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Super Mario World: completed!

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I didn’t get lost again, but that was largely because the game’s designers had finished messing around with the world map and everything was fairly linear from that point. I did find a couple of extra exits on Chocolate Island, but maintaining my aim of ignoring the red blinking markers and just pushing through to the end, I finished off Wendy and progressed through the shipwreck down to Bowser’s hidden valley, previously submerged beneath the suspicious big empty sea in the middle of the map.

I was expecting the Valley of Bowser to be more difficult, in fact, but actually the levels themselves didn’t present much of a challenge. There was one annoying level where the big moles kept getting in the way and I couldn’t find the way out the level, meaning I died a couple of time running out of time, but one I realised that I could go out and get a Yoshi, and then eat the moles, things became easier.

What was tricky was the final boss battle, and I felt I was fighting against the controls much more than in the rest of the game. To defeat Bowser you had to attack him from above, and the only way you could do that was to jump on one of the clockwork bomb things he was throwing down to stun it, grab it, and then throw it up so that it would land on Bowser’s head as he swung his ship back around. Obviously, this had to be done while avoiding the other clockwork bomb things and his ship.

Peach really needs a better tailor.

Still, it only took me a couple of goes, and then I saw the credits, meaning that the game is completed. Sure, it’s not completed completed, since there are a lot of secret exits I’ve not found, and I believe there’s a star world somewhere to be discovered. I’ll park it here, much as I did with Galaxy and 64 and Odyssey, and plan to come back to it one day soon.

Super Mario World: lost in chocolate

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I have got further than ever before, but that’s not saying much. I own Super Mario World on multiple systems – SNES, GBA, Wii, Wii U, 3DS – as well as having emulated it on the Raspberry Pi, the iMac, and (shh) my work laptop. I have played the start of it many times over, knowing to go left at the first map screen and turn on the yellow switch, then progressing right up the map to Donut Plains. I know about the secret exit in Donut Plains 2 to get to the green switch palace. I have, very often, given up at the ghost house in Donut Plains because I just hate the way the enemies move and the need for constant vigilance.

Not this time, though. Playing on the Switch (and then the Switch 2), I pushed through, and found new life beyond the ghosts in Vanilla Dome, Twin Bridges, and then the Forest of Illusion. And at this point it became really annoying.

In an effort to actually finish the game, I tried to ignore the red blinking dots that told me there were alternative exits to the levels. I went straight through each level, to the obvious end, making progress. And then in the Forest of Illusion, taking the obvious exit no longer worked; I ended up going around the overworld map in circles. I did find a secret exit in Forest of Illusion 1, but that just took me to the ghost house which I had already accessed from Forest of Illusion 3. The ghost house exit took me to FoI4, and then the exit from there went back to FoI2. I was frustrated for ages until I found the secret exit from FoI3 which was hidden in a pipe I was sure I’d been down multiple times before, just before the normal end of the level.

Keeping a Yoshi seems to make life a lot easier.

Through Roy’s castle, and onto Chocolate Island. I was doing fine until Chocolate Island 3, when I found that the exit led me into a loop which took me back to Chocolate Island 3. I explored CI2 for ages, because there was a sign at the start indicating that if I collected a certain number of coins or finished at a certain time I would get a different exit, but no amount of experimenting gave that result. There didn’t look as if there could be a secret path leading from the ghost house or CI1. And then, met with a facepalm, I realised that the arrows at the end of CI3 were pointing to the right, showing me where I had to go. I rode Yoshi along, swallowed the blue koopa to give me wings, and then made my way over to the other secret exit.

I’ve left it at CI4, which has a lot of diagonal platforms to slide down. Hopefully I won’t get lost again.

Comix Zone: comically hard

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I love the concept, of being pulled into a comic and having to battle through the panels. Having the world shaped by your own hand, and then having enemies drawn in by your enemy is a work of genius. Choosing paths, having to jump across or down past the borders of the picture, is a really engaging mechanic. It looks stunning too, with large sprites which have been drawn full of character and incredibly colourful. This is paired with a fighting game engine which is very competent and fun to play with – punches and kicks carry weight, and enemies can be avoided by a millimetre.

But it’s very very hard. You have a single life, and recharges to your energy are few and far between. I haven’t worked out how to consistently kill enemies without them taking some of my health off. As such, I’ve never got very far in, and short of quick saving after every hit I’m not sure I ever will.

But it does look lovely.

Sonic CD: chasing the generators

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I had some questions before, and I have now answered them.

  • Do I need to travel to the future after destroying the machine in the past, or is it sufficient to just explode the generator? No, you don’t need to travel to the future; you can finish the act in the past, and you’re still told you created a good future. However, if you can travel to the future (through two future lampposts in sequence) there are no enemies in the way of you getting to the end.
  • Do I need to create good futures for both acts, and if so do I then have to fight the boss? Yes, you have to create good futures for both acts, and if you do then the third act takes place in the good future – but you still have to fight the boss.

I know this, because I have spent quite some time exploring levels and working out where to time travel, where the robot generators are, and planning routes to get there; I’ve now managed it on the first five Zones, and have at least located the generator in the present on Stardust Speedway Act 1 (though I have no idea how to get to it, and this is a rare example of a 16-bit Sonic level being pretty poorly designed). Luckily I’ve built up a stock of about 25 lives, and it’s fairly easy to collect 100 rings to gain another, since I keep running out of time when exploring.

I have often thought of Sonic CD as intimidating, because I thought you needed to get everything perfect. Back in 2011 I threw caution to the wind, and played through the game on the Xbox 360, not trying for the good ending but just hoping to get to the end. It was relatively easy to do that, though levels were sometimes a bit disorderly and prevented a fluid run throughout. The race with Metal Sonic was particularly difficult.

Having plugged in my PS3 (because I wanted to test a copy of Crashed that I found), I saw Sonic CD on the list of installed games, and immediately got the sense of being overwhelmed again, because having completed the bad ending I felt I would need to try for the good one. Back in the 1990s I had time to devote to a game, and to this day I have a complete picture of all levels from Sonic 1 and 2 in my mind, crowding out information which might actually be useful. That came from playing the games over and over; by the time I got my Mega CD from Pink Planet in Bristol, I had many other things to be doing.

But in recent months I find myself wanting to spend time dedicated to specific games again, hence returning to Mario Odyssey, playing through GTA3 and Vice City, and progressing through Wreckfest. Taking time to appreciate a game in its entirety – exactly what has been holding me back from Sonic CD.

So I’ve been taking my time, exploring levels, working out routes to take, where to find time travel posts and then build up speed, trying to find the machines in the past. It’s been a very different experience, very unlike other Sonic games, but it’s been very enjoyable. I fear I may need to resort to looking at some level maps, though, if I don’t work out how to destroy the generator on Stardust Speedway soon.

Oh, and the special stages are still pretty rubbish.

Out Run GB: a valiant effort

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I previously wrote about Hero GP, a fun little Game Boy Colour game I bought which is pretty difficult given its speed. I have played it on occasion since, since it’s ideal for a very short play session (which can turn into a much longer one with just one more go). The maker of that game has wondered “what if OutRun came to the Game Boy Color?”, and despite his misspellings of both “Out Run” and “Colour”, it’s a valid question. Luckily, he has answered it.

Yes, there are limitations. No branching paths, limited roadside furniture, blocky cars. But it feels like Out Run, with undulating tracks and traffic getting in the way, and if you hit another car or a tree with enough force, the car somersaults in the classic advert for seat belt wearing.

It feels slower than Hero GP, which is probably a good thing given the tighter feel to the track space. The controls are very precise, other than the brake which seems to have too much of an effect. Hitting other cars slows you down a little too much, meaning that two hits is almost enough to mean you fail the first stage, whereas that’s not usually the case until the second stage at least – depending on DIP switch settings, of course. It’s a very accomplished bit of coding, and while it can’t be released commercially for obvious reasons, I hope that Sega keep it available as a curio – it’s free to play from the link above.