GuestLog in

Yeah... I was asked to play it.

I updated it to the full version and if we talk about the points, then a lot of things stand out.

In the cons, I sent:

• Level Design. What's wrong with him? In some moments it was crooked and unplayable. I was getting pain from these levels
• Screen Scrolling. In some levels - it's very strange and twitchy
• World 9. Oh... It feels and in all worlds - the worst of all with a Level Design. The whole world creates pain (sometimes even reaching the level of pain as KAIZO hacks). (P.S. I will mention here: The boss is cool)
• Non-obvious and (or) ill-conceived location of secrets and Warp Pipe. To get somewhere - go watch someone else's walkthrough.

50/50 Bosses. Why is this so? Because there are really interesting boss fights, and there are boring and of the same type

Now we need to highlight the pros. And they are:

• the secret worlds themselves (except World 9), because the replayability is really high
• Music. Selected competently and suitably to the worlds (levels, situations)
• Secret tests, Mini-games, Power Ups
• Some are well thought out - features

On one hand, I respect the author for deciding to make a flash game port.

With another: and was it right?

For a completely completed game (hack) - I understand that this creation is hurting me. And this is for SURE ONCE AGAIN, personally, I will definitely not overplay it.

If the levels were more playable, more honest and not so "eye-popping" - I would say: Recommended!

But the disadvantages - are felt in this - are stronger than the advantages. Therefore: I DO NOT RECOMMEND FAMILIARIZATION. This work is outwardly interesting, but inside - you may not like it

The original Mario Forever is probably one of the only times I have revisited a 2D Mario game without losing enjoyment, it is a game that isn't afraid to experiment with level design, gimmicks and power-ups when most 2D Mario games are the embodiment of average and bland.

However, the later versions of it have been bloated with many weird changes and edits that can be charming, but cheapen the experience overall.

Because of this, this hack is not just impressive, but generally really fun - being accurate to the earlier versions and having content of it's own, it's an incredibly well done recreation of the brilliant early 2000s fangame. However, I feel like there are some flaws: the controls are too close to SMW, which doesn't really mesh well with the level design and is more of a detriment than anything, and the lack of the original world map is a bit of a shame, as the SMW-esque one, while pretty, doesn't fit with the rest of the game's style.

However, I would definitely recommend playing this if you don't feel like bothering with the fangame versions. I prefer Mario Forever Remake, but this is a great feat and a fun experience overall.

Mario Forever is a very nostalgic game for me, as are all the tool bars I would unwittingly download when I installed the game. Being an adult now I realize that installing harmful junk on to my computer without the aid of a virtual machine is, to say mildly, a bad idea. This hack does a fantastic job of recreating the game, and doesn't even have any malware!

I somewhat struggle to find the words to describe how I feel about the work put into transforming SMW into Mario Forever. All the original songs made for the game are recreated perfectly and sound incredibly crisp. That being said the game (not the hack) still has some weird issues that keep it from a perfect fan game, like the massive difficulty spikes and different-enough-to-feel-weird-and-wrong physics. The aquatic theme also play at a strangely fast pace but I can't for the life of me remember if that's intentional. I can't fault beasteye89 at all for how the game feels and plays as these were features Buziol Games made themselves.

Regardless the game is still fun, if a bit maddening at times (through no fault of the hacker). The port is fantastic, I cannot stress that enough. If you grew up with the original I strongly recommend this one just to relive it without the malware

Overall, I think this hack was pretty fun. I've never played the original Mario Forever but I enjoyed the unconventional level design. I'm mixed on the secrets, I looked most or all of them up. I don't care, not sure how someone's meant to figure that out blind anyway. I liked the any% route enough to do a run but with the autoscrollers backloaded at the end, I don't feel the desire to continue. World 9 was... eh it was ok. I struggled a big, particularly the fast roto discs and Venus plants (I guess that could be multiple levels) plus the first half of 9-6. The 9-6 boss is where I had the most trouble. While version 1.5 does adjust the difficulty to the rest of the hack, phase 3 is still I bit too tough IMO. I understand that "phase" 4 isn't really a full phase but that's terrifying to see after that hardest phase of the boss, at least for me. Took me about 45 minutes for the fight after the hour+ I spent on 1.4 before it seemed completely hopeless. I have many years experience with SMW but I am bad at custom bosses so it is hard to judge. Curious what other people think of 1.5 Bowser as it seems anyone playing 1.4 just used savestates, which is understandable given the length and difficulty.

I'm glad a remake like this exists and I hope to see more since I much prefer the SMW engine (playing on SNES) than fan game engines with different physics... even if they are slightly modified for this haha.

A very impressive remake of a classic Mario fangame for Windows running on the Clickteam Fusion engine. I did not expect it to go as far as it did when it came to recreating many aspects of the original, especially the hidden secrets. All the classic secrets, from the "Human Laboratory World" to the "Mario Minix" mini-game. The Lost Map... "Funny Tanks"... all the cutscenes, hardcore worlds and more, all were impressive to see added in this hack, even if it wasn't necessary.

The highlight is definitely World 9, which I thought was going to be The One "World 9" that you'd find in the fan maintained "Mario Forever Remake" (a fangame of a fangame, if you will) or version 6.0 of the original Mario Forever, but I was pleasantly surprised to find an original world that truly goes above and beyond especially with the world's boss battle. To summarize, that boss battle definitely seemed more advanced than any bowser battle made for any fanmade Mario Forever world/fangame, made with the original game's engine, which is definitely saying something! Might be a bit more on the difficult side, but it IS more of a bonus after all. And the cherry on top, after beating it (and maybe after finding all of the other secrets as well) the SMW Special World effect is activated, changing the world map's color palette AND music too, just as a fun additional bonus.

I think Michal Gdaniec (Buziol/Softendo) would find this to be a very pleasant homage (especially if it works on real SNES hardware, which it probably does)

(Now just add unnecessary lens flare and shine sprite plushies and "Free Maryo Games at Softendo.com" spam text all over the game. jk)

Now for some personal suggestions that I could give to the hack... just some things that I know might be possible given the SNES limitations, and might make the game more accurate to the source material. (Unless being "fully accurate" isn't the main idea of the hack, of course, these are just personal notes):

• It's a bit weird to me personally to see this iteration of Mario with bare hands, not wearing any gloves, but that's just me.
• Some of the music that can be heard in the original game is understandably missing and replaced by another track with a similar vibe. But I'm pretty sure it is definitely not impossible to have most of the music from the original game ported over (including the World Map music)! It's just a matter of people being interested in doing it. I myself have a working AddMusicK port of Rigit Obstacles/Interference Ending (the music in the World 5 levels), it's not the BEST it could be, but gets the job done, so if interested... the partially sampled port of "Sirens" (the World 5-2 song) was pretty interesting to hear as well.
• And speaking of sounds, the Human Laboratory levels existing was a good surprise, and while that in itself is good enough, I can't say I didn't miss the silly voices like the human hammer bro going "Opa!" - One thing I know is it is definitely possible to have audio clips like that to play on the SNES, if one of the most well made hacks of recent memory, Mario's Mystery Meat, is anything to go by, even if it is partially a joke hack. Now how to do it exactly I am not sure myself. But I'm sure a couple audio clip-based sfx here and there is definitely doable.

And then there's some "exclusive" sfx that can likely be done even with the default SMW samples, such as Bowser falling into the lava, or the "8-bit" versions of a few sounds, that are used in the original game (i.e. item sprouting from a block, stomping an enemy, etc).

• The bonus levels "Koopa Troopa liberation" and "Starman Running", which might've been added in versions AFTER 4.0 (but I'm not sure) would be some interesting things to add, if there are any plans on updating this hack further. But any bonus feature from beyond Mario Forever 5.0 is probably going to be a hard pass from everyone... lol
• Finally here are just a couple quirks the original game had that I couldn't help but notice are missing/different in this hack, because I'm afraid that's just what I do, lol. But as I've said again, it doesn't have to be accurate if the point of the hack isn't that, it's just some things I thought I'd say, such as: in the original game, Mario doesn't use a skidding pose, and simply reduces walking speed to go to the other direction, without changing the walking pose. The beetroot suit is missing the little grass thingy seen in Mario's hat, but that's also just an unimportant quirk. Lakitu doesn't hurt Mario in the original game (and he also has a couple unique audio clips for when throwing Spinies), For the World 6 castle cutscene, originally it's the entire castle that gets shrunk to fit into the pipe, instead of the opposite, but working with Mode 7 stuff to do that might be hard... I don't know.

As another review stated, Mario Minix is missing the combo announcement texts, And finally, there's of course, the missing ending cutscene of the baby Marios coming out of Mario's house "9 months later", but... maybe that might've been a deliberate decision, lol

That said, this is a great hack, but probably not AS great for those who didn't grow up with the original fangame it is recreating. Considering the current state of emulation, you can now essentially play Mario Forever on any platform whatsoever. (And for an even more "authentic experience", I know some people hate upscaling filters, but if your emulator has an option to use Super Sai 2x, you can use that, lol)

Mario Forever has always held its status as one of the staples in the early 2000s Super Mario fangame community. Through its bizarre nature, unconventional level design, and unique soundtrack, it has not been forgotten in the eyes of quite a few individuals. And now, nearly two decades after the fact, it gets a completely out-of-the-blue, full-fledged remake on Super Mario World's engine.

I want to preface the bulk of this write-up by saying that as a remake, this hack passes with flying colors. Countless elements have been lovingly recreated, whether it be the extra powerups/enemies/bosses, the cutscenes and visual effects, the Amiga scene music (the song used in the tank levels is, as the kids these days would call it, a "banger"), or everything in between.

The general design philosophy, on the other hand... it's a whole different ball-game, and is it ever in the seventh-inning stretch. As someone who has an affinity for The Lost Levels and has beaten it on many different occasions, I'm all for advanced difficulty in Mario hacks, but there's a fine line between "expert difficulty" and "cheap trial-and-error". Some of the deviations of formulaic Mario functions definitely had me raising an eyebrow or two (Poison Mushrooms being instant death, not being able to scroll the screen with L and R), but the numerous "gotcha" traps and situations where the only way out was death just weren't fun. Though I was able to push through all eight worlds of the main game, the Human Lab, the Lost Map, and Funny Tanks? on my own (it should be noted that only levels in the secret worlds have checkpoints), the Hardcore Worlds very much pushed me to my absolute limit in terms of tolerance. (Good luck finding any of the hidden warps without a guide, by the way!)

It wasn't until the Roto-Disc hell that was Hardcore 2-4 that I threw in the towel and started indulging in the forbidden, arcane practice known as "save state abuse". I never, ever like to do this, but after Mario met an untimely demise from a lethal waffle for the fiftieth time, my well of patience had fully dried up. The Bowser fight at the end was a complete joke, not unlike the ones near the beginning of the game, and it felt like nothing short of a slap in the face. All of this very much makes the game show its age, and it's all too reminiscent of what gives ROM hacks such a negative reputation in the eyes of the general gaming public to this very day.

Upon reaching World 9, it being advertised as a brand-new remake-exclusive secret world, I expected a reprieve from some of the antagonistic design I had seen in the two previous worlds in favor of some more modernized, sensible craftsmanship. However, I couldn't have been more wrong. As expected from a bonus world, the difficulty had reached its peak, but in a way that I have seldom seen before - the last stretch of levels, chock-full of enemies/pits and stingy with power-ups, had me pressing those demonic hotkeys more than I'd like to admit. The true final level deserves special mention, as not only is it extremely long (you don't get a checkpoint until the boss), but that very boss is... ludicrous, to put it very lightly. The fact that it has four and a half health bars is astonishingly the least of its problems, but it feels spectacularly overbearing even for a Mega Man game, let alone a Mario game. I fail to see how any sane person would be able to beat it without either save state abuse or spending days upon days learning every single aspect of it by heart (with some generous RNG thrown in for good measure).

I want to close this out by saying that it's not at all the ROM hackers' fault that this turned out the way it did. I must reiterate that as a remake of the original Mario Forever, it's essentially flawless, and I do applaud the great amount of effort put into it. But the game it's remaking unfortunately doesn't stand the test of time, and the extra content doesn't do it any favors. I sadly cannot recommend it.

I was surprised at how faithful this game is to the Mario Forever version it's based on. While the Save Select screen is relegated to a level in the World Map and the initial loading of a save file is done through the usual title screen, it's surprising what could be added to this hack.

Pros:

• Minix minigame is in, though lacking the combo announcements of the original and suffering slowdown when a lot of sprites are on screen, but otherwise functions like the original.
• Most of the music is in (aside from the maps for Worlds 2 through 7, as they are on one map in this hack). I was very impressed with how the World 1 map music could be made to work with the SNES Soundfont while exactly like it does in the original (albeit with a proper loop)
• The SMW World Map makes it possible to go back to levels and get secrets you missed during your first trip through the levels or just play through the levels again.
• Works on every emulator I've tried it on: bsnes-hd, Mesen-S (both through RetroArch), SNES9X for O3DS, and even the official emulator used for SNES Virtual Console games on N3DS.

Cons:

• Other than the passages to the Hardcore Worlds and World 9, taking a passage to a later world renders it impossible for you to get back to earlier worlds as you're dumped at the beginning of the world with the path back being greyed out due to the levels not being cleared. (EDIT: This has been fixed in 1.3 which added the ability to press SELECT to warp straight to the Hub level on the map)
• Worlds 2-7 are on one big map, meaning one theme plays for all 6 worlds instead of the unique themes of the original. A minor complaint, but I would've at least liked a mid-map music change if possible (I'm not familiar with SMW hacking, though, so it could be impossible, either due to technical limitations or ROM space limitations or both)

All in all, this seems to be a good way to experience Mario Forever without worrying about viruses, and even if you don't like the way the Remake and Android versions play, at least try this.

Maybe I still can't imagine it, but this hack does look like Mario Forever from 2004, in fact, it has good gameplay, and the graphics, not to mention, are amazing and 20% cooler. That is why I recommend him as a good Mario player.