Comments on: The Anatomy of Super Mario Gaiden III: The anatomy of bad games http://www.anatomyofgames.com/2013/08/21/the-anatomy-of-super-mario-gaiden-iii-the-anatomy-of-bad-games/ Defunct, amateurish, game design analysis by Jeremy Parish Wed, 25 Nov 2015 23:31:21 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.7 By: J. Parish http://www.anatomyofgames.com/2013/08/21/the-anatomy-of-super-mario-gaiden-iii-the-anatomy-of-bad-games/#comment-1937 Fri, 23 Aug 2013 02:35:57 +0000 http://telebunny.net/toastyblog/?p=8508#comment-1937 Haha, no doubt.

As someone mentioned before, Miyamoto has talked pretty extensively about the design of games like Mario and Donkey Kong and how much thought they put into simple things like the character’s starting position.

]]> By: Fritz F. http://www.anatomyofgames.com/2013/08/21/the-anatomy-of-super-mario-gaiden-iii-the-anatomy-of-bad-games/#comment-1936 Fri, 23 Aug 2013 02:24:39 +0000 http://telebunny.net/toastyblog/?p=8508#comment-1936 >> Of the three games here, Milon’s Secret Castle is definitely the most polished.

Well, that’s a sentence I thought I’d never read.

Fair enough, though 🙂 I do still wonder how much of what makes SMB better than these other games was done *on purpose* (vs. Nintendo just getting lucky), but I guess it’s hard to make that many levels purely based on lucky.

And I gotta admit I have a weird nostalgic fondness for utterly obtuse NES games like Milon’s Secret Castle, Legacy of the Wizard, etc. When I was younger, the fact that I didn’t understand two-thirds of what was going on made me feel like these games contained all the secrets of the universe, and I’d discover it all if I just explored enough.

]]> By: Super Boy Alan http://www.anatomyofgames.com/2013/08/21/the-anatomy-of-super-mario-gaiden-iii-the-anatomy-of-bad-games/#comment-1935 Thu, 22 Aug 2013 20:42:17 +0000 http://telebunny.net/toastyblog/?p=8508#comment-1935 There are numerous examples of less-than-remarkable platforming design – more than could be touched upon in this blog series – but another one came to mind as I was reading this. Mystery Quest (or Hao-kun no Fushigi na Tabi in Japan) is a 1987 FDS release that reminds me a lot of Milon’s Secret Castle, except more linear. There are signs in the castles that point you in the general direction you need to go, and the breakable blocks, while frequent, aren’t quite as maddening as in Milon. However, the difficulty curve is weirdly inverted, since the enemies don’t really get that much harder later on, and the inertia of your jumps is a little fussy. Not to mention that the US version was severely gimped, with large sections removed and two of the castles being made into clones of the other two castles. And you have to play the game four times in a row with minimal difficulty increases to see the real ending.

It’s worth giving a three-minute test drive if you ever get a chance – it’s a little more decent than the visuals let on – but you’ve probably had your share of platforming garbage over the course of your lifetime.

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