Lets Play / Levelengine

Levelengine is a Let's Player who primarily focused on Super Mario World hacks earlier in his time as a YouTuber, and has also built many of these SMW hacks over the years as well. Since then, he arbitrarily streams games he enjoys playing and does speedruns (notably of things Castlevania related), while still occasionally playing romhacks of Super Mario World, though not in the sheer quantity he used to play them. Also holds the world record for the Castlevania III US version's Alucard route, and the Japanese version's Sypha route.

Levelengine and/or his videos contain examples of the following:

• Berserk Button: Custom bosses, which was at its worst during and some time after Mario Endgame. However, he would eventually get used to some of the custom bosses and their attack patterns (since they're often the same publicly released custom sprites reused by many hackers), or adapt quickly enough to stand a chance.
  • And invisible blocks. Sometimes even if they're not placed to lead the player who hits them by accident to certain death.
• Big "NO!": Quite a few.
  • Having an insanely good Castlevania Overflow Darkness run ruined by having an enemy drop the stopwatch moments before reaching Dracula.
• Bile Fascination: invoked Expresses his desire to play another terrible attempt at a creepypasta SMW hack while playing something of good quality during this stream.
• Bilingual Bonus: There's this sentence randomly spoken in French during the appearance of Hammer Brother Demo 3 on his worst SMW hacks video.
  • "C'est le genre du merde qui peut-être utiliser pour torturer les prisonniers à Guantanamo" (which roughly translates to "This is the kind of shit that could be used to torture prisoners in Guantanamo")
• Call-Back: Quite a few to the random user who showed up in his livestream to ask Levelengine if he ate sand.
  • "Alucard sub-26:10 is impossible. If that happens, I will eat sand. I'm that confident no one's ever going to do it."
  • And some time after the 26:10 was beaten, he did just that on one of his live streams.
  • And prior to the sand eating, on one of his Minecraft worlds, he also built a giant spoon next to a giant plate with sand on it.
• Challenge Gamer: Obvious if you've seen him play any of Anikiti's SMW hacks, JUMP, Skye Goes to Town, Luigi of Shadow, Yoshi's Strange Quest, or anything from the Devious Four Chronicles series. As of 2020, also add Super Compact World to the list. As of 2021, add two more Anikiti hacks to the list: Luigi's Adventure (the original Japanese version, not the easier Overseas one) and Mario X World 4th Edition. As of 2022-2024, also add Super Mario /v/orld 3: New Vegas and Rakugaki Mario to the list.
  • Or perhaps seen some of his Castlevania III livestreams where he was not just satisfied with beating the game, but was speedrunning it for world records.
• DVD Commentary: Creator's Commentary: Levelengine made several SMW hacks, some of which he played on the channel.
• Determinator:
  • He will never use savestates in Super Mario World romhacks unless necessary.
    • Completely thrown out the window during the Endless Boss Episode 5 playthrough; video also titled with "Colossus but something's very wrong with it".
  • When the grinds to get new world records in speedgames get lengthy.
  • When playing Advent of Ascension (a Minecraft mod) on Hardcore difficulty, it took multiple attempts to get a playthrough going where he defeated each and every one of the mod's bosses.
• Epic Fail:
  • Anytime he dies with the goal on screen. Bonus points for Flash Black, as he did it twice.
  • Luigi of Shadow's postgame boss rush in its entirety. The boss rush is poorly put together: one of the rooms doesn't reset your timer so you have to kill 2 bosses back-to-back in 120 in game seconds, another has a Buzzy Beetle boss that can glitch out the room making it impossible to pick up blocks to fight back, you sometimes jump through Magikoopas even if you're clearly landing on top them, and the midway entrance just outright kills you forcing you to reset, and the postgame credits have some of the most broken English you'll ever see, plus the author manages to misspell his own name in the credits twice. Levelengine's commentary at that point was almost as bad.
  • Yes boys, YES BOYS!!! That's how you...
  • He literally clips through the ceiling just after a boss fight, getting stuck since the screen was still locked in place.
  • This one also from when he was running Grant.
  • Another speedrun blown, thanks to Satan.
  • This one was a heartbreaker.
  • During a casual Zelda II playthrough that at that point lasted almost 3 full hours, he accidentally resets. And he had no saved data.
  • A marathon speedrun of Secret Maryo Chronicles during Resort Fest International 2019. He died over and over again halfway into world 2 due to input lag (or so he claimed it was this, though by watching previous Maryo Chronicles footage he livestreamed you'd see that he never made as many frequent mistakes on a single level the way he was doing on pasol_1). Almost 4 minutes later, he closes his internet browser that he had open to read stream chat... and then, he followed up with a very good world 3 and 4.
  • No clipping out of Immortallis to lose a 50+ hours hardcore run.
  • He beat Wendy at the end of Wendy 2.0's Fort, but didn't have enough time to spare to actually have the game end the level (since a small amount of time has to pass after landing the third hit before the level ends).

  • However, not all the epic fails are his. During Levelengine's first Minecraft livestream, he got raided by a bunch of trolls, some of which said things that fall under this trope:
  THE REAL SONS OF FUN: I CAN SPELLL

• Handy Feet: However, this was only ever seen once.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Invoked when he plays a Kaizo wannabe level known as Hidden Level 2, from a romhack Levelengine himself made over 10 years ago.
• Jack of All Trades: Aside from SMW hack related content, he's also uploaded a lot of Castlevania-related content, and also plenty of videos and livestreams about Minecraft, Magic the Gathering, reading forum posts, other retro games (like the Ninja Gaiden NES trilogy), Happy Wheels (he didn't continue to do any past 2012), YouTube Poops, and other random videos here and there.
  • Fast forward to 2018 and you can add Doki Doki Literature Club! and its varkious game mods, Hard Time, Geoguessr, and speedruns of other various retro games here and there to the list.
  • Some other visual novels he played were Fruit of Grisaia and Date a Live: Rinne Utopia.
• Medal of Dishonor: Giving any game below 30% is considered this, especially Hammer Brother.
  • In fact, Hammer Brother was far enough down the scale that it actually broke it.
  • Repeated again with Super Mario World The Endless Boss Episode 5 (and other romhacks from that series). In fact, he stated that it may be even worse than Hammer Brother.
• Old Shame: Some of his oldest videos he says are this, whenever they're brought up by viewers.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Has done this to Super Mario Kollision 2.
  • Before that, Syobon Action 3 (the SMW hack replica of the original game, not the actual game), A Super Mario Thing, Super Mario World: In the Galaxy, and Bolivia '96, just to name a few.
• Sturgeon's Law: A lot of the Super Mario World hacks he's played are crap.
  • Hammer Brother Demo 3, Bolivia '96, Er, the very first release of O Ninja Negro, Chever's Adventures to the island, Small Mario, BLOOD!!!!!, The Mario Quest, Endless Boss Episode 5, the list goes on and on...

Levelengine's SMW hacks contain examples of the following:

• Checkpoint Starvation: Happens on occasions, but is mainly a prevalent issue in the first Colossus. The last two levels (not counting the final bosses), A and L, can last at the very least 10 minutes long between a checkpoint/goal point, if you know the right way through those levels! Otherwise, you could even be walking in a circle!
• Development Hell: Colossus's final release date was delayed by about half a year, with the main reason being how hard the last world was to playtest and beat. Bits and Pieces takes this further, as it was originally rejected from SMW Central for its high difficulty and a bug that can softlock the game. Plans were also made to add in a few extra levels with respects to fixing overworld event reveal issues if they were being done across different submaps. He was intending to release it for good by February 2017, yet almost no word of it has been mentioned since.
  • In 2018, Bits and Pieces finally escaped it. Now officially being hosted on SMWCentral.
  • Colossus 2 is set to take even longer than that with only the first 7 worlds potentially seeing an open beta release in February 2024. For further context, the hack began as early as 2020.
• Leet Lingo: Featured in Colossus, as the password that unlocks the password protected folder that comes with the hack, with the password being yURm()n57r9k (apparently a leetspeak writing of "you are monster geek").
• Lethal Lava Land: Let's see: World 4 of Way of the M, half of World 5 in Colossus, and several levels scattered across pretty much any romhack of his.
• Lighter and Softer: Return Trip, in comparison to earlier releases like Bits and Pieces, Colossus, and Way of the M. Although the endgame levels still pack a punch.
• Marathon Level: Often occurs in the final levels of his romhacks. To name a few, there's the Generator Zone and the Leviathan in The Way of the M, the Norleras in Infinity Edge, the last two Colossus levels which are also by far the most labyrinthine, and the Fort levels in Bits and Pieces. However, the true final Bits and Pieces level, the Annihilator, takes the record by a landslide. Spread over two level tiles is a 200+ screen level that revisits nearly everything from the entire hack!
• Nintendo Hard: Has a huge history of insanely hard difficult hacks to his name (Bits and Pieces being the most widely known one but Colossus is harder, though less known of in full). Was also part of the reason SMW Central added a Very Hard difficulty for SMW hacks on their site. Even after coming to the realization that Bits and Pieces was too hard for the average player, some Nintendo Hard levels still show up from time to time.
• Non-Indicative Name: Some levels have names that may or may not be totally randomly decided (such as iawkwardlobster, you toke a shot!, Sleeman, and Cassini to name a few).
  • A few are also in the notes of the work in progress Colossus sequel, including Chalarosi, AST, and Axolotl.
• Platform Hell: Applies to some levels more than others. Also see Nintendo Hard.
• Shifting Sand Land: The most obvious examples being World 5 of Way of the M and World 2 of Bits and Pieces.
• Shout-Out: has its own page.
• What Could Have Been: The Great Hall in Colossus is basically in essence, this trope. The postgame level is full of them. Things that never made it into the final version of Colossus (but are still accessible to some degree by using the Great Hall) include:
  • A level where the gimmick was to avoid being spotted by a giant eye in the background; this would be achieved by hiding behind walls when the eye was active and only moving around while it was dormant.
  • The secret exit in Drain Damage had a challenge where the player had to hit a sequence of buttons as they scrolled across the screen, resembling something out of a rhythm game.
  • Walljumping may have been a recurring gimmick in levels, had most of the hack not been finished already.
  • A low quality music track.
  • Encoded hints for the true locations of the bosses that need to be fought to access the endgame, with sequences of numbers (either positive or negative) used for deciphering the encoded hints as one were using a Caesar cipher. This idea was abandoned under the assumption players would find it unnecessarily confusing and tedious.
  • World 9 also may have looked nothing like the pyramid (and each of its 4 corners) you see in the official release.