Development Insight #4: SNES Bad Apple!!

For those unaware, Bad Apple!! is the name of a song from Lotus Land Story (Touhou Gensoukyou). More famously, it's the name of a video featuring several Touhou girls in silhouette, alongside a remix of the original song (with vocals by "Nomico"), first posted onto NicoNicoDouga years ago. More relevantly, it's become an unwritten challenge to port that video to any and every computer, display, game system, processor, and architecture. And that's where we'll start.

Development Insight #3: SMA2 Status Screen

Super Mario Advance 2 was my first experience with Super Mario World, so I hold it very dear to my heart. Of all the Advance-series ports, it's probably the least amazing in terms of new content. However, that doesn't mean it doesn't have new content. One of the neater additions is a status screen that pulls up on the overworld, which shows your progress in various worlds. Specifically: which levels you've unlocked, which ones you've completed, and which ones you collected all the Yoshi coins for, in addition to general information like score and time passed. Pretty useful, especially when you complete all the exits because then you're able to warp to any level simply by selecting it.

One time on CaffieNET (#smwc or #serioushax, not sure which since I no longer have logs of the time), the one and only Adam suggested that someone port this status screen to Super Mario World. I, being a rather compulsive idiot, jumped at the opportunity.

Development Insight #2: ASM Contest Round 000

I am a showman at heart. I love to create and present things for everyone to marvel at. The attention thrills me. So when the ASM Contest was announced, it felt like the most amazing thing.

In the end, I had to drop out of the contest for personal reasons. But in the beginning, things were different. "This is my time to shine", I thought. You see, for some reason, no one considers me an ASMer, even though that is probably my strongest skill, the skill I've been honing and practicing all these years. Everyone considers me an artist, even though my art skills have stagnated since high school. Or they just consider me one of the many site jokesters/shitposters/whatever. It upsets me. The one thing I've worked hard on, I'm not acknowledged for. I saw the ASM contest as a way to prove to the community that I can do ASM. Of course, it would be nice to win. But recognition of my abilities is what I really wanted.

Development Insight #1: SMB3 Status Bar

For the longest time now, I've been brainstorming what the perfect status bar would be like, ignoring the actual content of the status bar (as it is usually hack-specific) and focusing on the design and implementation. If I had to use a single word to describe the perfect status bar, it would be "unintrusive". Unintrusive not only to the player, but also to the hack designer. The perfect status bar can just be patched once and forgotten, as it is completely isolated from everything else. As a hack author, there is no need to worry about your level ideas being compromised due to the status bar getting in the way.