Super Mario Bros Z

If anyone can, it's Alvin himself.....

Well that depends, which fight on Yoshi's Island are we talking about; the Mêlée à Trois or the one-sided slaughter with Mecha Sonic.

Both. The entire episode was a masterpiece fight scenes.

I caught that as well.

I too am wondering how the Yoshi's Island part will go. As some have said, it was already perfect, so how would you really improve it.

That being said, Alvin is an artist, and these guys are always trying to ice skate up hill, wanting to re-invent the wheel and all that.

I'm sure he's seen some things he can do that the rest of us have missed. We'll have to see how it works out.

Okay so my childhood is back and I'm not missing out on the thread for it

I miss the kart race, but the fight was certainly better done and more thematically appropriate

I just love the sprites from Bi S; they really just grind home how much of a brute Bowser is. And they don't even look out of place next to the SS sprites amazingly enough.

The Super Star Saga sprites are heavily edited though, he's actually been switching between the sprites from Pi T and SS for Mario and Luigi. The difference is small enough, but I still noticed.

That was pretty cool.

The amount of improvement is staggering for damn sure.

I went and watched Episode 2 of the original series to compare the Bowser fights.

Holy hell it looks like crap now. The animation is so stiff and awkward.

I get the feeling that when we get to the Yoshi's Island brawl, we'll just see alot more dynamic camera movement. between the fighters. More rotation and all that. Also probably more of a field of view, like how in the reboot episode, it looked like the area was more of a three dimensional environment.

Question, I was always wondering, when characters use specials and there's that double white flash, did that come from a series or was it original.

I think it was original, visual cue that a characters are about to do some real damage. For sprite animation specifically.

For those who are curious, here's a video that compares the first episode of the series with the first half of the reboot's.

Question, I was always wondering, when characters use specials and there's that double white flash, did that come from a series or was it original.

It kinda reminds me of the Super Art flashes from Street Fighter III: Third Strike, but it doesn't seem like it's quite the same.

I believe that is what they are, yes.

Hence Mario doing the Shin Shoryuken.

Huh. That was cool.

Interesting what's changed, and what's stayed the same after all this time.

Man, I went back and watched episodes 5 and 6. I recognize nearly every impact, beam attack, and explosion sprite from sprite comics on middle ground forums.

Does anyone else remember Middle Ground?

Are they still a thing?

Perfectly fine with waiting for a new episode.

Man, I can't believe I'm once again on a forum talking about a new episode of SMBZ. Feels real good.

So let me start with the biggest criticism I have so far: the dialogue. Now, the dialogue itself is still pretty cheesy, but there's a certain Narm Charm to it that makes it work. No, what bugs me about it is how it's handled, and comparing it to One Minute Melee I think I figured it out.

The issue is two-fold. First, the dialogue boxes sit on the screen for a bit too long. This was actually an issue in the original series that was solved with button implementations, but You Tube doesn't have those options. Second, and most importantly, whenever we get a dialogue box everything dead-stops. The camera is either still or doing minimalist zooms or pans, and anything that's animating is clearly a sprite loop.

Compare it to OMM's Bowser Jr. vs. Metal Sonic fight, itself a tribute to SMBZ. It tries to get through the dialogue as quickly as it can, and those bits of dialogue are dynamic. Jr. isn't just talking; he's waving his arm and moving about as well. Alvin's "static" dialogue is even more jarring considering how much effort's been put into posing in the action scenes.

It's similarly jarring with the voice clips, especially that "Boo, you stink!" line. Alvin seems to have done a lot of work in having an extensive choice of voice clips, so it's weird that in certain areas it feels so restricted. Wario's "I won I won!" bit also falls into the dialogue problem above, with it clearly being a loop.

All this aside, however, it's still a fantastically done episode. The jokes and references are all pretty much on-point and the animation is leaps and bounds anything he's done before. The ending was also nicely familiar yet still improved, and it's amazing I can recall the original Episode 2 ending so vividly. Looking forward for the new Episode 2, and hopefully it doesn't take another lifetime to do so.

(I also got a huge laugh out of the commercial break he put in there. Was not expecting that, and unfortunately I forgot to take off Ad Block. It does make a perfect point for possibly splitting these episodes in half though.)

edited 11th Jan '16 9:46:58 AM by Watchtower

I just watched this episode and I felt the nostalgia, really, really liking this reboot so far.

Will the reboot consist of three sagas like what the original series intended?

I believe so.

Alvin's Patreon got taken down by Nintendo. No idea what this means for the series, since I got this info (without a link) from our trope page on it.

I checked it. It is indeed down.

Shit.

Arrrrghhhhh damnit Nintendo... I mean, I guess it makes sense, but just.... Fuck...

edited 15th Feb '16 6:09:05 PM by Emperordaein

God damnit, I knew this would happen! No response from Alvin yet. It's a shame, because he just started work on the second episode. Hopefully the series will continue. Fingers crossed...