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Another day, another random obscure hack no one's likely to have ever heard of. Opposite Mario, as the name implies, is an interesting Japanese hack. There is no custom music, there are no custom sprites, blocks or ASM. And the graphics used, are rather tasteful, in that they're kept as close to Vanilla, albeit in a more cute style, as...

Sadly, some people still don't learn. Despite New Super Mario Bros Wii and Super Mario Galaxy 2 being deliberately designed to be as much of a challenge as possible for both old and new players, there have still been those accusing Nintendo of dumbing the game down, and using it as an example that Donkey Kong Country Returns will somehow be...

Usually, a remake of a game doesn't add a whole lot. A few levels here, some playable characters or a new boss usually. But what of when a game has mainly music found in the original, but adds a few new tunes here and there? Well, that's what this list is for.

1. Donkey Kong Country 3 GBA: Arich's Theme...

With one of the obvious ones being that for a game with fairly mediocre level design, they sure are taking forever for no real reason. Still, I'll get to that in a minute, because the latest VIP 5 demo seems to be near enough the finished game bar a world, complete with Boon graphics and title screen.

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Let's face it, Mario adaptations have always been hit and miss. Mainly miss, considering the movie, the cartoon series and the anime series, but that's what you get when you try to adapt something that really doesn't have a plot to speak of to any kind of non interactive medium.

But some are worse than others, and the ones listed...

As a general pattern, it seems every main Mario game seems to take Mario to a new location, often bigger, better and far more interesting than the last, and with a new fancy word in the title. Think about it.

He started in Super Mario Bros in the Mushroom Kingdom. One country, one invasion, standard bad guy role for Bowser.

Then, Mario...

And for those who don't like reading, the whole next article can be nicely summed up as 'vary the series up, making it more difficult'. Because you see, if there was any one problem the series has had for too long, it's the lack of variation, the rather strictly adhered to formula and the general decline of any real... purpose...

And that believe it or not, with some actual hard work and massive changes made, could actually be made into fairly decent Legend of Zelda games.

Now, this is not going to be a popular idea. Them being the worst monstrosities known to mankind are basically almost a fact on par with the general disdain of the Mario movie and the idea that nothing...

Ah yes, Mario Fantasy. Everyone knows of Mior/Romi's hack, right? It's the one with the oft seen on Youtube Marx battle, a bunch of custom sprites from Yoshi's Island, Squawks and Toxic Tower, right? Yes it is, except there are many more unseen demos, and more interestingly, a bunch of levels you'd never know existed without...

As we all know, Brutal Mario is not a good example of a hack level design wise. It's boring, it's extremely linear and quite honestly, it's almost like a really flash tech demo for the engine rather than a game you could play (think the below Yoshi's Story GBA demo and you've pretty much got what Brutal Mario is like):

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Huh? Isn't this blog about reviewing games and Mario hacks you may ask? Well, yes, but this next Super Mario World hack, actually uses the name 'Hack'. Just that. It's by Jacob, a user on SMW Central who made another good hack I enjoyed in the past, and since this is a neat little ASM/gimmick hack, I thought I'd give it a...

As I've said plenty of times, there are quite a few bad ideas in the Mario series. Not that this stops me being a fan, but each sub series really has a few issues that when solved would make it so much better. This article is basically all that, as an enormous list. I'm going to cover the issues with the 2D games, the 3D games, the RPGs...

With the design of many recent video games, it seems many have ended up being far less interesting, and a whole lot more 'functional' in their game design. Okay, maybe utilitiarian would be a better word here, because it seems if one thing has ended up becoming more and more common, it's the complete lack of true bonuses and secrets...

Another day, and oddly, another Mario hack. Yeah, not as big a deal as usual this time around, but damn, the thing even comes with some ExGFX used and all. That and well... it's about as literally close to half finished as possible.



A decent title screen....

Or just any semblance of a Japanese gaming fandom outside of 2ch.

Because you see, it seems decent web design has completely passed the country by, and it hasn't really moved on a lot since the mid 90s and the days of Web Pages That Suck being a major critical force. Really, too many gaming sites over there look like they wouldn't be out...

You know, VIP 5, Super Mario LD, Scarlet Devil Mario... they all say in some way 'don't take videos' and 'don't upload footage to Youtube', but come on, the mere concept is ridiculous. There's nothing illegal about doing so, nor anything not seen as ethical (indeed, a creator can never tell you how you can enjoy their...

1. Sprites never getting released...

When reading an article on Waluigious the other day, I was thinking about the Mario fandom and kinda realised for an odd reason it seems there isn't much of one online. Okay, maybe I'm harsh here, since many fan sites do exist, but it seems the community is somewhat less dedicated than that for say, the Legend of Zelda, or Pokemon, or...

To make videos, because just look at this latest demo overworld. It's basically one massive block of levels going to every possible area in the game



Can't get more blatant than that.

In the Mario series, it should be extremely obvious that the characters and such are characterised differently depending on the game. But is this a problem with the series recently? Is one of the major issues with the series that two different parties seem to have two different ideas about what the Mario series should be like? To me, it...