The Misunderstood Genius of Super Mario Bros.

[@Kosmicd12]

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[@H3n7yx76]

I’m so early I haven’t even gotten to the sponsor segment yet lol

[@based980]

no

[@typerightseesight]

imo this is the hardest one of the 3. world and 3 are easier by far.

[@bradbradson4543]

Pretty sure I've never seen a video on this relatively unknown game before

[@L0LSHR00MSYT]

I was practicing SMB2 Japan and and accidently deleted the goomba. I have a photo but i dont know your Discord

[@dansalvato]

I've wanted to cover this topic for such a long time, and I'm so thrilled to finally have had the chance. Thank you so much Kosmic for all the hard work you put in to make this happen. I'm a longtime fan and just happy to be here! To everyone else: Was there any particular eye-opening point that helps you better understand a different game you enjoy (or don't enjoy)?

[@Epicconor1]

*hi gu-*

[@unruf]

omg ddp dan salvato

[@cyanideOwO]

hi

[@Outside998]

I think for me it was for Death Stranding, the moment I understood on a deeper level how the walking and balancing mechanics work. It made traversing the world a blast, and contributed to the game becoming my favorite of all time.

[@louisng114]

A heart-pounding collab

[@Ravlen1]

One bit of conscious design not mentioned is the ability to play outside the field of view, which i had never seen in games before. Being able to run on the top of the screen was mind blowing when you first figured it out, and you know it's on purpose due to the 1-2 warp zone.

[@snoozbuster]

That’s a very good point actually. It seems so common today to look for secrets in anywhere we can but at the time those types of areas are places lots would never think to look.

[@Novastar.SaberCombat]

@@snoozbuster A funny side note on "breaking through the barriers"... ... When I was a kid, I played the original Mario Bros. in both the arcade and on the Apple II. I found it interesting that you could jump higher than the top of the screen and that your momentum wasn't interrupted. When I played SMB1 in the arcade, I remember how quickly we all tried busting through the ceiling in stage 1-2--literally the second stage. It was strangely satisfying to *immediately* recognize that "going over the top" seemed to be an underlying theme of the game, lol. Such strange memories, too. Reminds me of the subtleties of Mike Tyson's "Punch Out" (NES only, really); the minor, unnecessary, yet MASSIVE amounts of crazy tricks and exploits are nearly unfathomable. Another sign of exemplary design (in my opinion). Early Nintendo designers were obviously geniuses. I don't know about here in 202x though; no idea.

[@Pepeutra]

"A big part of game desing is making sure your game understands the intentions of the player and providing them with the expect outcome" is such a funny line coming out of the guy that made Doki Doki Literature Club

[@FlameUser64]

Hey to be fair, knowing how and when to _subvert_ that for maximum impact is also a part of game design.

[@Pepeutra]

@@FlameUser64 Yep, that I agree with and know first hand, I love DDLC, I just found that quote VERY ironically funny with the context that's all

[@xeldrine66]

​@@FlameUser64 It also depends on the genre. In a game with constant movement, being unpredictable can be frustrating. But in a visual novel where there's not as much player interaction per minute, it's much more doable and more surprising than frustrating.

[@Ricapica.]

11:15 You know what? I think the fireball model is reversed by accident. It looks like it should be a fire projectile with a harmless trail of fire behind it. That would explain its hitbox being just the ball and not the trail. But it looks like it is brighter on the back not the front which makes me think the model is flipped

[@theengineer-dellconagher]

the sprite is indeed flipped when it shouldn't be

[@thebigtomato0597]

@@theengineer-dellconagher i guess the sprite was created from left to right as you would think and then not flipped? maybe

[@fostena]

Definitely

[@dawnbreaker2912]

Has to be. Even when I first played this game when I was about 7, I was like "why are Bowser's fireballs backwards?"

[@sheltongolden4394]

That's an interesting observation! I guess I've never really thought of them as fireballs. I think of them as like.. "flying fire breath," I think? It's like if Bowser was on the right side of the fire breathing it out of his mouth to toward the left, then they just take that sprite and scroll it across the screen. But thinking about them as fireballs, your idea totally makes sense.

[@robertpucovsky]

YOOO IT'S THE CREATOR OF DOKI DOKI PANIC HIMSELF

[@lyrawh]

He also did the MUSIC for that one horror visual novel!

[@KernelLeak]

JUST MARIO

[@renyk4903]

@@lyrawhi LOVE doki doki panic club!

[@BrentDubroc]

Doki Doki Literature Club is great! If you want a similar kind of experience, I also recommend checking out YOU and ME and HER: A Love Story.

[@bananacat3109]

THE GUY WHO WORKED ON UCF FOR MELEE????

[@rgal]

Oh hey, a video by my favorite speedrunner, -Nifts- *_KOSMIC!_*

[@Nunya644]

This was pretty hilarious

[@FourthDerivative]

Dan Salvato: "Leniency makes games feel good" Also Dan Salvato: *makes P is for Pain*

[@Pablo360able]

Well, there's a reason he didn't call it P is for Pleasure

[@boriszakharin3189]

I always wondered how random data in the minus world could possibly resemble something playable, but with 18:50-20:45 it actually makes sense. If it's predefined areas instead of individual block positioning it becomes a lot easier to imagine.

[@WTheW_gaming]

The plant's hitbox is actually kind of cool, like Mario is jumping between the jaws of the plant

[@bluedistortions]

Yeah the game "feels" sooooo much better than other games at the time, where due to sprite work, often your character doesn't even touch the enemy, and dies anyway. Doesn't feel much better when it's one pixel of your toe. So Mario bros felt way better to play, it always felt fair.

[@yendayo]

Game devs back then "How do we fit all these in 16KB" Game devs today "200GB sounds good"

[@tarekcat1]

Tbf almost everyone nowdays has a pc and a console that can handle such games with such large space it's not like an entire 200 gigs are going to be stored in your pcs ram But yeah that doesn't justify the absurdly massive storage space of useless sht and uncompressed files

[@juxx9628]

it's so crazy that the man, the myth, the legend Dan Salvato just appears in a collab with Kosmic about some unrelated stuff to his most known work. never let them know what your next move is.

[@yeshevishman]

You do know Dan is also known for being a legend in the Kaizo Mario community, right?

[@juxx9628]

@@yeshevishman i'm aware, that's why i'm commenting this

[@Ultimaximus]

@@juxx9628 If he's also known for Mario stuff, then I don't think it's so crazy for him to appear here

[@generallyunimportant]

@@Ultimaximus it's not as in the public consciousness as pm or ddlc is, that's what op was getting at

[@Zalied]

this whole video is "they playtested their game and cared about the players fun" as if thats some crazy idea or outside the norm for modern videogames....oh wait...nevermind that makes sense

[@ninjaguyYT]

It's a lot different to other companies. For example, there's one that uses people for making videos about emulators or making games loosely based on pokemon (but with guns).

[@ThePharphis]

It was also a lot more difficult to playtest your own game back then, given the difficulty of assembly, version control and general slowness of everything involved.

[@Filsantos86]

Back in the early 80s, putting this level of thought and play test on a game was something unheard of. Looking at the complexity of the code, to make everything works like it did, and still fit on the cart, clearly shows the developers treated SMB as their magnum opus ever since development. No wonder it completely changed the whole game industry at the time.

[@EebstertheGreat]

@@ThePharphis Prototyping was also slower and more expensive. If you wanted to play the game "properly" on a real Famicom, you needed to make a separate PROM for each version, or else use EPROMs, which could be erased by UV light. These were expensive by modern standards and took a bit of time to write and erase compared to EEPROMs. (Actually, Nintendo might have used early EEPROMs, but they still would have been slow to write and required a specialized high-voltage writer.) In modern game design, you can make a single tweak, then test it, then another tweak, etc., and try twenty different adjustments in the time it would take just to write one new EPROM. This is also why so many games included debug codes: so you could play on real hardware and quickly set up the state you're trying to test after power on. Usually those codes were removed before release, but sometimes one or more codes was forgotten or ignored and ended up in the final product.

[@mikeallison5549]

😂😂 great comment. Now companies push out unfinished games and essentially have players play test and then update.

[@coolbrotherf127]

This video addresses something that I've thought a lot about. So many iconic games, were also some of the earliest that were released. Imagine if SMB, Super Mario 64, Doom, Final Fantasy, Halo: CE, Legend of Zelda, and Command & Conquer were all as bad as the the trash like Hylide, Bubsy 3D, and Tech War. I don't think we appreciate how easy it could have been for so many games to come out awful instead of foundational for their genres and the medium as a whole. Those developers really cared to make something really good and enjoyable for people instead of just trying to throw out something to make a quick buck. I feel like that attitude has been lost by so many developers and big publishers who only care about profits, not player enjoyment or artistic value.

[@dansalvato]

Yes, it's really sad to see when a game amounts to basically a list of deliverables and a deadline, without much care for the art of game design. The industry today might look very different than it did a few decades ago, but I do want to mention how much of an exception "good games" were back then. I think most games were just that-a publisher or licensor with a list of features they want in the game, and a ship date. It was still in most people's heads that games were toys, not art. Toys aren't built to last. Today, the failures are more noticeable because budgets are larger, but also because we have millions of passionate gamers who are all on social media to share the drama of overhyped games that fall flat. But I would argue that there are *far* more people today who care about the craft than what we had 30-40 years ago. The industry is full of developers and artists who want to recapture the experiences that impacted them so much in their youth. It's also easier than ever to make indie games, which is where a lot of the bigger risks are taken. I think the story of creators having their talent squandered by management is a tale as old as time-it's not a new problem, and I don't think it's strictly worse than it used to be.

[@life-destiny1196]

play one indie game I beg you

[@coolbrotherf127]

@@life-destiny1196 I think most inde games are the ones carrying the artistry in the industry. Small teams and solo devs making awesome stuff is the reason why there's still plenty of great games to play while the publishers like Ubisoft give us slop like Star Wars Outlaws.

[@Vexxter]

Well, I don't think it could've happened any other way really. The companies only seeking for profit are not going to risk making a failure by venturing into unknown territory. The companies making those innovations clearly have a team of people with an intrinsic motivation to push the limits of their profession which also means they will try to do their absolute best to present the capabilities of their new game in a way where the player really has the best experience they can give them.

[@Blutzen]

@@dansalvato To add onto this, another pretty big factor is the survivorship bias inherent when discussing retro games. Like, for every Super Mario Bros, Mega Man, or Castlevania that did really well, broke new ground, and launched a series that lasted for decades, there were dozens of games nobody talks about anymore because they aren't even worth remembering. It's true there are some real gems on the NES and SNES that still hold up and are worth playing today, but boy are there some stinkers, too. And that's _with_ the industry being a fraction of the size that it is today. So it's really easy to talk about how iconic a launch title was, but that's because you don't think about the launch titles that _weren't._

[@boubayaga_]

I have totally said Doki Doki Panic out loud to people when I meant Literature Club several times!!

[@retrebex5856]

au pire dit "dokidoki" pour panic , et "ddlc" pour litterature club

[@Monkeymario.]

@@retrebex5856Could be a misstranslation but how is that worst?

[@MxMaker]

Thats why is better to remember him for the P is for Pain level on the OG Mario Maker.

[@samuelfaille-denis8098]

@@Monkeymario. "au pire" is a french expression, if I had to translate it, it would probably be by: "worst case scenario" as in "worst case scenario say 'dokidoki' for panic and 'ddlc' for litterature club", hope that helps

[@Ucfahmad]

Are the two things related at all?

[@Sixfortyfive]

I really appreciate any breakdown of game design that pushes back on how the word "archaic" is applied in a derogatory manner when it doesn't belong at all. System design must always be balanced against obstacle design, and simply giving the player more freedom and ability without also balancing it against more formidable obstacles does not make for a better game. You can point to a lot of individual stages in Super Mario Bros 3 that would be more difficult than the average stage of Lost Levels if you still had to play them with Lost Levels' physics and power-up repertoire, and there's a reason for that. The only thing I'll nitpick about this video is that it falls into the common trap of being too Nintendo-centric when it comes to cataloging video game evolution. The physics and aerial freedom of SMB1 were indeed pretty groundbreaking and major parts of its appeal, but you don't have to dig *too* far to find notable games in the couple of years prior that were less stiff than Donkey Kong or Mario Bros.

[@Kosmicd12]

Could you share some examples? Someone shared Flicky which I definitely agree with based on footage I looked up, but others I've seen are indeed quite stiff

[@Sixfortyfive]

@@Kosmicd12 Flicky was the first one that came to my mind too, and tbh, the one or two others I had in mind were more like platform/shooter hybrids of sorts than straight-up "run and jump" platformers.

[@thomased22legoyodagaming]

Castlevania's limited jumping controls is a deliberate design decision to up the tension of the game. Which is the core philosophy of the traditional side scrolling castlevania games as proto-horror games. Make a game that's as tense as possible while being fun and replayable and skill expressive. Rewarding aggressive play and whatnot. There's a place for stiff jumps, they aren't always antiquated old hat design.

[@mikeallison5549]

I feel they described this well and pointed out Jump King as an example. Castlevania is a great game designed around those jump mechanics so it works. But a game designed solely around running and jumping is more fun with a bit more control for most people and this game did well revolutionary tweaking physics for a fun yet challenging experience. (Even though feels outdated and difficult to control today)

[@thomased22legoyodagaming]

@@mikeallison5549 I suppose that's true in many cases.

[@matthew5226]

Castlevania really made that jumping system shine, but I do think the system itself comes with an unavoidable baseline of frustration especially when you are a kid on your brand new NES and you are already playing very poorly xD

[@thomased22legoyodagaming]

@@matthew5226 I can't disagree with these observations.

[@TheNuje]

Bonus fun fact, the springboards are sprites. It takes some code to locate them every frame as the screen scrolls, but the NES can't flip background tiles, only sprites. This probably cost less memory than making it a background object as a result. The code was just the same code it takes to locate any object (Mario, enemies projectiles, platforms) so that didn't cost any memory. They really got creative to cram the whole game in there, and make it as fun and memorable as it still is to this day! Great video you two!

[@AnHebrewChild]

this is now my favorite Kosmic vid. Your explanations of SMB1's design genius are things I've intuited since I was little and always wanted to put words to, but you've broken it down **BRILLIANTLY.**

[@Wingsaber]

Everyday im reminded of how much of a living legend Dan Salvato is. I'll never praise him enough for his efforts on Project M and then he comes out with an instant banger in Doki Doki Literature Club. Even outside of those two, he's a huge influence in the gaming community in general. Keep being awesome, Dan ❤

[@Lockirby2]

I had the same thought about the Piranha Plant hitboxes. When I saw All-Stars hitboxes for the first time in a while, my first thought was "That makes sense, but it looks less fun to play". I like being able to jump straight past the tallest pipes instead of having to wait all the time.

[@Dominion_Hawks]

I really miss when technology limitations were a pressing issue and they had to come up with clever ways to make games, it made for very interesting quirks. Nowadays what we get is a quarter of the way baked games with a day 1 patch to get them to halfway done

[@AnHebrewChild]

YES. This is also, imo, what made the earlier star wars movies better. Tech limitations forced creativity / lateral thinking.

[@retrebex5856]

forcément , si on prends les triples A d'une entreprise connu random , mais si on prends des jeux pas connu (et y'en a plein qui méritent d'être découvert!) y'a pas ce genre de probleme! et au pire , joues a des triples A qui ont 2/3 ans , ça fait pas mal (si c'était un bon triple A , ça le resteras)

[@peterpeladon]

Many indie games are still brilliant; and usually cheaper! Try to find and support those instead if you don't like what blockbuster games are doing. :)

[@Dominion_Hawks]

@@peterpeladon Oh absolutely, I've been playing indies for quite some time, more often than not they're far better than AAA games. But I was specifically refering to the part that they *had* to be super creative with how they made games back then because of tech limitations. Nowadays a game can be say super unoptimized and still be fine without having to think of any sophistry to make do

[@LendriMujina]

@@AnHebrewChild And when the limitations were removed for the exact same movies, most people consider those to be the inferior version.

[@Darxide23]

The scripting and editing here are great. I never thought I could watch _yet another_ SMB1 video and still enjoy it this much. The game that just keeps on giving.

[@JackBond1234]

The answer to all those bugs at the end? Even the most polished games today have all kinds of critical bugs. Luckily a lot of these are minor or don't come up in typical gameplay, and that's the goal of any game developer-- rather than squashing every bug, make sure people have to try pretty hard to find a bug.

[@mickkelley3776]

12:15 That joke was so terrible that KZbin cut to an ad so I didn't have to put up with its awfulness. Rare KZbin W.

[@webspec]

Same here 😂 but it made me laugh eventually thru the ad.

[@PenguinLord10]

Did you know that SMB2 is actually a reskin of Doki Doki Literature Club? That's why it has the part where you take Birdo on a date.

[@ZapatosVibes]

Over 30 years, still learning about this amazing game. Thanks for this!

[@matthew5226]

This is such a perfect video. There is an almost indescribable magic feeling with loving my favorite games almost uncritically as a child, putting them aside for decades, and then coming back as an adult with completely different perspectives to love and appreciate this game all the more. I am really getting into speedrun content right now xD

[@danielj.8876]

I think the hitboxes of certain enemies are smaller because it didn't feel right to outright die just because a pirahna plant nibbles on your foot a bit or the squid gives you a wet willy. The explanation that they wanted to do be literally in the middle of the plants mouth to get eaten wholly made the most sense to me. After all there's no real health system to give you the feeling that you got some scratches but made it out alive.

[@GTnYo]

Watching Speed runs has helped me enjoy this game. This video really makes me appreciate the game even more.

[@Ladondorf]

They made the hitbox for Bowser's Fire small to suggest that the ball of fire is more dense than the trail. This isn't clear in the game because the sprite is facing the wrong way, but if you flip the sprite it makes more sense.

[@William-nw4sk]

I'm always interested in this sort of stuff. Not only because I love this game, but because I am trying to make an NES game myself, and am trying to take notes from other games. 6502 ASM's actually pretty easy.

[@dansalvato]

Let's go! I love to hear about people making new games for retro systems. Best of luck on your project, it's a really rewarding endeavor.

[@William-nw4sk]

@@dansalvato Thank you!

[@stevenschiro1838]

3:00 Bomberman Hero Music is so good

[@FlashRayLaser]

I keep noticing Bomberman Hero music EVERYWHERE. Did Nintendo randomly make it free use or something?

[@stevenschiro1838]

@@FlashRayLaser I'd like to hope people just remembered how great it was. Really got me into that style of music as a kid. Kosmic always has a great music selection on these videos

[@ShinSennju]

​@@FlashRayLaser that would be KONAMI's call, since tragically, they now hold the rights for Bomberman.

[@FlashRayLaser]

@@stevenschiro1838 I would hope so too, and I'm sure Kosmic genuinely appreciates it, but I've genuinely heard it so much recently that it feels like a one in a million that this is coincidence. The other comment says Konami owns the rights and I also believe this is correct which only adds to my confusion. So you know the "Summoning Salt music"? There are a lot of Rubik's cube speedsolving channels that typically use "We're Finally Landing" and a lot of the music Summoning Salt does. Between those and a few smaller speedrunning channels, this makes probably the 8th time I've suddenly heard Bomberman Hero (specifically) in the last two months after a lifetime of not hearing the music outside of playing the game. Something seriously has to be up.

[@RSMR029]

11:19 i think the reason the hitbox is so small is because maybe the fire used to be a fireball, like the same one mario shoots with the flower, and i was thinking maybe it was changed to be a long fire but they didnt change the hitbox along with it

[@ShrineFox]

Great video. My mind is so blown how much I've taken this game for granted my whole life. This series so easily could have never become as big as it is today, but they really pushed the envelope and put some insane thought into these things. Excellent work editing this all together to make it easy to visualize.

[@gregbartlett851]

honestly, this was a great video. Its clear that a lot of work went into the scripting and colab. Honestly, just great work and its obvious that you took your time to plan how to explain these mechanics in a way that even I, a casual speedrun watcher, could understand.

[@VioletteZero]

In those cases where colliding with an enemy from the side while moving down results in defeating an enemy, it looks like Mario is doing an elbow drop on them.

[@StormBurnX]

14:45 I know this is off topic but... did Bowser just turn into a greyscale goomba? wtf? How have I never noticed that before

[@Kosmicd12]

He turns into a different enemy in every world, except world 8 where he's really bowser

[@StormBurnX]

@@Kosmicd12 Ok, so I'm not crazy for thinking I've seen him flip upside down before. This game has so many interesting little code optimizations.

[@awsomebot1]

​@@StormBurnX it's not an optimisation (p sure), its that canonically you dont meet the real bowser until the end

[@scruffydad9435]

​@Kosmicd12 Wait, you're telling me that BOWSER is actually in a different castle too?! Haha That's incredible. I never noticed before now.

[@Kryxx07]

Awesome video. I love learning about early video game design. The limitations created so many interesting solutions.

[@ChrisBChips]

14:15 I love this argument. "Yeah, I know that this revolutionary title that defined an entire genre had good physics for the time, but compare it to a game that has had nearly 40 years to improve on the formula that this game created. Not so good now, is it?" Yeah and Elden Ring is better than Pong.

[@FalseXII]

21:27 The clip of this despawning trampoline is striking to me. It’s peculiar that there is a hidden block as a means to maneuver past the wall should the trampoline despawn. This leads to supporting the argument even more that developers were very detail attentive, and attacked their own game from all angles. 23:50 See, even here you can still make the jump if you wait until the platform hugs the far right!

[@HappyLeeHL]

Cool video. Interesting perspective from a speedrunner. :D

[@nightmare4lol]

Ive played a lot of mario as im sure many of us here have, and I really love how this video effortlessly just explains all the little quirks you now about these games from personal experience but never quite thought too much about and only know from like muscle memory. amazing work you guys, go I love mario games

[@sumguy63]

12:22 I hate to be 'that guy', but there were golden age arcade games where you could control your jumps pre SMB1. Such as Joust (which was probably a huge influence on Mario Bros. arcade) and Flicky. Loved the video though. Very succinctly explains the nuanced feel of SMB1.

[@Kosmicd12]

Joust is not controlling your jumps... it's not jumping at all. If you want to point to a game that joust influenced, that's gonna be Balloon Fight! Did the Mario Bros. devs make comments about Joust influencing them or something? I hadn't seen Flicky before! The mechanics in it looks very surprisingly smooth. I was ready to go to bat and say yeah sure you can control your jumps but i bet it's really unrefined with hard turnarounds and unrefined movement. But it looks really nice. Thanks for sharing!

[@sumguy63]

@@Kosmicd12 Flicky controls extremely smoothly. It's designed with proper momentum, steering, collision, etc. You should definitely try it, if you can. As for Joust inspiring Mario Arcade, I'll admit that it's conjecture, but there's /probably/ some truth to it, if you consider the layouts, gameplay, and widespread nature of clones in the 1980s. Again, loved the vid and SMB1.

[@Voliharmin]

I don't like collab videos but my God, this one is fantastic! It's my favourite video of yours.

[@varietychan]

2:46 NSMB actually acknowledges that and gives Mario a special animation for that, but only when grazing a block as in too low

[@SamBoerner-ph8ug]

love this. been waiting 30 years for this easygoing, high level analysis

[@Sly88Frye]

I love videos like this. It's really cool to see developer secrets and ideas they did to make the most out of limited software

[@clamdove3292]

iirc the bowser fireball sprites ended up being mirrored from what they're supposed to be (i.e. the bright round bit was supposed to be facing the player, while the darker, spikier end was meant to be facing away from the player). this would explain why they don't look much like fireBALLS, and probably explains why the hitbox is the way it is

[@darwinism8181]

Working around the limitations of hardware and even their understanding of code at the time really made for some of the most incredibly innovative game design that's ever happened

[@powertomato]

21:00 I think there is a mistake in the video, dan said niftski is his favorite speedrunner, when I think he meant second favorite.

[@JoeDan54]

As far as the Piranha Plant hitboxes go, the theory regarding Mario sinking into its jaws before getting hurt makes a lot of sense. Despite their name, they're based on Venus Fly Traps more than anything else (which is further confirmed by the Mario 3 manual referring to the ones that shoot fire as Venus Fire Traps), and in real life, Venus Fly Traps typically only chomp onto their prey after their prey makes directed, repeated contact with their little hairs, after which they lunge out and bite. So if they're based on Venus Fly Traps, it actually makes more sense for their to be a fair bit of leniency with the hitboxes. If only that logic was extended to Mario Maker. I vividly remember playing a level on day 1 of its release and dying to a Piranha Plant despite visually being several pixels off from its sprite.

[@tecknowledjee6933]

instructions unclear, i just wall clipped irl

[@crism8868]

Objects despawning also happen in Super Mario World, but never during regular gameplay. I only discovered it when messing around with Lunar Magic, the SMW romhack editor. If you go too wild adding enemies and objects to a level they won't appear when playing. It's fascinating how both in the case of SMW and the original SMB they managed to design the levels around this issue, and the levels are still complex and full of life

[@MrMarket1987]

Well, the Doki Doki Dan made involves panicking, yes...

[@nevyn]

I LOVE the format of this video :D the back and forth is great!

[@WisdurmK]

5:44 whoa, that's me in a kosmic video 😳 that jank banzai bill hitbox is something that's absolutely puzzled me for years, since under any other circumstances, landing on it from that angle should defeat it, but somehow i landed on the platform behind it while also entering its hitbox, which somehow resulted in my own death there. nice to know that if that entire interaction somehow happened in the original super mario bros, i would have been perfectly safe there 😁

[@Clery75019]

Thanks for this brilliant video showing so well that what made SMB so revolutionary was its controls and physics. You only need to play any game immediately before it to realize this. I don't know any other game that had such a similar "before" and "after" impact in the whole History of video games.

[@BinglesP]

22:28 FIVE SPRITES ALREADY?! Would they be the Sprites of '85?!

[@Xioper]

😂

[@Myriadis]

19:40 at some point I kind of get some pavlovan reaction whenever I hear the Crystal Chronicles soundtrack. Always love it hearing it randomly

[@AnHebrewChild]

22:30 WOW. I never knew you could get Bowser to despawn!

[@s_gaming71]

man that was a great video very well made ! very fun thanks to you and Dan

[@snazzle9764]

23:00 I quite like SMB 2 (The Lost Levels), but this was a major problem. It really felt like that game was pushing against its engine PHENOMENAL video! easily one of your very best!

[@MelodiCat753]

This video feels like pheonix wright case where you together deduce why the game is the way it is. So awesome!! This game felt clunky to me as a kid in the wii era, but I realize now that it's programming really is genius. Great work!

[@ujkloin]

the "is that the guy who made doki doki panic?" actually made me laugh

[@Aeroxima]

Some interesting points to think about. I've been convinced on coyote time, but didn't think about some of these. Although I was also already convinced on more lenient hitboxes, ever since touhou games. (But maybe not that extreme)

[@FNnametag3]

The fact of the matter is; a whole team of people invented this stuff before the internet. It will always be impressive for any game built before google but this one is The best of the best. There is a reason the franchise still exists

[@LendriMujina]

3:40 This was one of the problems with ET 2600. Part of the reason that game had such a reputation for its pits being inescapable is because, though the game map is laid out in an isometric perspective, its collision detection was built expecting a side-on perspective. So if ET's head brushed against the edge of a pit, he'd fall in when it seems logically silly for him to. This is one of the things that fan patch sought to fix most. I understand said patch is a little... _controversial,_ with ET being seen recently as more "too ahead of its time for its own good" than the "worst video game ever" reputation it used to have, but among those who have grown to like the game, which of the two versions one might prefer - the original versus the patch - the main point of contention seems to be whether one is willing to sacrifice some of the technologically-impressive-for-the-day visual detail in exchange for physics that are more intuitive.

[@_fudgepop01]

Primitive ECBs my beloved

[@Peace-AKA-Brare-K]

I’m surprised you didn’t bring up sprite blinking! But yeah I would definitely be interested in videos covering the things you listed near the end

[@Alakadoof]

They also increased the size of the hitbox for Piranha Plants in the PAL version of SMB1, alongside a few other minor changes. All-Stars kept those changes, plus a far less forgivable change that makes you lose all horizontal momentum when you break a block while running.

[@Nicohoho]

I'm so jaded with formulaic video essays that this video blew me away with how insightful it was!

[@8BitPlumber1]

I did not know the fact about why Mario accelerates faster backwards. Interesting. Cool video!

[@SomeGuy712x]

(22:54) Yeah, a moving platform despawning is pretty bad. Also, if a springboard sprite despawns (as shown at 21:25), and you land on the spot where it would normally be, then you become lattelocked, totally stuck until the timer runs out and kills you.

[@twotoned2774]

Great video. Can't wait to see the next video with the jump after power up, etc.

[@bryanthegoalie5692]

5:38 OBJECTION. It is even more more impressive when you think that the enemy is going for a counter attack to your jump! As for the upside down shell: it's still in an attack phase. That can not be interrupted.

[@fraz66511]

Oh a new kosmic vide- DAN SALVATO???!!! THE DDLC CREATOR HIMSELF???!!!

[@Goatman_Gamer]

Why did you remove the Featuring Dan Salvato part lmao

[@syntheticsleep]

I have three distinct memories of having my mind blown by video games as a kid. We had an Atari 2600 and an Odyssey II, so I was a "gamer" long before NES broke big in the US. Well, long as in I was 7 when that happened. Anyway, the first time I got to see and play SMB was absolutely incredible. There really isn't a way to describe the feeling of it. Sure, I had seen way more impressive stuff in the arcade, but to sit in front of my buddy's tv on Christmas day and have that experience was absolutely wild. We were dumbstruck. Later, a friend brought over his Sega Genesis when Sonic dropped. Again, it was a leap in tech and gameplay that we couldn't really even comprehend at the time. From the colors, the sounds, the music to the speed, challenge, and freedom to explore the levels, you could actually FEEL that game propelling video games forward in new ways. Finally, I was at Wal-Mart one day, and I'd always lurk the electronics dept while my mom was shopping. At this point I would have been around 12. And there it was: A demo SNES console with Super Mario World. Everything there was TRULY "next-gen:" the console, the controller (omfg the CONTROLLER), the graphics, sound, music, level design, abilities, secrets...everything was so gd incredible I dreamt about it for WEEKS. I honestly don't think we've made a leap like that in gaming since the move from 8 to 16 bit, which is wild. And that's not just nostalgia. I still play games and have participated in every generation. And, sure, we have made some advancements with things like graphics, interactivity, environments and the sandbox/open world as we know it today. But that advancement was slow and often very VERY ugly and clumsy. But that jump from 8 to 16 bits was a meteoric shift in gaming. Sure, there were still bad games. Total, uncompromising turds even. But I'm talking about the overall landscape of gaming and even the idea of what games were or could be. Absolutely unprecedented change that we very well may never see again.

[@FUGP72]

Ahhhh..sprites despawning. Possibly the "Fix" to make sure something like the Galaga "enemies don't fire" hack never happened again. Arcade owners sure hated seeing people play for over an hour on just one quarter.

[@pr0ntab]

It's just a limitation of SMBs sprite manipulation logic because there was just so little RAM that you could only deal with like 8 independently moving entities at once. Just storing their screen coordinates, speeds, and states took up a significant fraction of that 2048 bytes (yes, 2k)

[@Anthestudios]

Fantastic video. Also the Star Fox Adventures music is legendary. Thank you

[@stevenschiro1838]

3:45 God Da**it Kosmic, we need a trigger warning before that famous sewer jump in TMNT. I was brutally scarred by that as a kid over and over and over a...

[@lynxthewise7233]

Liked the video for it's content. Loved it for the River Belle Path music ( then Krazoa Palace! )

[@danielhale1]

We have a modern case study: in the remake of Crash Bandicoot, I'm told they swapped out Crash's hitbox for a sphere that's stretched to fit his model. This would be fine, except that same collision sphere is used for deciding if he's off an edge... meaning the curved surface makes him slip off the edge once he's partially over. This makes the remake much more punishing than the original, because moments where you should stay on an edge are instead going to be a fall.

[@partylikeits1066]

I've seen plenty of videos about smb before but this one introduced so many new things to me and gave me a fresh perspective on this well discussed classic. Awesome video and so interesting!

[@sweptapostle2473]

That mario and Luigi superstar saga music hits my nostalgia feels. I miss my childhood

[@schrodingerskitten7206]

> says he's gonna talk about the game in a way that's never been talked about before yo?? > he & guest start talking about collision detection YO????? > they move on to stomping mechanics and then hitboxes YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO (these are all aspects of smb I've always ADORED and I've always been butthurt nintendo's left them behind in all but the oldest games)

[@vuuvovuuv]

the way the terrain is actually just styles of floor/ceiling combos reminds me of how the original Doom made its 3d spaces by doing something kinda similar ...where a sort of one-dimensional line of code could create a 2d space for the Mario levels, doom took a 2d space and expanded it into 3 dimensions. doom doesn't have any floating platforms or up/down splits in one column, similar to how Mario here lets the dev pick a layout style of the top and bottom boundaries. kind of a cool echo between the two games, what with them both being groundbreaking, innovative, new-paradigm-making classics of their respective genres

[@12DAMDO]

as someone who made a mediocre platformer once, i genuinely relate to the hitboxes argument.. having the hitbox be the same shape as the sprite was definitely the biggest mistake i made in my game.. the level design was decent tho

[@SDMasterYoda]

In SMB2-J, the platform not spawning at the end of 7-2 is infuriating. I'm not a speedrunner, so quite often I'll get to that final Koopa and the platform won't be there to land on.

[@tiger5869]

I agree on the small hitbox point. For non-speedrunners, it's still very risky to allow the sprites to overlap, but the devs were right to prioritize the enemies not killing unfairly. SMM spikes are notorious and I knew exactly where you were going when you started to mention SMM.

[@nicholas3354]

The one thing I never took for granted, even as a small child, was how good the momentum feels in Super Mario; it always seemed to be the result of skillful design.

[@chongli297]

Thank you so much for making this video! I have a friend who loves NES and SNES games but he disagrees quite strongly with the use of glitches in speedrunning. I have tried argued with him many times over my belief that glitches are a GOOD thing for speedruns because they raise the skill ceiling and lead to deep investigations into how these games really work. He prefers to focus on his interpretation of "developer intent", and I think this video should work pretty well at showing how it's actually extremely difficult to determine what the developers really intended

[@SEGACD32XMODEL1]

Wario Land 4 is my favorite game to watch videos on

[@jolttsp]

The evolution of Kosmic as a content creator is great to see. Legit proud.

[@12DAMDO]

seeing the thumbnail when you don't speedrun: 😨 seeing the thumbnail when you speedrun: 😅 for context, Mario did not die in that particular frame

[@7EEVEE]

3:02 this man cannot perform Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes

[@tzarg]

ehehhh it's closeenough

[@mjc0961]

Wait. I need to stop and appreciate that being able to jump a few frames after leaving a ledge is called "coyote time" 😂 Thanks for teaching me that, Dan Salvato creator of Doki Doki Panic

[@SpaghettyLuvsU]

Lol yep, named for Wile E. Coyote of Looney Tunes fame

[@unbreakablealex2732]

Mario Games had an imprint on me ever since I first played SMB on NES as a kid and I always wondered what's the meaning behind of the level design. Finally I've found this very good video about it. So much eye opening and interesting information, wow.

[@Sinn0100]

First and foremost, wow! This is absolutely incredible. You, my friends, have earned a subscriber. This is absolutely fantastic. Addendum- Hey, hey, you stop it, you! Stop lording your top loader Nes, Famicom, and Famicom Disk Systems over me! Don't make me come down there. ;) Note- I'm just messing with you. I myself am a Neo Geo AES/MVS/CDZ and 5th generation collector (Playstation and Saturn mostly). So I definitely understand showing those bad boys off. What is your rarest game/consoles? I don't know if it's the rarest but my most cherished retro gaming gear has to be my 4-slot MVS cab.