The use of such room exits such as the door to just lead you in a circle did something to make the reset pipe in the next room feel less forced, while adding to the puzzle feel and the purpose of finding Bowser's escape route.. I felt it was pretty smart.

The walkthrough stones were the same color as non-walkthrough stones, so finding a way out of the first room was confusing the first time through. A slightly higher time limit would compensate well for having to search around some areas to get the right way out.

The addition of items that weren't mandatory to carry, but rewarded you if you did, was a helpful and meaningful touch. You need all the 'shrooms you can get here.

I personally feel that a bit of foresight is needed towards the end if you ever hope to nail that right the first time.

The difficulty curve within the level also felt progressive.

I feel like a butt for pointing out the one cutoff tile near the third mushroom block, but you won't see really notice it since it's constantly scrolling. x( That alone isn't worth a whole point IMO.

The part with the spike wall and the Volcano Lotus near the end took a lot of practice and attempts to get and was the first and only time I got somewhat frustrated by the difficult design - the level all in all was short enough that it did not become tedious, even though it was very hard to beat.

a) Cave segment after midpoint, sporadically throughout.
b) The area guarded by the Lakitu.

There were a lot of areas left unguarded that you could just run and jump through.

The castle walls as decor in the cave were a nice touch.

The only issues here are how Mario goes behind the ground when entering a pipe and how the Bullets are behind the foreground when they're first shot out. I personally think the green cave ground in the outside part would also seem better with a solid black outline like the rest of the ground. Some clusters of land seemed kinda blocky too when slopes and other transitions could have connected them in a prettier manner, and some land proportions after you carved them with diagonal walkthrough dirt were a little awkward.

Nothing -truly- gamebreaking since an exit is still reachable.

Enemy placement was intelligent, mandating spin jumps over sections of munchers and to reach higher grounds, and testing reflexes and timing in the case of the high-difficulty paths.

This level is a combination of brilliant ideas all over.

Some jumps were blind, and others were... blind. Literally blind.

Another bad thing was that the music blocks after you get shot out of the pipe can push you into something up there and kill you.

Right before the part where you are given a feather/mushroom, you are required to go beneath a cement block with one tile high leeway, guarded by a cement block. That didn't seem right to me if you made it up there big since you were forced to lose it.

The momentum changed throughout the level, starting fast and becoming slower overall, and the layout took advantage of area in the screens to make the level quite long.

My only gripe is in the Castle, it seems like some threats blend in more than they should. Different shades of brown for the lava and the enemies would've been very useful.

The castle segment felt like it dragged on. There was an awful lot going on in the way of enemy clusters where it was hard to dodge one thing without jumping into another. There were a lot of shell-kicking Koopas, and a lot of enemies that don't contrast well with the foreground, so it's difficult to see, for example, when Dry Bones throws a bone at you.

There are a few blind jumps both inside and outside the castle that can be helped with coin guidance. There's also no palette distinction between the deadly coins and the helpful coins earlier on in the castle.

I felt that a custom palette to make the logs outside darker would have been very helpful since it's a nighttime stage, though I was satisfied with the color inside the castle.

I also didn't think the Bullet Bills were unfairly placed - in fact, it helped me some in the castle to progress past the three-platform "deadly coin" zone.

The right path is pretty straight-forward until the ghost house part. There's an optional puzzle amidst the action in which you need to use a single blue shell to unveil two different P-switches, and the reward for bringing them to the end is a 3-up moon.

The Big Boo has an Eerie generator to raise the danger, and several blocks to give room for error.

All-in-all, the difficulty stays consistent throughout the level.

Each room had a unique challenge - for the Yellow Switch, you worked your way around spikes and Li'l Sparkies, and spin jumped off of a Ball & Chain to reach the final half of the room. The Green room had nets, the Red room had Thwomps you had to spin jump off of and jump over spike columns, and the Blue room had a Lakitu's cloud navigation challenge.

That said, the time limit was misleading - each room was very short.

While the yellow room's flashing was a little weird, it didn't look that bad since it was confined mostly to the castle floor's outlines.

One spot could have been executed more conventionally, that is the placement of the wall trampoline to the area with the door - you go through it if you're trying to reach it from the bottom.

The Red room was the trickiest - luring the Thwomp to smash down over a rather wide gap, so it wasn't easy to make it back alive, and then spin jumping off of that Thwomp without hitting the spikes was doable. It was tough, but very fair. The Blue room was a decent follow-up, with similar difficulty, if not just a little easier.

The "boss room" with the Grinder and Podoboo was rather cool.

I think overall though, while the foes were fairly placed and well-used, you used too many spikes, and it made the level pretty frustrating at points.

The underground segments were short, and the Podoboos did not jump high enough to be threatening, but at least these small segments added more variety to the level.

Lastly, you could simply fall to your death if you aren't holding a button while being shot out of that pipe, as you don't have enough momentum.

The stage seemed underdeveloped to me, though, as a whole, and could have had a lot more variety.

Each room had a simple concept, though only two rooms were really important to the gameplay - the line-guided Fuzzies in the first room, and the shifting spike pillars in the castle room. In the second room, you had to give Yoshi a key (read: buttplug) to win.

The trick with the castle room is pretty clever - not all the On/Off blocks are real. The fake blocks are very slightly desaturated in color, so it's extremely important to pay attention, else you are dead.

The castle portion of the stage with Yoshi had enough visually going on to take away from the fact there is no layer 3 background while layer 2 is being used for the spikes.

There's something to be desired in the rooms between the 1up and the castle, though. Otherwise, it's pretty nicely done.

It was cool that you changed Fishbones to Boos via ExAnimation and did not hurt the gameplay because they have virtually the same contact behavior.

There are quite a lot of one-tile-wide ledge jumps, and the extended path guarded by the Eerie generator with two wrong paths and one correct path in each segment felt a little tedious and repetitive.

The killer to the score really was inside the cave due to the background positioning, cut through the middle like a knife. D:

Then, I walked into the border and went from a dark wasteland to Kirby's dreamland. I thought that was pretty freaking cool since the moods contrasted completely, and I LOVE how the forest background transitions from sherbet orange to purple rather fluently.

On the right side, there's a problem with sprite tile limits with the Amazin' Flying Hammer Bros. One won't spawn. I've also had two on one platform, which is more human error. The platform above the water can push you through the slope and kill you. It makes more sense when it pushes you to "drown" in the water, but the slope thing is an issue.

I wish the right side had a little more substance inside the border. It kinda felt like filler when so much more could have been done. =(

Probably the only issue with the design is that there were a lot of enemies that didn't need to be there, like two Chucks guarding the pipe when one did the job well, or all those Boos around the raft when two could've been omitted with no influence on the challenge.

On one hand, I really liked the outdoor palette. The colors were appropriately rich and vivid. The cave palette seemed too bright to really capture the feeling of being inside a toxic cave, and the blocks seemed too saturated-blue... it didn't really fit.

Inside the bonus room, I did not like that the layer 3 water had lava beneath it in an aesthetic sense - it was immediately clear it was lava because you dropped a Goomba in and there was the splash, though water just simply does not look lke lava at all.

I found it like impossible to not take a hit when you have to jump to dodge the Banzai Bill while being able to get back on the mole and not hit munchers though. An extra tile of space would've made that part tremendously better.

The saturated colors fit in with the party theme, though I didn't think that some of the sprite colors were done too well, like the yellow part of the Rex and Koopas' skins, and near the end of the first part of the level felt very cluttered with coins and castle blocks in a disorganized fashion.

Inside the castle looked solid.

Also, Wendy's room really faked me the hell out. That was a trippy-cool spin on this boss without being unfair.

In spite of holding a consistent concept throughout, the level maintains its freshness through the variety in line guide formations and placement of ground along the path.

The level felt grossly overpopulated with enemies. Underwater could have done with less fish, the snow area could have done with less Chucks, and it could have retained a similar amount of difficulty with a faster momentum.

The cloud section in the snow room was nice a nice deviation, though the stage felt pretty devoid of concept - there wasn't any fluency of gameplay ideas here, just random elements thrown together.

I thought the mushroom columns and platforms in the bonus room looked pretty bad, but the background palette was nicely done.

The snowy room's white outline makes it hard to distinguish between the cloudy background "lines" and what's really ground, and it doesn't look that good, especially in how it makes the snow look like it has a bad shadow. Palette 6 objects didn't look very good, and the sprite palette tampering didn't look that good either.

A redeeming quality of the snow room is the clever use of background clouds to create snow mounds in the foreground. Another positive thing that can be said is that the level did pull off a mountain theme decently - the underwater part works because you can imagine aquifers inside the mountain on the way to the colder heights.

It provides variety and doesn't try too hard to shove ideas into the stage, and remains straightforward in spite of having elements of puzzle.

The 3up moon was also hidden well.

The only design flaw (that doesn't fit under FUNCTIONALITY) is how the ghost train below the trail of coins leading you down to the line guide area is nearly guaranteed to hit you unless you know in advance it's there so you wait for it to pass.

The cabin looked good for the most part with the default ghost house palette, though some of the outer wall bricks were cut prematurely.

You can dismount him at the second P-switch and fall through near where the door is to get the secret exit, which is the unsuccessful ending. The door to the left is the successful ending.

The midway point doesn't bring you far from the actual entrance to the level and may as well not exist.

I liked the palette work inside the cave too, it didn't seem like a solid screen of the same brown throughout, and the darker brown cave ground to reflect land that you had to be on the mole to cross was a neat touch. Inside the cave lacked decoration, whereas the outside part seemed satisfactory with the diagonal carving and the bushes with colorful berries on them.

I do believe the springboard was intended to reach the secret exit, but even when small, you can jump high enough to reach the pipe.

Underwater looked perfect, however.

I've had a few issues with slowdown early on in the level near the first mushroom where there are a few Koopas.

Underwater, the interaction with the black things is inconsistent with the graphical space they take up.

Suffice to say, after the midway point, there were no more problems like that and the level was so much more enjoyable to play, especially the underwater segment.

The land was well-decorated with forest and grassland tiles, bushes, and intricate layering of colorful pipes.

There are no standout design elements, but the enemy placement is solid.

Underwater looked cool. I liked the gradual gradient that gets darker as you go deeper underwater, and the brownish ground itself and the pink cement blocks looked nice.

Through the doors, the level becomes more linear. You're faced with torpedoes, more Koopas, and Bullet Bills as you swim through layer 3 currents. A creating/eating block train is near the end of this room, with Porcu-Puffer there to punish you if you fall in the water. It's easy to wuss out and swim under just about all of this part if you wanted to.

The key to the secret exit was well-hidden in the shallow water of the first room, and the keyhole in the bonus room was also nicely obscure without being too hard to discern. The moon is decently hard to get, and some of the Dragon Coins require effort to get - one such location is within the room before the block train where you must use a P-switch to go under a wall, another pits you directly against the Porcu-Puffer; others require exploration.

The thing you did with the water to have silhouettes was pretty cool.

You travel left as Fishbones swim towards you in mid-air while avoiding spikes, Spike Tops traveling along the ground, and a fish swimming vertically in a thin strip of water.

The next room featured a bit more of the same, but also threw in a Fishbone you had to spinjump off of if you didn't have a cape, and a wall of Fishbones you had to duck under to avoid.

The danger increases in the next room with the introduction of Thwomps and Ball & Chains placed in narrow-but-fair regions, so patience is important. Nonetheless, the powerup providence is balanced and forgiving without being overblown.

Finally, you reveal [?] blocks to climb over the level and to the boss room, where you fight Reznor in a relatively safe room.

Overall, placement of enemies varied between highly strategic and irrelevant to where you might even go, and were even amusing to watch when they were stuck in walls or running in circles mid-air.

I honestly wasn't fond of the Lotus/Muncher placement since when you are falling, it's harder to dodge them without knowing whether they are there, but I think that the placement of Chucks were pretty clever.

It definitely wasn't boring, though.

You first must go left and cautiously lure a Pokey into the lava without spawning the other one, then get the Bullet Bills to shoot to get up the pipe. In the next room, there's this one fucking annoying rock you have to go under, and a big mushroom that you have to get carefully or you'll be forced to kill yourself if you go above the clouds, and a really tight jump that's extremely tough to clear.. you will need to get at least 30 coins in order to be able to feed Yoshi and clear this gap to get the P-switch and take the pipe back to the beginning of the room. If you had accidentally collected a coin here, congratulations, you die after all that.

Now, as far as "Kaizo hacks" go, this is a very good entry and pleasantly clean.

The route with the layer 2 provides a very different pacing in the cave part before you are sent underneath the outside's route into a cramped area.

The green room is a layer 2 room where the ground scrolls up and down, and unless you stand on a block as it sinks, you will touch munchers, and if you're below a ceiling as it comes up, you're crushed. An Eerie generator and a couple of Big Boos are the other obstacles here.

The blue room has saws and flying Hammer Bros. that make for some tricky platforming.

The stage concludes with a Big Boo fight with some Boo friends and a Bullet Bill generator in a giant rave.

It's possible to get permanently stuck if you kill the Koopa that bounces down the hole in this one part in the red room. Not sure if it crosses into the "but you have to be retarded to do that" realm since with the lights faded, you could fall down there and if you bounce on him without making it up, you're screwed, though should never happen again after discovered regardless.

It kind of has a seizure after the Big Boo fight during the fadeout, but other than that, cool shit.

The green room was a good step-up with the scrolling gimmick, but the blue room really delivered in raw action with well-placed enemies. Nice buildup.

Inside is a kinda crowded slippery room with fireballs everywhere for the portion of the raft ride and the land above it. The second raft ride has some flying Koopas above it which you can jump across to make it go by faster, followed by a ceiling and floor covered in munchers.

Outside you pass by the bouncing Koopas to get to the end.

Nothing particularly stood out design-wise. Enemies were bordering overuse in regards to the Podoboos near the raft and in regards to the projectiles everywhere near the end of the first room.

Overall, like Firestorm Fortress, it was short enough so that the difficulty did not become annoying. It was somewhat enjoyable.

Another route in the maze leads you to a springboard you need to jump through a high hole. There are a couple of routes from here to the finish, including a reiteration of the platform/lava slope idea from the beginning.

I like this design because it takes two ideas that contrast enough to make the level have a lot of variety, yet are brought together by the fact that they're both appropriate to their environment, the cave. It would fare better with no time limit.

I found a part early on where I could spinjump really high, on the first two Thwomps, and go over the cement block wall, which was kinda cool, and followed up by a neat gap which you jump on a Bullet Bill to be able to cross. Stunts like that are pretty cool.

Design-wise, I couldn't find anything particularly stand-out. It was solid and varied enough, but rather basic with all taken into consideration.

In the first set of cutscenes, you've left the timer at a non-zero value - clearly an oversight since the later sets of cutscenes have no expiration.

I thought that Starman's palette was kind of weird, and the foes using palette 9, as well. Everything else looked fine, and you did the best you could with cutscene text. The story is worth paying attention to, although the screen limit probably forced you to simplify it.

The first cutscene after the stone labyrinth breaks for me probably due to your initial FG/BG positioning there.

The ability to skip cutscenes with pipes in the same way you made decisions in later cutscenes would be helpful for when you re-enter the level after you die.

The ending I got was rather sad, and probably would've been strong if you had time to develop the characters. I think that this would be worth developing into a deeper, longer hack, with influential decisions that change the direction of the story.

Being one of the longest levels in the contest, it's impressive that it kept from becoming repetitive.

The bonus room's background captured the molten rock mystique well, and the cave with the ghost house tiles came off as a dusty old abandoned mine. The aquatic castle palette also looked really nice with the more cyan foreground against the blue background.

The complete lack of redundancy and the fact that the paths weren't horribly claustrophobic but well-protected made this level rather memorable.

You see the midway point and the screen starts to scroll as bullets shoot everywhere and stuff. The final Dragon Coin is on a dangerous route of this brief room. To be honest, the midway is very close to the end and the last room could've had more done with it, but the first room seemed nicely done.

The second room has a lot of flatness, and redundant design towards the end.

As a damaging factor for both rooms, while the enemy placement was often out of the way or not very threatning at all, the distribution of powerups was obscenely liberal.

The foreground's combination of the grassland and forest tilesets look quite fine, and the palettes were definitely good. The second room's variation in the trees with some leaves helps a bit, but the repetition and closeness of all those trees still looked pretty bad.

The second room is an auto-scrolling beach with many Goombas, Piranha Plants in the pipes, and yet another P-switch which you must be big to get, which takes you to another bonus room with a Dragon Coin, and if you're exceptionally fast, a 3up moon.

Inside the cave is very dark, though if you find the light, it will assist you. Volcano Lotuses below ground provide an uncrushable threat in this brief segment.

Next comes a really short underwater part with some Urchins and spikes everywhere, and then you re-enter the cave. It carries much of the same concept as shown in the previous cave section, albeit with a lot more action, and introduces yet another autoscroll segment.

At the end is Big Boo and falling layer 2. You only get three throw blocks to kill him.

All-in-all, some parts felt dragged out, others felt like filler, but there were some well-executed ideas in here. The whole cave section was great IMO from an action standpoint, and the new time limits imposed each room allowed for exploration if the player desired to get all the Dragon Coins.

The Big Boo room was long and cramped, and there should have been more opportunity IMO to attack Big Boo rather than "you get three chances, if you miss one, you start the fight over" - having survived the whole room, I think having 5 or so throw blocks at the end would've been perfectly fine.

In the next room, you're introduced to upside-down clouds as a hazard you can fall through, but pretty much all you do is dodge the few Koopas and enter the pipe, get shot out, get the midway point, then enter another pipe.

The level didn't really develop a concept, and the raft ride had no danger until the end where the Hammer Bro was.

Enough time was given to compensate for the experimentation needed for the pipe maze right before the midway point. The level, discounting the pipe maze, has a progressive difficulty curve, and is moderately hard but not rage-inducingly hard.

The Yoshi hidden in one of the walls is tremendously useful without even coming close to breaking the level. I do think, though, that there should have been a powerup in the area where you re-enter the level from the midway point because you're going into heavy enemy territory.

The Big Boo fight incorporated Boo Blocks as a neat means of helping you reach one of the throwing blocks, but was unforgiving to misses. Other than that, it was pretty much just a standard linear level with a lot of cramped areas having threatening objects but enough variety in platform positioning and cleverly-placed sprites to keep it from going stale. The part with the blue P-switch where you use it to turn one block into a coin, right above another coin, and have to wait it out, got in the way of things more than anything else.

Both rooms focus on enemies that guard their turf strongly and often test your reflexes, the ability to land on the edge of a pipe to not hit the Lakitu poking out, and resisting the temptation of sliding down the slope to kill the Spinies when there's a pitfall immediately after. The subtle hinting at the gimmick in the first room was a neat touch.

But then, you get to the midway point inside a ghost house. The springboard is all the way to your right, and then you enter a small maze where you need to find a switch as three Boos chase you through pockets of water in the maze. The water was clever because the Boos became a viable threat due to your lower speed while swimming.

Then, you enter a room full of Eeries and misleading doors. Afterward, you end up in one final room with platforms guarded by circles of Boo Buddies before you find the sorceror responsible for this - Big Boo.

Big Boo's room is actually well-designed, because the throw blocks are merely fragmented bridges, and you get a fair few shots at him.

Probably the only thing wrong with this level is it felt like it went down in difficulty after the maze.

... and I liked this level. It told a story without being an ebook.

The door takes you to the forest where you're surrounded by Boo circles and must wait for them to open up. Here are two mushrooms for your hardships. There are a few dangers beyond that like saws and other ghosts, and then you go through yet another filler room, then find yourself in a relatively simple pipe maze.

The objective of the maze is to find the P-switch before leaving. There's no way back in after you leave, and while the goal post is blocked by 3 tiles high of brown blocks, it's incredibly easy to just jump over, thus voiding the need for a P-switch.

I wanna say that there were some solid rooms in here, but the filler segments and the flawed latter half bog it down. (Also could've used a lower/no time limit :s)

The volcanic room remains mostly as two paths, that ultimately lead to the same pipe. The secret exit here requires a key, but you use it as a stepping stool instead of an actual key.

Both rooms are packed with a lot of action and enemies that guard areas very well while providing the only way to advance by bouncing off of them, but both rooms also suffer from platforms (and munchers in the first room) being so close together that your jumps are sometimes pixel-perfect.

The toxic part, where you are on a very strict time limit, gives a little breathing room if you are somewhat slow, but forces you to keep on moving if you are to make it to the pipe in time regardless. The gimmick fits in with the grim theme of the level without overtaking it and becoming the center of attention.

The stage concludes with a dangerous boss room with Eeries and toxic assisting Big Boo.

I've had one portion of the turn block bridge disappear due to sprite tile memory issues, but I could only get it to trigger once.

There was a slope in the outside segment with the Fishin' Boo that I walked through and died next to a one-tile-high bone.

When I got to the Fishin' Boo and the land was elevated, I got frustrated most at that part since I was small, and even with savestates it took me quite a lot of tries to get through.

The Ball & Chains were tough to discern throughout as dangerous foreground because it didn't stand out to me, I had trouble seeing a lot of them, and graphics didn't fill their hitbox either.

Only three blocks to kill the Big Boo, plus an Eerie Generator, was rather strict after all that.

The midway point comes much too early in this level, considering the immense difficulty of all that comes after it. If this level is an endgame excerpt, at the very least, this is the one thing I suggest changing above all else. This is a very long level for its difficulty.

In the second room of the cave, there was a springboard available to scale a wall later on in the room, but alternatively, you can wait for a Spike Top to crawl down the wall and spin jump off of him to go up.

I liked how the key to the secret exit was hidden behind the treetops, in the pipe you had to walk off a mushroom platform slowly to get to.

The cave ground looks cool since the brown and yellow layers of earth contrast well, and the castle candles are used in a cool fashion as torches on the angled ghost house pillars. I found it neat that the next room of the cave took the previous room's palette and made it darker instead of being a plain recycle.

Overall, detail in the level is dispersed nicely - it doesn't feel overcramped or empty, even in spite of the cave not using layer 2 as a background.

Now, you're in a room where Spinies drop near you, and you have to choose to go up or right. If you go right, you pretty much just run and jump over enemies until you discover the goal is blocked by some brown blocks, so you have to go up. If you go up, you have to get around munchers while you scale the clouds, which can be a little tricky, but then you can just carry a blue switch down and activate a silver one to save you the trouble of either waiting one out to press another one or having to deal with enemies below.

It doesn't really feel like it has a unified theme; it's like an experimental obstacle course level.

Part 1 and 3 of the level are outdoors, and a standard action environment. Part 2 is a castle that is about to explode, and you have 100 seconds to get out. The bonus room is abuseable to reset the time limit to explore more, but it's a rather trivial thing because the exit to the bonus room is next to the door, and it's simple enough to find everything in the room before you're about to die.

The palettes are quite good - the different shades of brown between the beach's colors and the mountains' colors prevent it from being dull like so many other attempts at a desert/beach, but what really strikes me is the castle. The foreground is rich and the hue blending is brilliant - it fits as a desert castle, and the background gives off a warm, heated feel like the story to this segment implies. The pinkish tones and the yellow contrast very well.

The deduction here is in the third room where the door is, I think the butcher's knife fell too soon, and rather cleanly through that screen. Le "ouch."

Nothing gamebreaking.

After the midway point, you enter a linear castle with standard castle threats in addition to generic foes - they often fit in the color theme of the screen they are on. Halfway through, you can go through a pipe and experience a different half of castle interior to the finish, or just stick along the same path.

While I did find the first half of the level more impressive from a raw platforming point of view, the level as a whole is a solid product handled with love.

Probably the most interesting thing about this level is after the sky part, when you're put back in the grassland, you think it's the same room you started out in and you jump across those turn block bridges in the air to the goal, but if you jump down and go back to the beginning, a more challenging castle is there to a secret exit.

Most importantly, platform placement throughout is very varied yet not scatterbrained, and spaced well enough to give the level flow without feeling empty. It feels like it could structurally be a level in Super Mario World itself.

The action does hold up very well without the side quests since the enemies are extremely effective for their areas, especially after the midway point. Not a single enemy was wasted. What was interesting is that hesitation hurts here - if you keep a certain rhythm, you can comfortably sail through even foes placed in the most intimidating places.

I don't like the swooping platform placement in the autoscroll part because it can push you through the platform you're standing on, and didn't like how in one room, you had to wait for a pretty long time before the Bullet Bill generator gave you a bullet you could actually bounce off of to reach the water - it technically can be considered luck-based design.

Blank message box in the boss room, eh.. counted as appeal and not functionality because it technically doesn't hurt the design.

Fishin' Boo chases you as a brigade of foes explode out of blocks to try to force you to jump into him. Afterwards, you end up inside a building with a few Ninjis and some Koopas walking down the stairs, which is no problem to pass.

The castle is where you start to see an ample amount of powerups and strategic enemy placement next to walls you run up, and the like. Bowser's statues at the end spit fireballs that can be difficult to dodge if your timing is not good, but it's still very much passable.

At the end, you fight Reznor.

Inside the building, some of the Ninjis jumped through the ceiling and became a nonfactor.

I could also walk under some of those escalators inside the castle.

One problem I see is if you are small, you can get stuck in the right path where you throw blocks to get through the turn blocks laid along the ground over a hole. Another is that the screen won't vertically scroll when I'm done bouncing on some Chucks to a high place because when I hit the wall, it doesn't have me in "fly" mode anymore, so I had to get lucky to know if I'd reached ground or if I'd fall to my death. Overall, this is one of the most cleverly thought-out death traps I've ever seen.

Through the pipe is a raft ride with pillars of lava you have to maneuver around. The midway point gives you a castle room with line-guided platforms around spikes, walls that Magikoopa's magic can only break, and a cloud ride around spikes. Finally, you have an autoscroll room with spikes everywhere, and a part you have to wait and see before just how many Thwomps in a row are on those platforms, lest you be forced to take damage.

Even with variety, the design as a whole felt uninspired, like a grab bag of ideas thrown together.

This swimming exercise utilizes Urchins and fish effectively - sometimes you have to be patient, and sometimes you have to duck to dodge. One of the coolest things was how the Chuck protected in the wall could awaken all the Rip Van Fish behind the seaweed, but there aren't many at first; it builds up as you progress along this stretch. If you find the key, you can get out before the castle.

The main attraction of the castle is the second room where you ride the ? block left, being wary of jumping fish, magic, and Balls & Chains, or if you got the feather, you could skip to the vertical room where you need to spin jump off of lots of things and unveil ? blocks to make bridges across gaps with low ceilings to proceed. There's a puzzle with a invisible floors and threats, and the true image mirroring, where you have to get a P-switch to proceed, but if you still have the feather, you can again skip it, do more stuff, net climb and fetch items.. yeah, it's just a little overboard in length. A lot of thought went into it, but at the same time, it has too much.

Not only is the level atmospheric, it's also quite humorous - at the end of the underwater part, there's blowfish with their rear ends sticking out of pipes, and after that part, there's this FUCKING HUGE PIXELLATED FORTRESS. I wish the dark outline would've been a consistent thing throughout, though. =(

The idea behind the Big Boo fight was cool, having Yoshi spit shells at Big Boo, but you didn't get many chances. There was a very narrow gap between lava that you had to fly through as well.

You must get Magikoopa to throw his magic at the blocks above where he can spawn a yellow Koopa, then throw the shell up to drop and activate the P-switch and get out of there. You then find and fly a Blue Yoshi through the castle while trying not to get hit by his spells and other enemies.

There's a minor oversight where the turn blocks spin in the Magikoopa's P-switch room, but all this serious ricing more than makes up for it.

The side rooms, one being a bouncy bonus and the other being a Thwomp room with a Dragon Coin, as well as the path to the midway point, add a degree of exploration and variety to the level - one is just in a pipe on the ground, and the other two can be reached by bringing an item shortly ahead of their location back a little and then hitting a block or following a coin path.

The palettes themselves were solid, though there wasn't much contrast between the background and the foreground... they were both the same kind of green and it was kinda bland.

A midway point exists just before the goal.

I'd say this was an amusing satirical level.

After the room with a P-switch and an ominous message, the factory counts down to detonation. Jumps here are more dangerous so spin jumping is advised to avoid hitting fire. The room after resembles the appearance and challenges prior to the lava room, and after that, you are home free.

I loved the fire. The orangish hues in the fiery factory rooms create the sensation of heat well, and the gradient in the first factory interior room was a good prelude to this.

Detailing was quite balanced and not over/underdone. The coolest thing was how the self-destructing sequence used enemies out of view to shake the entire level.

The only thing I noticed wrong was in the second room, when you take the swooping platform over, the Hothead glitches when it's going left along the top of the platform beside the coin area. It's pretty out-of-the-way, though.

One really neat design point, as minor as it was, was how you recycled that powerup block from the beginning and midway point and prevented the player from switching thresholds. Using the conveyor belts to influence enemy speeds as well has having spikes to duck below was also a memorable touch. Enemy and block placement is pretty righteous throughout.

One really BAD thing is in a room after the midway point, where if you jump down to an area with a springboard near a Diggin' Chuck without grabbing a throw block, you get forced to kill yourself because the ? blocks box you in.

This stage did a great job setting things around the creating/eating block route to make for a unique challenge this contest.

Each room is rich in landscaping detail, so this level is anything but a flat run, and holding off the introduction of enemies as well as confining them to certain rooms keeps each area fresh.

I found the secret exit first by taking the P-switch in the dungeon room with the midway point up the pipe into the forest room and activating it in there, as shown in the cutscene.

The only thing I didn't particularly care for was some outline inconsistencies with some pipes, and Mario's colors were rather inconsistent between rooms as well.

The forest rooms were nicely done, although too small to make much of an impact.

In the final room, you just run and jump at cue, and you can not stop running or you will probably fall down a hole and die.

It's not really a good thing that you put walkable tiles on the bottom row close to the beginning, and the level seemed to be rather ununified. The midway point also came much too early.

In the second indoor room, I would've liked to see more contrast between the background and the foreground like you've done with all the other rooms.

The grassland part itself was pretty bare in the later part. The beach area seemed to have a good balance of action and powerups as well as solid momentum. There was a definite surplus of powerups in the room with the Bowser statues.

I felt that a lot more work needed to be done on the grassland part because it was sort of neglected in the second half, and that the statue room could've been amped up in difficulty by removing powerups and adding a ceiling so you can't jump over nearly every Thwomp.

The remaining rooms are less "searchy" - the water room is a straightforward swimming test with many fishes and Urchins in some pretty tight but fair spots. The start of the earth zone gives you a midway flag, then pits you against wooden stakes, falling platforms, and creating/eating block trains, so it's essential to keep moving. The fire room forces you to spin jump off of low-jumping Podoboos to cross over pits, and be wary of Grinder movements, until you can finally go over the room and bring the key to the end.

...and do it all over again?

From then on, however, the level was more "obvious" to figure out, and it became progressively more fun. I was really enjoying the earth and fire rooms, especially the latter, but I felt kind of let down when the grey room led me back to the forest area.

Subsequent playthroughs were more enjoyable since I knew the ropes, though an actual end would give more purpose to the level.

To be fair, the central gimmick of using those blocks and the lines that only sprites can walk on had some good ideas behind them, and there were a ton of ideas to keep each room fresh, such as a Lakitu's Spiny ball spin jump puzzle and a Yoshi adventure through brambles, albeit they didn't fit in coherently with the gimmick that dominated the level beforehand.

One damaging fact about this level is that there is absolutely no midway point in the biblical sense - the midway point is at the very start of the level before you're exposed to any real action.

While the Piranha Plant prop was cool, the hitbox was also very inconsistent when you walked across it. Some Piranha Plants and Spinies had a tendency to get stuck in the wall too.

The sewer is a vertical descent in a more ...illuminated room, and spikes player a bigger role in threat here. You'll use the P-switch to make bridges over some of them, and if you're fast enough, earn an extra life. Coins along a part of the wall point to another secret room essential to progression, with the key and a P-switch for free money. You'll use this key to get inside a pipe which you'll otherwise not be able to reach, and get another P-switch to take into the Red Moon area, the hardest room, to find and enter a blue temporary door to the boss.

Going any other way will get you "lost" and you'll have to start the level over, but thankfully, your time limit resets as well. It can be confusing if you don't get the cues. The Big Boo gave you six blocks over spikes with which you can kill him - lining up so you don't fall onto them takes skill, though the bullets get annoying when they waste your block.

The only real problem I can think of with this level is that it needs a midway point - a precision point would be in the transient room between the sewer and the Red Moon room where the P-switch is.

What really hurts here is the layer 2 in the boss room; it's impossible to discern as non-contact because it has the same bold outlines and looks overall as the foreground. What you did with the sewer, though, explains perfectly what would've made the boss room look perfect.

Then, you have to find another blue P-switch and silver P-switch and you get a reset door if you screw up, but this time you have to be quick with the blue switch rather than bring both of them to a nearby point. You find the springboard, and use that to advance. If you are fast enough, you can clear another path of munchers and have a shot at a bonus room.

Now, you have to swim through these narrow floating water places in such a way that you don't jump up and hit munchers or fall below and land on munchers.

For the secret exit, back in that room, there's two springboards but one is fairly obscure and you probably never heard of it. You have to carry one through the top pipe in order to gain access to the top part of a cave, and get a P-switch to get through the blocked part near the midway point. Now that you have a key, you have to guess where the hole is behind the wall and make it to the keyhole.

The secret exit challenges you with a 101-second race to the end with a key, through some pretty tight spots around munchers, urchins, and fish.

The mountain route has moving rocks, rotating platforms, and some swooping Hammer Brothers in addition to all the little nooks and crannies in the path. Finally, the sunset room just gives you a 3up room and has a goal sphere to end the level.

The first room was fairly average but the underwater and mountain sections felt like they served a purpose and had distinctive concepts.

A notable point of the outdoor segments is the seeming continuity of daytime - the opener can be likened to midday, the mountain has an afternoon feel, and the final area has a defined sunset palette. The underwater palette is my favorite - it's not too desaturated to the point of seeming lifeless, the bluish tint doesn't dominate because of the green seaweed, grey arches, and tan sand, and the level of brightness is superb.

Well, when it comes to the secret exit, I was pretty annoyed at first - not by the design, but because of the keyboard input using ZSNES, so I had to map down-right to / to have a fair shot. I do think an ample amount of time was given, especially for joypad users.

All the way through, I enjoyed the underwater segment and the mountain area - especially the latter due to well-executed use of rotating platforms and moving rocks. They did not feel cramped, had a lot of variety in action, and I liked that the optional puzzles and minor path breaks were rewarding.

The ghost house is dark and dangerous. One really clever thing I can point out here is the use of the Ninji above the tile you have to jump through to proceed, where you need to calculate when to jump safely. At the heart of the level is a small "lobby" which serves as the center point of a puzzle. The great thing about this puzzle is there's so little backtracking and it doesn't even need a reset pipe if you mess up; you enter various rooms facing "sleeping" enemies that awaken after you disturb the Boos, and the layer 3 smasher in an autoscrolling part in another room.

Finally, you'll have to escape the toy factory because (for some reason) it's going to explode, and you run across Boos with the help of a star. Some Boos are "real" among the "platform" Boos.

The midway point is sufficiently placed though it probably would've been better towards the toy factory room, and the difficulty is rather balanced. Enemy placement here is wholly fair and not empty.

Every time someone successfully combines childish things with really creepy things, if pulled off right, it creates some of the most unsettling ambience ever, and for a Mario hack, this was done tremendously well. Other than that cutscene thing and a couple of nitpicks with the outer wall of the ghost house not mirroring, this level looks fantastic.