VIP 4 2018 - That was fun

[Ashan]

So I think the second half of this level single-handedly took me longer than any other level in the game when I played this years ago. I don't know why, I just had so much trouble dealing with the boss bass on the ropes. Like I think it was the one stage that actually made me take a break from playing the game a few times.

[BobisOnlyBob]

So I found the VIP wiki page for Hot Beach Tizer and google translated it. The section for "dealing with boss bass" has been auto-translated as "The nature of backwash and measures against it" and this delights me so.

Other highlights include "For now, unless you have a mantle, you can pick up apples or frisk here" (confirming the thing about Frisk Mints for the fire flower), "One side is poison. It is mean." (midpoint room) and a comment that reads just "It is too difficult" (in that color)

[xfix]

By the way, a star leading to next world is a sort-of a point of no return thing. Make sure to get the secret exit of a level leading to it and get lives from a life farm.

[AlchemistHohenheim]

Man, after rewatching Pure Savestateless Is Dead, I have to wonder: How did we end up where we are today with tool-less runs being the norm for raocow? That video made it seem like he was ready to quit doing that forever.

raocow is nothing if not stubborn. He decided to try again when he started doing the Super Mario World Returns series of hacks, and has more or less stuck with it since then (outside of the occasional checkpoint, or being fed up with progress being stopped because of a level refusing to function properly).

[raocow]

wait

does the vip4 wiki seriously mention asmt :O

[FourteenthOrder]

wait

does the vip4 wiki seriously mention asmt :O

Yep.

[Zach808]

For me, that secret exit was a nightmare. In the end, I did beat it without a mid-level savestate, but I had to disable the BC3 layer to get rid of the fog so I could see properly. I hate when levels use it. Blame my crappy vision, I guess.

[Zummorr]

The background in Hot Beach Tiser is from The Lion King game for SNES. From the level Simba's Exile. That game looked nice, but was a real kick in the pants.

VIP4 has a thing for brambles.

[Zach808]

Hey translation team, for the love of god, don’t send raocow an update right after he enters world 7. That’s not a good time to be reset to 5 lives.

[BobisOnlyBob]

wait

does the vip4 wiki seriously mention asmt :O

Yep.

Technically that's a comment, not part of the article itself, but nonetheless it's a mention!

[Voltgloss]

So what IS up with today's level and its weirdly-unnecessary-and-more-complicated-to-trigger "hard mode?"

[Ryrir]

Hey translation team, for the love of god, don’t send raocow an update right after he enters world 7. That’s not a good time to be reset to 5 lives.

Yeah don't worry we've thought about that. I don't think there are gonna be any more updates while raocow is playing the hack, and we'll just post a fully finalized "v1.00" after the LP is over.

So what IS up with today's level and its weirdly-unnecessary-and-more-complicated-to-trigger "hard mode?"

If I understand the wiki article correctly, it's just that: An optional hard mode of the level where you don't get a midway point and are forced to take a detour in the goop before the boss door.

It's kind of an interesting concept if you're up for an extra challenge, though I feel like it's weird to throw it out there without any explanation about what's happening.

The stage tomorrow is one of my favorite VIP 4 levels, looking forward to it!

[Zach808]

Okay, is Boon physically capable of not smiling? Cause I sure wouldn't be smiling while swimming through huge puke bubbles.

Anyways, from my experience, Uber-Homing is probably the hardest level in world 7, but it's not unreasonable or anything. Not sure if this applies to a vip coin run, though.

[Whimsical Calamari]

these were some levels
not much of them, but they existed

DailyMotion
episode 21 - March 22, 2008
0:00 - treasure
2:47 - disco
9:11 - easy

YouTube
cold cold... generic area - January 29, 2009
0:00 - treasure
4:11 - disco

goodbye World 5 - January 30, 2009
0:00 - easy

"holy cow i sure can play this game" - raocow "really good at video games" early beta LEAKED????

otherwise wow i have nothing to say here. dang. disco-riding without a feather for some reason, huh. amazing. my brain's kinda shot right now

[xfix]

Tags: honestly, this was probably, made harder, when I used savestate, poison house style

For what it counts, during second playthrough you did the second part savestateless due to VIP Coin rules.

Well, mostly, you made a savestate just before the run did start, but it's like, whatever.

[This Eye o' Mine]

I've been lagging behind on posts lately. Kinda preoccupied with some other stuff.

Today's level really isn't as bad as I've seen people claim. It's basically a memorization level, for better or for worse, but ultimately not really that hard to execute once you know how to.

...Are we sure that The First Step was actually intended to be a reference to the boxing manga by George Morikawa? I get that the title is the same, but nothing in the stage itself seems to support that idea.

I'm somewhat inclined to think that it's meta-commentary along the lines of "yeah, the first thing anyone does with Lunar Magic is make low-effort edits of existing SMW levels" and that it sharing a title with a popular series is pure coincidence.

Yeah, to be honest there isn't any evidence. I do think that the Japanese name of the series is more distinctive than the rather bland English translation (The First Step) of it would suggest, to the point that I imagine that any native speaker with some knowledge of the series would instantly think about it when seeing the level name. It would have been especially relevant at the time the hack was made, as the anime I think was actively airing only about two years prior to this hack's release. I guess the note would be more accurate as "...shares its name with...".

Translator's Note: Horse Cavern

Up until shortly before the LP started, we actually had this level name as "Horse Road". It wasn't until I browsed through a Japanese website that listed all of the level names written in kanji (でっていう洞) that I realized it was supposed to be "cavern" (洞) instead of "road" (道). The confusion comes from the fact that both of these words are pronounced 'dou', and if you only ever saw it written phonetically (in kana どう, as it is for the level names in game), you would never be sure which it is. Now, "road" is by far the more common of the two, which is why we went with that initially. But, the name in kanji on the website made it absolutely sure that it was indeed meant to be read as "cavern", which does make sense when you look at the level in retrospect. Some of the Japanese comments on this level expressed a similar sentiment of intial confusion at the level name, saying stuff like "All this time I thought it said 'Detteiu Road'". One commentor even went for a third option, saying that they thought it was "Detteiu Temple" (でっていう堂) instead.

Shockingly, this was a case where Oyster of all people almost had it closer than us, as he had "And Then There Was a Hole", and 'hole' is arguably kind of close to 'cave'. Even a broken clock huh.
(Also, don't ask me why he always put "Detteiu" as "And then there was a". I really don't know, but it apparently inspired a level name in ASMT, so that's a plus.)

Translator's Note/Oyster's Pearls: Uber-Homing/Temple of Homing

We lifted this translation straight from lion's document, since it was fine as it was. In turn I'm pretty sure he got it from this quote in the 2009 VIP4 LP:

"Well, apparently it's not 'Temple of Homing', but something like 'Super-Homing' or 'Uber-Homing' or 'Banana-Bologna-Homing Sandwich'..."

I was really tempted to switch it out for that last one, but eh.

It seems obvious to me that it's supposed to refer to the fact that the main gimmick enemies in this stage home in on you. Of course, if Homing was actually the one who made this level then that would make sense as on top of that. The original mistranslation was because the name was "tera-homing". 'Tera' is the same word as in 'terabyte', and it means pretty much what the current translation puts it as, basically "a lot" or "super". It comes up quite a lot in VIP speak. The thing is there's also a Japanese word pronounced 'tera' (or 寺 in kanji) which means 'temple', typically a Buddhist one. Still, if that was what it meant then the translation "Temple of Homing" wouldn't make any grammatical sense, because there's no possessive in there, and the noun order would make it translate more like "Temple Homing". All of this, and the fact that Japanese has a lot of homophones anyway, makes me strongly think that temples weren't on the author's mind when they named this level.

I also heard that somebody thought it was supposed to be FF9's "Terraforming" spell (which was mistranslated as "Terra Homing" in the original game's English version), but just look at the level and tell me with that translating it like that would capture the intent of the name better for those not already familiar with Japanese internet slang, since that spell does not actually involve anything that homes. It's one of those cases where they might have modeled the name to be similar, but what they were trying to say with it was something completely different. Kind of similar to the First Step level I guess.

Oyster's Pearls: Self-Defense

His name for: "A Walk"

I don't even...

[Bean]

I'm keeping up with this one and the Mega Man stuff. You are way better than you used to be. I think YUMP is when it clicked even though you've been doing the no save state thing for years now.

[ano0maly]

I wonder if at 11:26 you could have let the bullet go past you.

[Dragon Fogel]

I definitely remember "Dodge everything in the world".

Specifically the fact that you kept singing it on every attempt when you got there. I laughed pretty hard at that.

[Whimsical Calamari]

DailyMotion
episode 22 - March 23, 2008
0:00 - mountain
4:58 - castle

YouTube
goodbye World 5 (continued) - January 30, 2009
2:19 - mountain
6:17 - castle

When I first saw dailymotioncow take the old version of the P switch exit (spoilers it makes a big ol set of platforms and walls directly leading to the secret door) I thought "Wow that isn't very subtle at all".

And then I saw what 2009cow did with it. I mean, idk it seemed obvious to me that "here's a P switch you should hit it here" was what that part of the level telegraphed? But the lack of coins beforehand compared to the "new" one did kind of mask it. (And if it was just a rao mistake, I doubt they would've changed it.)

Regarding the castle: I may have complained before about the frustration of watching someone figure out a puzzle on screen, but wow, watching the "I know exactly how to solve this oh wait" version of playing levels like that is way less fun.

Seeing the multitude of solutions that people had to the puzzle in this thread was pretty cool, though. I love it when it's demonstrated just how many ways a puzzle can be solved without being just broken. (And no, I don't include the P-switch clone as "breaking" the puzzle. Switch cloning is fair game in VIP, after all.)

[Arctangent]

homing bullets are gay culture apparently

[Whimsical Calamari]

DailyMotion
episode 23 - March 24, 2008
0:00 - water
4:39 - spinner

YouTube
The sleeping Sea - January 31, 2009

IP! - February 1, 2009
0:00 - spinner

"Idiot, that's the state I am in every day"

same tho

HIGHLIGHT REEL: a really great thwimp chain pulled off in the dailymotion run

With all the talk of how much of A Thing that Super Spinner Boon was, I'm pleasantly surprised by how smoothly it went in both of the other runs. Sure, there was savestating involved, but even that wasn't quite as bad as other less-worrisome levels have been so far.* Neat level, too.

^{* *rewind* dammit *rewind* dammit *rewind* dammit}

[Whimsical Calamari]

and now we get to the point where raocow took a completely different route in each of the three runs
joy and happiness and all that as i track down timestamps wildly

DailyMotion
SKIP
rotatoe - March 27, 2008
8:17 - "Under the Ocean 2 - 10,000 Miles" (seriously Oyster? really?)
SKIP AGAIN

don don duuuuuuuuuuu - March 28, 2008
0:00 - "The First Stage"
2:16 - "A is Amy Falling Down a Flight of Stairs" (Oyster it was literally written in English in a message box come on man)

YouTube
SKIP
two stages, one about riding an elevator, and one about swimming - February 3, 2009
5:36 - the one about swimming
SKIP

mountain adventures - Feburary 6, 2009
0:00 - 1-1 edit
2:36 - "wat. the hell. is this."

Nice to see 2009cow relying less on savestates once more. And some quality commentary in the last couple minutes, too.

I'm gonna go ahead and become a lumberjack so I can forever forget the past.
[...]
Just, let that mellow in your heart for several hours, while you rest in a catatonic state, chewing idly on some styrofoam. Mmm-mm, whole wheat styrofoam.

While these levels just sorta happened, they're also a couple of commendable attempts at high concept (I'm not counting The First Step, obvs). I don't recall seeing too many underwater levels that focus on quickly dropping down, especially not in real Mario games. And the stairs are, at the very least, an interesting theme for design. They make platforming awkward, but moreso in a "I have to think about this in an uncommon way now" way than a "oh god this feels awful to watch" way. Cool stuff.

[Whimsical Calamari]

catching up! catching up! catching up! four in a day!
(with that big ol 30:00 staring me in the face for the next ep, ouch)

DailyMotion
GO BACK
sorry about the weird dysincing at the end there... - March 25, 2008
0:00 - "Self-Defense" honestly oyster for real
3:05 - "and then there was a hole"
8:51 - skyscraper

YouTube
GO BACK
IP! (continued) - February 1, 2009
6:24 - self. defense.

Yoshi Hole - February 2, 2009

two stages, one about riding an elevator, and one about swimming - February 3, 2009
0:00 - the one about riding an elevator

time for another three observations
1) wait. wait what was that ending in the yt run skyscraper level. is that a glitch with the smw engine? is that an artifact of a different VIP 4 build? why did the warp go to another level? halp

2) Another thing that I haven't seen or thought about for a long while, despite it formerly being a mainstay. How long has it been since one of rao's videos desynced? I totally forgot it even happened, but now that I remember it, it seems like when I watched his videos in years past, that desync was always a risk. And then it's just... not a thing.

3) Am I remembering things wrong, or was there a bit in the previous VIP translation LPs that mentioned how "detteiu" was somehow interpreted as "and then there was [x]"? Kinda funny that it was somehow fixed to "Yoshi" between 2008 and 2009, too. I'm sure there's a story behind that that we might never know.

[AlchemistHohenheim]

Kinda funny that it was somehow fixed to "Yoshi" between 2008 and 2009, too. I'm sure there's a story behind that that we might never know.

The 2008 LP would've been accompanied by a thread on SomethingAwful's Let's Play subforum, so presumably the story is "someone in the thread told Oyster and/or raocow that Detteiu is a derogatory name for Yoshi among Japanese SMW players, and so those level names were updated between LPs".