Sun, Jan 12, 2020
Puzzle stages are by far the most difficult levels to design in Super Mario Maker 2. Normal Super Mario Maker 2 levels are just so much easier to playtest, to design and to get working than puzzles are. But playing a great designed puzzle stage in Super Mario Maker 2 is also one of the most rewarding experiences out there. But what does a good Super Mario Maker 2 puzzle stage actually look like, how do we design great puzzles, what are some traps to avoid, and most of all, how do we even approach designing a single puzzle in the first place? In this video we are going to take a closer look at how to create great puzzle stages in Super Mario Maker 2.
Wed, Feb 5, 2020
There are many obscure and really weird official Mario games out there. Games like Mario's Fundamentals , Hotel Mario, the Virtual Boy games, or that one time they abused the Mario brand to teach kids typing. All of those games are super weird, and, to be honest, most of them are among the worst games Nintendo ever released. But all those obscure Mario games also kind of raise a question. Which of these really bad Mario Games is actually the worst one? So I sat down and started to investigate this question, I played dozens over dozens of hours of really weird Mario games, all in the hopes to find out which game featuring Mario is the worst one ever released. And I pretty quickly came to a realization. There is way too much going on in these games to cover all of them in a single video. So instead of answering the eternal question which Mario game is the absolute worst one in a single video, we are going to do this in a small mini series, where we take a closer look at some of Nintendo's weirdest moments, starting today, with the fascinating game Mario's Time Machine.
Tue, Mar 3, 2020
In February 1995 a really interesting Mario game got released. Mario's Game Gallery, which later got re-released under the promising title Mario's FUNdamentals. The game looks like the standard 90s Mario cash grab game at first. It's just a collection of five board games, featuring Mario. But actually there are several things setting this weird little game collection apart from other obscure Mario games. Mario's FUNdamentals is a really weird game, among the weirdest games Mario ever did. But is the game any good? Well, let's take a deep look into this almost forgotten part of Mario's career, and let's find out.
Thu, Aug 6, 2020
There is something really interesting about the 3D Super Mario series, and that is, that the different 3D Super Mario games don't have much in common with each other. All the Super Mario games use the same enemies, and obstacles and characters and whatnot, but the gameplay in the 3D Super Mario games dramatically changes from one to the next. Yet, all of them are highly critically acclaimed games, and all the games are among the best selling games on their Nintendo console. This kind of leaves us with a question? What wizardry did Nintendo practice to make all those games so successful, while making all of them so different? Well, in this video we are going to investigate this question, we are going to take a look at the very first world of all the 3D Super Mario games, as a stand in for the whole game, we will discuss how Nintendo evolved the series, what new ideas Nintendo tried, what worked, where they failed, and we will try to find out why all the 3D Super Mario games are so different.
Thu, Aug 20, 2020
The way Nintendo implemented the Cat Suit in Super Mario Maker 2 is the perfect metaphor for everything that is wrong with Nintendo's glitch management. In this video we are going to take a deep dive into a couple of weird decisions regarding glitches that Nintendo made in the past. We will discuss in detail how Nintendo implemented the Cat Suit in Super Mario Maker 2, why this implementation is the perfect metaphor for everything wrong with Nintendo's glitch management, and what Nintendo should do going forward regarding glitches.
Tue, Sep 1, 2020
The 1.3 update added tons of new Power-ups to Super Mario Maker 2. But all those new Super Mario Maker 2 Power-ups kind of raise an important question. Which Power-up is the best one, and much more importantly, which Super Mario Maker 2 Power-up is the absolute worst one? In this video we are going to finally answer this eternal question, because today we are not only going to put all those Super Mario Maker 2 Power-ups into a tier list, but we will also discuss what it is that makes some Power-ups much more successful than others, we will take a look at a couple of different ideas with those Power-ups, and we will even add a new entry onto our dangerous list of evil.
Wed, Sep 16, 2020
So I never liked how the tanks in Super Mario Odyssey control, but I was never able to really pinpoint what was wrong with them. That was until recently, because recently I decided to investigate this huge Super Mario Odyssey mystery. In this video we will take a look at the shocking truth about the tanks in Super Mario Odyssey. We will not only discuss every aspect of the tank capture in way too much detail, but we will also unravel why the tanks in Super Mario Odyssey feel so bad to control.
Thu, Oct 1, 2020
I have a love hate relationship with the bosses in Super Mario Odyssey. So here's the thing; In my opinion Super Mario Odyssey has some of the best boss fights in all of the Super Mario series, but while some of the bosses are really great highlights of the game, there are also some bosses that are - well not. This kind of leaves us with an eternal question: Why are some of the bosses in Super Mario Odyssey better than others? What is it that makes a Super Mario Odyssey boss really great, why are some of them so annoying, and most important of all, which out of all the Super Mario Odyssey Boss fights is the best one, and which one is the absolute worst? In this video we are going to investigate those eternal questions, because today we are going to rank all the bosses in Super Mario Odyssey and we are going to put them into a formidable Super Mario tier list.
Thu, Oct 15, 2020
Can New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe be beaten while permanently holding down the crouch button? At first glance this might sound impossible since permanently crouching not only robs us the ability to walk, but makes tons of other Mario obstacles a lot more complicated to platform through. But as it turns it actually is possible to beat New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe while permanently crouching. But what about permanently crouching, while also being Mini Mario? Is it possible to beat New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe in the absolute smallest way possible? In this video we are finally going to answer this eternal question.
Thu, Nov 5, 2020
So in this video we are going to do a couple of things. So first we are going to do this face reveal thingy people seem to be so curious about. Second, we are going to rank all the wonderful stages in Super Mario 64 HD. We are not only going to rank all the wonderful paintings in Super Mario 64 HD, but we are also going to discuss the quality of the Super Mario 3D All Stars collection, and we are going to reflect on the nature of Super Mario re-releases in the first place. But let's start by revealing some faces.
Thu, Nov 19, 2020
Nintendo is an unbelievably stubborn company. Nintendo is a company willing to take huge risks, Nintendo is a company willing to ignore all design trends of the current time and to go into the opposite direction. Nintendo is willing to reboot their most important franchises like Mario or Zelda, over and over again. Basically they are a company that was and still is sometimes crazy enough to take a huge risk, to throw all proven to work concepts into the bin, and to start again from scratch - and sometimes those huge risks Nintendo was willing to take turned out to be insanely influential. Sometimes those risks not only lead to tremendous successes for Nintendo, but even changed the way we think about games in its entirety.
Thu, Nov 26, 2020
Nintendo is a fascinating company. Nintendo is probably the single most important company in the history of gaming, they revolutionized the way we think about and even play video games more than once. But, and that's a huge but, not everything Nintendo did over the years has been brilliant. For every fantastic Mario sequel that Nintendo made, there is also a time where they stubbornly drove a franchise into the ground for no reason at all, for every time the Zelda series made a revolutionary design choice, there is also one time where they made a design decision so stupid that it ended up actively harming them and for every time they came up with something brilliant, there is also one time where they completely got stuck in the past for absolutely no reason. So today we are going to take a look at my personal favorite and totally subjective most disastrous worst mistakes Nintendo ever made list.
Thu, Dec 10, 2020
The Blue Coins in Super Mario Sunshine are a great reward for thoroughly exploring all the different stages. I also absolutely hate those coins. So what went wrong? Well the answer is: It's complicated. There are several reasons why I end up really disliking the Blue Coins that I otherwise really like. So today we are going to take a deep dive into my love hate relationship with the Blue Coins in Super Mario Sunshine. We will not only discuss how the Blue Coins succeed at what they set out to achieve, but also why they fail miserably at the same time. We will not only try to find out what went wrong with them, but we will hopefully also learn about a couple of interesting and often lesser discussed crimes in game design that the Blue Coins in Super Mario Sunshine commit.
Mon, Dec 28, 2020
Why does Nintendo refuse to produce the Paper Mario game that so many fans want to see? Like literally: Why? This question honestly started to kind of haunt me. I ended up spending way too much time thinking about why Nintendo refuses to produce the Paper Mario game that so many people want to see, and I believe I finally found the answer, or at least I have a theory. So today, we are going to explore this question. We are going to take a look at a couple of Nintendo franchises and how they evolved, we will discuss a couple of brilliant design decisions that Nintendo recently made as well as chatter about a couple of incredible dumb ones, we will find out how all of this is connected and why it is the reason for many of Nintendo's more recent design disasters. But most importantly of all, we are going to find out why the classic Paper Mario format had to die.