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 Prologue Super Mario RPG is one of those games that doesn’t require an introduction. But I’ll give it one anyway. The Super Nintendo is known for having a number of truly life-changing smash hits on it, especially towards the end of its lifespan. Video games were still a young medium, and developers of the time weren’t yet beholden to things like saying or producing something to appease stockholders. If you wanted to make a video game and you had a team, some cash, and the gumption to pull it off, then you could do anything. The mid-1990s had the same energy as the modern-day indie-game scene. During this time, the Super Nintendo saw games like Super Metroid defining what a Metroid game was; The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past giving gamers one of their first tastes on what it’s like to be on an epic adventure across a countryside to rescue a damsel; and games like Donkey Kong Country, F-Zero, and Star Fox pushed the limits of what a “graphic” was, from their punctuating detail to breaking into the third dimension and introducing gamers to a whole new way to view their world. Of course, the Role Playing Game genre was no exception, with entries like Breath of Fire, EarthBound, Secret of Mana, and several Final Fantasy titles. An at-the-time small-ish company called Squaresoft was on top of the world, pumping out these smash-hit titles one after the other and defining the genre. But two titles in particular, both RPGs, would cement their reputation as masters of what they do: Chrono Trigger, a title that’s in hot contention for the greatest game on the system, and Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. SMRPG was exactly what the title said it was: a game about Mario that is also an RPG. The plot was far more grandiose than any Mario title before it: rather than rescue a princess from a fire-breathing turtle or reunite a child with his brother, Squaresoft shook up the formula drastically by introducing new enemies; new world-shattering consequences; new locations; and new scenarios. SMRPG is also famous for one other thing: more than just a fancy-free Mario game with RPG elements, the game also introduced the concept of timed mechanics to its battles. Before, RPGs consisted of you selecting an action and your character executing it; in SMRPG, if you had Mario jump on an enemy and you pressed the attack button just before he landed, he’d do extra damage. It’s a system that many RPGs have since built and expanded upon. The Randomizer It stands to reason that, with as amazing as a game like Super Mario RPG is, many people have beaten it many dozens of times over by now. Like I mention in the first video, I’ve beaten it northwards of 30 times by now, replaying it once every year or so. Some intrepid speedrunners in the SMRPG decided to mix up our favourite game by creating a randomizer for it, which you can find here. If you have a ROM of the game, you can put it into this on-site randomizer and select the settings you want, and the game you get will be different every single time you remake the game in the randomizer, even if you use the same settings. My good friend Olive Branch and I will be playing a randomized game, and although I forgot to copy the seed, you can see the settings we used by placing the following line of text in the “Custom Flag String” field under “Select Preset:” code:Mario is supposed to be the one constant that never changes throughout the game: whether you have more characters or not, you’re not ever supposed to be able to change Mario out of your active party. The randomizer does away with that, but we’ll be keeping him in anyway, to maintain the spirit of the game. Moreover, I rigged up a very simple random number generator that, with the click of the mouse, will determine Mario’s action for us. Whether Mario attacks, defends, uses an item, or uses magic, is up to the generator. At no point do either Olive Branch or I make Mario’s move for him – if Mario wants to use a Megalixer to heal two points worth of damage, then that’s what he does. Hopefully that’ll be random enough for us. Overall, this is a fairly low-effort, relatively chill LP that Olive Branch and I wanted to do to pass the time. Hope you enjoy the ride with us! If you'd like to do a run of this game yourself, with one of your teammates being controlled by the random number generator, you can find the tool I made here. It's just an HTML file and only requires a browser to work, meaning it can be used offline and on mobile. Videos                          
Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 13:05 on Jul 15, 2020 |
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Mar 16, 2020 06:37
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     Geno didn't coordinate with the squad. Are Mario's level-up choices also random?
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Mar 16, 2020 07:40
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Zomblified posted:Are Mario's level-up choices also random? If you mean the magic spells, they all are! Bowser could get Snowy. Geno could get Spritz Bomb. Who knows! If you mean his stat ups, we always pick them based on their worth. Some of them give you a total of +3, sometimes you can get +6 or higher. If it's a tie, we just pick one.
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Mar 16, 2020 08:03
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I told Maple Leaf that this randomizer really made me want to play this game again as intended.
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Mar 16, 2020 18:00
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This looks like exactly the right kind of bad idea  Oh by the way, here's my contribution to the thread: https://twitter.com/MarioBrothBlog/status/1239753984811900928
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Mar 17, 2020 12:16
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This is an interesting take on playing the game, and I'm enjoying it so far. Yes, we see the mouse cursor, but it doesn't really matter (to me). Looking forward to the next video!
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Mar 17, 2020 14:37
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this is a fascinating idea, and I love it already
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Mar 17, 2020 15:32
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Mar 19, 2020 22:58
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Wow, had no clue you could change Mario's pose like that in the save screen. Even after all these years still learning new hidden things in this amazing game. Here is to hoping Mario doesn't just consume a Red Essence or Rock Candy against a Goomba in the future.
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Mar 20, 2020 00:14
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Hey, neat. Good way to make this game interesting again. I love it but yeah, I've also seen the normal game a whole bunch of times. Rando Mario will probably end up being a better player than me  Minor request: any chance of making the text in the randomizer overlay a bit bigger? It's pretty darn tiny, and tough to read (especially compared to the giganto pixels in the game itself). No big deal if it's a pain or anything! Captain Hygiene fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Mar 20, 2020 |
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Mar 20, 2020 00:49
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Captain Hygiene posted:Minor request: any chance of making the text in the randomizer overlay a bit bigger? It's pretty darn tiny, and tough to read (especially compared to the giganto pixels in the game itself). No big deal if it's a pain or anything! I could, but that would mean taking up more space on the screen. The overlay is current formatted to be as small as possible without cutting off the longest text strings with the current font size. I could fix that by trimming down some of the flavour text, but Olive Branch and I have already recorded up to Marrymore, so you wouldn't see any changes for a hot minute anyway
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Mar 20, 2020 04:02
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I think it's fine. I assume the text just says what you're verbally confirming anyway, so it's not really adding much to the video.
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Mar 20, 2020 04:46
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Maple Leaf posted:I could, but that would mean taking up more space on the screen. The overlay is current formatted to be as small as possible without cutting off the longest text strings with the current font size. I could fix that by trimming down some of the flavour text, but Olive Branch and I have already recorded up to Marrymore, so you wouldn't see any changes for a hot minute anyway No worries, figured it might not be doable! I like it as something to look at if I miss some of the audio, but it's definitely usable info as is.
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Mar 20, 2020 04:52
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Something to watch for when leveling up - I think defense bonuses in vanilla are always one, but this randomizer seems to give you two defense pretty often, so it's worth keeping an eye on it and factoring that into your calculations.
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Mar 20, 2020 14:47
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I haven't tried doing a randomizer of SMRPG yet and you got me hooked! mario romhack says trans rights 
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Mar 20, 2020 17:39
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This tells you what the icons on gear mean. So, from that, we know that the Jinx Belt has the following stats: Immune To Fire, Half Damage From Lightning +17 Agility +31 Physical Attack, +32 Physical Defense +0 Magical Attack, -5 Magical Defense So, you trade 5 Magical Defense for all of those sweet buffs. Totally worth it! The Mega Cape, however has the following stats: -1 Agility -2 Physical Attack, +5 Physical Defense -1 Magical Attack, +3 Magical Defense Great for Defense, but that's about it. Still, when you don't have a Jinx Belt for everyone, Defense is handy.
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Mar 20, 2020 22:14
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Do you always start with Geno and
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Mar 21, 2020 12:54
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Randalor posted:Do you always start with Geno and All characters you start with are randomized, including Mario (although it's always Mario on the overworld and map areas), but you can set the randomizer to guarantee any one character to start with. According to the randomizer, you're always guaranteed to get characters after beating Bowyer and Bundt (or, rather, the fight that would be them), but if you set the game to start with one character instead of three, you'll get more after beating Croco 1 and Punchinello. Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Mar 21, 2020 |
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Mar 21, 2020 20:40
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Mar 23, 2020 23:13
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I definitely wouldn't mind you rebalancing Mario so he uses items less often. Yeah, backseat gaming, I know.
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Mar 24, 2020 10:10
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I wouldn't be opposed to it! The whole idea of LPs is that people enjoy and derive entertainment from one or more dude(s) shooting the poo poo while playing a game. Mario using the Megalixer three times and getting a freebie twice is, as I said, maximally chaotic, but I can put my finger on the scale if people want. Uh... starting in Marrymore, like I said.
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Mar 25, 2020 06:45
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I think it's a bit predictable and unchaotic that the item choice extremely strongly tends towards the last item in the list, because there's an equal chance of every item slot being picked, with most of them empty at any time, defaulting to the last item. The perfect solution for this would be for your RNG tool to know the game's state and only choose from items that actually exist - but I get that that's way more complicated to implement. Another would be to have to type in the current number of items, or to have the RNG tool print an item slot to pick for every possible amount of items you could have... but both are annoying and would slow gameplay down so I'm not in favour of that either.
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Mar 25, 2020 08:27
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I wouldn't mind if the Mario RNG was weighted 33% Attack, 33% Magic, 22% Defend, 11% Item (and either just chose the first item, or you get to chose yourself). Otherwise there's little point in even having an inventory, because the AI will just plunder it constantly.
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Mar 25, 2020 11:42
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Randalor posted:I wouldn't mind if the Mario RNG was weighted 33% Attack, 33% Magic, 22% Defend, 11% Item (and either just chose the first item, or you get to chose yourself). Otherwise there's little point in even having an inventory, because the AI will just plunder it constantly. I would go further than this: in this game, Magic and Item are almost always reserved for emergencies (since frankly it's a pretty easy game). Mario's hoovering up all of your resources and preventing you from making any interesting decisions. So I'd suggest something like 75% attack, 25% defend outside of boss fights, and the current distribution inside of them. That should make it substantially less likely that your only decision making in boss fights is which target to attack.
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Mar 25, 2020 14:29
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But most fights outside of boss fights can be easily won with just using basic attacks, and Mario has an attack-all spell. Plus it looks like the MP restoring chests are still in place.
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Mar 25, 2020 15:04
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I've made some edits to Mario's RNG, but like I said, they won't kick in until Star Hill.
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Mar 28, 2020 23:39
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Maple Leaf posted:
I never really thought specifically about what Jinx is supposed to be aside from "a bug or something" but this episode got me wondering.  Turns out his actual model is so weirdly generic I just feel more confused after seeing it in detail. He could be almost anything, or nothing. (also it's a good reminder how much better all the models look to me in their SNES-friendly pixelized forms rather than their official renders)
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Mar 29, 2020 00:55
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I honestly thing he's just a parody of the "tiny guy is really good at martial arts" trope. He's incredibly tiny, so tiny that his hair has to be almost as big as his body in order to have any detail. I don't think you can even give him actual detail because it would all be lost in-game, so better to just make him a generic beige with a red cape and green hair for detail. Kinda like giving Mario a moustache so he can have some facial detail in Mario Bros.
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Mar 29, 2020 17:04
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Apr 2, 2020 07:53
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OK, so, do we get to vote on the party?
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Apr 3, 2020 02:50
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I suppose there's no reason why we can't! I wanted to use them by a by-room or by-area basis, but I keep forgetting. Having the characters on a by-world basis (a single world is usually large enough for one recording) ought to take that out of the equation entirely. Olive Branch and I still haven't recorded again since we completed Merrymore, so, who should we bring into Star Hill/Sunken Ship? Minor spoilers, but we'll have every character by then.
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Apr 3, 2020 04:52
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Mario, Peach, and Bowser. Might as well cycle the new crew in. Plus, it's who I rolled with most of the time when I played the game as a kid.
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Apr 3, 2020 04:59
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Just to double check, Mario always has to be in the party right?
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Apr 3, 2020 07:28
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Ideally, but I could change the generator to apply to anyone.
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Apr 3, 2020 14:04
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Mario, Peach, and Bowser. Might as well cycle the new crew in. Plus, it's who I rolled with most of the time when I played the game as a kid. Well, I was going to say swap Mallow for Peach, but if we're going to have all of them, then yeah, let's get the new crew in. Bowser, Peach, Mario.
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Apr 3, 2020 17:56
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Somehow I usually default to the Mario/Peach/Bowser dream team, Chaos Mario should add some spice to the mix.
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Apr 3, 2020 18:00
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Apr 6, 2020 23:05
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Mario, Geno, Bowser, aka TEAM BRUISER
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Apr 7, 2020 03:03
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Apr 11, 2020 21:48
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I just want to express my appreciation for the thumbnail selection, especially the last couple. I didn't have a regular subscription to Nintendo Power but I always liked those little game challenges/contests they ran. I never saw one for this game but my random story is seeing the record holder for 101%-ing (or whatever >100 value) Donkey Kong Land for the gameboy, then beating that time by at least 5-6 minutes. I even documented it with a pre-digital photo, but the contest was over and I lost my confidence to send the photo in since I didn't even have a subscription at that point. So somewhere I still have useless physical evidence that I was a nerdish gaming prodigy at one very specific point in time   
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Apr 11, 2020 22:33
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