Hobby #9: Super Mario War

No, it’s not related to the classic card game. Today’s hobby is an absolute gem by the name of Super Mario War. This game has more depth than you can dream of.

A sadistic level I made. Not actual/full size.

Super Mario War (Or SMW, sometimes confused with Super Mario World) is essentially a fighting game built right off of the Mario engine. You and a friend (or two, or three. If you don’t have friends, poor ol’ you, you can face off against the CPU) can fight against each other using many techniques with a variety of characters (sort of), stages and items. The most classic technique that is omnipresent is to jump on top of your enemy’s head, squishing them and making them lose a life/lap/frag/point/whatever else your game mode offers. In most cases, this is good for you and bad for them. Another technique is to use items to help you out, such as the Ice Rod, which, once you press the item button, shoots out a Kamek-esque polygonal mess of magic straight forward. If it hits someone except you, it turns them into an ice cube temporarily. If they are touched in this state, they shatter into an icy mess. There are plenty of items to use to your advantage, sort of like Super Smash Bros. These are only two of the ways to kill an opponent, though the one I dislike is that if someone stands still for about 10 seconds, they die instantly. Though by then you would know to move by the time counting down on you in the last 3. But the general rule (and you’ll see the CPU execute this at all times) is to keep moving and jumping, moving and jumping. That way, you’re harder to squish/hit/otherwise kill. These battles are a bit frantic, indeed, but are very fun.

Most important in my opinion, though, is the game modes, which are plentiful and very varied. Just a few of them follow:

Classic

The basic mode. Make your opponent lose all their lives however possible before they make you lose all of yours.

Jail

Jail is a very backwards mode in which the first person that loses a life “goes to jail”. Their jump height and speed are drastically reduced at this point, thus making you easier to kill and getting an even longer sentence. While staying alive for a good while gets you out (like serving your sentence for the crime you never did), you may also find jail keys in item blocks, which you can use if jailed, or save for later if not. And if I recall correctly, you may be tagged by a teammate (if any) to break out. Essentially, though, it’s just classic with a huge yet fun gimmick of sorts.
Capture the Flag (CTF)

CTF is one of the most fun modes, in my opinion. For the poor souls who don’t know what CTF is, and how to play: Each team hides their flag somewhere around the area they’re playing in, and all within a certain radius of the flag is now their base. The other team does the same. The goal of each team is to capture the enemy team’s flag and bring it back to your flag without being tagged (IIRC, you may only tag an opposing player while they are within your area, unless the player you are trying to tag has the flag). If you are tagged, you are out of the game. The game continues until one team wins either by tagging every team member on the other team (very hard) or by capturing their flag successfully (varied difficulty).
Super Mario War has a few twists on this: one, your bases are set randomly each team someone captures an opposing team’s flag. Also, when you die in any way, you just start back from your base, but drop the flag at the spot you died on. The flag may or may not then reset back at the enemy’s base after a set period of time, or go automatically back after being touched by the “tagger”, both depending on the settings.

This is just a taster of the incredible amounts of game modes. And I know I mentioned it before, but don’t get me started on the amount of levels and “characters” (there’s really no characters, just different sprite sets for the same system- don’t worry, it’s still great to have a variety of them. The reason I’ve only shown 2 in these pictures is I didn’t bother to swap them and/or their colors in the time of taking these pics). Both are also somewhat easy to edit/create.

Pros:

• The amount of variety and depth is incredible
• Basically endless replay value
• Fan of Smash Bros (TM), the Mario games or both? You’ll love this.
• If you’re not, it’s still great fun.
• Terrific fun at that with two or more players.

Cons:

• A little too fast paced overall, but that might just be me
• They might want to remove the “GO” button on the main menu so that you don’t end up in a random level and a random mode and say “Huh? What happened?”, or at least place it where it’s not right next to the “Start” button, thus leading to confusion between which one to press in the back of your mind
• Big con: no network play (yet)! It seems like the perfect game for it.
• The bots have great AI, but tend to get stuck in various places sometimes, and don’t work terribly well with moving platforms (and definitely not my run-away-from-spikes-on-moving-ground levels [see first picture])

Overall score: 8.5/10 – A true gem that makes me wonder why it’s not even shareware, being so in depth and all.

The link to the stable version 1.7 AFE is currently here, but you may want the slightly buggier version that has more features, 1.8 beta 1: Link

Hobby #8: Youtube

I don’t know a soul that doesn’t know what youtube is. Many are obsessed with it, and since I’ve been doing hobbies about things that many people don’t know about, I decided to do a more common one. Also, apologies for the lack of updates.

Youtube is essentially the ultimate video sharing website, for those who live under a rock (how are you accessing my website?). The Youtube idea is this: you upload videos you’ve recorded, someone watches your video, some more people watch it, and since by this time it has 5-6 views, people might say “hey, I’ll fit in with the crowd” or “Oooh, the subject of this video interests me” and watch it some more. Thus your status on youtube is partially accumulated by how many views your videos have, which is essentially how popular they are, because people can share your video with their friends- bam, more views. Also, two other popular features include other people being able to rate and/or comment on and discuss the videos. You can also at special effects to the video, descriptions for an explaination of it, tags to help people find it with keywords and even notes and speech bubbles burnt into the video itself.

A more complex and fun part, however, comes if you register an account on youtube (don’t worry, it’s free). You don’t have to register to watch videos, but you do have to if you want to comment and rate on them, or upload your own. However, when you register, you get your own customizable profile page complete with subscribers, subscriptions, an avatar the varies with the videos you’ve uploaded, quicklists, favorites, playlists, and on and on. All these things really enhance your youtube experience.

Pros:
Very accessible
Great interface
Easiest file sharing the planet
Plenty of features

Cons:
The comment rating system is kinda dumb

Overall rating: 9/10