Do you know how to paint and loop thru the infinite void of solitude? Then this job is for you!
Super Painter is a NES homebrew developed by RetroSouls, where you control the one and only Super Painter with the task to paint the whole world in green, blue and pink (quite a peculiar taste for colors).
Thru 24 charming levels¹, divided in world tropes like Grass, Ice and Sky, you must paint all the remaning gray blocks by touching them on the top or sides to make the exit door appear. The screen wraps both horizontally and vertically, which provides a whole new perspective when routing the painting. Speaking of that, painting routing was really a pain, due to some levels having maaany different ways to traverse, and the invincible enemies, and a strange pattern of being able to jump every 4th frame, and a lag every 6th frame.
I started this project in late march 2022, aiming for the typical April Fools for that year due to the sound effects being the same as Super Mario Bros 3. Early in the process I realized the routing was not trivial, so I had to postone for next year. 2023 arrived, and with it a heavy daily routine lacking free time to TAS in general. In october 2023 I got back on track and finished on november, leaving everything ready, even the submission text.
Just like any other game I TAS, I made a decent lua script with everything you might need for this game, I encourage using it to explore its mechanics.
¹ There's a level 25 hidden in the data, only accessible via cheats, probably an oversight during development.
Welcome to the first ever look at the earliest version of Super Mario Bros 3, codename "Super Painter".
This prototype dates back to janurary 1986, months before the release of Super Mario Bros 2 (known as The Lost Levels). Nintendo was trying to not only expand the universe but the mechanics too, so the series almost pivoted to a puzzle-platformer. While Miyamoto and Kondo were working with the westernization of SMB2, Tezuka was tasked to start developing this new world, so he began using "Denis Grachev" as his pseudonym. And since Kondo was busy, Tezuka had to work with his intern to compose the temporary sound design for this prototype. Kondo said that the sound effects were so good and natural to the series that were kept in the final game.
You can see Mario here with a new profession and a simpler objective: to paint all the tiles in the level, to really challenge the player in the platforming aspect of our Jumping Man, instead of collecting coins and hitting enemies. These enemies are now invincible, but they have the same fitting purpose as Goombas, but eventually were scrapped in favor to the original, returning from Super Mario Bros 1, tho the winged one served as the foundation to the Para-Goomba design.
Only 24 levels¹ are playable in this version, divided in world tropes like Grass, Ice and Sky. The exit door appears after painting the remaining blocks by touching them on the top or sides.
A very experimental feature introduced in this proto is the vertical screen wrap, that is enabled at level 11, which provides a whole new perspective when routing the painting. Speaking of that, painting routing was really a pain, due to some levels having maaany different ways to traverse, and the invincible enemies, and a strange pattern of being able to jump every 4th frame, and a lag every 6th frame.
¹ There's a level 25 hidden in the data, only accessible via cheats, probably an oversight during this stage of development.
Darkman425: I see you've painted us a TAS. Let me take a closer look at the brush strokes as I judge this.
Darkman425: Input file replaced with one having a fixed cycle count.
Not the first game I've seen that took Mario sound effects and sold for money. Anyways, the routing in this looked great. With the screen wrapping available for a large chunk of levels there definitely were a lot of possibilities for approaches, though limited by enemy movement cycles. The routing and movement optimization looks good to me. Nice work!
Accepting to Standard.
despoa: Processing...