Friday, August 30, 2013

Blog: Thoughts on Super Mario Galaxy

I have a confession to make: I've never finished a main line Mario game. Not the NES ones, not the SNES ones, not 64, not Sunshine, not Galaxy, not New Super Mario Bros Wii (or Wii U) Galaxy 2, not any of the DS or 3DS ones. I've played almost all of them, but I've never actually played any of them through to completion. This is a bit of a short coming in my gaming history I feel and so I've set out to fix that.

Super Mario Galaxy! - From GameFAQs


Super Mario Galaxy  is my favourite Mario game, in terms of style, tone and gameplay so I thought I'd tackle it first. I've now finished all Mario 120 stars and am starting on the Luigi play though, but I think I've done enough for the time being to call this one "finished".

Things I Liked


The number one thing I liked about Super Mario Galaxy is the ambiance. When you start up the game after leaving for a while you're hit with happy music and bright colours and it feels like everyone is happy to see you. This happiness caries over to all the places in the Comet Observatory and into all the levels as well. This isn't rare for Mario games, but it really makes you happy as soon as the game turns on and it just keeps going.



The number two thing I liked about Galaxy is the control. This is an obvious point since the quality of control has been the factor that's made Mario one of the top gaming franchises (if not the top).   You never ended up feeling like you weren't able to make Mario go exactly where you wanted him to go and when things did go awry it was easy to see exactly why (as in, I shouldn't jump into that space).

Things I Didn't Like


The thing I most didn't like about Super Mario Galaxy is the power-ups, which were either difficult to use, not that interesting or had time limits imposed which made them less useful and less interesting. Spring Mario is probably the worst of these as it only serves to make Mario harder to control. Additionally because it allows Mario to jump significantly higher, it causes the designers to use put everything up out of camera frame so that you are forced to spend a lot of time trying to get up high enough to see the level. The biggest problem however is that it is very difficult to tell where Mario is, in 3D space and so you frequently jump into things or off the edge of the platforms because you can't tell the difference.

Nothing can possibly go wrong! - From GameFAQs


The time limits on the fire and ice flowers were also annoying. In the 2D Mario games when the fire flower power up (or later the leaves or the feathers or any of the costumes) you were able to keep it as long as you didn't get hit and you didn't die. They opened up your ability to play because you could do things you couldn't necessarily do without them. Here they actually reduce the options presented to you, "You got the fire flower? Better hurry to kill the thing that can only be killed with the fire flower!"

I liked Cloud Mario and thought that it was a lot of fun to be able to jump far away from where you could normally make it to. Bee Mario was fine, but I never really felt one way or another about it. The other powers ups, though, all failed to make the game either more interesting or more fun. In the cases where they added difficulty, it was fake difficulty and really only frustrated me.

The other big problem with the game is that the "end" of the game comes halfway through. Once you collect half of the total stars, you can fight Bowser and be "done". I can see that this was added so that it was possible to finish the game without going on to do the challenging levels, leaving those available to people who want to be "hardcore".

In and of itself this would be fine but there's no difference between the levels before you fight Bowser and the levels after (even the levels that are only opened up after you fight him). After you win the game dumps you back at the title screen, when you go back to your save file the game goes "oh you came back, well let's keep going" and then nothing changes. Peach remains kidnapped, except that you can't do that mission again (and get a star for it anyway) and everything else is exactly the same.

I would really appreciate the game noticing that I'd "won" already. It doesn't have to change the gameplay or any of the levels, but some changes in the hub world would be great.  For example, assuming you rescued Peach at 60 stars, the game could go "Great! Mario you're a hero! But don't you think you could help all these other people get their starship powered up again so they can go home?" Then Peach would hang out with Rosalina, be generally encouraging and the rest of the game would go on.

Things I Noticed


One of the things I noticed most pointed about this game is that 3D platforming is still hard. I haven't played enough to be sure that this really is the pinnacle, but I certainly can't think of a 3D platformer that's considered better. However it's still really easy to get lost in 3D space, not be where you think you are and die when you thought you were doing something super reasonable. Maybe I'm getting old and maybe I just never had the eyes for it, but I think that Super Mario Galaxy is one of the factors that pushed Nintendo to focus so much on moving the Mario games towards the 3DS.

I mostly know where you are ...  - From GameFAQs


Things I'd Include in a Game


There are two things I'd keep in mind for a game of my own based on Super Mario Galaxy. The first is ambiance and the second is fine controls. There is nothing more frustrating in gaming that knowing what you want to do an being unable to execute it. Mario games are generally the best examples of control in video games and for any game where control is important the developer should strive to live up to this level.

The ambiance is important, not only that bright happy games are fun to play (although, I would like to make some games that give this bright feeling) but that everything about your game should build towards the feeling that you would like your players to have.


Final Thoughts


I love this game, despite what seems to be an overabundance of complaining above. I think among the 3D Mario games it's my favourite (although that may change as I play through the others). It brings a lot of fun to the party, which is, at the end of the day, the point of playing.

It's bright and even if it's going to kill you at least it looks nice - From GameFAQs user Nicholas761

Friday, August 23, 2013

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 37)

This volume of my favourite YouTube videos is a bit old school, with a bunch of faces (or hands) we've all come to know and love.


  • The first video in this volume is "Doodle Music" from viheart.
  • Next, we get to discover what happens if you give Felicia Day a chainsaw. (You knew the answer was awesomeness, right?) Also maybe that it's best to stand well back when she sees baby animals.
  • Next, John Green pretends to be Charlie McDonnell while getting things done (like signing a contract for the TFiOS movie).
  • Next, Ze Frank (and I hope you didn't think that one wall to wall volume of him was all we were going to get) puts up a new video about a new song.
  • And, finally Watsky raps "Energy". 

Monday, August 19, 2013

Project 4: Snake Version 0.3.1 - now with a little less crashing.

Version 0.3.1 of the snake game fixes a problem where pressing the 't' key to give yourself points before the game starts caused the game to crash. All the cheat keys (and the control swap key) now only work while the game is playing.

All the other features introduced in version 0.3.0 remain unchanged.

You can download it here:

  • The Windows Versions (32-bit, and 64-bit)
  • The Mac OS X Version
  • The Linux Versions (32-bit and 64-bit)
  • Friday, August 16, 2013

    Project 4: Snake Version 0.3.0 (Almost Undetectably New!)

    The Snake game has still been holding my attention, so I've put together the newest update. This new version however is primarily changes to the design and organization of the game.

    Does this mean you won't be able to tell the difference from version 0.2.0? Not entirely. The new structure has made it easier for me to switch things in and out and make things a little easier.



    The biggest change is that now the controls are modelled after those implemented in Nibbles. This means that when you're heading in any direction you can now only turn to the side rather than back on yourself. However if you liked the original controls, all you have to do is press 'k' to switch between the two controls.

    Furthermore if you want to make things easier or harder on yourself there are some cheats available:

    • Press 't' to add a point to your score, this moves the target and is just like you hit the target on your own.
    • Press 'y' to add a level. This levels you up, speeding up the game.
    • Press 'u' to turn off collisions, so you can go on forever without worrying about running into yourself. Press 'u' again to turn them back on again.
    That's pretty much the update for this time. Lots of changes that mean more to me than you, but it should make it a lot easier to do the things I'm thinking for the future. Speaking of which Version 0.4.0 will be along in a little while and should bring a GUI and different kinds of worlds to play.

    But for now you can download Version 0.3.0 below:

    Edit: See the Patched Version 0.3.1
    • The Windows Versions (32-bit, and 64-bit)
    • The Mac OS X Version Edit: There seems to be a problem with the Mac OS X app. I will investigate as soon as I can.
    • The Linux Versions (32-bit and 64-bit)


    Tuesday, August 06, 2013

    Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 36) - ZeFrank Special

    This volume of my favourite YouTube videos is a bit special, first of all it marks the point in time where ZeFrank had just started doing a show. This is special in and of itself, and caused me to have several of his videos in my favourites in a row, but somehow I managed not to favourite "An Invocation for Beginnings" which is possibly my favourite ZeFrank video of all time. So I decided to slip that one in and add in one extra to give us a totally ZeFrank focused volume.

    I'm going to let each of these stand alone.

    • "An Invocation for Beginnings"
    • "Thinks Like Me"
    • "Make. Beleive."
    • "TMMTO :: Comfort"
    • "2601 People Wrote This Song"

    Thursday, August 01, 2013

    Project 1: Third Season of The Blog

    Happy Birthday!

    Well, not birthday. Happy Project Ending Day and Happy Project Start Day. More precisely, Happy Blog Start and End Day!

    Today is the last day of the Second Season of the Blog. Today is also first day of the Third Season of the Blog.

    The Second Season of the Blog was not all I'd hoped it would be. I wanted to be really good about regular updating, which I haven't really been. I've managed to post in every month of the second season, ranging from 1 post to 11, but not as regularly as I'd hoped.

    By far and away I've been best about posting my "favourite YouTube videos", managing 27 of them in total. I've also managed to post 5 "Thoughts on Games", which is fewer than I'd hoped. Finally I tested out "Cool Things of the Week", before deciding that it would be better served living on twitter.

    I'm glad I've managed to post as much as I have, although I would like to write more and more regularly. I did manage to finish my PhD coursework and my candidacy during that time, which certainly has more priority.

    That being said, I've managed to keep up with the blog for a whole year and for that much at least I'm pretty happy.

    The Third Season of the Blog starts now. I'm not planning to change my content that much although I'm hoping to change my schedule/quantity and improve my quality.

    Ideally I want to post twice a week for the foreseeable future. This would mean one favourite YouTube videos post, probably on Friday and one other post sometime during the week (hopefully on Tuesdays, but no promises). This other post will be thoughts on video games or something else, if I happen to have a project update (and ideally I'll have more of these than I have so far) then that will count too.

    As far as quality, I'm hoping to spend a bit more time writing each post. I also hope that my quality will naturally improve simply by getting more practice.

    Hopefully I can keep this up for another year. So the third season will last until August 1, 2014.

    Thanks for reading, and keep getting excited and making things.

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