Video Game / Grand Poo World 3

The quakes have become even worse.
The ground shakes, the oceans roil.
The end is coming.

— Intro text

Released in 2023, Grand Poo World 3 is the sequel to Grand Poo World 2 and the final chapter in a trilogy of Super Mario World Kaizo ROM hacks by BarbarousKing. After Mario's ship is wrecked, he finds himself in a new land.

The BPS patch need to play the game can be found on SMW Central. The instruction manual can be found on the internet archive. The game's soundtrack is available on Youtube.

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Grand Poo World 3 contains examples of:

• Absurdly Long Wait: A warp pipe in "Bubbles, Bitch" traps Mario on a bubble which is very slowly descending a long corridor. What's at the end of the corridor? You'll need to wait 7 minutes to find out. It's a portrait of Shoujo.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: "Brother Bastion" has you play as Luigi past the first screen... provided you've bailed him out from jail first.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Beating the Hard Mode of "Tower of Fate" lets you play as many different character skins with the same gameplay as Mario.
• Anti-Frustration Features: If you defeat every boss in the game, you can skip the cape section of So Long through a hidden pipe.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • A hidden message box offers the player a hint in German: "Dieser Deutsche zeigt auf etwas. Vielleicht verbirgt er ein Geheimnis." Translation? "This German is pointing at something. Maybe he's hiding a secret."
  • Elsewhere, you may find a glyph that looks like this: 五. What does it mean? It's the Chinese character for "five".
• Boss Subtitle: During the final airship battle against Bowser, his health bar is captioned "Bowser, The Forsaken Turtle"
• Bragging Rights Reward: The character skins count as this, as it requires beating 81 rooms without dying once for a mere cosmetic change.
• The Cameo:
  • Digitized portraits of Mario streamers appear in hidden rooms at different points throughout the game.
  • Some of the custom player skins are 16-bit versions of Mario streamers.
• Checkpoint Starvation: For a hack that's good at averting this, Brother Bastion has only a single checkpoint at the start of the submap. Die to the boss and it's back to the start of the subarea.
• Cool Airship: In this game, Mario gets an airship that can travel the main overworld quickly, resulting in one of the most open-ended Mario World hacks out there.
• Continuity Nod: This game has several:
  • The first submap theme is a sampled version the main overworld theme from the first Grand Poo World, which itself is the Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals overworld theme.
  • Levels that are harder versions of the first stages of the first two games in the trilogy appear later on.
  • The second Bowser fight is an even harder version of the second game's Bowser fight.
• Deadly Gas: Poisonous clouds put the "toxic" in "Toxic Tunnel". They're even color-coded to indicate their relative toxicity.
• Dedication: No, it's not Toilet Humour. The "Poo" in the title refers to content creator GrandPooBear, to whom the hack is dedicated.
• Double Meaning: The name of the final level, "So Long" carries two meanings. Not only is it bidding goodbye to the player and the Grand Poo World series as a whole, but it also describes the length of the level itself.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: The game ends with the planet that the trilogy takes place on exploding.
• Emergency Food Supply Animal : According to the manual, Mario ate the Yoshi which he rescued during the ending of Grand Poo World 2. It was necessary in order to stave off starvation while at sea — honest!
• "Everybody Dies" Ending: As a result of the planet exploding, this trope is in full effect.
• Forced Transformation: One level revolves around blocks that transform sprites into other sprites.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Version 1.0 of the hack has an issue where, if you accumulate 100 or more stars from the end-of-level goal tapes, the game sends you to an empty level from which you cannot escape without resetting.
• Grand Finale: The final chapter completely fills a 4 megabyte cartridge, and has callbacks to the first two games.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: In "Gill Issue" Mario has access to an unlimited number of throw blocks. A message box at the beginning of the stage makes it explicit that he is pulling them from his, ahem, "mariussy".
• Interface Screw: The much-hated "reverse water" from Grand Poo World 2 makes a return in "Dreadnought". It inverts your directional inputs while you're swimming through it.
• Invisible Block: Invisible "kaizo blocks" which exist solely to troll the player are plentiful. There are at least 4 such blocks in the first level alone!
• Joke Ending: When the player completes the third level, they are treated to a suspiciously brief credits sequence which culminates with a "The End" screen. Figuring out how to proceed from there is part of the challenge.
• Jump Physics: Luigi, predictably, has a much lower, floatier jump than Mario.
• Just Before the End: The setting of the game, as the planet explodes at the end.
• Kaizo Trap: "Blast Brigade" requires the player to blow up a concrete block, or else they'll fall in the acid after hitting the goal post.
• Lethal Lava Land: The penultimate world is located in an area filled with lava.
• Locked Door: Several levels contain locked doors which can only be opened when Mario is carrying a key.
• Luck Manipulation Mechanic: Barb tried to Avert this, but then a manip was found for "Tower of Fate". It requires an exact set of button inputs from entering the level that dying even once breaks, and dying makes the tower random again.
• Nostalgia Level: "Gate of Fire" is a Dark Reprise of "Marathon", the first level of Grand Poo World 2.
• Once per Episode: "Widow's Peak", an infamous level from the first Grand Poo World, returns yet again to troll unsuspecting players.
• Only Smart People May Pass: The puzzle for this game involves solving algebra using different items as different numbers.
• Oxygen Meter: Whether you're swimming through polluted water or running through poisonous gas, managing your oxygen meter is the key to beating "Toxic Tunnel".
• Portal Door: Throughout "Toxic Tunnel" you can find pairs of miniature warp pipes which can be carried and thrown. Entering one will instantly transport you to the other, leading to some very Portal-esque platforming.
• Platform Hell: This game makes the Kaizo Mario World trilogy look easy, requiring memorization and puzzle solving skills to beat.
• Randomly Generated Level: "Tower of Fate" requires the player to beat a series of randomly selected challenge rooms back-to-back without dying. Even the number of rooms is subject to randomization; particularly unlucky players may need to clear as many as 18 rooms in a row!
  • If you're a serious Challenge Gamer, you can choose to take the hard route, which requires beating all 81 possible rooms in a row without dying. The order of the rooms is still randomized.
• Recoil Boost: The gun in "Flintlock" fires with sufficient force to propel Mario in the opposite direction. Much of the level is based around using this imparted momentum to your advantage.
• Recycled Soundtrack: Some of the songs in this game have appeared in Grand Poo World and Grand Poo World 2, usually as nods to the previous games.
  • The Battleship Halberd theme reappears for the more difficult version of the first game's first level.
  • The puzzle level theme from the second game reappears, and has the same function here.
• Retraux: The hack's instruction manual was created in the style of the instruction manuals which accompanied Super Nintendo games in North America circa 1991.
• Rule of Three:
  • The fake ending appears at the third exit of the game.
  • There are a total of three worlds the player can access as soon as they get an airship, and each has its own castle.
  • There are total of three Bowser fights in this game, and the third is the Final Boss.
• Same Plot Sequel: Like its predecessor, Grand Poo World 3 begins with Mario becoming shipwrecked. The first level is even named "Wrecked Again".
• Secret Path: Many of the game's hidden secrets are accessed by walking through seemingly solid walls.
• Sequel Escalation: Among other things, this hack has as many exits^note (distinct ways to complete a level) as the first two Grand Poo World games combined.
• Shout-Out:
  • The first world's boss is a carbon copy of the first boss of Sonic the Hedgehog, except with a Charging Chuck piloting the machine.
  • Multiple tracks from Final Fantasy IV, Super Metroid and Chrono Trigger appear in the game, with the Epoch theme from the latter game being the default Airship theme.
  • Many level names are referential:
    • "Blades of Chaos" is named after the weapons from God of War.
    • "Hagakure", the level in which you platform on falling leaves, is named after The Hagakure, whose name means "Hidden by the Leaves".
    • "MMMMMM" is a reference to VVVVVV, complete with the Gravitron.
    • "Porpoise Please" is a reference to the game Papers, Please.
    • The icy level "Slip Not" is a play on the name of the band Slipknot.
    • "Snow Crash" refers, appropriately enough, to Snow Crash.
    • "Tall, Tall Peak" pays homage to "Tall, Tall Mountain" from Super Mario 64. Meanwhile, the level's climbing mechanic is based on the same mechanic in Celeste.
    • "Tower of Fate" likely refers to the similarly named area in Shovel Knight.
    • "Yacht Club Keep" is a reference to the developer of the Shovel Knight series, Yacht Club Games.
    • Many levels such as "Guano Grotto" and "Steppe Sprint" follow the idiosyncratic alliterative naming scheme used by Donkey Kong Country.
  • The boss of Tower of Fate is Bowser, in a battle that's a copy of Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix.
  • Two of the character skins unlocked by clearing Hard Mode are Sonic and Tails.
  • When you unlock the puzzle level by getting 32 exits, the Puzzle Clear theme from the Zelda series is heard.
  • After the planet explodes, the text says "It's as if millions of Yoshis cried out and were suddenly silenced."
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The level "Slip Not" features ice that has even more slipperiness than vanilla SMW, and uses the Ice Cap Zone background.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: The sad ending of the game has a triumphant ending theme playing during the credits.
• Time Stands Still: One of the levels builds on this trope's use in Grand Poo World 2, where clocks freeze sprites in place for a few seconds.
• Theme Music Power-Up: The final phase of the final boss features a heart-pumping remix of GPW2's "House of the Undying" theme as the player uses the airship to take Dry Bowser down.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: The level "Bubbles, Bitch" is a challenging level revolving around bubbles that move at different speeds.
• Troll:
  • A message block in the "Pit of Obfuscation" level appears to present players with a choice: "I understand if you don't want to do any puzzles, so if you want to instantly beat this level please go left." The left route is sealed off by invisible kaizo blocks.
  • At the very end of "Slip Not" there is a message block just before the end gate. If you attempt to jump into it from below you'll hit a kaizo block instead, rendering the message box totally inaccessible. The only way to find out what it says is to take a death, beat the level from the halfway point again and this time, do a long arcing jump so that Mario's head just barely clips the message block.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: The Bowser fight in Tower of Fate plays much like the Dance Dance Revolution games, and has been completed with an actual dance pad.
• Unexpected Shmup Level: Dry Bowser's second phase has Mario take to the sky in his airship and engage in a dogfight with Bowser.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: "So Long" is a really long castle level that has multiple Cape rooms, really long Firebars and a really challenging fight against Dry Bowser.
• Zonk: Getting the Bonus Game means you have to reset, as it softlocks you (and was why the hack was rejected from SMWC).

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