Rhinoferizing this so hard. (I also really appreciate that it'll be a regular feature rather than a big ol' dump.)

I kinda sorta want to mirror these websites in their entirety somewhere.

This weeks' Freehosting Pick comes to us from Rob Bruder, AKA Little Dawg. The game is titled "Mario's Many Adventures" but seems to center on one very specific, and unusual adventure. The title screen introduces us to Mario, or at least one frame of his incredible 3-frame custom sprite set. It's clear that Mario here is the star of the show, lovingly reproduced with his familiar commander-keen white skin, mullet, and green gloves, green boots, and green belt. I'm fascinated by the inexplicable cross-hatching on the boots. There were darker greens available to the artist in the palette, so why pixel hatch with black? Also of note is the fact that Mario appears with 2x2 pixels, making the hatching and resizing feel more like an early attempt at "Retro Graphics" which the Indie Games community has yet to grow tired of. Pressing "S" brings you to a garish green on pink story screen that informs you that you need to retrieve stolen jewels from penguins. Start the game with the enter key (not mentioned anywhere) and you'll find yourself in the first level (which is nearly identical to the title screen) facing the wrong direction. You'll notice immediately that Mario's two frame walk cycle includes one frame with a yellow M on Mario's hat, while the other frame lacks this detail. Try jumping to the first step of the staircase (Pyramid?) to your right, and you'll likely encounter one of my favorite KnP quirks: Nose Hanging. Succeed, and you'll be well on your way to becoming frustrated on the moat level and giving up!

The whole game feels like it was built around the home-brew Mario sprite. My impression is that most development time was spent on drawing the sprite, whereas the game was quickly built to serve as a showcase for his artwork. Both Mario's appearance, and the Pyramid-esque first level lead me to believe this game was not inspired by Mario's NES or SNES outings, but rather that this fan-game was created after the author played Super Mario Land for the Game Boy. The platforming later on is sadly made nearly impossible due to the lack of player control over jump height in the default platform movement in KnP. It is interesting though, to see the already simple abstractions of a Mario game abstracted further through an individual's recollection of the rules governing the traditional platformer. Kind of like that time I attempted to reproduce "A Christmas Carol" from memory using Opening Night from Mecc.

Next Week: I don't know, maybe something with Hobbits?

I've mentioned it here before, but Jim Cogswell's K&P Tetris always amazed me. Witness the incredible 3D rendered intro, and riveting gameplay. Tetris is a simple game to describe, to to but describe it with KnP events is a herculean undertaking. It's amazing that the game runs with a mere 172 events, but the most fascinating part is the annotated level layout, with a text description of every counter and object involved in the process of translating this classic game into the oddly-shaped confines of KnP's event editor, resulting in the vanishing line this forgotten achievement represents.

Next week: hopefully something more fun, less technical.

._o

This got posted in the wrong section... I think