Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

A trip that belongs to 2D Mario and his time. The "1-1" in the original Super Mario Brothers is probably the most famous level in the history of video games.

The brick road under the blue sky and white clouds created a type of horizontal scroll game and set a peak at the starting point of the platform jump game.

Since then, a number of new works have been launched one after another, most of which have inherited "Ren's Design ideas" and won a good reputation. But since the release of the new Super Mario Brothers U in 2012, there has been no news of the orthodox work of the 2D Malio series.

But not long ago, Super Malio Brothers 5, a game that sounded like a new 2D Malio, suddenly sparked a heated debate on Twitter.

It is neither an official new work nor a companion work, but a game made by a fan using Super Malio Creator 2 (hereinafter referred to as Ma Zao 2). Although there is no official pedigree certification, this complete game, which is composed of 8 worlds and 40 levels, is still evaluated by many players as "very classic Malio."

Directly below is its serial number, interested friends can go to Ma Zao 2 to try for many players who like the traditional 2D Malio game, this is a rare meal in ten years. For the author Mike, it was a long journey that took seven years.

1 like many children who have been exposed to games since childhood, Mike always wanted to make a game of his own when he was young. Because I particularly like the Malio series, so in its goal, the game can be more specifically positioned as "a Malio game".

But like most people who want to play games, the idea stays in mind for a long time since then. At most, it became a graffiti on paper and a line of text version setting, and never took that crucial step.

Since then, he has maintained the habit of making lists with pen and paper until 2015, when the first generation of "Super Mario Creator" was officially released.

Whether it's Nintendo's tough copyright controls or the natural threshold for making games, the emergence of horse-building gives Mike no reason to delay the idea of being a Malio. As a result, he officially began his own creative path.

When he first started designing levels on 3DS, he didn't have the idea of making a "complete game", just simply creating piecemeal levels. As the previous graffiti on the paper is only on paper after all, he can only review the previous classic 2D Malio, while groping to gradually improve and enrich his own level.

With the increasing complexity of his checkpoints, Mike devices are gradually evolving. After discovering more and more inconveniences of 3DS at first, he easily moved the battlefield to Wii U. But when Horse 2 went on sale on NS, Nintendo presented him with a problem: maps for second-generation games don't support one-click import.

According to him, it takes about 1 to 3 hours to move each level before the release of Horse Building 2 that year, many players were worried that if the maps between the two generations of games did not support one-click import, they would suddenly lose millions of map players. can also rebuild the previously complete ecology. But it turns out that they are completely paranoid. The creative enthusiasm of these players soon reinvigorated Ma Zao 2, and Mike is one of them.

At that time, he had already designed 22 levels, and he could only honestly start the big project from scratch: open two games at the same time, one brick at a time, and move his map to Ma Zao 2. Due to the changes in the details of the two generations of games, he had to delete three of them in the process of reproduction.

By the time the 3.0 patch of Ma Zao 2 was officially released, the popular world map feature among players was finally launched. Players can finally experience a world of multiple levels in the game without the help of third-party websites. It was at this time that Mike realized that he finally had the opportunity to assemble those fragmentary levels into a complete game.

Prior to this, the player's homemade horse-made big map editor put these levels into eight different worlds in terms of mechanism and difficulty according to the grassland, snow, volcano and other styles provided by the Mazao 2 world map. And made major changes to the seven existing levels, designed more than 20 new levels, and finally launched the full version of this 40 levels on September 25 this year-- a Malio game that belongs to him.

The design ideas and materials used come from the "Super Mario Brothers", "Super Malio Brothers 3" and "Super Malio World" that he used to play.

It also makes the absent map of "New Super Mario Brothers U" and "Super Malio 3D World" like a trip back to the last century, visually and experienced. it brings players back to the era when platform jumping games evolved with Malio.

2 in Mike's "Super Mario Brothers 5", a total of 24 levels use the "Super Mario World" style, "Super Mario Brothers 3" painting style has 14 levels, and the FC version of "Super Malio Brothers" has two. In addition, the game also added "Super Malio Brothers 2" (the Japanese market is called "Super Malio Brothers USA") transformed mushrooms.

This makes the whole game visually like a long scroll that follows generations of games, magnifying the "time corridor" attribute crushed in Horse 2, like a "land of evolution" that belongs to Malio.

At the same time, because Mike seldom imitates the drawing ideas of other players when designing levels, the most common references are "Super Malio Brothers 3" and "Super Malio World", so his level also has a strong Nintendo imprint.

For example, in his 1-2 level, we can see the obvious shadow of the original FC version.

After giving several question mark bricks and a flower reward, it is followed by five exactly corresponding bricks to guide the player to open them.

Among the five bricks, he quietly put in the hidden gold coins to let the players know the existence of the concept of hidden bricks.

Then, in an obviously wrong way, the newly generated concept of hidden gold coins is also hidden in the player's mind.

Finally, on the ceiling at the end of the map, there is a structure that is obviously designed, but I don't know what the use is. Arouse the interest of players, let us can not help but think of the concept of hidden bricks we have just learned to try to see the top, and finally get an American version of mushroom reward.

This is the way Nintendo has always designed the level. First with the player's intuition to lead to a new mechanism, and then use the practical design in the level, step by step to teach us the various applications of this mechanism, and finally improve the difficulty to a comprehensive "big test".

In the limited level, they will not rush to introduce too many mechanisms, but around these one or two mechanisms are most likely to play more tricks. It can not only help players understand and remember, but also make the difficulty curve as smooth as possible.

In the video of the YouTube Channel "Game production Toolbox", he has analyzed and introduced two levels in "New Super Mario Brothers U" and "Super Malio World". The former wants to teach players the characteristics of the "water wheel" and set up a training camp with a full degree of relaxation.

Green and red represent the safe zone and the area that may fall into the water, respectively, and the difficulty of the latter gradually increases. Around the element of the revolving board, Nintendo also patiently gradually widens the gap and increases the enemy for players to be familiar with. Finally, there is a smooth continuous jump that is both a test and a reward to the bottom. It is homologous to the method used by Mike in his level.

But this kind of level design idea, modern players are a little too familiar. We have already played too many similar games, and many times this soothing rhythm means that the difficulty is too low. So in Horse Building 2, the most popular is not the official map, but some well-designed automatic and poison maps.

But this is like Ma Zao 2, these painting styles maintain the version of the Malio game at that time. At first glance, it still looks like that year, but too many new mechanisms and new props have been added. Taking it out alone can definitely be called a new game, only continuing the thinking of that year on the lowest level of thinking.

Said that this is the FC version of Malio, Link must be the first to disallow in Mike's "Super Malio Brothers 5", we can also see a lot of modern horse-made maps on him, such as the combination of multiple props, the difficult "car chase" or the mockery of the players in the poison map.

Of course, none of this is the most important thing for Mike. Because his original intention is not to make the most popular Malio game, but to have his own Malio. That's why he chose his favorite and familiar generations of old-school classics, as long as "some people like to play their own games", he is already very satisfied.

3 before releasing the full Super Mario Brothers 5, Mike went to the Nintendo flagship store in Manhattan, New York, where he used a demonstration machine to open his horse-building checkpoint and hid behind a container to quietly observe the reaction of passers-by.

When those players smile while playing the game, he thinks he is happiest as a creator.

Mike's Twitter avatar has been lonely in his creative life during the seven years he has been making the whole game. Although he does not need to consider the barriers of traditional game production, such as art, programming and music, he still needs to do a series of planning, design and testing work on his own. Before the release of Super Mario Brothers 5, not many people played his level, and even fewer people could communicate with him.

Apart from him, the only QA tester around him is his 4-year-old son. He designed the level to be as smooth and friendly as possible, not only to implement the "design idea of any department", but also to take care of this little tester. Whether the son can understand and whether he will be stuck here has also become a big standard in his design, just like the full-age game should have done.

Mike posted a pair of sons and daughters on Twitter, but fortunately, after seven years of production, Super Mario Brothers 5 has become a game that many people have played and loved. Three days after his release, the map of Ma Zao 2 Li has garnered more than 20,000 likes, which means that at least 20,000 people have played it.

Now in interviews, he laughs and complains that every five seconds, his horse maker 2 will pop up a hint for other players to play, which seems to have reaped another sweet annoyance.

As a successful Ma Zao 2 map writer, Mike still hopes that officials will add a better sharing mechanism to the game. In this way, map writers will not be so dependent on sharing on social media, resulting in many authors working hard to make hurdles, but the number of visitors is always zero.

As an experienced person, he understands the sense of loss, which is sometimes why newcomers are afraid to take the first step. So he always mentioned the fun in Malio games, whether in the process of playing, making, or watching others play, became the reason for him to stick to it.

When asked if he had any advice for those who tried to make their own "Mario level" or game, he replied: "make it interesting …"... just like Nintendo taught us. "

This article is from the official account of Wechat: game Research Society (ID:yysaag), author: sleep with algae

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