The Mario RPG thread



Seems neat so far.
Looks really nice. Tho a bit dark in certain places, if you ask me.

No HUGE changes yet... The Toads are now generic Toads instead of different kinds of people, furthering the genocide of female Toads...
Mario no longer jumps on Toad to knock sense into him, he just sorta hops in place and Toad's head doesn't grow huge when he's embarassed. That's unfortunate, I thought it was a neat, over the top effect.
And of course, the Koopas don't have their pilot uniforms anymore... :/

But at least they kept the design of the ?-blocks the same! :D
 
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The overworld moves were streamlined... that's quite a disappointment to me. I think it's better if players will have to learn to streamline the switching around of brothers and action commands themselves.
As long as Luigi still goes "THUNDERRRRRRR~~~" when you select it I'll be happy. :Sx3:
 
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This just makes me think about how I lent someone Superstar Saga and they never gave it back and I never got to finish it :SpoiledRotten:
 
We got new footage.



  • Now we know what the File Select looks like.
  • Taking wacky photoes does return
  • Some people have been concerned that the double jumps will make the game to easy, but I can tell the remake will be balanced with this in mind.
Some thoughts:
  • Will it be possible to do the Luigi abuse coin trick?
  • The Sun Door puzzle in Woohoo Hooniversity was a bit confusing. Would they update it?
  • What will happen in Starbeans Caffey? E Gadd 7 times, or other characters?
  • Several wacky cartoon animations have been removed. Will they keep the "anime fall" gag?
  • The origional game had 9 Green Warp Pipes. Will the remake add any more fast travel points.
  • Both the Beanish folks and the Hoohoo Village folks will most likely reuse sprites from Dream Team, meaning the Hoohoos will now be brown instead of their old designs. But Dream Team made these guys say "hoo" all the time, which got annoying. What will happen in the remake?
  • Since this remake came out many years after Partners In Time, Bowser could had updated dialog: "This is my newest weapon, the Koopa Kruiser. You like it? I based it on the one I had back in my childhood." But that doesn't happen... Well, I guess everybody needed to forget the events in PIT Past in order for that game to work...
 
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  • The origional game had 9 Green Warp Pipes. Will the remake add any more fast travel points.
I hope they add one more in Hoohoo Village. It always felt like that was the one place you couldn't easily get to without a bit of backtracking.

Oh, and I hope they add an unlockable shortcut in Bowser's castle in front of the thrown room so you can get back to the entrance much more easily.
 
Not gonna lie, what I saw in these first 10 minutes has me a bit conflicted, at least as far as the visuals are concerned.

I still think it looks nice, if oversaturated with it's colors and lighting, but they really scaled down the expressions way too much, Superstar Saga had no problem to really exagerrate the characters' expressions, even intentionally going off model and it not only made for great visual comedy, but it also helped to bring life into the visuals. Cackletta in particular feels like she was practically designed to be expressive, to the point of looking wonderfully grotesque even as Bowletta and her bit in the remak's intro was....rather lame in comparison to the original, to say the least.

The Toads and Koopas being generic now is actually a pretty big bummer for me, but at this point I'm starting to get used to the Mario series nowadays putting no effort into trying to make the Toads (aside from a few select ones) appealing NPC types in any way anymore, maybe Little Fungitown will be better about it, it pretty much has to, since that town has married Toads with children, but you never know.

I do like the little extra animations next to the bros' battle jigs, as well as the attempts to recreate old animations, so it's not like there's no visual charm and it still looks fine, but it just doesn't play into the strenghts of the original's spritework.

Still very much looking forward to the game, but this is the one aspect that doesn't 100% click with me as of now.
 
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Not gonna lie, what I saw in these first 10 minutes has me a bit conflicted, at least as far as the visuals are concerned.

I still think it looks nice, if oversaturated with it's colors and lighting, but they really scaled down the expressions way too much, Superstar Saga had no problem to really exagerrate the characters' expressions, even intentionally going off model and it not only made for great visual comedy, but it also helped to bring life into the visuals. Cackletta in particular feels like she was practically designed to be expressive, to the point of looking wonderfully grotesque even as Bowletta and her bit in the remak's intro was....rather lame in comparison to the original, to say the least.

The Toads and Koopas being generic now is actually a pretty big bummer for me, but at this point I'm starting to get used to the Mario series nowadays putting no effort into trying to make the Toads (aside from a few select ones) appealing NPC types in any way anymore, maybe Little Fungitown will be better about it, it pretty much has to, since that town has married Toads with children, but you never know.

I do like the little extra animations next to the bros' battle jigs, as well as the attempts to recreate old animations, so it's not like there's no visual charm and it still looks fine, but it just doesn't play into the strenghts of the original's spritework.

Still very much looking forward to the game, but this is the one aspect that doesn't 100% click with me as of now.
I pretty much agree on all of that.
It's really weird when they make some things more homogenized but others are still as exaggerated as they were, like the big goofy grinning faces on everything. If you wanna capture the style, capture all of it, not just what's convenient.
 
I wonder if that aspect is due to this overall homogenization of the Mario series or if it's to better integrate it with the later series as the gameplay chances also try to do. Compared to later games the sprite work is quite out there which tends to happen with first entries.
 
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About the whole Manual Bros. Move Controls VS. Quick-Select Bros. Move Controls on the Overworld, a good game designer would simply give the player the choice and include both control schemes. I mean this has got to be one of the easier things to program.

I wonder if that aspect is due to this overall homogenization of the Mario series or if it's to better integrate it with the later series as the gameplay chances also try to do. Compared to later games the sprite work is quite out there which tends to happen with first entries.

I mean... the later games had no problem including unique Toads. Just look at Bowser's Inside Story, that's one of the more modern games in the series (comparatively) and it features a bunch of diverse Toads. Children Toads, Mother and Father Toads, a fortune teller Toad, chunky Toads with mustaches, Toads with unusual cholor schemes, etc.
Superstar Saga DX doesn't even wanna keep the female Toad in the beginning of the game so it's more likely it met with the same fate as the unique characters in Paper Mario and Paper Jam.
Dream Team didn't have many unique Toads but that was fine since there were a ton of other unique species.

I don't wanna make any unfounded accusations... but I wouldn't be surprised if a certain someone doesn't want people to tamper with his Toad designs...or Koopa designs... or Bowser design... or... you get the idea.
 
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[Cackletta's] bit in the remake's intro was....rather lame in comparison to the original, to say the least.
For comparison:
cackle.png

This one is faily faithful but I can't help but still be critical of it.
For one, her eye is more joyful in the remake, while the original is much more evil and intense.
For two, the eye, unlike in the original, is not surrounded by many darker colors, making it blend somewhat into the yellow of her robe, making it harder to read the expression. Same can be said for her tongue, which has almost the same shade of red as the carpet behind it, making it harder to see. And since this style no longer has any outlines it's unavoidable. Which is a shame since the original already had more of a pink tongue anyways.
Also note the lighting on the faces of both sprites. The GBA version has light coming from below, to add to the manic, evil impression, while the remake goes with standard lighting.

cackle3.png

This one isn't so bad either, but you can notice the changed proportions. Her head is much smaller, making her evil smile less effective, and it also looks like she has less teeth.
It seems like they are going for more realistic "camera" angles as opposed to the ones with more of an artistic license of the original, which results in some sprites showing less of the characters' faces.
Like, look at Fawfy here:
cackle4fawf.png

(Again with the red against red! :wurgh: )
The original perspective is at a bit of an angle, letting you see most of his face, while the new one is straight-up 90°.
Same thing applies in the next one:
cackle2.png

This one is REALLY unfortunate. I mean.... WHERE'S THE PASSION!?!? :SpoiledRotten:
This was supposed to be her winning moment!
She's having a mad evil laugh moment of ORGASMIC PROPORTIONS!!! SO MAKE A SPRITE THAT REFLECTS THAT!
It looks more like she's about to swallow a big red pepper, not like she's gaping her mouth so wide that her tongue can't help but protrude out.

AND AGAIN WITH THE RED TONGUE AGAINST RED! :wargh: :wargh: :wargh: :wargh: :wargh: :wargh:
 
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Speeking of the opening cinematic, I am a little bit nitpicky in saying this, but I dislike the fact that they changed the screen at the bottom of the text to speach bubbles.
I know that, yes, that fact in the origional was purely due to the screen size limitations, but with the whole game being a movie, it made for a better movie opening, with actual movie subtitles.

Other things I don't like as much is how the music extends further, instead of suddenly dropping.
Such as the castle explosion. The sudden music stop, plus the much quicker explosion animation, made it a lot more comedic, and it was extra funny because you didn't have time to prepare for it, so it got you by surpirce.

---

Now as far as removing female toads... What will happen with that scene at Little Fungitown, where a toad is hiding from a girl on a Mushroom platform, because she can't jump onto it, and he says "that girl scares me"?
Are we just completly getting rid of that little moment?
 
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Something that just came to my mind, I really hope that Alphadream secures themselves the permission from Square to keep Geno's cameo around, in the Superstar Saga remake:
Genomlss.PNG

I know that it's as small and insignificant as you can get, but these types of small surprises are among the many things that I adore about the M&L series.

This was one of the first things I thought of when this remake was announced.

Somehow I doubt it will include Geno. Just doesn't seem like he'd fit the "spirit" of this new remake.

I gotta say...no offense to those looking forward to it, but I'm totally against this game. I think Superstar Saga is just fine the way it is, I think it looks charming as hell and doesn't need an "update" to make it look more like generic Mario.
Bowser's Minions on the other hand, looks kind of cool. Why not make that a full game instead of pulling some George Lucas shit on a classic.
shrug_by_omegasunburst-d7yoz5o.png
 
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I'm still quite happy the remake exists. I mean, the upgraded graphics outside of the characters should be good, the improved music will be amazing and the added options (like the inevitable boss rush) should be nice to see.

Just wish they didn't lose so much of the charm with the character designs (as mentioned above).
 
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