Blog: Finishing Part 1 of Super Mario World (02/28/22 - 03/04/22)

Monday, February 28th

It's the last day of February! I hope everyone had a great weekend. It was super-cold here in Kansas City. But today, it is a lovely 65 degrees. I'm all for it.

I continued editing Part one of the Super Mario World video. Today, I focused a lot on the early iterations of Super Mario World. In this screenshot, I'm comparing Super Mario Bros. 3 sprites to early Super Mario World sprites. As you can see, they are very similar. 

I originally thought of animating all of these sprites. But I tried it out and it looked a little too busy (like a late 90s Geocities website). 

Tuesday, March 1st

I know what you are thinking...why does Mario look different? It's because I modified a Super Mario World ROM. Let me explain why.

From early screenshots of Super Mario World, we can see early ideas Nintendo implemented. For example, this checkpoint. 

It was a way to bring balance to the game: It saved the player's progress and made Mario big if he was small. 

However, look at the sprite: That is not the standard Mario sprite we know today. It's different! For a long time, these screenshots were all we had. However, in 2020, a massive Nintendo leak revealed early sprites of Mario for the game.  And inside, were sprite sheets from early builds of Super Mario World. 

In the video, I talk about how the game evolved over time. So naturally, I wanted to mention the checkpoints. But I had to use the old Mario sprite to show it. So, for 6 hours today, I learned how to modify ROMs. In short, you need to use Lunar Magic and YY-CHR to modify the sprites.  I replaced the standard Mario sprite with an early build Mario sprite.

It was a long process for just 5 seconds of footage but...worth it!

Wednesday, March 2nd

I filmed some more B-roll today. In this section, I'm talking about new ideas and concepts for Super Mario World. So I brought in set pieces to give the shots a little something extra. I used graph paper, a ruler, a pencil, legal pads, and more. Basically, I was going for an artist's desk.

Thursday, March 3rd 

I'm nearing the end of Part one! I made an homage to the title screen from one of the early screenshots (below). What do you think?

Friday, March 4th

I made a couple TikTok videos today, mailed out Patreon rewards, and had to do some tax stuff (bleh). Here is the upcoming schedule for Footnotes videos!

March 7th - Bleem!
March 13th - Mister Mosquito (20th anniversary)
March 21st - Top 10 Console Games, March 1991
March 28th - Kingdom Hearts (20th anniversary)