Tuesday, 24 November 2009

• New Super Mario Bros. Wii Can't Be As Hard As THIS!

  

  Warning: The last video in this post has unabashed use of inappropriate language and may not be SFW. Play at your own discretion.

  
  

  New Super Mario Bros. is being touted as the hardest Mario game yet (barring the Super Guide option). So I decided to take a look at the levels most people seem to have trouble with (5-6, 8-5, 9-2, and 9-7). My final conclusion? There's already been much, much harder than this in the Mushroom Kingdom.
  
  

  

  Super Mario Bros. 2 in Japan, known to us as The Lost Levels in America, was built around the concept of hair-pulling screw-overs like murderous invisible blocks, the Poison Mushroom, pipes taking you a few worlds back, inexplicable strong winds that ruin the trajectory of your jumps, and actual dead-ends that force you to start the ENTIRE game over. Made for the players who felt a rush from the gameplay of the original at its most challenging, Nintendo of America's President at the time purportedly believed it went in a direction that stifled the franchise. (This debate sound familiar?)  

  
  

  But for many, Super Mario World's "Outrageous" was perhaps the hardest level they'd ever had to deal with. Outrageous is the pinnacle of challenging level design in the Mario series, as it forces players to have honed all of the skills they had used up to that point to navigate halfway through a treacherous stretch of territory with a trampoline, all the while dealing with an assortment of Will-o-Wisps, Bullet Bills, Hammer Bros, Wigglers, and Piranha Plants in awkward spots. There's definitely an element of trial and error, but not as groan-inducing as the Lost Levels were; the real difficulty comes from having the proper reflexes and timing.
  
  

  Still, stages the like of Outrageous only gave way to something even more frightening. As of this moment, nothing comes close to the hacked custom stages proliferating the 'net under the collective name of Kaizo Mario or sometimes "Asshole" Mario. They've been around for a few years now, but it was only with the rise of streaming sites like YouTube and Japanese rival Nicovideo that they really began to take off. These combine the emphasis on execution from levels in the series like Outrageous and the painful rote learning of the Lost Levels to confound and anger eager players unwilling to be patient and treat the entire thing like a puzzle...or a Guitar Hero/Rock Band song on Expert difficulty.

  But seeing Kaizo Mario makes me think it's a shame Little Big Planet managed to capitalize on stage customization before any of the Mario games did. Most people aren't savvy enough to hack a Mario game, and Nintendo officially jump on this trend could have led to both an incredible payoff and perhaps the greatest retro Mario release of all time.
  
  What do you think: do you wish New Super Mario Bros. Wii had the kind of difficulty present in other challenging installments from Mario history? And how about that custom stage creator?

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