NEW! SMW2 Yoshi's Island is "difficult"

[Saturn Moriya]

The fuzzies in a new environment sure are interesting. Also, Rao just has to say "anything down this hole?" when playing a yoshi's island hack, if you remember s.n.n.'s kamek's revenge: the let's play.

Anyway, it's been a while since raocow had a project that I could enjoy as much as I am enjoying this. This one is going to the list of my favourites (along with asmt, vip1/4: the youtubes and an untitled story)! Really, this LP is just so fantastic, and it's not just the fuzzies! Something about the commentary just works! Screaming out loud behind my computer!

[Sebby19]

Physics trivia: When those flipping platforms are upside down, flutter jump underneath them, and you will fluttler infinitely. That is, until you phase of through it and touch the spikes, but that takes awhile.

Speaking of DK, there was a prototype of a larger barrel throwing Ukiki.

[Alice]

Physics trivia: When those flipping platforms are upside down, flutter jump underneath them, and you will fluttler infinitely. That is, until you phase of through it and touch the spikes, but that takes awhile.

Speaking of DK, there was a prototype of a larger barrel throwing Ukiki.

That sounds like it could make for an interesting gimmick level.

[Sebby19]

That sounds like it could make for an interesting gimmick level.

Well, yeah, he just played it...

I'm just saying that had Rao known, those low jumps would have been a lot less stressful.

More physics!: If you hit your head on the ceiling while flutter jumping, just keep holding the button, Yoshi will start fluttering again automatically.

[EiresWind]

raocow, this hack starts taking the kid's gloves off with puzzles/hidden items soon so there are a couple of things I really want to impress upon you. One, there is never a single-screen room that doesn't serve at least some purpose, even if it's just for stars/lives. If you can't figure out something immediately obvious about a room don't just assume there's nothing there. Sometimes Yoshis Fan will hide things in what would in a normal stretch of level be unreasonable ways because he assumes you'll recognize that a bonus side room must have a point.

Two, you're going to start seeing more elaborate puzzle segments soon that require a heavier investment of actions to solve correctly, some of which will be necessary for the level itself, not just 100%. I really need to stress that these are almost never poorly designed enough to be trial-and-error affairs where you just throw everything at the wall and hope something sticks. If you see an involved, lengthy bunch of setpieces you will really benefit from going through them and looking at what you're working with one or two times before you actually try setting anything in motion. The solutions are usually very easy to work out as long as you just take in what you're seeing and can plan out how things will go given certain choices.

This sounds like I'm being patronizing for no reason, but I'm not. I realize that LPing live tends to draw a lot of focus to the commentary and less to more subtle aspects of what you're playing, and it's easy to miss things or just kind of hammer at stuff that's meant to be logically approached because usually (especially in a platformer) there's a simple solution. I'm rambling about this specifically now because you're going to run into a blockade when you record 3-3 tomorrow, one I can see really ruining your mood if you spend too long with it, and I know this because everyone I know who's tried the hack does. You're going to have several options in an obvious puzzle room and the last thing you want to do is just try different ones until you finally find the right combination. I fell into this trap myself and that puzzle ate up loads of time and frustration. Once I just went through and took it all in without doing anything to actually work out what was being asked, it passed a lot simpler, and learning that lesson saved tons of pain down the road.

[Rameau's Nephew]

I always hated the monkeys in this game. I hated the way they act as enemies, I hated their stupid grins, I hated the fact that even when you knocked them out, they still retained those stupid grins, as though they somehow enjoyed your enacting righteous vengeance on them. I hated that ridiculously looking swingy chain thing, which is the worst sort of obstacle--an annoying one that also looks stupid, and makes you feel stupid when you get hit by it. I hated those disgusting, half-eaten, saliva-covered melons which they left lying around everywhere. And I hated the fact that I, too, needed to eat those melons to progress. It made me feel nauseous to eat those melons; I always worried I was going to get monkey rabies from them. Can you get monkey rabies from a half-eaten melon? I don't know, but it's not a chance I'd particularly like to take.

[EiresWind]

If you thought you hated monkeys before, wait until an up-and-coming bonus stage forces you to get real damn intimate with their bizarre AIs.

[HiFolksImAdam]

I'm really liking the level design in this hack. It's like many of the older SMW hacks, in that it forces you to get used to the mechanics in a way the original never did, and then makes you solve a bunch of puzzles and platforming challenges with that newfound knowledge. However, YI has a lot more to work with, which means that vanilla is still very interesting.

[Alice]

Well, yeah, he just played it...

I'm just saying that had Rao known, those low jumps would have been a lot less stressful.

More physics!: If you hit your head on the ceiling while flutter jumping, just keep holding the button, Yoshi will start fluttering again automatically.

I meant a level entirely centered around that gimmick.

[Sebby19]

Ukkiki roll call!

-Monkeys that go after Mario!
-Monkeys that run away!
-Monkeys that spit seeds!
-Monkey chain!
-Monkeys that throw cacti/missiles!
-Barrel throwing monkeys!

Did I miss any?

[Rameau's Nephew]

Ah my, I just knew raocow was going to be killing himself for no reason there; it made the whole incident exceedingly painful to watch. Nut concerning the egg fears, though...don't you have two full compliments of eggs in your items, raocow? You're already in World 3, after all, which in this game means approaching the midpoint; I'd imagine there's little need to keep quite jealously hoarding items (doubly so non-star items), especially as you seem to be in a World where Match Cards (easily the most lucrative bonus game by a very substantial margin) comes to predominate.

Also, we're probably supposed to think of that level as an extension of the insufferably snobbish aristocratic amphibian's dwelling, but I like to think that was Blargg's personal fortress. I dare say he's earned it, no?

[EiresWind]

Shit, I forgot to warn you about something in 3-4 and now it's too late. There's a bonus room where you're meant to do a kind of tricky maneuver where you dislodge from a purple guy and then do some good hovering to some side items. Yoshis Fan forgot to make a way back to try again below the spikes so it's a one-shot only deal when it's not meant to be. I was gonna tell you to lay some rewinds there because it's totally cruel past the point of what's intended. I hope that didn't cause a huge amount of stress...

[raocow]

Actually, that section made me downright cancel tomorrow's yoshi video. What the hell AM I supposed to with that stupid purple thing? Like are you seriously supposed to be able to... 'jump out' of the purple guy in midair and then be able to flutter from there? Because I sure can't do that, unless there's some insane precise trick to it.

[EiresWind]

It's not exactly what I'd call precise, but it is a bit obscure just because of how oddball the purple guy's modified controls are. You just dislodge by tapping down and then you're free to do whatever. Yoshi just resumes his own control from wherever you happen to be when you remove yourself from the purple guy. See, this section is intended to be one of those bonus rooms where you play around with lesser used mechanics in experimental ways but it's completely ruined by virtue of you needing to suicide when you screw up. There's supposed to be a tunnel under the water that leads right back to the beginning of the room where you can just keep trying/playing around, but it was excluded from the coding for whatever reason. Yoshis Fan is remedying that for the final release, but, well, there it is.

I can cook up a little demonstration video to try and make the controls on that thing clear, but it might be hard to get across clearly since you're not outright seeing my hands input presses or anything.

[raocow]

I'm just kind of puzzled because when I pressed down while in midair, yoshi would just flutter for like half a second and just.. cannonball downward, if that makes sense.

[EiresWind]

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/kYr6yQZhZ87huR2XFRF

Okay, to make this absolutely crystal. Like I said, when Yoshi sticks to a purple guy, a new control set takes over. This much is obvious. The moment you dislodge from one, the controls immediately snap back to normal. This means whatever you've keyed Yoshi into doing, that's the first thing he's going to do the moment the purple guy leaves him, whether it be ground pounding, falling a certain direction, fluttering, what-have-you.

What I can assume is happening to you is, you're trying to press down to dismount the purple guy while jumping to the right. What this is doing is, since you're already holding the button to hover (the jump button) when you dismount, but also holding right, you're quite literally hovering back onto the purple guy and just falling uselessly into the water with him. You want to do a jump with him while standing still, so that when he falls as Yoshi's controls take over, you do a safe, automatic hover in place as well. You can start doing the usual rigamarole of hovering over a large distance from there. Even if you want to take things super methodically and start moving right slowly/after the first in-place hover, it's a very forgiving distance to travel. You don't need to do super perfect, lose-no-vertical-distance crap.

So to summarize just so there's nothing lost in translation anywhere: take the purple guy toward the end of the spikes, stand still, press and hold jump, press down at the top while continuing to hold jump, and Yoshi will do the rest. Just start hovering toward the right from there.

Again, I'm sorry I forgot to mention this before you kind of had the experience of the level ruined for you. It's not the kind of maneuver you're expected to inherently understand, but the oversight in that room forces that expectation on you when it's not meant to. You're supposed to have no penalty so you can play with the guy and figure out, "Oh, okay, so that approach doesn't work, let's try this next one." ect. I realize I sound like I'm whiteknighting Yoshis Fan here, but I just want to make it clear not to expect a huge slew of problems this gigantic in the future that no one saw fit to mention to you. This section is a significant and recognized problem that I had planned to explain, but er, I'll blame it on exams.

While I have you, though, since you're not doing it blind anymore, it's totally worth your time to take the extra travel and eat all those damn frogs hovering around in the water before you do anything above them. Those tongues are the absolute worst.

[ano0maly]

Pardon, but is this all you're here for?

[EiresWind]

Uh? I lurked here for a good deal of time but kind of forgot about the site for awhile, but I've been watching raocow's LPs for ages. I saw him LPing a hack I happen to really enjoy so it spurred me to start posting, plus I figured I could help since there's some pretty obscure stuff at play here sometimes and I've played with the engine of YI to death and back. Yeah I realize I had originally suggested this thing ages ago and kind of disappeared if you're in my post history for whatever reason, but that was less to do with me going 'oh I'll just wait on this possibility' and more to do with, like I said, lurking but not having much to contribute. Am I overstepping or something?

[Ometeotl]

No, I'd say you're being very helpful.

[morsel/morceau]

I'd like to play a level where you just follow something down through multiple screens without letting it disappear ahead of you. Like a vertical chase.

Actually, on reflection, this sounds annoying and a terrible idea. I hope no such level exists.

[EiresWind]

I get it.

Oh, NOW I get it!

[raocow]

Don't worry Eires, I am grateful for this kind of help, both with your timing, and the way you give this help. You are the ideal helper.

The world would be a better place, if the world was Eires.

[Rameau's Nephew]

The world would be a better place, if the world was Eires.

Not so sure about that these days; they got hit pretty hard by the economic downturn, and you can see that quite visibly in the cities: "For sale" and "To Let" signs everywhere, which is rather a bit depressing. And yet despite this, food prices are still ludicrously high (and you, ah, very much do not get what you pay for). Booze prices even more so, which is particularly problematic considering there's not really all that much to do at night aside from going to the pub (cafės which are open late are quite a rarity indeed--and even those open during the day leave something to be desired, on the whole). Also, the train system isn't particularly good, especially out west (likely owing to all the bog land), though admittedly the buses aren't all bad to make up for it, and it's not like it takes more than a few hours to get anywhere anyway. Furthermore, like the UK (which also shares their ugly, blocky style of plug), but unlike the rest of the world, they've yet to figure out that it is indeed possible to create an electrical outlet which can be safely used in a bathroom or other place with running water without performing the technological equivalent of casting Bolt 3 on one's self, and apparently scoff at the notion that such continental perversions should even be imaginable in one's wildest fantasies.

[Jesuiscontent]

insightful analysis of Eire

Hahahaha seriously man

Are you a writer or something

[Rameau's Nephew]

I'm proud to report that my work has been published on various lavatory walls around the world.