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  What's This About?A philosophical question for the ages. That's all. What is your favorite Mario game? It's a hard question to answer, leastwise to me. Considering the various Mario games by and large set the foundation of platformers, first in 2-D and then in 3-D (one of the few series to actually master 3D platforming, really,) and I cut my teeth on 2-D run-and-jumpstravaganzas, it's really difficult to pin just one that brought the perfect experience to the table. And here's the thing, as much as I love them, and as inspirational as they were, I... and I know I stand to get a lot of flack for this, if I was trying to select my favorite video game of all time, or even my favorite 2-D platforming game of all time... I don't think most of the Mario games would hit the top rank for me. I don't know why. Maybe they're -too- fundamental. Is there such a thing as being so essential that you don't stand out? You're so good as a whole that you're normalized individually? Maybe I like cool bosses too much. Mario's always been iffy at bosses. Maybe I'm really attracted to characters, and personalities, and stories, and too much Mario seems copy and pasted. That's certainly why Luigi and the Koopalings are my favorite Mario cast members. They've got some personality and individuality to them. But being one of the philosophical playground questions of the ages, I've thought about it for a good long time, and I have a solid answer. Answer is subject to change. And there might be two or more answers in a later project. Void where prohibited. My favorite Mario game is Yoshi's Island. It might be squeaking in on a technicality, having Super Mario World 2 in a subtitle, but it's a technicality I'm glad to grant it. The game is gorgeous, with a distinctive artistic vision that mixes the aesthetic stylings of children's books and crayon drawings with super-smooth and detailed sprite work. The sound design is packed with memorable and lively music, with really good audio quality. And the game-play is as full featured and varied in options as you can ask for in a genre that's often just about as simple as running around and jumping on turtles and things. And the best thing is... there's no timer. Unless you really mess up. Don't mess up. You'll make the baby cry. The Story: No princesses, but still plenty of kidnapping. Basically, Baby King Bowser's wizard nanny Kamek made a grab at the infant Mario Bros because he knew they would be Super someday and cause grown-up Bowser lots of trouble. Baby Mario escaped and literally landed in the care of a clan of Yoshis, who then tried to reunite the Baby Bros and save them from Kamek. Bam! Seriously, Nintendo, it doesn't have to be about Princess Peach all the time. You can keep it simple and still have it be something else. Spoilers and Rules: Um... the plot might be different from your average Mario game (except for rampant kidnapping,) but there's not really a lot of twists. Mostly, I guess, try not to spoil anyone's sense of discovery in cool level stuff. This game has been out for a while, but there's still a few video game players who've never tried it. [nintendoshill]It's part of the variety pack on the SNES Mini! It's really good! If you like what you see, go get it! You'll get like 20 games on the deal![/nintendoshill] The LP: I will do videos. They should be about 15-20 minutes-ish each, and should land one to two times weekly. I will not edit out the fact that I mess up sometimes. You can have your schadenfreude. I think that's half the fun of an LP. I will try to earn all the secret stages (by getting 100% scores on every stage in a world. More on that later,) eventually, but this is a surprisingly long game, so I might have to come back to certain stages later. Also, I will try and make some use of my artistic stuff to draw up fun title cards. Hope you like! With that said, Let's Play!   (The first video has a bit of an audio quality issue, due to an error in commentary recording. Please excuse.) Drakli fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Jul 24, 2019 |
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Jul 23, 2019 04:31
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Reserved for Future Use: Also, this is my first LP, please be gentle. 
Drakli fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Jul 23, 2019 |
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Jul 23, 2019 04:32
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Did you go to/through the sandcastle thread for this LP? It's not required, but it is recommended if you want to get feedback. Anyway, here is some feedback: Pros: You seem to know your stuff about this game. Cons: You over-explain the game. Yoshi's Island (and it's sequels) have been LPed here and some more than once. We know you're walking, jumping, and collecting coins. We can see where you are setting your controls, but unless it affects the video, no one needs to see that. I would recommend cutting out most of the explanations during the actual gameplay. Point out some of the mechanics, any level secrets, or even favorite level and/or enemy quirks from time to time, but let the game speak a bit more for it's self. Also, you are not spoiling anything if it shows up in level one and you explain it. Also, your sound quality is off. Turn up the volume a bit on the music. I played it a bit on an emulator for a few minutes, and it sounds better to me there (and my PC is almost a decade old!). This may be a limitation to your setup, but you may want to ask around. Its a beautiful game for it's era. The idea was to make it look like crayon drawings that a child would draw or that you would find in a nursery or kindergarten class. I believe it was not liked by some, because it was brought out as the sequel to Super Mario World at the time, and it was completely different from what was expected. It was really more of a spin-off game than a true successor. mastersord fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Jul 24, 2019 |
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Jul 24, 2019 02:33
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mastersord posted:
Thanks for the input. I'm a bit embarrassed by the audio quality bit, to be honest. At least in part, it's from an error in the first recording. On the first video I recorded the gameplay first, then watched what I was playing and recorded commentary afterwards. However, I accidentally recorded gameplay audio again within the audio commentary track. Rather than re-record the commentary, I tried muting the audio on the gameplay track and just used the audio on the commentary track. I test played it for a friend to see if they picked up any audio issues I didn't hear, and it sounded fine to them, so I ran with it. The audio gaff that caused this has been isolated and corrected, so it oughtn't to re-occur. That's my bad. I would have mentioned it if I realized it was still noticeable, and have noted the first post accordingly. On my over-explaining... yeah, I can see that. I overthink things at times and I think it comes out in my speech. I'll try and reign things in going forward. I did actually read large chunks of the sandcastle thread to get an idea of what was getting critiqued and see what formatting was being used for stuff, and I almost posted my first video there instead of in a thread. I probably should have. Now that I've released this into the wild, it seems a bit late to back out on it now, though. mastersord posted:Its a beautiful game for it's era. The idea was to make it look like crayon drawings that a child would draw or that you would find in a nursery or kindergarten class. I believe it was not liked by some, because it was brought out as the sequel to Super Mario World at the time, and it was completely different from what was expected. It was really more of a spin-off game than a true successor. Seems to happen a fair amount in Mario games, really. Wario Land etc. spun off from Super Mario Land. And despite Donkey Kong Country being handled by Rare and then Retro, one could call that a side-wise spinoff of Donkey Kong. Drakli fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Jul 24, 2019 |
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Jul 24, 2019 04:59
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Drakli posted:Thanks for the input. I'm a bit embarrassed by the audio quality bit, to be honest. At least in part, it's from an error in the first recording. On the first video I recorded the gameplay first, then watched what I was playing and recorded commentary afterwards. However, I accidentally recorded gameplay audio again within the audio commentary track. Rather than re-record the commentary, I tried muting the audio on the gameplay track and just used the audio on the commentary track. I test played it for a friend to see if they picked up any audio issues I didn't hear, and it sounded fine to them, so I ran with it. How do you record your commentary? Are you recording while playing, or do you play back and talk over it? if it's the latter, you could try doing a second take by writing down your points as a speech and then re-do the commentary with some rehearsed points. This will help eliminate having to think of things to say to fill up time. That may not work for you, but it is something to try. If you want to start over and re-record, you always can. You're only one video deep and you could close this thread and restart or even just redo the video and pretend the old one never happened. You can also fix it in the next video instead (or when the next recording session starts). I don't think there's a rule that a sand castle posted video can't also be re-posted to the actual LP either. Drakli posted:Seems to happen a fair amount in Mario games, really. Wario Land etc. spun off from Super Mario Land. And despite Donkey Kong Country being handled by Rare and then Retro, one could call that a side-wise spinoff of Donkey Kong. ..but in these cases, neither game was marketed as a sequel to it's respective parent franchise (though I may be wrong about Wario Land and Super Mario Land). Yoshi's Island was originally called Super Mario World 2 mastersord fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Jul 25, 2019 |
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Jul 25, 2019 01:53
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Thanks for the advice. Yeah, I've been playing the game first and recording commentary after the fact. I think you're on point in that if I'm doing it that way, I should think about going over second draft or two of what I want to record. Improvising is best for when you're commenting as you're playing, I expect. I've re-recorded the commentary on the original (going back and doing a second draft based on the points I want to cover) and I'm going to re-do the second and try them both out on the Sandcastle, maybe get some more tinkering advice. I think I'll close out this thread and try and redo a new thread when I feel more confident in the way it sounds.
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Jul 30, 2019 05:54
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Drakli posted:Thanks for the advice. Yeah, I've been playing the game first and recording commentary after the fact. I think you're on point in that if I'm doing it that way, I should think about going over second draft or two of what I want to record. Improvising is best for when you're commenting as you're playing, I expect. I'll keep and eye out for your next thread then. Confidence comes with practice. Don't be afraid of how you sound. If I can think of anymore advice I'll share it, but I'm curious to hear how the re-record comes out. I'd wish you luck, but this is not a competition, so as long as you keep recording, you'll be fine.
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Jul 31, 2019 01:25
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