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What are your preferred 2D Super Mario platform physics?


DarkeSword
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So I recently grabbed The Lost Levels on Virtual Console, and have been enjoying it quite a bit. Another one of my VC games is Super Mario World, which is also quite enjoyable.

HOWEVER!

Every so often I get frustrated when Mario or Luigi doesn't react to my quick button presses precisely the way I want him to; I think it's a product of growing up on Super Mario Bros. 3 and subsequently playing the hell out of the GBA re-release. I've always found that Super Mario Bros. 3 has the most responsive--for lack of a simpler term-physics. I'm able to pull off accurate running jumps and bounce off koopa shells, or tweak my trajectory underwater with a few taps of the A button with judicious use of B and ->. SMB (and by extension, TLL) and SMW never felt "right" to me.

I'm sure others would argue otherwise; I'm sure plenty people find SMW's physics better, but SMB3 will always be the pinnacle in my mind.

What do you think?

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Hmm...I've actually never really noticed that, except with the first Super Mario Bros. (I haven't played "The Lost Levels" or as it's called in Japan, Super Mario Bros. 2 in a long time, so I wouldn't know much about that) but maybe it's just me. I like the later Mario Bros. better because you can do more things in them and stuff like that, but I never thought of the Mario Bros. I "prefered". Well, it would probably be a tie between Super Mario 3 and Super Mario World, not necessarily because it's more responsive, but because there are more controls (As in, you can do more things in them).

PS. I apologize if I made a comment that contradicted itself in that tangled mess.

:wink:

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I've never really thought about it, but now that you mention it, I come to the same conclusion. SMB3 is the 2D Mario that I killed the most time on (thanks to the GBA). SMW is probably my second-favorite 2D Mario, but I felt like it was too... drifty? slick? I felt like making tight turns and air control involved too much inertia. Same feeling with New SMB.

I never played the heck out of SMB1 like I did 3 (and especially not recently), so I don't feel qualified to pass judgment on that one.

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Call me crazy, but I kind of like the physics in the original Super Mario Bros/Lost Levels. It's floaty and imprecise, sure, but the way the momentum works is just so much fun -- on levels you're really familiar with, you can just hold down the run button, hold down D-pad right, jump in the appropriate places, make tiny course adjustments with D-pad left, and just breeze effortlessly through the level.

And FYI I'm more familiar with the original than with Mario 3 and SMW, so that could be why I like it so much.

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Call me crazy, but I kind of like the physics in the original Super Mario Bros/Lost Levels. It's floaty and imprecise, sure, but the way the momentum works is just so much fun -- on levels you're really familiar with, you can just hold down the run button, hold down D-pad right, jump in the appropriate places, make tiny course adjustments with D-pad left, and just breeze effortlessly through the level.

And FYI I'm more familiar with the original than with Mario 3 and SMW, so that could be why I like it so much.

I think whatever you played the hell out of is really what it boils down to, but you can pretty much do the same with any Mario side-scroller game, provided you're comfortable with the physics.

The weirdest stuff is when you play these romhacks. I played on that recreated Super Mario Bros. in the Super Mario World engine, but it used Super Mario 3 All-Stars version tilesets for the graphics. I kept thinking SMB3 physics, but I was confused with the SMB layouts, and SMW physics have always given me a hard time. So hard! xD

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Hmmm... I played the heck out of just about every Mario (Sunshine is the only one that comes to mind that I haven't played through)and I agree with most of the comments. Original had "floaty" physics, World was kind of "slick", Mario 3 is the tightest control wise. Seems to me that in every case though, it 'works'. The control seems to fit the game. That's just part of the reason that every Mario is great IMHO. I always liked World the best because of it's deeper level design, secret paths and such... but as far as control I really can't choose.

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I'd have to go back and replay to make a comparison, but as I remember, SMB3 had slightly tweaked controls compared to the first two. In SMB, the split second you stopped pressing right on the D-pad, Mario stopped moving. In SMB3, there was just the tiniest bit of a slide when you let up. This is VERY evident in Super Mario World for the SNES, and even more so in Super Mario 64. Basically it was a simulation of forward momentum. Also, the jumps in SMB were very rudimentary, and as the algorithms were improved in SMB3, jumps were much more fluid, the arc was larger, and it made more sense as to how the character moved. How many times have you missed a jump in SMB because the arc you're expecting him to make is just slightly off?

So what you're saying about the physics is true. Basically as Nintendo invented new and better ways to simulate real life physics such as momentum and arcs, the characters began to respond in a way that was more in line with the natural world, and hence more in line with the natural instincts of players as to how mass is supposed to move. In essence, I don't think the controls were more responsive, you responded to them better because they made more sense.

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SMB 1 and 3 were just right.

When playing as Mario in 2, I sensed that there was a bit more "gravity" and he didn't hang at the peak of his jump like he does in 1. I can still pull off some smooth moves in SMB2, but 1 and 3 are where it's at.

Also, when playing Mario World, the way I first held a SNES controller, the spin jump button was where my mind wanted the regular jump button to be. I couldn't handle that game for the longest time.

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Yea people, blame the controller or the game for misjumps or stuff ups....the likely excuse. :-P

Na, on a serious note, the earlier games did have a lot more slide than the others, but that was intentional. Mario had less skid than Luigi but couldn't jump as high, fact of the game and a fun little quality. Pick an early SMB game and try to run through the whole level with Luigi without slipping off an edge or slamming into a waiting enemy, it's quite the challenge. I always hated those parts with a massive gap to jump, and only the most tiny ledge you have ever seen to land on, now that's just teasing.

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Yea people, blame the controller or the game for misjumps or stuff ups....the likely excuse. :-P

Na, on a serious note, the earlier games did have a lot more slide than the others, but that was intentional. Mario had less skid than Luigi but couldn't jump as high, fact of the game and a fun little quality. Pick an early SMB game and try to run through the whole level with Luigi without slipping off an edge or slamming into a waiting enemy, it's quite the challenge. I always hated those parts with a massive gap to jump, and only the most tiny ledge you have ever seen to land on, now that's just teasing.

um? except in SMB2 there are no diffferences between mario and luigi

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My favourite 2D Mario game so far has been New Super Mario Bros. for the DS. It feels like the original, the physics feels pretty tight and realistic, similar to SMB3, and some of the special moves from Mario 64 (namely the wall jump and ground pound) are in the game as well.

I didn't like the GBA rerelease of SMW or SMB3; I found the controls to be backwards from what I'd been used to more recently, and found it really awkward moving from running to jumping, while NSMB seemed more natural. That doesn't of course affect the originals. It's been a while since I've played the original SMB3; I've played the Allstars version much more recently, but I found them both to have good physics, although different.

The only Mario game with really bad physics IMO is SMB2. Although, who doesn't love the ability to lob turnips at people?

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Call me crazy, but I kind of like the physics in the original Super Mario Bros/Lost Levels. It's floaty and imprecise, sure, but the way the momentum works is just so much fun -- on levels you're really familiar with, you can just hold down the run button, hold down D-pad right, jump in the appropriate places, make tiny course adjustments with D-pad left, and just breeze effortlessly through the level.

And FYI I'm more familiar with the original than with Mario 3 and SMW, so that could be why I like it so much.

Same here. I just got an SNES a couple weeks ago, and with it some great games (All-Stars + SMW, Gradius III, Super Mario RPG [Alone, combined with shipping, was $50], and 'A Link to the Past')... I'm playing the hell out of the SMBI game, though, and the only problems I have now is in fluently breezing through 8-3 and getting past the final Hammer Kappa and Bowser. But hey, worlds 8-1 and 8-2 FTW!

Oh, and I find the Advance versions to suck... BAD (I have every version). Mainly, it just seemed to mess with the simplicity of the original (for lack of a better word) trilogy of SMB games, which was pretty much the main reason I like the original SMB games, even SMB3, which changed a LOT of what the SMB1 and the REAL SMB2 had. I didn't need gimmicks, nor didn't I need anything especially out of the ordinary to pop up unexpectedly, all I needed were decent controls and surpassable challenge [after practice]... Maybe even tweaking the level design a bit to fix notable problems, or to make it slightly more or less challenging (Not because of poor design, but due to basic challenge).

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Side Somersault and Wall Jump are badass and I wish they would've put them into New SMB.

I'm pretty sure you can wall jump in new SMB.

I prefer the controls of 3 and SMW. They seem pretty similar to me overall, with SMW maybe having a bit more hang time in the jumps. I also like just holding down the button in SMW to float with the cape rather than tapping with the raccoon tail.

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SMB3 definitely has the tightest and most responsive control set -- this is very apparent if you patch SMW to the SMB3 levels and try playing it. Not that SMW doesn't have near perfect controls anyway. SMW it's harder to change directions mid-flight (and impossible in the GBA remake due to the lack of buttons).

It eventually boils down to whether or not you really like multi-directional pipes. SMB3 has em, SMW doesn't (unless you're playing one of the great rom-hacks out there, Super Demo World: TLC.)

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Favorite: SMB1

Mario floats. The peak of his jump lasts like 3 minutes. Love the intertia

Less favorite: SMW

Everything was kinda hard to do, and kinda slippery too, felt less tight than smb3 or smb 1.

So the order goes like this:

1.-SMB1

2.-SMB3

3.-NSMB

4.-SMBTLL

5.-SMB2

6.-SMW

Not in order of favorite game, but favorite physics engine or whatever.

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Loved the physics on New Super Mario Bros. since it brought a couple of moves from the 3D games and successfully implemented it to the 2D-style. However, one of the reasons I love The Lost Levels and the US SMB2 is differentiating between Mario and Luigi in terms of physics. I'm glad the GBA ports of the 2D titles were able to do the same thing with Luigi.

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