Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 108 posts

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

#61

Post by recursive »

mywittyname wrote: post #31
petercooper wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Kind of weird to put the comment on this one then, since it's edited so tightly.

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

#62

Post by LocalH »

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?

Not really, except for the shorter gameplay duration. Going through a warp zone even enables the hidden X-1 1-UP mushrooms that normally require you get all the loose coins in the preceding X-3 level.

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

#63

Post by bityard »

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 was into console emulators in the late 1990's and believed even at that time that it was possible to know everything there was to know about the NES. So given that we're a couple decades plus later and random hackers at home are still digging up interesting information, I feel like the tail on this kind of thing is quite long.

(And I'm still continually surprised that 80's-90's retro gaming/computing as a whole is such a popular hobby! If my teenage self had a crystal ball, he would have been very pleased to learn this.)

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

#64

Post by Wowfunhappy »

rightbyte wrote: post #3
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…

> But there's a bunch of evidence that warp zones were added very late in the game's development, perhaps as a last-minute change. I assumed they were for testers to quickly go to some level on a release build?

Surely if that was the only goal, it would be easier to have a debug menu come up when you enter a certain sequence of inputs? Among other things, getting to the warp zone still requires playing 1-1 and 1-2, and you can’t warp just anywhere.

It could even only work for the P2 controller, or use inputs not normally possible like left + right simultaneously.

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

#65

Post by LocalH »

excalibur wrote: post #33
coldpie wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wi…

It also depends on skill level too. I'd say I could complete a full home SMB1 run in about 30-45 minutes or so (the WR is under 19 minutes and is hyper-optimized, second only to any%).

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

#66

Post by bityard »

runevault wrote: post #57
jhauris wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it was the only way to do the weird optimizations and tricks needed to make a cutting edge real time game like Mario. Even in the '90s developers embedded assembly in the performance critical areas of C code.

My understanding is NES games were in pure assembly (specifically 6502), no C at all.

Yes. There may have been _some_ 8-bit or 16-bit games that were written in C for mainstream consoles but it wasn't until the 32-bit consoles (Playstation, Saturn, etc) that it was really practical to do so.

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

#67

Post by gowld »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #64
rightbyte wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But there's a bunch of evidence that warp zones were added very late in the game's development, perhaps as a last-minute change. I assumed they were for testers to quickly go to some level on a release build?

Surely if that was the only goal, it would be easier to have a debug menu come up when you enter a certain sequence of inputs? Among other things, getting to the warp zone still requires playing 1-1 and 1-2, and you can’t warp just anywhere. It could even only work for the P2 controller, or use inputs not normally possible like left + right simultaneously.

> use inputs not normally possible like left + right simultaneously.

Are there NES games (or mods) that have different (useful) behavior when an emulator permits such inputs?

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

#68

Post by vlunkr »

LocalH wrote: post #48
synu wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you happen to know why the minus world is the way it is? Was it a level that was designed, or is it a level where it's rendering some random program or other data? I'd love to learn more about that part too.

The minus world is technically an out-of-bounds level. The game treats it at world 36-1 (since the digits are tile numbers 0-9, followed by the alphabet, then a space tile at $24 or 36). Since doing so reads a whole host of other data out-of-bounds as well, it ends up pointing at the level layout for 2-2, but without the data that properly sets the pipe destination, resulting in an infinitely-looping level. Other ver…

It’s pretty interesting how the game can continue to function in a level that isn’t supposed to exist. Metroid has similar areas I believe. It’s hard to imagine a modern game or any modern software handling a scenario like that without crashing.

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

#69

Post by gowld »

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…

The cool kids know that Star Wars is much better in text than video

https://telehack.com/ -> starwars

or

(which apologies for video of text of video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJAbbRh9q4k

since the original is dead.

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

#70

Post by alickz »

VyseofArcadia wrote: post #29
mysterydip wrote: post #6

I was expecting typical youtube "you won't believe THIS!" but it was actually really informative, as someone without knowledge of how they stored levels in SMB1.

Displaced Gamers is great. Nice dives into the code and architecture of NES games. Not so deep that it's inaccessible, but deep enough that you could go start hacking on NES games yourself (assuming some prior exposure to assembly). My only beef is the NES focus on the Behind the Code series. I'd love to see some Sega Genesis games get broken down like that.

> Displaced Gamers is great.

Seconded, their videos are informative and lean.

If anyone has a passing interest in NES architecture or just how NES games work I'd recommend checking out the creators other videos.

Post reply on HN