just be bc i always found the black mage design to be kinda cute in a weird way. just a lil' shadow dude in a pointy hat and cool robe. nothin' wrong with that!

"creepy"

?????

[KobaBeach]

dear camwoodstock thank you for reminding me of floigan bros. on dreamcast with your flair and also good job on the consistently good tweets on the bird hellsite

[PSI Ninja]

Yeah, raocow was absolutely surrounded

finally inspired me change my signature in years

Oh man, now I forgot what your old signature looked like.

[1F0]

Call me crazy, but I didn't actually think Giant Ice Cubes was really that bad. I mean, sure, it was full of tight squeezes and sometimes the magikoopa was a bit rude, but I could at least beat this level without totally giving up and savescumming, unlike Honeypot or Pressure Point.

[LunarRainbowShyGuy]

I feel like I must have been having an off day when I played this level, because I feel like I died here a lot more than I should have. Regardless, this is where I had my 300th demo. I was actually thinking during the first half "I like the way the wizard's used in this level", but then I saw the fireball generator in the second half and I became a lot less keen about the whole thing.

My biggest issue is the fact that the fireball generator is paired with tight spaces and precision platforming, leaving little room to maneuver and dodge the fireballs. All too often I would be ready to make a jump, only for a fireball to appear right in the way forcing me to wait. Of course, having the wizard on top of all that does not help matters, and in some cases I would end up waiting a considerable amount of time waiting for a safe opportunity to move forward (which would often end with me getting hit anyway).

Eventually I determined that the best thing to do would be to use the shell from the paratroopa a little after the midpoint to kill the wizard so that I could more consistently keep my powerup for later parts of the stage, which did help, but safely getting the shell from the paratroopa and then waiting for the wizard to appear at a good place to attack it was quite a time investment, which got annoying to go through over and over with how many times I died. It also didn't help that I once again died at the end and took several attempts to get back there.

[Leet]

raocow is actually one of my favorite level designers

:wholesome:

[Daarkbuu]

That was still infinitely better than anything in WTH or WTH2 actually a big fan of that level, it's a vibe

[Le Neveu de Rameau]

That was still infinitely better than anything in WTH or WTH2

That's what they said at Gallipoli.

[J. J. W. Mezun]

I had no idea raocow was sponsored by Google Watch.

Call me crazy, but I didn't actually think Giant Ice Cubes was really that bad. I mean, sure, it was full of tight squeezes and sometimes the magikoopa was a bit rude, but I could at least beat this level without totally giving up and savescumming, unlike Honeypot or Pressure Point.

Definitely not the worst. I’m biased gainst slow levels, but that level with the rising & falling castle… I dunno…

Meanwhile, “An Echoing Call” was 4 good levels unfortunately mashed into 1. I actually thought the infamous 1st part was the best designed.

also while i was looking for the term for ice cube in jisho i found the sentence "私はホットコーヒーに氷を入れるのが好きです。大抵熱すぎるので。" or "I like to put an ice cube into my coffee, because it's usually too hot." and im like ???? iced coffee is a thing yes but coffee with ice cubes? i guess cultural differences

I knew someone who’d put ice cubes in her ramen to cool it down. I didn’t get it, either.

[Skye]

I ended up writing paragraphs for some of these levels! I can't help it, it's fun.

It's much appreciated.

[Paragraph]

It's transcendentally funny that raocow made a level almost exclusively filled with stuff he utterly loathes

Apparently out of the twisted logic "the level is too easy -> I need to add more challenge -> I'll do it with the stuff I dislike, as I must dislike it for reasons of it being challenging"

Sometimes bad design is just that!!!


Also I fell behind a little and just today also watched the up&down castle, and I appreciate the Shadow the Hedgehog elevators branching out a little

[KobaBeach]

スーパーパズルデラックス
アイスパズルしろ！！

raocow is actually one of my favorite level designers

:wholesome:

honestly he is really creative. murder death place zone is a masterpiece. his levels are just a bit too hard for me sometimes lol

also while i was looking for the term for ice cube in jisho i found the sentence "私はホットコーヒーに氷を入れるのが好きです。大抵熱すぎるので。" or "I like to put an ice cube into my coffee, because it's usually too hot." and im like ???? iced coffee is a thing yes but coffee with ice cubes? i guess cultural differences

I knew someone who’d put ice cubes in her ramen to cool it down. I didn’t get it, either.

but was she japanese