Okay, I know I said I was going to do Fatio Bros. 3 next in the previous post, but... I already went ahead and played through my first (and crappiest) ROM hack,
Goma-Mario, last night so I already had all the screenshots ready for that one.
So, getting away from chronological order now... we're heading back to the early 2000s, or perhaps the late 1990s, I can't remember which for sure. Either way, this is
old. Like, probably the single oldest game/hack project that I still have a copy of. If I had to guess, I'd say this hack is probably from late 1999 or early 2000, which makes it even older than that awfultastic OHRRPGCE game I started on around 2000 (some of you may know the one I'm referencing; it's the one that's no longer available for download anywhere. I'm avoiding saying the name now to further erase it from existence.)
Anyway... on to the game.
Goma-Mario did not have an edited title screen, so I skipped that part. Actually, it originally didn't have a title screen at all, but at some point I must have applied a "fix" patch to the ROM which inserted the original Super Mario Bros. title screen... except with screwed up colors. I'm not sure why or how, but at some point the palettes in this hack got thrown all out of wack, possibly related to those ugly SMB3 bricks replacing the original ones (why, I don't have a clue) since it seems like the colors of those bricks -- all pale and orangey and flesh-toned -- mixed up the order of the palette for other things, resulting in black and orange getting swapped. Yeah, it's pretty crappy-looking, as you'll see in some future screenshots.
Anyway,
Goma-Mario gets its title from the name of a Digimon -- Gomamon -- which I was moderately obsessed with for a while back in the day. Small Mario has been replaced by a crude 8-bit Gomamon sprite, and when you get a mushroom (well, actually a "Goma-Fruit"... as you'll see later)...
...he transforms into some bizarre Gomamon/Mario hybrid. Basically, it's Mario with Gomamon ears and no mustache, and when he runs (but not when he stands still, oddly) he has Gomamon paws instead of his regular hands, too.
Also, that flying slug thing? It's a Cheep-Cheep with a new sprite. Except for some bizarre reason...
...jumping on it turns it into a Koopa Troopa (also with new sluggy sprite.) I know I didn't edit the behavior of the enemies in this game, so apparently that's just what happens when you jump on a "swimming" Cheep-Cheep in SMB1 -- since they never used them in a non-water level, you just couldn't make it happen anywhere in the original game.
Of course, since they're both edited into slugs it makes more sense here than it would in the original Mario game. The only weird bit is how the slugs change from black to red when you jump on them, and even that could
sort of work as an old-video-game-style "enemy gets mad and turns red when hit" sort of thing.
Jumping on them again causes them to curl up into a weirdly urn-shaped ball of slugginess, which can be kicked around just like a Koopa shell.
Here's the Fire Flower replacement. It's a bottle of some sort with the letter V on the front, which I vaguely remember was known as the "V-Goo" back in the day. The star's replacement was similar, but with an X, so I assume that was an "X-Goo." Anyway, when you get the V-Goo you change colors and can throw Gomamon Goo Bombs.
...most of you are probably confused right now. But... "Gomamon Goo" was an old joke-type thing I had going back in the 1999-to-early-2000s time period, a mysterious edible substance produced by Gomamons somehow. Nobody actually knew what it was, and all attempts to discover how Gomamons made Gomamon Goo ended in failure. It was basically like Gomamon milk, except both male and female Gomamons could make it, which led some to joke that it was sometimes Gomamon spooge. I also wrote at least a few chapters of a story revolving around a "Gomamon Farm" where this goo is collected and then sold, in which a group of Gomamons gains goo-themed superpowers. "Gomamon Goo Bomb" was one of the attacks they could use in that. And now you know the history of Gomamon Goo, so I can go on with the rest of this thing. XD
Yep, throwing Gomamon Goo Bombs at some flying slug things here.
And here's the first sign of the awfulness that the palette change has inflicted on some of the original game's map graphics -- that tree isn't supposed to be flesh-toned, and those blocks aren't supposed to be inverse-colored like that. I never did go in and fix this, for some reason, even though it looks frickin' awful.
Here's 1-2, where the palette ugliness strikes again -- the X/square blocks look okay, but the ugly SMB3 bricks and the floor are terrible. On a more positive note, here's the first view of the coins, which have Gomamon heads on them.
And here's what the Goombas were replaced with -- some sort of little lizard things. They still smush when jumped on, but for some reason the "smushed" graphic is still a Goomba. I could've sworn I changed that years ago, but in the version of the ROM that I still have... yep, still a Goomba.
More "Cheep-Cheep" type slugs, and some underground trees. Also shows pretty well how the palette here is still the same as the original game -- the newly-added blocks look awful, while the original game's blocks and tree look okay.
And when you beat a level, you get a "G" flag rather than the usual mushroom or star or whatever it was.
1-3 is a bit different than in the original game, thanks to the addition of water (and everything being moved/changed around, of course.) There's a Piranha Plant peeking out from behind a cloud there...
1-4, pretty basic castle level, nothing too unusual based on the fact that I only took four screenshots of it and all but this one were from the very end. But here's what the Goma-Fruit item looked like.
And here's Bowser. Sadly, you can't knock him over with that slug.
The axe has been replaced by... a bottle of Gomamon Goo. Whut?? How does that make the bridge fall? XD
And Toad's message is unchanged, but... what the heck did I do to his sprite!? Is he supposed to b e some sort of midget in a powdered wig now, or what...?
2-1 looks a bit different from before. Also, here's the first appearance of the flying Koopas... err, slugs. Except I seem to have been unable to find the wing sprite to edit it, so there's still a visible chunk of Koopa shell attached to the wings on these. Whoops!
Two chains of spinning goo-balls AND a Piranha Plant on that one pipe? Huh.
And here's a vine. The cloud area above was completely unchanged from the original version of the game, though -- even the background was still blue sky despite the level it came from being dark.
And speaking of inconsistencies in sky color between levels, here's 2-2 where it's randomly bright blue sky again after 2-1 was dark. The level itself is also a bit weirdly designed... there's a lot of chunks of castles strewn around, like this was some sort of sunken city.
I think I tried to edit the Bloopers into something resembling Gesomon, a squid Digimon with clawed tentacles. It definitely does look like I added some black claws to the two largest tentacles, anyway, though the rest of the sprite is unchanged.
Also, weird-looking pink tree underwater. What the heck?
More ruins. I guess this is like Goma-Mario Atlantis or something.
Awkwardly tall castle thing that
almost peeks up out of the water here...
And... a glitch. Since that pipe is taller than in the original game, you come out at the height the original pipe was rather than actually at the top of the pipe. Thankfully, you don't get stuck -- you slide out through the side.
And now it's 2-3, and the level is back to being dark again. It can't make up its mind, apparently.
This level is also home to not one but TWO game-breaking bugs! One, if you get past this point in the map, you will start off here whenever you lose a life. As in, directly BELOW that chunk of bridge, so you'll just keep falling into the pit immediately and be unable to do anything about it. Yep. I clearly did not test this part of the level very well. >_<
Second game-breaking bug can be caused by that floating girder, which you can get stuck on part-way down the flagpole if you time things right (or "time things wrong," I guess, since it locks the game up forever -- Mario still goes down the rest of the way once the platform has moved, but he never hops off the flagpole and back into the castle.)
And here's 2-4, which I think is the first appearance of Muncher Launchers! These also appeared in
Sumo Fatio Bros. 3, and much more recently have made an appearance in my completed OHRRPGCE game
Okédoké! La Leyenda Mexicana. The palette screwiness of this game is visible here, too -- the Munchers really should have the white and gray swapped, so their eyes are white rather than their bodies...
After an uneventful rest-of-the-castle-level, here's 3-1 -- which is randomly a
sky level, in a drastic change from the original game's version. It even has the "invincibility star/cloudy bonus area" music from the original game. Except you're not invincible and there's not that many coins around.
Hammer Brothers are almost entirely unchanged. I say "almost" because... well, you can't see it here but their hammers are weird in this hack. They look like hammers on some frames of their animation, and then randomly change to something resembling a pair of croutons or something. I vaguely recall making them throw croutons on purpose as a jokey-type thing, but I'm not sure why they flip back and forth between those and regular hammers...
And here's a vine!...
...that... doesn't actually go anywhere? Whoops.
3-2 is a bit weird. It uses a level structure that was never actually used in the original game, and though they don't look like it, those blocks...
...are actually regular ol' breakable bricks! Or, if you hit them when small, they turn into "bumped" blocks like when you get an item out of a ?-block. It's really odd.
And here's the first appearance of the X-Goo, not counting one I found in a previous level that fell in a hole before I could grab it. It flashes different colors but just happened to be black when I took this screenshot, so it's impossible to see the actual shape of the bottle (it's a bit different from the V-Goo bottle.)
And randomly, a minor glitch --
two G flags rather than just one now?
3-3 and here's another new enemy -- Yuggs. They look a lot like the Pokémon Kabuto, except they walk on two legs and have longer arms. They're supposed to have more than just four limbs, but 2000-era me wasn't able to make that work in a tiny sprite, apparently. They replace Buzzy Beetles (and apparently I never edited their "stomped shell" sprite, as it looks just like a regular Buzzy Beetle shell.)
3-3 is an
incredibly glitchy level. You'll see how when I'm forced to play through it again later on.
And here's 3-4, which is also glitchy....
...as in, "unbeatable" glitchy. For some reason, parts of the level are just not showing up here, resulting in an impossibly long jump over lava. Poking around in a Mario level editor program I happened to have lying around, I found that the cause was apparently the positioning of a row of three coins -- when I moved them over just a bit, two more platforms appeared (and a third, which had previously appeared in the editor but not in-game, also started showing up in the game itself.)
I mentioned 3-3 being glitchy above -- here's an example. Why are those trees randomly cut off? Why is that cloud randomly broken apart? Why is that Piranha Plant coming out of nothing (and sometimes floating up off the screen)? I have
no idea.
Also, some of the platforms in this level act like they're part of the background rather than solid objects. Shown here is Mario falling through the top of that one. I think the first row of smaller ones (which don't move, unlike the second row) are glitchy pass-through ones, too, but I didn't check to be sure since that would mean falling down that hole.
Now, this is what that endless pit of lava in 3-4 was
supposed to be like -- one small platform, a decent jump, and then a couple bigger platforms. Those coins above the tallest block are the ones that seemed to be causing the problem -- when they were between the two gooball-chains, those two platforms didn't show up, ever.
And a conveniently located X-Goo bottle means that you can run through and bowl Bowser over without bothering with goo-bombs
or the bottle of goo that mysteriously knocks down the bridge. Being able to do that made the glitchiness of the two previous levels almost worth it. XD
And here's 4-1, which is... lookin' a little weird to start with. Camouflage Goma-Mario there, thanks to the messed-up palette.
And here's the Lakitu and Spiny replacements -- the Lakitu is some kind of lizard guy riding a cloud, while the Spinies are black spiky balls that turn into... masses of tiny Piranha-Plant-like things that crawl along the ground? Hard to see in this screenshot thanks to the background trees, but they're there.
And 4-2 seems to be the point where I stopped editing the levels, as this looks just like 4-2 in the original game.
Ending still has the pipe glitch, though.
4-3 is also about the same, aside from screwy palette issues.
World 5 was completely unchanged, but 5-3 ended up really bizarre thanks to the "add extra stuff to an earlier level (I think 1-3) to make this new level" thing that it used. At least, I don't
think that combination of bridges and block-towers was in the earlier level...
And here's 5-4, which... huh, that's odd, this level definitely has been edited. Oh yeah, that's because 5-4 is a repeat of an earlier castle level but with extra fire-bars and such added. Anyway, 5-4 has several letters spelled out in blocks or coins throughout it, but it doesn't seem to actually spell much. Here's a K...
And then an A...
And then... a P? Maybe an R that's missing a coin? Maybe a really odd-looking D? I dunno. So it's either "KAP," "KAR," or "KAD." None of those actually spell much of anything. A lot like a previous level which had a very clear "M," "I," and "L," but then nothing else. There was a pipe/mushroom combination that almost sorta looked like a "Y," but "MILY" doesn't mean anything more than "MIL" does so I'm not sure what the heck is going on there.
Mushroom Atlantis again, as 7-2 is just 2-2 repeated..
And 7-3 is 2-3 repeated. Yep.
8-4, and I finally got a "smushed Goomba is still a Goomba not a lizard" screenshot.
This weird palette was actually completely unchanged from the original, as those who played the original Super Mario Bros. will remember.
And... no change to the end, either. The princess even still has her bizarrely ugly sprite. Oh wait, there is one change -- random mushroom glitch things where periods would normally be in the text. Not sure why that is.
And that's it for Goma-Mario! Next, I'll actually get around to Fatio 3 like I said I would last time. XD
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