’Mong the various delusional ambitions I’ve had o’er the course o’ my life — & still have, which includes the recent “video game level critic”, which isn’t a career, & still writer & game developer, despite only making tiny updates in both these categories nowadays — when I was a kid I had ambitions o’ becoming a newspaper cartoonist, back when people other than that 1 blogger still read newspaper comics & newspapers in general. For ’bout 2 years in middle school — starting near 20 years ago — I wrote a drew a comic for e’ery day, like newspaper comics had, up to a total o’ 600 comics. Similar to my sprite comics & Pokéme comics, this was impressive in quantity, specially for a middle schooler, but when we see the quality o’ the comics, we can understand how I was able to crank these out. Also, one should not get the misimplication — my spellchecker says that’s not a word, but it’s wrong: I have now made it 1 — that I created a comic e’ery day: more oft I would create these comics in batches, usually several weeks after they s’posedly were published.

As this comic’s title hints, this comic followed the tradition o’ focusing on cute animals ( Garfield was my favorite comic @ the time ). 2 o’ the main trio, Pandora the Maine Coon ( Pandy for short ) & Peta the bunny, were based on pets we had. Since this comic is 20 years ol’, you can probably surmise that these animals aren’t ’live anymo’. Doney wasn’t based on any real animal I had, tho I did later get a turtle I named Doney, who also died, since I was too poor to afford the proper equipment & too busy to take care o’ it. Those who have read my great work, “Doney & Sid & the Epic o’ the Lightbulb Bong”, may recognize that name. After I wrapped up the 3rd “book” — yes, I drew these comics into fake treasury books like real newspaper comics had, included with commentary in red pencil, which I think was inspired by a Dilbert book, back when Dilbert was a comic people actually read for the comic itself, not just a footnote to its creator’s wacky Twitter political antics — I renamed the comic “Doney & Sid” & continued writing comics, only on rare occasions actually drawing comics, for a few years later, all the way up to when I started writing the unreleased novel Boskeopolis, the precursor to Boskeopolis Stories ( which, itself, is already 10 years ol’, horrifyingly ’nough ). As it turns out, Pandora & Peta, as much as I loved them as pets, were like Shermy & Violet in Peanuts. If you’re asking me who those characters are, that’s precisely it: they were so boring that I gradually phased them out o’ the comic & replaced them with characters that could actually inspire jokes. I don’t e’en think I e’er latched onto any consistent personalities for either o’ them.

Possibly the most boring opening to a newspaper comic that wasn’t named Garfield. If I had been familiar with Pearls Before Swine by this point I would’ve opened the comic with something as exciting as an ol’ bingo-playing woman being crushed to death by a ceiling tile ( a’least that’s how that comic opened in e’ery paper by the Bezos Post, if its 1st treasury is accurate ). I think I thought I was being clever introducing all the main characters’ names & tying it to the “punchline”. Eh, there will be far worse comics.

Case in point. The red commentary below it says this was actually the 1st comic I made. That can be the only explanation for why I chose “Where’s the Turtle’s Treat” o’ all lines as the title for the 1st “treasury”, as it’s not a particularly funny punchline. I guess the joke is that their owner is abusive & neglects his turtle. So he’s a foreshadowing o’ my neglect for my real turtle later on in high school.

I included this comic only ’cause o’ the commentary below it, pointing out how “interesting” these early comics were. So e’en then I knew these comics blew.

I looked up “umisaki” in Google Translate, & it tells me it means “seashore”. According to my commentary, I stopped using this alter ego ’cause ’twas too close to the Ninja Turtles. Apparently I was ’fraid Mirage Comics would sue my 12-year-ol’ self.

Being inspired by Garfield, there are a lot o’ “boy, this animal sure likes eating food that would poison them in real life” jokes. ’Cept e’en Garfield was much funnier ’bout it. I will be skipping most o’ them.

The weird thing ’bout this comic is that, being made by a moomer, & not someone o’ the silent generation, like the majority o’ newspaper comics, this comic is a strange, anachronistic mix o’ boomer jokes & video game references you’d find in a webcomic. I don’t think I’ve e’er seen video games @ all in a newspaper comic. That I chose an NES is particularly weird, since I hadn’t e’en played a real NES by this point & the NES was far from my favorite Nintendo system.

O yeah, & this comic’s “punchline” is just an advertisement. That’s probably the most important thing to note — its failure to be funny, despite that being its expressed goal.

1 o’ the things I loved as a kid, & still appreciate, ’bout Garfield are all the different title banners it would have for its Sunday strips. I was always disappointed in other comics that didn’t do something like this & made sure not to make the mistake myself.

I guess I only bothered to colorize the non-Sunday comics for the 1st week — I guess as a reference to the fact that @ that time Garfield had a special version o’ the 1st book that had all its comics colorized.

I figured this comic was me trying to establish Pandora as the “dumb” 1, but looking @ the commentary below I was reminded that Pandora, who I think was bought from a seedy seller, had some obscure disease that made her not want to eat & constantly grumpy. After my mother took her to the vet & had her treated, we were all surprised by how much nicer she became afterward. So this comic, which attributes Pandora’s problem to a serious eating disorder as a joke, in hindsight is mo’ fucked-up than funny. Quite an achievement so early in my career.

I’m pleasantly surprised I found a comic that I still find funny this early. I don’t like the weird Dreamworks smirk Pandora’s doing with her brows in panels 1 & 2 but I love Doney’s sour eye in the 3rd panel.

In true newspaper comic fashion, in order to pad out these daily comics, I just keep repeating the same joke ’bout being absentminded ’bout food for the whole week.

Gulford, believe it or not, would continue up to when I stopped writing Doney & Sid in round 2011. ’Cept in this later edgelord political iteration he would undergo quite a change: he would become a Nazi. This was back in the good ol’ days when fascism was widely held to be a joke & you would ne’er hear a politicians praise Hitler, unlike nowadays where just ’bout e’ery Republican does so to get his 15 minutes o’ fame.

Then jump o’er it, you idiot.

Damn, e’en young me is straight ripping into this comic. He’s right: this comic doesn’t have a joke, other than that 2 cat comic stars happen to be fat.

This comic baffled me & made it seem like these 3 just hate each other now, but I think the joke was that s’posedly Pandora was shaved bald by Peta & this was blamed on Doney ( how she judges Doney did it is unexplained ). The problem, ’course, is that this is meant to be indicated visually, but this is uncolored, & Pandora’s hair is ne’er drawn, so Pandora doesn’t look any different.

Mo’ unfunny advertisements. Man, I was really simping for Nintendo as a kid. This was back when Nintendo’s new releases were actually exciting & not disappointments. ¿Remember how people ragged on Super Mario 64 DS for its shitty controls? Man, I loved the hell out o’ that game when it 1st came out. Li’l did we realize how shitty a rerelease Nintendo would make for that game later on.

Cleo was a cat my grandmother had, who was already ol’ when we moved in, & would die the next year. Cleo would be replaced by the world-famous Patches, who was a baby then, but has recently died of ol’ age ( as had my grandmother a couple years before then, as commemorated in my masterpiece poem, “Taco Time” ), which only reiterates how ol’ these comics are. These facts are far mo’ interesting than this comic, which thinks saying hi to someone with “uh” in the middle is a punchline.

The 2nd actually-funny comic, & only week 6 — ¡& e’en my younger self agrees! I e’en managed to sneak in a visual gag o’ Doney’s shell springing up in the 2nd panel — albeit it’s hard to see, as I was still am a terrible artist then — & a different camera angle on the last panel.

This is some surrealist antipunchline. Also, ’nother advertisement.

Before this comic I’d forgotten ’bout how the squirrels would gather round Peta’s cage. This comic feels less like a comic & mo’ a boring pet blog ’bout all the “quirky” things my family’s pets did.

Our family also had a mouse named Dario, who was my older sister’s, which Pandora would, being a cat, try to grab. Thinking back, I don’t think I e’er made a character for a bird my younger sister had — I have no idea why we had so many pets; I think my mother wanted each o’ my siblings to have a pet ( mine was a fish that died 2 days after I got it, so I got the short shaft ). I guess by that point I realized that these character’s weren’t interesting.

This is the 1st unintentionally funny comic, thanks to the absurdity o’ Peta being possessive o’er grass, which is all o’er the place, & Dario’s “punchline”, which doesn’t connect to the rest o’ the comic @ all.

I’m shocked that this brilliant character, a horseshoe that causes chaos for no reason, didn’t stick round till the end. I think I just picked a horseshoe ’cause e’en my younger self couldn’t fuck up drawing it.

What actually is shocking is that I stretched the nonjoke o’ horseshoe causing pain & suffering to these animals for 2 whole weeks. We will be skipping the rest o’ these, as they’re boring.

Young Mezun won an award for his shocking discovery o’ an e’en less funny version o’ “I Hate Mondays”.

Doney discovers some edgelord from Kiwi Farms, who, presumably, called him a racial slur.

I love my stubborn hatred o’ punchlines by adding this pointless “Got some coffe” — whate’er “coffe” is; I wonder if it tastes like “covfefe” — line, which is like taking the air out o’ the punchline — not to say that the punchline was great in the 1st place.

Funny ’nough, I only use my TV for video games. I don’t think I intended to imply that Doney is taking advantage o’ his newfound discovery o’ television programming in that 2nd comic & that I just forgot the 1st comic’s joke immediately afterward.

Cosmo was a dog my uncle had. Not only is Cosmo dead, my uncle is also dead. The photo from my poem, “Shiny II”, was taken @ his memorial ( which, despite this poem coming out in November, actually took place in June ).

I think that’s s’posed to be the phone Pandora’s chopping up. Which makes no sense, since Cleo doesn’t need the phone to come o’er. Checkmate, liberal.

When I 1st saw that this wacky topic would fill 2 whole weeks o’ material, I was pissed; but then I realized it just meant mo’ content I can skip. Fun fact: we’re now up to the 150’s in terms o’ strip #s. That’s ¼ done. Be glad you didn’t have to read the stuff I skipped.

Look @ that inconsistent characterization: before Peta was so dumb she didn’t realize she had to eat; now she’s making wisecracks @ Doney’s expense.

& now I’m realizing that Doney’s characterization is inconsistent, too. ¿Wasn’t he lazy & dour before ( he certainly is later on )? ¿Why’s he dancing like he’s Snoopy here?

’Stead o’ “Where’s the Turtle’s Treat”, this comic should’ve been called “Where’s the Joke”, ’cause I have no idea what the point o’ Horseshoe Man scheming with the moon is s’posed to be.

These comics, which introduce the character who would later be named Sid, show why Sid stuck round after Pandora & Peta got Lyman’d: these comics are strikingly much better than anything else in this tedious “treasury” — specially that 3rd comic where Sid devours the fuck out o’ the wanted poster, which is hilariously badass.

Man, I can’t believe Cute n’ Cuddly’s already going woke, bro. I can only imagine how well it’d go if someone who “treat[ed] a black unequal” tried to rectify that situation by giving them a chew toy. Actually, that’s not true: that’s how the average edgelord YouTuber “apologizes” after spending a whole hour whining ’bout cancel culture.

Literally just a Garfield comic.

¿Why’s their owner bringing a pet turtle to help him carry his golf club? Man, he really is an abusive owner. E’en I didn’t make my turtle bring me golf clubs — tho that’s mainly ’cause I ne’er played golf.

This whole week o’ comics is just Doney fat-shaming Pandora’s boyfriend. Worse, this is a ripoff o’ a series in Garfield, where Garfield does the same ( ’cept Garfield, being fat himself, has such N-word privileges ). Those jokes, unsurprisingly, were much funnier than these.

Worse, that caps off the 1st book. Well, ’cept that due to the weird formatting o’ this book, I separated all the Sundays from the dailies. Howe’er, I will spare you almost all o’ them, as none o’ them are interesting, & the vast majority just reiterate their week’s themes. But I will leave 1 mo’ with Sid:

My only complaint gainst this comic is that the final panel is bad. If I made it now, I’d end it on the final pause.

I wouldn’t blame anyone who bowed out on reading the next 2 books with me, e’en the incredibly abridged version I have here. The comic does get a’least mo’ interesting — albeit not better — in the next few books.

From the wordsmith, Trump:

“Everybody I speak to says how horrible it is,” he said during an event at the border on Thursday. “Nobody [can] explain to me how allowing millions of people from places unknown, from countries unknown, who don’t speak languages — we have languages coming into our country, we have nobody that even speaks those languages. They are truly foreign languages. Nobody speaks them.

Such deep, meaningful words inspired me to compose the following political ( sprite ) comic:

The 1st real¹ program I e’er remember writing was in what I thought was C++, but was closer to C. The header includes were C-style & none o’ my programs used classes ( though there is a C-style struct ) or STL. The only thing “C++” ’bout this program was that it had a CPP extention & didn’t put “void” in empty parameter lists. Nonetheless, I was confused by these 2, since I called this folder “C++” & remember reading a ( quite terrible )² book on C++ @ the time.

There was no particular inspiration. When I was a teen I’d oft check out wildly different nonfiction books from my local library. ’Twas in a songwriting book that I learned that imperfect rhymes are better than perfect, since they’re generally fresher ( none o’ that moon-june shit ); ’twas in a podcast book I learned ’bout Audacity; ’twas @ the end o’ an ol’ For-Dummies book ’bout YouTube that I got to read the writer pontificate ’bout how to survive in an apocalypse ( I think the For-Dummies books let writers write whatever the hell they wanted in the last few chapters ); & ’twas in Game Programming All in One that I truly 1st learned how to program, round the spring & summer o’ 2009, I think.

I used to have this idea that a simple “enemy chases you & hurts you if it touches you” was the best simple game idea to do 1st. I think I got the idea from reading ’bout Atari founder, Nolan Bushnell’s, 1st program on some ancient computer, which I read ’bout in yet ’nother nonfiction book, The Ultimate History of Video Games, by Steven L. Kent, a hefty 600+ page book that I highly recommend. Thus, this was the gameplay o’ my 1st game, “Nihilly the Nihilist”… or “Nilly”. I was ne’er consistent on that part. Also, I always pronounced it “Nilly” till I finally learned the proper way to pronounce “nihilist”. You were chased by somewhat KKK-looking guys with white bandanas wrapped round their faces & deep black holes for eyes called “Fucksters”. You can see that this was an immensely edgy fox-&-chicken game worthy o’ Edmund McMillen.

That’s ’bout it for art design. I couldn’t comprehend such arcane concepts as programming backgrounds ( I think I was so paranoid ’bout resource use for some reason that I feared redrawing so many graphics every frame or something — I don’t know. I also thought objects were resource intensive & should only be used for “big” things, whatever those were, for some reason. You can probably see that I still thought o’ computers as some magic too powerful to use without discretion ); therefore gameplay was played o’er plain purple. Not sure what that purple was s’posed to represent — other than a way for hackers to figure out how to steal my passwords, ’course. The title screen was just whatever font Allegro decided, apparently, o’er blue background — presumably inspired by ol’ Final Fantasy games. Maneuvering menus was programmed through a bunch o’ lock integers acting as booleans ( & global, to boot, for some reason ) so that 1 button press wouldn’t cascade through all the options.

If you look @ the linked code, you’ll see that I had a strange method o’ indention. Interestingly, I still used the Allman for braces, though conditional statements & function calls would randomly fall out o’ this pattern. Mo’ importantly, you’ll notice that I didn’t quite understand functions very well. I seemed to view them as simply a means o’ dividing game states, & nothing mo’, while blissfully copypasting large chunks o’ code. Also, for some reason I made every function return an int, e’en though none o’ them are used for anything. Each frame o’ each sprite is just it’s own graphic file plopped right into the big “gameplay” function. @ the time, I certainly didn’t know what the “*” next to the “BITMAP” type was for, but I dutifully copied & pasted it there as the book told me to do.

As a larf, I downloaded Allegro 4 & compiled this program. Unsurprisingly, it’s utterly broken. Content stretches far past the end o’ the screen & everything runs ridiculously fast, like a 90s game that comes free with Cap’n Crunch cereal. I guess that’s to be expected when I was too naive to understand the whole complexity o’ framerate maintenance & I test my software on a 169MB-RAM laptop that was mo’ than a decade ol’ e’en back when I had it ( how I miss you, Grape Faithful ). Also, Valgrind told me it had 16 whole bytes o’ leaked memory, which is, oddly, less than an empty program programmed in D, apparently — a’least on my computer.

As part o’ my nostalgic research, I actually tracked down the book I learned from, which is apparently on GitHub. There I learned that the writer said he was writing his code as C++ projects with mostly plain C to keep his code from sucumbing to C++’s object infection, STDs, & colon cancer. I also learned that apparently the GameCube & Game Boy Advance SDKs, or whatever, used GCC. He also hilariously recommends readers to actually learn C before starting, which I didn’t do.

There were a few other programs I made round this time, too. In my language arts class @ the time I had to memorize the work, the chapter, & the speaker of certain quotes from works like Macbeth & The Waste Lands, so I made some quiz program that showed my amazing understanding o’ functions by having each question have its own function — there was no fucking way that version o’ me would understand the complexities o’ passing string pointers & concatenating them with the parts o’ the question that didn’t differ ’tween questions. I think I did figure out how to have tree tiles based on multidimensional arrays in 1 program. But none o’ it went anywhere, & I soon lost interest & didn’t come back to programming till 2014.

View e’en worse code than Boskeopolis Land.

If anyone remembers those Nasrin stories I published here almost a year ago, they now have their own website… sort of. That also has some new stories that I wrote o’er the last year but ne’er bothered to publish like many other things.

& since I’m talking ’bout other stuff I’ve been doing ( ¿isn’t that all this blog is, anyway? ), there’s this short story series I’ve been doing for 5 years whose website I recently ( read: 4 months ago ) overhauled & a microstory series based on random prompts that I started doing daily ‘gain this month.

In my defense, I have been doing things, it’s just that I haven’t been finishing them, which is the trick. For instance, I’ve finished 2 levels for Boskeopolis Land, but am still trying to record “The Minus Touch”, but am failing, ’cause Ubuntu likes randomly making programs stop working, or maybe it’s just linux video-editing programs. I may have to resort to using screenshots, since, to be honest, I hate video-editing, anyway; but this bugs me, since ’twas a pain beating “The Minus Touch” so that I could record a successful run in the 1st place.

Expect 2 editorials ’bout video games before the end o’ the month. I thought last October would be my worst, but 2017 nadirs as always.

This is the comic that most resembles the world I was trying to convey.

— 100% real quote by Pokémon creator, Satoshi Tajiri.

¿You remember all the inconsistent characterization?

& you can’t forget all those smooth panel transitions…

& then there are those setups that don’t make any sense…

¿& how could we live without that wonderful filler?

¿Remember, um… Pikachu & Leafaro being perverts?

We have, um… truly fucked up violence — so fucked-up that e’en Pikachu is appalled — happening to Firara for no reason @ all.

We have hilarious satire, like hilarious tips for beating the gym leaders in the 1st-gen Pokémon games, such as “Next, surge. Use Geodude. Or lick a donkey”. The best joke is that I couldn’t count & forgot either Koga or Sabrina.

& then we have that amazing artwork:

& then we have a comic wherein Leafaro gets addicted to gambling, causing Pikachu to get chased by a mobster Ditto & his rectangular bullets, & leading Pikachu to check himself into a mental asylum, which also has amazing artwork.

Leafaro heartily approves:

¡Order Pokémon Leaf Green & Fire Red Adventures #2 Today!

12 years ago an utterly professional company known by the immensely clever name Pokéme — e’en though their work wasn’t particularly anime-styled & was, you know, comics on static paper & not animation — invented history when they released their 1st classic in January 2015. Today we shall be remembering these underrated gems.

Origins

The idea for the 1st series, Pokémon Leaf Green & Fire Red Adventures”, began 1 cloudy afternoon as the CEO was riding his scooter down the hill, having still not learned how to ride a bike till the tender age o’ infinity. The idea was to actually focus on the cute Pokémon critters & not the filthy flesh creatures, & that the best way to do that would be to have the Pokémon be able to talk real English, since the real anime showed how compelling Pokémon characters became when they voiced such Shakespearean lines as, “¡Pika Pikachu!” & “¡Meeeow! ¿did I not says ‘on topic’ heres? ¿Are you stupid or something?” Also, since I they truly hated the human characters so much @ the time, I they decided it’d be funny if the Pokémon screwed round with the humans.

A Boy and His Pikachu

Natural dialogue in the empty white void.

In the 1st Pokémon games, Pikachus had a patch on their bellies; in the 1st “Pokéme” comic, Pikachu wore gloves.

That makes 1 o’ them.

I don’t remember what Pikachu’s s’posed to be selling Firara. I don’t think a younger me would’ve imagined something gross like 1 o’ Leafaro’s pubes ( plus, as we’ll see later, that’d be a terrible scam gainst Firara ), so my best guess is a particularly hefty staple.

“Idiots: nobody till now figured out how much easier carrying round big sacks o’ money is by just super-gluing it to the back o’ your hand”.

& while we’re leagues below the ship that holds the barrel o’ quality, we might as well meme it up:

Nothing’s weirder than selling stuff on the market. Confirmed canon: Leafaro is a dirty communist.

What you fools may mistake as my weakness @ erasing cheap paper experts recognize as movement lines with the finest o’ detail.

This panel comes right after the previous. ¿Isn’t the pacing o’ this comic just smooth as linoleum?

Smooth as linoleum.

I’m curious myself. Not only is that ring that’s purportedly s’posed to be rope ( apparently transparent rope ) hilariously not tight ’nough to bound her legs in any way ( well, ’less she’s too stupid not to figure out how to move her legs in a li’l closer than as wide out as humanly possible ), said transparent rope isn’t e’en attached to anything, making it not so much “rope” as an antigravity ring. I’ve heard o’ B movies where you see string that’s not s’posed to be there; ¿but how could I fuck up not putting in string that’s s’posed to be there?

Natural smiles.

If you paid attention to what happened a mere second before, you’d know, Leafaro.

Also: super natural smiles.

Forget such triffling nonsense as Pikachu craning his neck awkwardly so that he’s facing the camera but his back is turned to the camera or Leafaro standing straight with his head just ’bove Pikachu’s level, implying that his entire lower body is underground; I forgot that for the longest time as a kid I thought “maybe” was spelled “mabye”. What a fucking tool.

Thanks to Leafaro’s gluttonous & linguistically incorrect theft o’ a scarce uppercase for his hip hope chant for all the spirited pre-teens, Pikachu was left for none @ the start o’ his sentence.

“¿Did you ‘atleast’ remember to draw my neck or Pikachu’s nose or not draw my arm as transparent? No…”

Magic water that makes it impossible to breathe, but makes it easy as air to speak. It must be magic, looking @ that sexy perspective up there.

I couldn’t have e’en bothered to erase the line through the middle o’ the pokéball.

I want to point out how extremely characters’ personalities shift throughout this series’ run: Pikachu starts out as an evil psychopath, Firara starts out cheerful & nice, Leafaro starts out as some high-strung yeller ( essentially Jon from Garfield ), & Torchic, who appears in a later issue, starts out as calm & deadpan ( i.e. boring ). Later, Pikachu’s mo’ a dumb jock who has some moral standards ( later “tortures” are less, “¡Ha, ha, murder!”, Firara’s an asshole, Leafaro’s a spineless wimp, & Torchic’s the one who in all seriousness despises humans & wants to kill them.

You probably think that’s it for the 1st issue. “Bursting with brilliant content, surely it couldn’t have mo’”. But you’d be wrong: there’s still 9 mo’ pages. Which means, no, I won’t be loosening the chains locking you to your chair.

This time we’ll only focus on the best parts, since I don’t have an eternity & there’s mo’ than 20 o’ these issues ( not including the Hamtaro 1s, which are just boring ).

Charmander, the Thief

Surprised I didn’t misspell it, “theif”. It’s remembering all my trip-ups with English’s many, many inconsistencies that leads me to believe that ol’ claim that children learn languages mo’ naturally & easily is bunk.

We start with some truly Marvel-quality animation wherein Firara has some disgustingly misshapen blog for legs.

Also, get used to Leafaro spontaneously losing his hair in random scenes — the illustrious Pokéme always kept their readers guessing.

Don’t be so amazed by her transparent arm, Leafaro: you already proved you could do the same in the previous story.

Laugh.

I’ve noticed I was quite creative with word-spacing back then.

Also, ’course “thee” is spelled the same as “the”; ¿Why wouldn’t it, considering it’s spelled completely different?

Also, for those who care deeply ’bout this series’ rich canon, you may notice that Leafaro’s shown without his hat, e’en though it’s later setup that nobody’s e’er seen under Leafaro’s hat.

Including Leafaro’s hair.

The way he says that, he’s probably s’posed to be referring to the canonical Dark Cave in Johto, not just any dark cave. ’Cept Leafaro & Firara canonically live in Pallet. Pallet is nowhere near Dark Cave, being in a completely different region & such.

“I’d better say this out loud so the cave lights itself up for me”

Charmander’s most devious scheme is his ventriloquist act on Pikachu.

Nobody has e’er thought to blow up someone they didn’t like the history o’ eternity.

So, Pikachu later decides he doesn’t want Firara to blow up, ’cause then he’d have nobody to torture — torturing humans being an immensely funny topic, by the way. So then he does this:

I can only imagine that Pikachu was that same guy who complained ’bout arrows hitting bombs blowing them up in Ocarina of Time.

After all, as the wise critic Anonymous once said eons ago:

What kind of piece of crap explosion is that? Mario can’t make people explode by hitting them with his hammer arrows!

Also, I always hated it when cartoons made a big deal out o’ something killing someone, & then they blow up & they’re fine. ¿Remember all those times Wile-E Cayote tried to “kill” the Road Runner with some explosion, only to hit himself & turn out perfectly fine. ¿What’s the point?

Over the Edge

Just for you.

Hilarious social commentary.

Leafaro transforms into a wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man.

Accurate depiction o’ mental health issues.

Jiggly Puff, the Acomplist

In my defense, there was no hope o’ young me figuring out such a complex word as “accomplice” — & it’s not as if dictionaries existed back then.

Nothing’s better for working in the “black market” than wearing suspicious black shades & a black suit & saying out loud, “Nothing better than doing illicit activies, ¿am I right, everyone?”

Apparently I wasn’t right in the hands, what with how shaky & unreadable the writing is.

Jigglypuff, who finds Pikachu cute in his sexy The Matrix cosplay, agrees to help him with his hilarious scheme o’ having her make Firara fall asleep & draw on her face, ripped straight off from the anime that I hypocritically bashed as a kid.

Only 2 stories later, & Leafaro’s gone from, “How dare you keep indulging in ordinary capitalist behavior” to “So, ¿how many people did you fleece?” Just like Russia.

I, no joke, find the idea o’ pokéballs being these comfy li’l realms with lamps & other amenities endearing.

¿The outcome? Exactly as he crafted the plan.

I remember reading ’mong the mountains o’ writing advice I’ve read that if you give a character’s plans in-story, then it must go wrong, else it’ll look silly & repetitive — otherwise don’t give the plan @ all.

Pikachu vociferously defends his self-image, anticipating Tumblr by a decade or so.

I’m mo’ amused by what a narcissist Pikachu is — & I mean the medical term. Look @ that earnest expression he has on his face & see just how deeply he believes that he ne’er did anything wrong to Firara & deserves only the utmost respect for his prosocial behavior.

In a cave { named cerulean…

I have no idea why there’s a left brace before “named” & “cerulean” — ¿to show they’re connected? I also don’t know why I spontaneously change my story-title capitalization scheme to a Spanish-style — including not capitalizing “Cerulean”, when e’en Spanish titles would.

I’m going to drop kayfabe & completely trash this story, ’cause it’s dumb in too many ways to count — though I’ll try. Here’s it’s entirety.

My notes:

It’s full o’ inside jokes. “Anti-Hamtaro” is a reference to some ol’ sprite comics. “Hamtaro but with inverted graphics”, “Mario but grayscale & 5 times as big”, & “Wart but blue” were some o’ the brilliant character designs I came up with back then. ¿Why does Anti-Hamtaro work for Mewtwo? ’Cause he did in some ol’ sprite comic that’s thankfully disappeared off this planet. ¿Why did he in those ol’ comics? You’d have to go back in time & ask my younger self.

The world blowing up is from the also-high-quality Neglected Characters Comix, which I didn’t e’en make, & is now apparently being run by an Orwellian totalitarian poker machine.

Characters being bored is ne’er a good basis for a story. Having them blow up the world makes it e’en less funny.

Island of the Blastoise

Fuck myself, I forgot how much padding was in this.

Don’t worry: I won’t subject you to this utterly uninteresting waste o’ paper & ’stead just show the title:

1. ’Twas vitally important to advertise the lack o’ humans in this story, so they know that it came after a nuclear war wiped them all off the planet.

2. 1 o’ the s’s is cursive, & nothing else is cursive @ all, including other s’s. @ the time I probably only knew how to write s’s in cursive.

Sorry, the 1 other note I’ll make is that this comic ends with a recap o’ a previous comic so Squirtle can react to said event, e’en though nobody cares. Wonderful plotting.

A Day at the Pokécenter

This comic’s much better without the “The End” panel so you can feel like you’re reading this right next to Family Circus while eating your morning bagels & vodka & crying into your newspaper o’er how empty your life is.

A Dark World

I’m guessing mo’ filler…

¿Does Leafaro not have a Pokédex? Later he’d be established as a huge nerd & 1 o’ the few competent Pokémon trainers in this series where Pokémon rarely fight each other & trainers rarely leave their home town.

Spoiler: the comic ends with Pikachu commiting violence gainst her.

Also, no part o’ this story is ’splained: ¿why was Pikachu in her bag? Clearly this is right up there with the briefcase in Pulp Fiction with brilliant cinematic mysteries.

Ice Cave

Nope, this 1’s a skipper for su —

Hold that. Look @ this:

“Oops: drinking those chemicals made my hand become massive”.

This comic’s just here to make people rethink attacking the original Pokémon games for being ugly.

¡Space grocery bag to the rescue! ( In this production Earth shall be played by a bowl o’ chicken noodle soup. )

A Time for Tranquility

This final story for this issue is mostly more o’ the same. I just want to show off these 2 panels that in full honesty go 1 after the other.

Smooth as linoleum.

I like to think that Leafaro’s awkward digression from Pikachu showing callous indifference to the prospect o’ murdering a li’l girl is his way o’ trying to avoid acknowledging his own role as a passive enabler. This comic teaches us that evil has many forms, which is why award-winning sociologist Phillip Zimbardo included it in The Lucifer Effect — 100% true fact.

I mean, this same comic establishes Pikachu as a pyromaniac.

I also want to add that Leafaro’s idea o’ a “place of tranquility” is just @ the foot o’ an ordinary tree in a place so plain, there isn’t e’en a horizon. To be fair, Leafaro clearly needed a break from all the… not training & not leaving his hometown that he does.

A good summary for this whole series.

If I torture you with more o’ these, I’ll try to be mo’ selective. There’s too much silly stuff to waste time on fucking juggling Anti-Hamtaro.

World J: The Warped Void

Music: “Main Menu”, WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$!

“It’s just an empty void”. What a great ’scuse to not put any effort into map graphics, like I did throughout this whole hack. The only interesting part is how a lot o’ the level tiles are ?s, making the player figure out how many exits each level has.

I do really like this map song, though.

Easiest Level Ever

Music: “Green Greens”, ’bout every Kirby game

Laziest, too.

Originally this spot held “Let’s Abuse Yoshi”, a level much mo’ clever & fun. I think I replaced it ’cause a few parts were janky — specifically a part where you had to get through a corridor clogged by Chargin’ Chucks using Yoshi’s extra hit point & retrieve him ’fore he goes past the next Chuck. I shouldn’t have; jankiness is better than boring, ’specially for the last world.

• P-Switch level count: 30 / 50
• Levels with mo’ than 1 switch: 15
• Levels with mo’ than 1 o’ the same switch: 8

Stratus Travesty

Music: “Green Greens”, ’bout every Kirby game

Message box: best way to deal with flaws isn’t to fix them, but to point them out so people know I made their experience less enjoyable on purpose & hate me e’en mo’.

See, the trick ’bout the end is that you have to not get hit with the feather the level gives you or you can’t fly & are screwed.

There’s nothing interesting to say ’bout this level. It’s mere OK.

• P-Switch level count: 30 / 51
• Levels with mo’ than 1 switch: 15
• Levels with mo’ than 1 o’ the same switch: 8

Goomba Path

Music: “Enemy Battle”, Super Mario All-Stars: Super Mario Bros. 3 ( Same )

I don’t know what inspired it, but for some reason this world has a bunch o’ levels revolving round a certain enemy. This level focuses on Goombas & resources I ripped off from Super Mario Bros. 3, the 2nd o’ which is a tradition that continues to today in the bosom o’ Boskeopolis Land.

In particular, the “boss” rooms @ the end are a waste o’ time: I just copypastaed so many Goombas that the sprite engine slows to slime, ’cause repetition & slowness are always fun.

I seemed to like puzzles wherein you have to make small jumps under flat platforms to avoid getting stuck in a higher place & having to go back to go back down. I apologize for that.

In my defense, some o’ the running & jumping sections in the low corridors actually looked neat if you knew when to jump. But its been years since then & I’ve lost all my Super Mario World skills & memory for when to jump, so I make it look like shit.

• P-Switch level count: 30 / 52
• Levels with mo’ than 1 switch: 15
• Levels with mo’ than 1 o’ the same switch: 8

Jungle of the Ninji

Music: “Overworld”, New Super Mario Bros.

Replace “Goomba” with “Ninji” & Super Mario Bros. 3 with Super Mario Bros. 2.

¿Did I truly need to make this key require Yoshi, & then force you to ditch him & bring the key all the way to the end? Great: every time I died, I had to go all ’cross the map to get ’nother. ’Nother reason cutting “Let’s Torture Yoshi” was a bad idea.

’Specially since that waterfall jump to the lower mushroom is bullshit. I think I remember adding that midpoint specifically to make that jump less bullshit. ’Cept it’s still bullshit — ’specially for the secret exit — & I should’ve just made it less bullshit. That “Ho, ho, don’t go to high or you have to go back & try ’gain” shit got ol’.

The Ninji “boss” is the dumbest, most trivial fight e’er. & this was a hack wherein a “boss” was a single Goomba as a joke.

• P-Switch level count: 31 / 53
• Levels with mo’ than 1 switch: 15
• Levels with mo’ than 1 o’ the same switch: 8

Killer’s Fun House

Music: “Shy Guy’s Toy Box”, Paper Mario

The strangest time to insist on using Bullet Bill’s Japanese name. I guess I thought it sounded mo’ ironic.

A’least this level is short ’nough to not get annoying. If you only have 1 trick or 2, you should keep your level to 1 trick or 2.

¿What does a fun house with Alfred Chicken & Wario Land 4 bonus tiles have to do with Bullet Bills?

I think this was 1 out o’ quite a few levels wherein I discovered that making you drag the P-switch back to the start was ridiculous, so I made the switch cause some blocks to make the race back after hitting the switch easier. I think it’s better that way.

The saddest part is that this Warped Void enemy “boss” is the best ’mong them — & it’s puzzle is just going in a loop.

• P-Switch level count: 32 / 54
• Levels with mo’ than 1 switch: 16
• Levels with mo’ than 1 o’ the same switch: 9

Lunaria

Music: “Title Theme”, SimCity ( SNES )

This was originally going to be the 1st level o’ the scrapped space world, the remnants o’ which can be seen in the map on the 1st post. The other planned levels, scrapped ’cause they sucked unbelievably, were a level where you had to swim through thin shafts ’tween walls o’ lava with a glowing rocky background called “Helios”, a lablike level with lots o’ shitty layer-2 shenanegans involving lava walls repainted green called “Cryogian”, whatever that’s s’posed to mean, & what would’ve been a haunted, darker-tinted moon level if I’d been able to think o’ mo’ than a straight path with a boo here & there called “Hades”.

I don’t know why I e’en bothered to keep “Lunaria”, since it sucks too — just not as hard as the others. The only original idea was having the secret exit in the Yoshi-wings section, & e’en that had the hitbox jank o’ totally-not-munchers & Yoshi caused by the programmers only intending for them to be used on the ground & not realizing that hacky rom hackers would want to spread them everywhere like weeds. Precise jumps o’er totally-not-munchers is hardly new, nor are Lotus Plants & Baseball Charlies, which are all o’er this world. This is, I believe, the only level in this hack that uses Monty Mole, simply ’cause I hadn’t thought to use them till then ( it’s funny how I took the time to look up patches & custom blocks on SMW Central for new gimmicks, but neglected a bunch o’ sprites, blocks, & general features already in the vanilla game ); but I don’t do anything with them, ¿so who cares?

Extra note: as noted ’bove, this level uses the title screen music from SimCity ( ’twas ’tween that & “The Moon” from Duck Tales; I figured this was the less cliché choice ). I was thinking how I should’ve chosen the SimCity menu theme for the title screen o’ this game ’stead o’ that metal Super Mario Bros. remix popularized by ASMT. It’s not as if the title screen needs to long a song, anyway. In my defense, I chose to use that song before that hack came out ( though the hack that rendition was actually made for, Cool or Cruel, which didn’t get nearly as much attention, already was ).

• P-Switch level count: 32 / 55
• Levels with mo’ than 1 switch: 16
• Levels with mo’ than 1 o’ the same switch: 9

Autumn Hills

Music: “Enemy Battle”, Super Mario All-Stars: Super Mario Bros. 3 ( Same )

Actually, you’d probably see brown grass in summer mo’ than autumn.

Speaking o’ neglected sprites, here’s those Chocolate Island dinos, used nowhere else. ( To be fair, ¿didn’t the real Super Mario World only use them in 2 levels? )

This level bugs me, ’cause its gimmick is ruined by its placement. Its gimmick is that, ’less you’re great with the cape, you need a blue Yoshi to get through, as there’s only a Yellow Koopa… but you’re guaranteed to have a blue Yoshi to get here ’cause the route to here is that Yoshi-wings secret exit that turns Yoshi blue.

This is also why my hack in general has so many bugs: I refused to make limiting choices, like making Yoshis & capes not stay with you after levels, which many hack makers recommend: I wanted to exploit as many stupid weird things as possible, including having a level wherein you needed to get a Yoshi from a totally different level.

• P-Switch level count: 32 / 56
• Levels with mo’ than 1 switch: 16
• Levels with mo’ than 1 o’ the same switch: 9

Attic Antics

Music: “No Eating Crackers in the Theater”, Mother 3 / “Shy Guy’s Toy Box”, Paper Mario

That’s some Rareware level naming there.

Didn’t know ’bout this horrendous game-breaking glitch with the midpoint. For those who don’t know, Super Mario World can easily kill you don’t put the camera’s vertical starting position near where you start. This is a common glitch in Super Mario World hacking. Now with a greater understand o’ game development & just looking @ how you die, I’d guess it’s not caused just by the camera not being where you are but probably caused by your character or the blocks below them not having collision detection while offscreen, causing your character to fall into the ground; when the camera catches up to them they’re already embedded in the ground. Now that they’re on-camera, collision detection resumes; but since you’re inside the ground, the game kills you, as it usually does when you’re smashed in solid blocks.

The 1st half o’ this level’s quite lame. The Piranha Plant section’s nothing new; & the part after that is full o’ filler & enemies that can fall on your head from offscreen. I love how I bothered to put all those blocks on the street in that middle area in some futile attempt to prevent flying, when you can easily fly from the very beginning & fly o’er the whole room.

I actually didn’t know ’bout the trick o’ jumping off Yoshi to reach the goal to skip the entire 2nd room all throughout development; I only learned ’bout it while watching a Let’s Play o’ this hack.

The 2nd portion’s all right. I like the idea o’ using grabbable items to reach a vine — I just wish I did mo’ with it. Also, ¿why’s there a vine in an attic? ¿Mold? ¿Why are some o’ the walls infested with Munchers? Obviously ’cause everything else in Dinosaur World is.

• P-Switch level count: 32 / 57
• Levels with mo’ than 1 switch: 16
• Levels with mo’ than 1 o’ the same switch: 9

Also, while we leave the mainland for good, I need to finally address some weird glitch wherein Luigi’s palette delays changing when returning to the o’erworld from a dark level…

Unforunately, the only way I can address it is with a silly meme:

Golden Bomb Mines

Music: “Mt. Moon”, Pokémon Red & Blue Versions

I remember liking this level a lot near the end o’ development, e’en though I didn’t remember much ’bout actually developing it. There was just something ’bout the trickiness o’ those slopes.

Maybe I was in a bad mood, — not helped by how late this update was coming — but I was less enamored this time. Those slopes seem less “tricky” now & mo’ “inconsistent”.

That said, I’d still call this level better than what we’ve seen so far in this world. In fact, it’s ironic that I was in an impatient mood while recording these next few videos, as looking back, these are some o’ the strongest levels.

This level does have cruft, though. ¿What’s the point o’ the water section? ¿To show off that it’s gold?

& ’course, we have this “boss” which is the same as the Goomba “boss”, but e’en less tricky, since it’s just straight right ’stead o’ going upward.

• P-Switch level count: 32 / 58
• Levels with mo’ than 1 switch: 16
• Levels with mo’ than 1 o’ the same switch: 9

Twinkle Twinkle

Music: “Casino Night Zone”, Sonic the Hedgehog 2

Well, maybe not that strong…

The 1st half’s solid. I remember when late in development I considered that jump off the Yellow Koopas to be the hardest jump in the game ( now we see that that clearly goes to that 1st slope jump in “Golden Bomb Mines” ).

The 2nd half, though. “¿Wouldn’t it be delightful if you had to slowly bounce through small passageways walled in all directions by bouncy blocks like the padding o’ a mental ward?” Actually, I do like how those Koopas always find a way to bounce up into that powerup area you’d think would be safe. I ’specially like how I didn’t design that on purpose @ all — I was as delightfully surprised when I ran into it back when I was developing this.

Something that had ne’er happened to me till now: not getting all the coins on that brown block wall. You can see the point where Luigi matches my expression: freezing in stoic horror as my mind slowly reeled the possibility that I’d have to start all o’er. But, to my own surprise, I was able to fly through.

The rest is just filler meant to be funnier mo’ than fun — just like “Death Desert”. Particular example: the brown blocks @ the end that are s’posed to make you go, “Fuck, ¡I missed a P-switch? Better go all the way back…” only for the solution to be mo’ hidden blocks.

& as an extra hilarious joke, Luigi falls off the ending platform during the victory march, but doesn’t quite reach the bottom ( which would kill him & steal ’way his victory in what is popularly called a “kaizo trap” after an infamous level in that infamous hack ) before the level ends. That was a big gimmick o’ this hack: teasing kaizo without actually giving it, which was probably fresher in a time when kaizo hacks were still the standard, like… maybe the 1st year o’ this hack’s development.

• P-Switch level count: 33 / 59
• Levels with mo’ than 1 switch: 16
• Levels with mo’ than 1 o’ the same switch: 9

Persistence of Time

Music: “Peanut Plain”, Kirby Super Star

Here’s where I was inconsistent: ¿remember how I just recently said I refused to limit myself to keeping Yoshi out o’ levels he clearly didn’t belong ( like “Attic Antics” )? & yet I refused to apply the patch that allowed you to have mo’ than 19 characters per name ( well, without smushing letter together in hardcoded graphics, like the original Super Mario World did for “Forest of Illusions”’s names ), e’en though I wanted longer names. Here’s an example wherein I not only wanted it to have the word “the” & have it be “Persistence of Memory”, which is what the Dali painting’s actually called, but wanted it to be in its original Spanish, “La persistència de la memòria”, which would’ve been e’en harder to fit.

History repeats itself as I procrastinate allowing Boskeopolis Land to have levels that go beyond 1 line…

The note ’bout there being 1 o’ each color Yoshi is interesting ( not the least the fact that it’s wrong: you can also get a Blue Yoshi from that wings section o’ “Lunaria” ): you can’t 100% the game without finding the Yellow & Blue Yoshis, so they’re not all that secret. Only the Red Yoshi, which I showed off up ’bove the beginning o’ the 1st level, is truly secret.

Spreaking o’ the Yoshi section, its layout is odd. There’s just ’nough Koopas to feed Yoshi & leave 1 mo’. Knowing me, you’d think I’d leave just ’nough with none extra. The blocks are also setup so that it’s as awkward as possible to feed Yoshi, which I guess was the point, since I for some reason thought “awkward” meant “challenging”. ’Course it wouldn’t be LOTFS level without that awkward design leading to some hilarious glitches that kill you instantly. LOTFS teases you with intentional kaizo bullshit but doesn’t deliver, but does deliver kaizo bullshit by pure accident.

“HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME” is a reference to a line spoken a few times from a poem by T.S. Eliot called “The Wasteland”, a famous example o’ modernist poetry ’mong the literati. Despite said popularity with serious literati, the all-caps & lack o’ punctuation are true to the poem — ’cept LOTFS actually adds punctuation: the original line said “ITS”, not “IT’S”. ’Cause o’ this, I was always surprised “HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME” ne’er became a meme.

In the earlier 2012 version o’ this hack, this level had a blander background & “Green Greens” music. I always wanted this level to have “Gourmet Race”, what with the focus on speed, but there was no rendition on SMW Central & I was too incompetent to make any decent renditions, as my attempt @ “Sea Turtle Rock” showed. I later found “Peanut Plains” & settled for that, since ’twas close & was a’least mo’ fast-paced than “Green Greens”.

I think this is 1 o’ my better-designed levels. It’s full o’ things that can delay you; but if you’re clever, you can speed them up. For instance, you can actually jump o’er the Pokeys with precise jumps, skipping the delay o’ eating them, & you can skip building some o’ the bridge o’er the Lotus Plant if you know that you can run o’er block-wide gaps by holding the jump button.

2 flaws: I remember the goal being higher up, requiring you to hop off flying Koopas to reach it. Maybe I thought that was too hard, but I think it makes for better design. I also think the time’s not nearly tight ’nough: I wasn’t e’en going all that fast & I made it to the end with 50 whole seconds left. I think I wanted to time it so that the timer kept reaching 100 seconds so the song would keep getting faster & faster, thanks to the famous Funky glitch.

• P-Switch level count: 33 / 60
• Levels with mo’ than 1 switch: 16
• Levels with mo’ than 1 o’ the same switch: 9

Touchdown

Music: “Flower Garden”, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island

The trick with this level was that I simply didn’t add a normal exit & set the normal exit to have no event. Thus, while most levels have no secret exits, this is the only level in this hack to have only a “secret exit”.

This was ’nother level I always liked, though it has its problems, too. That message box in the middle with the reset pipe is there ’cause some glitch I couldn’t figure out would sometimes cause the vine block to not make a vine when hit by the Rainbow Koopa, forcing you to warp to refresh the map.

There’s something to be said ’bout the oddness o’ this level’s layout. It’s s’posed to be a long stretch o’ a football field, only to be full o’ pipes. I guess that was the point. Strangely, despite this, the level does stay rather focused on the theme o’ Chargin’ Chucks & pipes & Piranha Plants. Then ’gain, ¿doesn’t most o’ this hack focus on those enemies?

¿Is that Muncher jump in the middle that I kept getting hit by e’en possible to make if big? I couldn’t do it @ all in my recent attempts.

• P-Switch level count: 33 / 61
• Levels with mo’ than 1 switch: 16
• Levels with mo’ than 1 o’ the same switch: 9

Wonka Factory

Music: “Fear Factory”, Donkey Kong Country

After 2 strong levels we get a meh level. Clearly the aesthetics & the underutilized mechanics o’ conveyor belts & Li’l Sparkys masquerading as Super Mario Bros. 2 Sparks were s’posed to carry this level. Most o’ the 1st room is easily-dodged enemies on conveyor belts, with the only difficulty being the silly 1-tile conveyor jumps, & most o’ the 2nd room are easily-dodged Thwomps & Ball-’n-Chains, with the conveyor belts not doing much to change anything. Finally there’s ’nother autoscroller with unpredictable Podobos. The most interesting part is Wendy being a boss ( ¿Why didn’t I call this “Wendy’s Factory”? ¿Did I think nobody would get the reference or did I want her to be a surprise? ), marred by a wonky camera.

• P-Switch level count: 33 / 62
• Levels with mo’ than 1 switch: 16
• Levels with mo’ than 1 o’ the same switch: 9

@ this point we’ve reached 84 exits ( & 62 levels, oddly, which means I must’ve miscounted somewhere, ’cause I remember there being only 60 levels ). That leaves 1 mo’: the aptly-named “The Last Levels”. As the plural “levels” indicates, it’s a big exit, which I’ll go into next update.

We’re going to skip the world intros, since we’ll be jumping round rather erratically & they’re getting ol’.

Bootropolis ( revisited )

Music: “Shy Guy’s Toy Box”, Paper Mario

Probably should’ve done this back when I did the regular exit, but forgot that its “prize” was so inconsequential. You’ll see what I thought it unlocked in the next update.

Something I don’t show in this video: you don’t need to go to the hassle o’ getting the silver P if you already know where the doorway is; it works whether you hit it or not. The silver P just reveals it. Probably should’ve let myself die for a ’scuse to demonstrate that.

The graphics for the attic area are from Garfield & his 9 Lives for the GBA, which was surprisingly a decent game with nice graphics & music, unlock its bretheren Garfield: the Search for Pooky, which is shit — e’en shittier than this hack.

’Course, I can’t talk ’bout this level without mentioning the infamous game-breaking glitch that probably was the prime reason this hack wasn’t accepted into SMW Central 1 o’ the 2 times I tried. I don’t know how it happened, but the top block o’ those move-throughable blocks ’bove that ladder was solid ’stead o’ a ladder, making it impossible to get the golden mushroom, & thus impossible to get this exit & 100% the game. Considering how oft I tested this game, I have no idea how that flaw made it in, but somehow it did.

Though you were expected to use the shell o’ 1 o’ the yellow Koopas, as I show, to hit the turn block so you can get back o’er the wall, you can just throw the key @ it. This was unintentional, but is a nice way to keep players from accidentally screwing themselves o’er by destroying both shells.

• P-Switch level count: 29 / 48
• Levels with mo’ than 1 switch: 14
• Levels with mo’ than 1 o’ the same switch: 8

Shroom of Streets

Music: “Dark Cave”, Pokémon Gold, Silver, & Crystal

& our message is just a hilarious 4th-wall-breaking joke ’bout everything wrong with these shrooms. Deleting my save file & filling my computer with viruses would’ve been a better reward.

The 50s & 60s ( revisited )

Music: “Hippie Battle”, Earthbound Beginnings

Finally we see where the “60s” part comes in.

While the palette gimmick feels cheap, I feel I did rather cleverly use it by forcing the player to puzzle out where the blue Koopa is. ’Course, as the end o’ the video shows, the player can just fly straight up @ the start & skip mo’ than half the level; & I could empathize, size that 1st part is annoying, ’specially if you fuck up in such embarassing ways as I did. I e’en feel bad ’bout having to raise the P-switch count, since the use o’ both P-switches is actually clever in psychedelic land. Then ’gain, if I didn’t use so many switches in superfluous ways, this wouldn’t be a problem, so I don’t feel bad, ne’ermind.

I read some people complain ’bout the palette in the 2nd area somehow being “godawful torture to the eye” or something. Yeah, making the gimmick o’ a level just a different palette, ’specially 1 as lazy & ugly as “invert all the colors” is, well, lazy. This is from the same person who, when much younger & making awful sprite comics ’stead o’ awful rom hacks, thought “Mario & Luigi with inverted colors” & “Mario in grayscale & 5 times as big” were compelling character designs.

• P-Switch level count: 30 / 48
• Levels with mo’ than 1 switch: 15
• Levels with mo’ than 1 o’ the same switch: 8

Lab of Secrets

Music: “Revenge of Meta Knight – Halbert”, Kirby Super Star

Those lava sections are completely pointless. Due to the recording setup I have ( using Zsnes movies for recording, believe it or not ) I couldn’t show me turning off layer 3; but if I could, it’d show you that there are no fireballs anywhere nearby — they’re all way up ’bove the screen. The idea was that this was s’posed to be sort o’ a troll, sort o’ what I called @ the time “psychological challenge”, or something. Basically, it’s s’posed to make players worry ’bout cheap hits only to realize that they’re perfectly safe. It’s dumb & wastes time on subsequent attempts.

Which is relevant, ’cause I die all the time in that 2nd section, as shown. I actually expected to die many mo’ times, but I think I found a kind o’ rhythm to it that I didn’t know ’bout before. This was a case wherein I struggled ’tween what I thought was a clever & unused gimmick & my worries that ’twas too cumbersome & hard & not worth keeping. However, looking @ other playthroughs, it didn’t seem as if other players had much trouble with it.

What truly shocked me, though, was the section that came after it, which must be so late in development that I forgot ’bout it. I remember this level having you go through each o’ the previous lab bosses ’tween each room & having trivially easy ice section followed by some buggy sewer room wherein you bounce o’ breaking blocks or something, which is easy to screw yourself out o’ any chance o’ victory, & which I did see other players get annoyed with. Since neither o’ these rooms were any good, nor were any o’ the bosses save for 1, who was not good ’nough to fight ’gain, the replacement was definitely a good idea.

Though I die a lot, I don’t think this section is bad. I’m surprised I hadn’t done such an obvious gimmick as that till then, & it’s certainly 1 o’ the few all right layer-2 parts. It doesn’t o’erstay its welcome a’least. I can’t say my problems with this level were due to anything but my incompetence.

The Thwomp boss is all right — not much o’ a boss, but then none o’ the Super Meat Boy bosses were, either. I just don’t like how Thwomps are used in a 2nd boss. Since I couldn’t get the Custom Boss Sprite @ SMW Central to not make my rom shit its pants in Zsnes & didn’t want to reuse the boring Koopa Kid fights, I didn’t have many tools for making bosses but regular enemies.

• P-Switch level count: 30 / 49
• Levels with mo’ than 1 switch: 15
• Levels with mo’ than 1 o’ the same switch: 8

& with that we finally enter the true final world o’ the game: the bonus “Warped Void”.

World E: Deserted Skies

Lab of the Mirage ( revisited )

Music: “Revenge of Meta Knight – Halbert”, Kirby Super Star

Yes, e’en this world’s lab’s secret exit involves flying.

The reason for my clumsy playing is that I just started using a real SNES controller & was getting used to it.

• P-Switch level count: 27 / 45
• Levels with mo’ than 1 switch: 13
• Levels with mo’ than 1 o’ the same switch: 8

World I: Bowser’s Secret Sea

I was a’least wise ’nough to hide the water levels ’way in a secret world that doesn’t give you anything for beating it.

Sea of Secrets

Music: “Underwater Tunnels”, Wario Land II

Nice awkward tiling o’ the bottom row o’ the background.

Not much to say ’bout this level. It’s not terrible — it’s just not terribly creative. It’s just a bunch o’ places where you need to dodge Urchins & swim round Electros. As the bonus ending shows, this level does reward you for noticing alternate routes.

Speaking o’ which, that brings up a point that annoys me: while I play rather clumsily in this video, when I was playing up to the part o’ the 2nd route, I did so well & smoothly, making early cycles with Urchins & squeezing through Electros with minimal movement. But I didn’t start recording till I got to just before the secret path, since it’s not as if I expected that to happen.

Also, that the “multiple paths, right path is 2nd-to-last” is a “puzzle” I’ve done a’least 1 other time, & probably mo’. It’s hilarious ’cause it wastes a li’l bit o’ the player’s time, & nothing else. Actually, to be fair, if the answer is this consistent for a few times, it does make for an OK puzzle in terms o’ challenging players to learn & remember. I did remember it ’cause it’s so common it’s solidified in my mind; I only intentionally took the last path to show it off.

The lack o’ P-switches & my foggy memory leads me to believe this was extensively remade late in development.

• P-Switch level count: 27 / 46
• Levels with mo’ than 1 switch: 13
• Levels with mo’ than 1 o’ the same switch: 8

S.S. Devil Koopa

Music: “Jib Jib”, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest

For some reason I reference a lot o’ Japanese Mario names like Teresa ( Japanese name for Boo ) & “Devil Koopa”, which is actually what Super Mario World calls Bowser @ some point. I think I found it exotic, like how I always found the inaccurately translated enemy names in Super Mario RPG exotic.

The silver P-switch is a nice reward for exploring. I didn’t e’en know Boos turned to silver coins till I made this level. I also like how the dynamic o’ the 1st room changes if you take the key with you. As you can see, I couldn’t control myself worth shit & careened into every obstacle I could — but still didn’t die thanks to this level babying me & giving me plenty o’ powerups. The only problem is that savvy players would probably think to take the silver P-switch with them only to ne’er find a place they need it — ’nother flaw caused by my o’eruse o’ P-switch puzzles.

Speaking o’ which, the 2nd area has a needless blue switch, presumably to force the player to explore the left area on the top deck, where they can find a bunch o’ empty space & a single hopping Koopa.

That’s OK, ’cause it turns out my memory was wrong: I thought the ship went straight down, preventing you from swimming under everything, @ certain points, like just after the keyhole alcove. Turns out I changed that & allow you to straight swim past everything. Guess that was to give the player a back-up in case they stupidly waste the P-switch without getting rid o’ the brown blocks.

I have no idea why Luigi’s fiery palette is messed up in this area. ¿Does he e’en have a different palette scheme in this area? Other than the fiery palette being his normal palette, everything else is the same. ¿Why does this exist?

You’ll also notice the water surface tiles choppily jutting into each other when the open surface meets the surface in front o’ the ship. No matter how much I tried, I could ne’er fix that problem. I don’t think I could e’er figure out the frame speed o’ the original surface.

& our reward for this secret exit is… a warp to the middle o’ the forest for some reason. Makes me wonder if this route would make for better speedrunning — as if anyone would be masochistic ’nough to speedrun this gem.

• P-Switch level count: 28 / 47
• Levels with mo’ than 1 switch: 14
• Levels with mo’ than 1 o’ the same switch: 8

Sea of Classics

Music: “Underwater Theme”, Super Mario All-Stars ( Super Mario Bros. ) ( Same )

Now we get some truly shitty level design: an obnoxious maze with cliché references to the original Super Mario Bros., glitchy turn-block graphics, & a P-switch. I love how I didn’t e’en go all the way with the classic references: the music is from All-Stars & the end has the Super Mario World goal post, not the flagpole. It’s the only level with the goal post, too, so that means that if one’s stupid ’nough, they could use this level to get the bonus level that otherwise is defacto edited out. I’d be interested to see how glitched that looks.

Also, the outlines on everything is wrong: it’s dark gray when the original Super Mario Bros. obviously used pure black.

The 1 interesting point ’bout this level is that it’s while copying the graphics from Super Mario Bros. that I learned that the clouds & bushes are the same graphics, just with different palettes.

• P-Switch level count: 29 / 48
• Levels with mo’ than 1 switch: 14
• Levels with mo’ than 1 o’ the same switch: 8

Shroom of Seas

Music: “Underwater Theme”, Super Mario All-Stars ( Super Mario Bros. ) ( Same )

¿Do I have déjà vu or did I not also see this message somewhere else? Considering how many messages are just stupid jokes, it amazes me that I couldn’t come up with ’nough messages that I had to stoop to repetition twice. Truly these were here just to give me a reason to have mo’ multiple exits, since it’s not as if I could’ve made level layouts mo’ creative than a straight line to the end. I mean, we already saw what kind o’ bizarre shit I come up with when I don’t just use shrooms with that warp star to the middle o’ a forest shit.

I want to emphasize: your reward for beating this secret world is a fucking shroom. A fucking shroom with a message that’s a copy o’ ’nother & randomized item blocks that don’t e’en seem to work & aren’t worth e’en 10 coins.

Next update will be e’en shorter, & hopefully mo’ prompt, since it’ll just be a li’l clean-up & build-up to the true final world.