Friday, August 7, 2015

Mario NES Builder

For an upcoming round, I propose we play:

Mario NES Builder!!

A faithful recreation of SMB1 for NES, but with a built in level editor and a fairly active online community of people who are creating new levels   :)

One of my favorite platform games of all time. It was the summer of 1988. We had just moved back to the US from Japan, and my next door neighbor at the time had this little box called a "Nintendo"... From the first time I played SMB, I was hooked.

Later on, I got into playing super difficult hacked ROMS of the game, both solo and also with my fiancee. But those only lasted a while and there are only a limited number of new hacks coming out at this point.

So when Mario NES Builder hit the scene, I was pretty excited. I've messed around with it a little bit, and it seems to be a fairly faithful recreation. The physics seem possibly a little bit off, maybe, perhaps it's just my mind tricking me. I don't know.

What do you think, would you be game for some moderately difficult level sets of this for an upcoming round?

This in contrast to the vastly different and very bizarre "Mari0", which combines SMB1 and Portal ... I couldn't wrap my head around that   ;)    (Plus in general I don't like games that use the mouse)
Posted by at

15 comments:

  1. A-LinAugust 11, 2015 at 12:37 PM

    So much count me in! I've always wanted to get into SMB. I have never ever played a SMB game! Except a few trials on a SNES once. So I trust you to make a selection. Then maybe I can narrow down if you want me too.

    ReplyDelete
  2. A-LinAugust 11, 2015 at 2:25 PM

    I've stumbled on http://www.supermariobrosx.org/ it looks cool but it frozed at the first screen (under wine).

    Anyway given I have no experience with SMB I wouldn't mind playing anything, a classic console version, or whatever you'd choose.

    ReplyDelete
  3. A-LinAugust 11, 2015 at 10:47 PM

    I also tried SMB Game Master but it runs incredibly slowly. Then I tried https://supertux.github.io/ it's actually a lot more entertaining than I thought but it's still a beta version (I don't know that entails in practice).

    ReplyDelete
  4. organic ioAugust 11, 2015 at 11:29 PM

    I am familiar with smbx. But I say we just play the one I linked originally, Mario NES Builder is an actual game which is supposed to have multiplatform support because it is coded in Java. Then you just download the level files from the server and you have tons of levels to play.

    I'll spend some time over the next week checking out level sets for it and try to pick one that is good quality and challenging but not too insanely hard. :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. A-LinAugust 11, 2015 at 11:34 PM

    I've just managed to run Mario NES Builder! Unfortunately without sound and gamepad support.

    I also tried the classic SMB in a NES emulator, which works flawlessly.

    I only play the classic game (went to world 1-2 so far), I feel I can definitely like this game (not too unsurprisingly :).

    I'll see if I can fix the sound and gamepad support with the builder...

    ReplyDelete
  6. A-LinAugust 12, 2015 at 12:42 AM

    It's very frustrating, I can't get the sound to work, I tried a couple of settings on my OS, 2 version of Java (the open source one and sun's). I somehow can't send an email to author (in the Help tab). The program is closed source so I can't even attempt to debug it. :(

    I'll push a bit further. I know running that in a virtual box isn't gonna work (due to bad support of the graphic display of VMWare under linux). Maybe I should try to install java and run it under wine...

    ReplyDelete
  7. A-LinAugust 12, 2015 at 2:16 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  8. A-LinAugust 12, 2015 at 2:17 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  9. A-LinAugust 12, 2015 at 3:16 AM

    Reposted without so many typos: It seems Wine does not support Java. I couldn't install it anyway. I'm installing Windows in a virtual machine, although I already know it ain't gonna work...

    ReplyDelete
  10. A-LinAugust 12, 2015 at 8:42 AM

    Woohoo, I managed to get Mario NES Builder with the sound. I use VirtualBox with Windows 7 + 2D and 3D accelerations + the lowest possible resolution on the Host (640x480). With this I can run the game in fullscreen with virtually no slow down (there are occasional ones but they are rare and don't last long). :-) :-) :-)

    The last thing I need is gamepad support but I'm sure I find a way.

    ReplyDelete
  11. organic ioAugust 12, 2015 at 8:44 AM

    Awesome! Sorry it was so much trouble to get it working. For gamepad support I suggest something like joy2key. :)

    I'll start auditioning level sets for it soon. I'll play the first 3 or 4 levels of each one and pick the best one.

    ReplyDelete
  12. organic ioAugust 12, 2015 at 8:46 AM

    Wow, somehow I checked the comments RIGHT after you posted that last one :)

    ReplyDelete
  13. A-LinAugust 12, 2015 at 11:45 AM

    Oh man, I can't believe it, I've spent like an hour looking for a way to map joystick events to the keyboard and I didn't even come across joy2key!!! Actually I had a plan to write my own bash script by listening to /dev/input/js0, but it seems I won't need to. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  14. A-LinAugust 12, 2015 at 4:07 PM

    That's it, I've sound and gamepad. That was a long day but I'm glad I did it. Here my command line of joy2key, that I save here for future use

    joy2key "Win 7 [Running] - Oracle VM VirtualBox" \
    -thresh -16383 16383 -16383 16383 \
    -X -buttons z x c v a s d f q w \
    -axis Left Right Up Down

    Till you're ready with your selection I'm trying to catch up by playing the classic world. So far I went till 1-4.

    ReplyDelete
  15. organic ioAugust 14, 2015 at 12:24 PM

    Hey, also wanted to mention to you that there is something similar to Joy2key for linux, it is called Qjoypad. I used it quite a bit when I was on Ubuntu

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)