Kaizo Mario World

Kaizo Mario World
Developer(s) T. Takemoto
Platform(s) Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Release 2007-2012
Genre(s) Platformer
Mode(s) Single-player

Kaizo Mario World (改造マリオワールド, Kaizō Mario Wārudo), also known as Asshole Mario, is a series of three ROM hacks of the 1990 Super Nintendo Entertainment System video game Super Mario World, created by T. Takemoto. The term "Kaizo Mario World" is a shortened form of Jisaku no Kaizō Mario (Super Mario World) o Yūjin ni Play Saseru (自作の改造マリオ(スーパーマリオワールド)を友人にプレイさせる, "Making my friend play through my Mario hack (Super Mario World)"). The series was created by Takemoto for his friend R. Kiba.[1]

Kaizo Mario World features extremely difficult level designs on the Super Mario World engine.[2] The series is notable for deliberately breaking all normal rules of "accepted" level design, and introduced many staples of later Kaizo Hacks, such as placing hidden blocks where the player is likely to jump, extremely fast autoscrollers, dying after the goal post and various other traps. This cruelty and the resulting frustration, as well as the skill level required, is both the purpose of the hacks and the appeal of any Let's Play videos made of them.[3]

Gameplay

Gameplay from Kaizo Mario World

Kaizo Mario World is a side-scrolling platform game in which the player controls Mario or Luigi. Being a ROM hack of Super Mario World, the hack uses many of the same game mechanics, while also introducing many new ones. The hack is notable for pushing the limits of human-capability and features many frame-perfect tricks, which often requires trial and error gameplay.

Each of the three ROM hacks start by killing Mario during the title screen unless the player performs a certain action.

History

Kaizo Mario World first gained popularity after being uploaded on YouTube under the title Asshole Mario.[4] Let's Play videos of Kaizo Mario World have received millions of views online.[5] The unique difficulty has also attracted speedrunners. On January 1, 2015, dram55 became the first person to complete a deathless run of the original game, a feat which has since also be accomplished by Calco2.[6][7] The original game was featured at Awesome Game Done Quick in 2015 with dram55 speedrunning it.[8]

The later games in the series did not have the same popularity as the original, but are still very popular games to speedrun or do Let's Plays of. Kaizo Mario World 3, the final game in the series, is widely considered to be the hardest Super Mario World Kaizo hack in existence, being very notable for its final boss fight which features heavy RNG. There are only 10 known people in the world to have beaten the game without the use of savestates, while DoDeChehedron was the person to have done so in a single sitting.[9][10]

List of ROM hacks

Timeline of release years
2007Kaizo Mario World
Kaizo Mario World 2
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012Kaizo Mario World 3
Game Year System Notes
Kaizo Mario World 2007 Super Nintendo
Kaizo Mario World 2 2007
Kaizo Mario World 3 2012

Reception

In 2015, IGN stated about Kaizo Mario World - "It’s funny, impressive, and extremely entertaining. Kaizo Mario wasn’t the first mean Mario hack, but it was the most polished, and the first to understand that it’s not just about being as hard as possible. Punishing players is an art form."[11]

Legacy

The Japanese word "kaizō" (改造) simply refers to ROM hacking in the gaming industry, since its literal meaning is "reorganize," "restructure," or "reconstruct," but Kaizo Mario World's prominence means that this term has been used by other hacks to indicate an extreme level of difficulty, such as Kaizo Mario Bros. 3, Kaizo Mario 64, and the Kaizo Caverns Minecraft map in Vechs's Super Hostile map series.[12] This has also lead to the term "Kaizo Hack", meaning a ROM hack of a game intended to be extremely difficult or unfair, that is intended to push the difficulty to the limits of human capabilities. Excessively hard hacks, such as the Item Abuse series, that go very far beyond human skills, are called pit hacks.[13]

SMW Central, which has a depository of Super Mario World ROM hacks, has the difficulty categories "Kaizo: Light" and "Kaizo: Hard" for ROM hacks in the Kaizo Mario World style.[14] Of these, Super Dram World, Super Dram World 2 and Super Panga World have been speedrun live at a Games Done Quick event. [15]

Kaizo Mario World has also been the inspiration for many levels created within Super Mario Maker.[16] One of the most notable is a level created by PangaeaPanga titled Pit of Panga: P-Break, which was for a long time considered to be the hardest level in Super Mario Maker.[17]

References

  1. "自作の改造マリオ(スーパーマリオワールド)を友人にプレイさせる". 29 June 2008.
  2. "The Palette of T. Takemoto and the Dark Art of Asshole Mario 3".
  3. Wilson, Douglas; Sicart, Miguel (2010). Now it's personal: on abusive game design (PDF). Proc. International Academic Conference on the Future of Game Design and Technology. ACM.
  4. "Asshole Mario Stage 1". sibladeko.
  5. "Kaizo Mario". YouTube.
  6. "Kaizo Mario any% Speedrun - 14:29". dram55.
  7. "Kaizo Mario World Any% in 14:12". Calco2.
  8. "AGDQ 2015 Kaizo Mario World Speed Run". Games Done Quick.
  9. "Kaizo Mario World 3 Any% Speedrun". DoDeChehedron.
  10. "Kaizo Mario World 3 - Leaderboard". Speedrun.com.
  11. "Inside the World of Brutal Hard Mario ROM Hacks". IGN.
  12. "[CTM][Collection] Vechs' SUPER HOSTILE Series - Maps - Mapping and Modding - Minecraft Forum - Minecraft Forum".
  13. "Pit Hacks". SMWiki.
  14. "Super Mario World Hacks". SMW Central.
  15. "Speedrunners Race Their Own Hellish Creations With Super Dram World". Kotaku.
  16. "The 'a-hole' version of Super Mario World that's inspiring Mario Maker's hardest stages". Venture Beat.
  17. "The Creator Of The 'Hardest Super Mario World Level Ever' Is At It Again". Kotaku.
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