They apparently found an even earlier version of Sonic 2 (predating the originally discovered prototype) and the cool part is comparing images of an entire level from each version to see all the little alterations from the alpha to the final.
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CLOUDBOND007 |
Something I'd be interested in seeing. |
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This is true for a lot of games, but SMB1 is the one I'm most interested in... I'd really like to see some interviews about the making of this game.
How many people were involved in level design, how long it took to finalize a level, what were the earlier versions of the game like. It was so different from
anything that came before, I would love to see how they got started, what ideas they had that didn't work out, etc. I also kind of wonder exactly what it
was like to program games for the NES and other early consoles. Maybe someone here knows more about that.
They apparently found an even earlier version of Sonic 2 (predating the originally discovered prototype) and the cool part is comparing images of an entire level from each version to see all the little alterations from the alpha to the final. |
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Crawl and 1OOO |
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I'd love to see this for a lot of games.
Over the years, a few things have been said about Super Mario Bros. -- such as how they had to use the Excitebike sound effect, because Mario's jump hadn't been finalized yet; or how originally Mario would always be "big", but the idea of the power up came later -- but I don't think any that address your questions. Those really nitty gritty issues could be very interesting, especially of course for a classic. Some modern games sort of have stuff like that. I think God of War was supposed to have a complete commentary for it, much like a movie's DVD commentary, but of course much longer, since videogames are much longer. They had the commentary for the first level on the demo, plus lots of other info on how it developed. It seems like if they ever released Super Mario Bros. or other classic games for a modern system with optical media, they could include lots of stuff like this as a bonus. (Supposedly, even the PS1 Atari arcade collections have some interviews, but I haven't seen them, so I don't know how comprehensive they are) Assuming any records exist (artists at Disney supposedly went surfing down the hallway on cells of finished movies), people remember the details (Simpsons DVD commentaries suggest that they might not), and that the people originally involved would take part (if something like that would be attempted for Metroid [or Super Metroid], it has an obvious problem). |
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Crawl and 1OOO |
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How many people were involved in level designI thought that in the Mario World player's guide (or some other interview from around that time), Miyamoto said something like, they added about four staff members per Mario game, and had about 12 or 16 for Super Mario Bros. 3. I don't know about that, though, because didn't Super Mario World have a pretty long staff roll? |
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CLOUDBOND007 |
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such as how they had to use the Excitebike sound effect, because Mario's jump hadn't been finalized yet; or how originally Mario would always be "big", but the idea of the power up came laterEven that is more that I ever knew. It seems to be very rarely discussed. |
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Crawl and 1OOO |
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It almost makes me wonder why they thought the jump sound effect would be so important that they had to test to make sure it would work. (Incidentally, sound
effects -- including Mario's jump -- are sometimes dropped on the tank level in SMB3) I'm trying to imagine the game without it. Maybe it'd seem
a little lifeless without it; maybe I'd never notice it. Castlevania 3 doesn't have a jump sound effect, and I never noticed that ... though those two
games do have different atmospheres.
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