Mario Contest: public vote!

General Discussions
#1

Hey all, I’d like to invite everyone to vote for the winner of the Super Mario Programming Contest. The winner scores a free 1-up hat that I bought from walmart. The other prizes were transferred to the 4K contest as a decision by me and the sponsors.

So, if you’d like to help us decide the winner, just check out the games list. Play the games and decide which game you like best. Please comment on why you think your favorite game deserves to be the winner. You can vote for a game for any reason you want (best graphics, gameplay, whatever made you like it best), but I’m sure the authors would like to know! :slight_smile: (you can also comment on any of the individual game entries on the website).

Thanks to all who can take the time to do this! :slight_smile: The poll will run for 5 days.

also, please do not confuse the two Mario Dash entries, they are two completely different games by different authors!

#2

Mario Dash (Ari Ronen)
Hard to control the character, and the view. Not possible to enjoy fully.

Yoshi’s Joust (Andy Cook)
Neat! Although not my type of game, it still is well done.

Lakitus Adventure (Christian Mueller )
I do not understand this game. When it started, I thought it was a splash screen, and then I was dead. First impression is everything, didn’t like it.

SuperMarioBreakout (toasten)
Way too fast for me to play.

Zario (Oscar Gomez)
Nicely done! Probably the closest replica of Super Mario Bros (although that was not the goal). The screen-area was probably too big, but very few bugs, and a fully functional game. Very good job!

Mario Dash (Daniel Fekete)
Seems like a fine game. Once again, not my type of a game, but is well implemented and playable.

The Roots of Mario (M.E.)
Could not play this one (trying to play as guest, cannot be bothered to register).

Shrooms! (Kevin Glass)
Very hard learning curve, took me like a dozen tries just to understand the first level and what to do. Graphics are fine, game is well implemented, but I did not enjoy gameplay. Sorry kev! :frowning:

My choice? Zario (Oscar Gomez)

#3

Looks like I’ll be the only judge ;D

#4

Na… 100 something views… I guess that at least 50 people have already voted.

(Btw approval voting would have been nice for this.)

#5

meh, with choices/judges so few, I don’t think it’d really matter either way. easiest to fire up a JGO poll to decide the winner of a 1-up hat. o_O;

#6

Well, you can do approval voting with this voting system. You only need to set the number of votes per user to the number of options. Then you get checkboxes.

#7

I didn’t enter it, but:

http://www.mojang.com/notch/mario/

:smiley:

#8

Too bad you didn’t enter it, it would have been the best game in the competition :slight_smile:

#9

yes, now your head will not be covered by an obnoxiously green 1-up hat :stuck_out_tongue:

#10

I voted for is the mario dash (Daniel Fekete). It’s at least partly original and feels like a good game. I voted for it because it simply was the most fun of all the mario related games created for me.

If it were a cloning contest then Markus’ non-entry is absolute brilliance - just for how close it feels to the SNES mario. Brought back lots of memories. I was hoping for a little more inovation when I first saw the contest however a nice crop of games. Free games to play can’t be bad!

Kev

Other notes:

Shrooms! - no comment. :slight_smile:
The Roots of Mario - nice pipe mania / sokoban cross. good idea. The response to key presses is slow through and unfortunately the game doesn’t play too well.
Yoshi’s Joust - Take a great game, stick mario graphics on it - make it better. The lift from each flap is just too small however, making it pretty irritating to play. Shame, because this was on the edge of being brilliant for me!
Zario - I’m really surprised by the comments above. Playing here was really slow and stuttery. I couldn’t get very far because the response for so irregular.
SuperMarioBreakout - I really really enjoyed playing this. Probably my second fave. It plays well and is lots of fun. More than that it isn’t a platformer but something keeping the spirit of mario while taking it somewhere else. Lovely.
Mario Dash (Ari Ronen) - ditto appel here. Lost control of the character too much. Maybe it was intended to be imply the speed. The rest seems to work ok though.
Lakitus Adventure - Great choice of music and visuals. Couldn’t quite get into the game though, the shooting towards the centre of the screen caught me off balance - I’m not sure it added anything to the strategy involved. Nice implementation though, felt crisp and responsive.

#11

It was originally going to be a multiplayer mario, with “deathmatch” and capture the flag. I wanted the gameplay to feel as close to the original as possible.
Of course, once the gameplay started getting polished, I realized I only had the difficult and boring multiplayer bits to go. :wink:

#12

I voted for Shrooms.

My main reason why is Shrooms seems to stand on its own the most. As in, it doesn’t have this odd/awkward “I’m recycling things from other games to create something”, the recycling of graphics and themes feels natural. If I just came across Shrooms one day on the web I wouldn’t have thought twice about its origins. Hard to explain.

#13

Kev… where were you when I submitted it at the last minute? I could have tweaked it for you. :’(

Well, I’d have preferred to be able to select 3 top games, give marks out of 5, or perhaps rank them in order. But I can’t. So, Mario Dash (Daniel Fekete) - Good gameplay and plenty of levels. That’s a vote.

I know from my own effort that games are hard to do (well, except for Kev), so apologies for any negativity in advance.

The Roots of Mario is an interesting hybrid. I used to like this sort of thing but not anymore and gave up on level 3. Sorry.
Mario Dash (Ari Ronen) seems bland, and there’s only 1 level.
Lakitu’s Adventure made good use of graphics and music, but was unfortunately rather dull to play.
Shrooms is the most polished. I played it through, but I found the trial and error rather frustrating - should I place the spring here or 1 square to the right?
Super Mario Breakout is well presented and plays well. But the second level (why does it start at level 3?) is too hard, and I played for ages trying to get the last block. I don’t really want to do it again.
Zario - it’s not Markus’s Infinite Mario, but it’s well done. But I’m not actually a big Mario fan. [Ducks and runs for the exit]

#14

On the plus side it seems much easier to give opinions on these games than in 4k :slight_smile:

Kev

#15

My vote goes to:

  • Lakitu’s Adventure. It’s pretty (although some credit goes to Nintendo of course!), it’s a nice twist on the Mario theme, and although it’s quite simple it felt that there was more going on than I was expecting. I liked it enough to forgive it for its really awkward mouse-and-keys control scheme!

Silver medals to:

  • Yoshi’s Joust. Simple, but very nicely executed.
  • Mario Dash (Daniel Fekete). Not very original of course (I remember Boulderdash!) but I found that the progression of the levels (starting with really basic tutorial levels before moving on to more interesting puzzles) really drew me in.

And because no one goes home empty handed:

  • Zario: Award for Most Precise Clone. Pretty solid as a technical exercise, but after a couple of minutes I was begging for it to do something that Super Mario Bros didn’t do.
  • Mario Dash (Ari Ronen): Award for Most Obscure Glitch on My Computer. My keyboard won’t let me press too many keys at once, and so I couldn’t move (right arrow), run (Z key) and jump (X key) all at the same time. That made it impossible for me to get beyond a certain point on the first level. A pity, as the game was looking okay up till then.
  • SuperMarioBreakout: Award for Most Tenuous Use of Mario Theme. A quite decent version of Arkanoid. Unfortunately, I really, really hate Arkanoid.
  • Roots of Mario: Award for Making Me Most Puzzled. I haven’t had much time to play the games, and in particular I only had a quick glance at the instructions, so it’s probably my fault that I was confused by this. The game seemed to want me to play the same level over and over again. I’ve no idea whether I was doing the right thing or not!
  • Shrooms!: Award for Lowest Frame Rate. My ancient hardware was only able to update the display once every two or three seconds, so I’ve absolutely no idea what was going on in the game.

Finally, a little criticism that I felt applied to several of the games. Not enough seemed to happen when either baddies or the player were killed. The baddies tended to just vanish, and the player often just reset to the start of the level. Perhaps this was a consequence of the restricted set of sprites (no explosions, spurts of blood, grave stones, etc.), but it felt to me like some of the games weren’t reacting as much as they should to what the player was doing.

All good fun. Same time next year?
Simon

#16

So, ok, hm, 15 votes. That’s really, hm, not good.

#17

yeah I know. I cant believe nobody voted for the breakout one, I love that one! it even has a fireflower powerup o_O

#18

I cant believe nobody voted for the breakout one

Wouldnt have happend if you had used approval voting :stuck_out_tongue:

#19

you cant be for sure :wink:

again, not enough voters to really -need- approval voting :stuck_out_tongue:

#20

Yay! Joint second. Thanks guys. :smiley:

The turnout is a little disappointing, but it’s been fun. I’ll have to try the 4k this year.