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Super Mario Bros warp zones were intended to work slightly differently [video]

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Re: Super Mario Bros warp zones were intended to work slightly differently [video]

#31

Post by mywittyname »

petercooper wrote: post #26
baisq wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, I'm so tired of 15 minute videos for something that can explained in text and images that can be read in one minute.

Star Wars is set in a remote galaxy where a civil war is taking place. Rebels, led by Princess Leia, are fighting against a baddy called Darth Vader and his Imperial forces. Leia steals some Imperial blueprints for a deadly weapon called the Death Star but she is then captured by Imperial forces so... .. yes, text is great, but video can, too, be great, whether it's explaining something fictional or not. Different st…

I think the parent is more frustrated by videos that drag on for 10 minutes before getting to the meat of the content.

Re: Super Mario Bros warp zones were intended to work slightly differently [video]

#33

Post by excalibur »

coldpie wrote: post #20
seanwilson wrote: post #17

Is there any disincentivize to using the warp zones so that people don't always skip levels when they know how to?

No. My philosophy has always been, if you want to play less of the game, why are you even playing it to begin with? :) So I just don't use them.

I agree with this philosophy for most games. I tend to play through them once and not revisit them once completed, so I try to experience as much of the game as possible on that first playthrough. (Up to a point anyway. Sometimes certain content e.g. gathering collectibles becomes boring or tedious. And sometimes I'm enjoying the content just fine, but feel the need to hurry up and finish the game so I can move on with my life.)

Needless to say, SMB isn't most games. It's the type of game you play again and again. And it does not natively include any game save or password system. The warp zones transform it from an hours-long marathon to something you can play through during an episode of your least-favorite Saturday cartoon.

Re: Super Mario Bros warp zones were intended to work slightly differently [video]

#34

Post by jvanderbot »

raldi wrote: post #2

For those who can't watch the video or just want a text summary: The underground 1-2 level is supposed to stop scrolling as soon as the mundane return-to-surface pipe comes onto the right edge of the screen. (Unless you're walking on the ceiling.) But because of a programming error, it keeps scrolling, revealing that the warp zone room is there. It was originally intended to be a much more hidden secret than it turne…

Even better. they take Y & expecting that condition to be false only when Y==0, but it appears to be false whenever the lowest bit of Y is 0, which means for any even numbered vertical position. Fantastic!

Here Y is the vertical position of Mario (0--> on top of the level). So, one bug is: there was supposed to be a scroll stop unless Mario was on top of the level. Because you can scroll the screen while not on top of the level produces the -1 level bug where you scroll Mario through to the warp zone with some junk in a certain memory location.

The memory location is corrupted because they set a boolean flag with an increment operation, which of course causes an overflow instead of setting a zero to a 1. (EDIT: I misunderstood this point, see discussion below)

Re: Super Mario Bros warp zones were intended to work slightly differently [video]

#35

Post by vikingerik »

seanwilson wrote: post #17

Is there any disincentivize to using the warp zones so that people don't always skip levels when they know how to?

If you're playing for score (which doesn't mean much in SMB, but it's there if you want to), you'd want to play through all the levels.

Or if you want to get more lives for the later levels, you might want to play through easier early levels to stock up.

It's not exactly disincentives for warping, it's incentives for not-warping.

Re: Super Mario Bros warp zones were intended to work slightly differently [video]

#36

Post by parksy »

tablespoon wrote: post #7

I wonder if this kind of obsessive analysis of popular NES-era games will end in a couple decades, as the people who grew up in the console's heyday grow too old; or if they'll continue because interest in these particular games transcended a particular generation (and they're simple enough for people to really take them apart).

Archaeologists still study garbage heaps from tens of thousands of years ago to figure out things about past civilisations. So my guess is on no - people will study the digital garbage heaps of humanity as much as they study the... once-were- stinkier ones.

Re: Super Mario Bros warp zones were intended to work slightly differently [video]

#37

Post by aasasd »

tablespoon wrote: post #7

I wonder if this kind of obsessive analysis of popular NES-era games will end in a couple decades, as the people who grew up in the console's heyday grow too old; or if they'll continue because interest in these particular games transcended a particular generation (and they're simple enough for people to really take them apart).

I'm vaguely sure that many of the hackers picking apart 8-bit games are in their twenties, if not teens. Meanwhile, even people who grew up with SNES and Genesis would now be in the late thirties.

Re: Super Mario Bros warp zones were intended to work slightly differently [video]

#38

Post by mywittyname »

tablespoon wrote: post #7

I wonder if this kind of obsessive analysis of popular NES-era games will end in a couple decades, as the people who grew up in the console's heyday grow too old; or if they'll continue because interest in these particular games transcended a particular generation (and they're simple enough for people to really take them apart).

I don't think so. Those are the only generation of games that can be analyzed this thoroughly. Plus, computer geeks in the future will still be interested in the fundamentals of computing. And console games are really the only piece of mainstream software whose assembly would be interesting to look at.

Granted, this is already niche content, and it will continue to be going forward. But I bet a lot of people watching those videos weren't even born when SMB came out or have even used an NES.

Re: Super Mario Bros warp zones were intended to work slightly differently [video]

#39

Post by Deletionk »

cplusplusfellow wrote: post #5
baisq wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, I'm so tired of 15 minute videos for something that can explained in text and images that can be read in one minute.

But how else would we make $300k a year on YouTube?

Weird criticism.

Video is a nice relaxing medium with video and audio.

Some prefer it others prefer text, I prefer both depending on where I am.

Guess what I prefer on the couch

Re: Super Mario Bros warp zones were intended to work slightly differently [video]

#40

Post by mywittyname »

coldpie wrote: post #20
seanwilson wrote: post #17

Is there any disincentivize to using the warp zones so that people don't always skip levels when they know how to?

No. My philosophy has always been, if you want to play less of the game, why are you even playing it to begin with? :) So I just don't use them.

Warp zones allow players to see more of the game. If you were a kid playing SMB, and was only allowed 30 minutes a day to play a game, you would probably never get to experience any of the later levels without the warp feature.

Not everyone games the same way. For many people, cheats add to the experience, they don't detract from it.

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