Yesterday the most recent version of Super Mario Bros Crossover, version 3.0, was released to the masses; the biggest update to the game thus far, adding in the entirety of Super Mario Bros. Special as well as Easy and Hard variations of it and vanilla SMB, quadrupling the number of maps in the game. Considering how much of a sucker I am for Special, I decided to list off some notes regarding the design choices.
*As expected, the game is built to run with SMB1/2J physics, not the choppy and crappy ones from the home computers.
*The Sharp X1 version's skin is the only available version of the two; the PC88 skin is completely absent even if just about all the needed resources for it exist on the Exploding Rabbit forums and the Spriters Resource. Restricted colors or not, I consider the PC88 version the most well-known incarnation of Super Mario Bros. Special.
*The levels are not 100% authentic recreations of the original's, however unlike the NES romhack, the level recreations are much closer and capture all the original charm, since SMBC does not run on the limits of how tiles in SMB1/2J could be placed. And the differences in the level design present are very minimal compared to those of the NES romhack, such as reversing the direction of an underground elevator platform, adding an extra 1UP into a castle level, and making a previously-invisible block now visible.
*Levels now take advantage of the extra map hight in SMB1/2J, 13 tiles high as opposed to 12.
*The unintentional traps of 4-2 and 4-3's major secrets have been ridden of. 4-2's supposed "Warp Zone" which was non-functional in the original, now leads to a secret room that wasn't in the original (or the Mari0 recreation from last year) with many coins spelling out "Exploding Rabbit" and a secret item that completely stocks up your character of all his/her weapons/upgrades, resembling the ER logo. As for 4-3's bonus room, it now exits to the proper pipe under the staircase of mushrooms.
You can play the game directly from this link. Or on its Exploding Rabbit page.
