Difference between revisions of "SMB3"

65th: SMB3 Make a Good Mega Man Level 2

:"Enemy Spam is fun right, guys?" ―ACESpark, Part of the judge review.

Overview Creator(s): Lizardcommando Artist(s): Lizardcommando, Nintendo, Capcom Statistics Scores: 24 24 16 25 18 Total: 21.4 / 50 Rank: 65th Elements: 1 Enemies: Koopa Troopa War Goomba Hammer Bros. Koopa Hopper Koopa Joe Parazooka Troopa Rifle Troopa Lakitu Fat Hammer Bros. Batton Jet Buton Parasyu Killer Bullet Walking Bomb Cocco Apache Joe Bosses: Bowser Other Information: Skippable

Theme Music Athletic, Airship, Final Bowser Fight (all from Super Mario Bros. 3) Stage Order Location: Tier 3 Previous: Chomp Man Next: MegaLondo

"It felt like you made all these graphic replacements and tried to show them all at once instead of making an actual level."

―JupiHornet, Part of the judge review.

Overview

SMB3 is the 65th place entry in Make a Good Mega Man Level 2. It was created by Lizardcommando. The level is based off of Super Mario Bros 3. There are three main sections to the level: the intro area, the airship/tank battalion section (this level lets you choose between the two sections), and the boss area. It has new enemies (which are just sprite replacements with very slight health adjustments) and a new boss (which is basically just an edited Guts Man AI). The Koopa Troopa, Hammer Bros, Rifle Troopa, War Goomba and Parazooka Troopa are brand new sprites mode from scratch while the Fat Hammer Bros, Lakitu, Hopper Koopa, and Koopa Joe have been edited from existing sprites.

Basic Strategy

This level is enemy spam heavy. Think Metal Slug or Contra but with unfair enemy placement and enemies that don't die in one shot. Use Triple Blade or your Mega Buster if you have an itchy trigger finger. Take on the first part of the level slowly to avoid running into enemy fire. For the scrolling sections, just stick to the back of the screen, spam Hornet Chaser or Triple Blade or charge your Mega Buster. If you want a challenge, play the airship section. If you want to test your itchy trigger finger, play the tank battalion section. General consensus seems to be that the Tank Battalion section is the least frustrating section to play through.

Intro Area

The first part of the level is basically supposed to be your average Mario level, except it has tons of bad guys. After travelling across the field dodging enemy fire, you go down a pipe, travel across a pit with Concrete Man platforms and you end up at a split path that will take you to two auto-scrolling levels: The Tank Battalion section and the Airship Fleet section. The difficulty in this section of the level isn't as frustrating as the auto-scrolling section.

A: Hammer Bro and the Koopa Hopper (replaces Picket-Man and Hopper Mech). Looks different, but they practically function the same as their original Mega Man counterparts.

B: An abandoned tank. These bad guys must have left it behind. Too bad you can't steal it.

C: The underground section that eventually leads you to the split path.

Tank Battalion Section

The first scrolling section you can select. It takes place on the ground in the outskirts of the Mushroom Kingdom. This tank battalion is on their way to smash through Princess Peach's castle and Mega Man (or whoever you use as your player skin) is the only one who can stop the tank battalion from entering the Mushroom Kingdom! Cheesy side-story aside, this scrolling section has players facing off against waves of Koopa Troopas, Rifle Troopas, War Goombas, Hammer Bros., Parazooka Troopas and even some unchanged Mega Man enemies (Walking Bomb from Mega Man 3 and Killer Bullet from Mega Man 1). This section also has the fragmenting missiles from Mega Man 5 occasionally flying towards the player's path. The end of the stage has a teleporter that takes you to the boss room.

D: There are a ton of these Hammer Bros. and Fat Hammer Bros. littered throughout this section. Use Slash Claw to cut through them!

E: Not pictured: Lakitus floating above dropping bombs on top of your head.

F: Also not pictured: Waves of fragmenting missiles, Killer Bullets from Mega Man 1 and those Walking Bomb from Mega Man 3 littered throughout this section

Airship Fleet Section

The other scrolling section you can select. Also the more frustrating section due to having to make precise jumps onto the Tomahawk Man stage platforms while avoiding flying bad guys. This level has the most default Mega Man enemies placed in the entire stage. Some of those unchanged Mega Man enemies include the Apache Joe, Jet Buton, Parasyu and a Cocco. The end of the stage has a teleporter that takes you to the boss room.

G: The beginning of the section, AKA, the calm before the storm.

H: These Tomahawk Man stage platforms are pretty buggy. Sometimes you can fall through if you get hit.

I: Previous screen had a randomly placed Cocco. I guess Koopa Troopas like chickens?

Boss Area

After going through the scrolling section, you end up in the boss room. Bowser faces off against you in a not-so-epic showdown. He only has two attacks: He will either shoot three fireballs at the player in rapid succession, or he will occasionally jump around the boss room. The former attack gets harder to dodge as he gets closer to you, and the latter will have a short-lasting earthquake effect. It is advised to use Super Arrow for maximum damage, although Wheel Cutter works well too, and it can protect you from all of his attacks if you climb the wall.

J: You fight Bowser. He likes jumping around and shooting fireballs.

Skip Status

This level was deemed skippable by the judges, due to the insane enemy spam and unfair difficulty, especially in the scrolling sections.

Judge Comments
snoruntpyro  : 24 / 50
Design Fun Creativity Aesthetics Functionality Skip Teleporter? 6 / 15 3 / 10 6 / 15 4 / 5 5 / 5 No Holy geez please calm down with the enemy placement in the first half, like wow. My experience with it was basically "oh hey! cute smb3 lev-OH GOD ENEMIES EVERYWHERE HELP". The resprites are really cute, but I feel like the level spams like, the literal worst enemies to spam. Sniper Joes, Hammer Joes, Sniper Mechs. There's a lot of them, there's a lot of button mashing as a result, and for some unholy reason the Sniper Joes in this level lose their weakness to Slash Claw. Once the path splits, though, the level gets more tolerable, mainly because both paths are autoscroll and that allows you to slow down and take care of the enemies more easily. I still don't think that the level is very well-designed, though; there are a looot of Sniper and Hammer Joes just pasted around and it really doesn't make for a fun level experience. The Bowser boss fight is fine though, and the level does have a lot of charm going for it, so that's that. But it just...isn't well designed. It's just kinda unfun.
JupiHornet  : 24 / 50
Design Fun Creativity Aesthetics Functionality 5 / 15 2 / 10 10 / 15 3 / 5 4 / 5 I'm gonna be honest, I really, REALLY didn't like this level. I couldn't even come close to enjoying the nice graphic replacements because there was SO. MUCH. ENEMY. SPAM. The first part was fine because you could get through it easily if you went slowly. The second part was slightly worse with the falling platforms, but it was still manageable. The tank and airship parts were the worst offenders, because they were autoscrollers, so you can't really go slowly or quickly, and there were a lot of enemies on the screen at once. You'd think after all of that, the boss would be really hard, but nope! It's just Bowser with only 2 attacks (fireballs and earthquakes) that are both insanely easy to dodge. It's really unfortunate, too, because this level had the potential to be fantastic, but it was ruined by sloppy level design. It felt like you made all these graphic replacements and tried to show them all at once instead of making an actual level. That kind of thing CAN work, but at a certain point you need to ask yourself "am I doing too much?"
Enjl  : 16 / 50
Design Fun Creativity Aesthetics Functionality Skip Teleporter? 2 / 15 0 / 10 5 / 15 4 / 5 5 / 5 Yes The way this level presents itself makes me feel like it tried to get a majority of its points by emulating the graphical wow-factor from MaGMML1's SMW level. I can tell that a lot off work went into the sprites, even though they're not perfect, but I an also tell that this level would've been much more enjoyable if the work went into actually designing it instead, as the level pretty much falls short in every factor of design, aside from the boss. The level's main flaw is the abundance of enemies in every section which are placed seemingly randomly and in much larger numbers than necessary. Couple this with a lack of health refill pickups and you've got a stage that'll make people frustrated very quickly.
Garirry  : 25 / 50
Design Fun Creativity Aesthetics Functionality 5 / 15 4 / 10 7 / 15 4 / 5 5 / 5 I don't like it. There is a serious excess of enemies and they are often poorly placed, so you have to know their placement in advance, and often even that's not enough. It was... Okay. The stage was pretty fun for a bit but it got frustrating very quickly. I actually liked some of the ideas here. Mario stage was kinda cool. But there's nothing that interesting. I think it could be a bit better. Works just fine. What a disappointment. I would have liked the Mario theme here but the level itself is just so bad. Not only are most enemies simply recolours of existing Mega Man enemies, but they are placed in excessive quantity, and in the worst places possible. It's almost impossible to beat this level without taking damage. Also, the boss requires extreme precision to dodge his attacks, and when he isn't attacking, the fight is as dull as ever. So much more could have been done to the stage.
ACESpark  : 18 / 50
Design Fun Creativity Aesthetics Functionality Skip Teleporter? 5 / 15 3 / 10 5 / 15 3 / 5 2 / 5 Yes To quote the last contest: ""Enemy spam is fun, right, guys?"". That is everything wrong with this stage. Every screen is packed with enemies, and the enemy placement itself is baffling. The most infuriating one was on the Airship Area - trying to get on those Tomahawk Man platforms was insane. Often, you picked the worst possible enemy to place in the auto-scrolling segment, and there are so many projectiles everywhere it's too hard to keep track of. Also - there is a distinct lack of gimmicks here... with the exception of the Tomahawk platform, and they basically do nothing. This entire stage is just enemies basically, and that's not really too fun. Just because the last contest had a Mario level... doesn't mean you're going to place as high as that one because you used Mario. Because what the last contest entry had was actual thought put behind it. This was just everything plonked down without much creativity or testing. Don't get me wrong, some of these Mario reskins were pretty interesting, even if the lineart was a bit shoddy, but... then you just sort of stopped trying, and plonked regular Mega Man enemies into the Mario arena. This felt very half assed. Bowser was unexpected, and a neat addition, but he was too easy really... granted that is par the course for Bowser. Bare in mind some of your positive score here is due to including him. I'm not joking. This was pretty awful overall. (Oh.. and most of your new assets are busted when you use certain weapons. Playtesting is a good thing.)

Revised Version

The author released a revised version of SMB3 about a month after MaGMML2's release. Not only is there a significant reduction in the enemy count and enemy health has been reduced, unchanged Mega Man enemies were removed from the level, two brand new enemies were added into the level that are exclusive to the airship fleet section and tank battalion section and the music has been changed due to gameplay videos being flagged for using copyrighted music. You can also play the unfinished sequel to SMB3, the two Pit of Pit levels featured in MaGMML2, the author's very first map created for MaGMML2 and the original version of SMB3 (with the enemies' changed stats). http://www.mediafire.com/file/ofy56g0dpd6udn3/Lizardcommando+MAGMML2.zip

Trivia

• SMB3 was actually a placeholder name. The level originally would have been called Super Mario Warzone or Super Mario Battlefield.

• The main inspirations for this level were from Super Mario Bros. 3, Metal Slug, and the Megaman 7 opening stage orchestra remix from the MegaRock Carnival album. There was inspiration from Battlefield 1 for one of the enemies and a really old unreleased Game Maker game that involved a gun toting Koopa Troopa. The author of SMB3 had never played that Super Mario World themed level from the first Make A Good Mega Man Level contest. He had no idea a Super Mario Bros. themed level had been created in the previous contest.

• The two auto-scrolling sections were originally supposed to be played back-to-back, but the level designer deemed it too long and frustrating to have to go through two scrolling levels in a row. That's why it was split up into two different sections, giving players a choice between the two auto-scrolling sections.

• All of the enemies used in the level were supposed to be replaced, either with brand new Mario enemies or Mega Man enemies with a more Mario-Esque design (Like the Koopa Joe). Due to time constraints, that was never fully implemented.

• There were two enemies that were originally supposed to be in SMB3 in the auto-scrolling sections, a Para-Goomba that was supposed to replace the Parasyu and a Zaku Troopa (A mech resembling a Zaku 1 with a Zaku-esque Bowser head.) that was supposed to replace the Power Muscler. The Para-Goomba would have been exclusive to the Airship Fleet section and the Zaku Troopa would have been exclusive to the Tank Battalion section. These enemies have been added into the revised version of SMB3.

• The second Tomahawk platform section in the Airship Fleet part of the level originally had the cloud platforms from Megaman 2. It almost worked, but the scrolling screen made it a little too hectic and you had to jump on the cloud at the right time, otherwise you'd fall off and die due to the screen scrolling.