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Full Let’s Play
The Invasion is the 1st SMBX episode ever created. No, not The Invasion 2; this is the original version from the program’s infancy, available with legacy copies of SMBX. Being from a time so far gone, it really shows its age and just how far SMBX has come, if only for all the things it lacks.
Let’s Talk About Assets!
All default SMBX stuff, meaning graphics and music from SNES Mario All-Stars & World, plus the occasional rogue non-Mario BGM. Only so many of the tiles and NPCs had been included at the time, so the available resources were stretched threadbare across the 50 or so stages. Nostalgia is all it has going for it, though the visual consistency and theming is at least coherent.
Let’s Talk About Writing!
There isn’t any. They either hadn’t implemented text boxes yet or didn’t use them. I doubt Redigit would have left out a feature if it existed, so my guess is the former. Anyway, what can be construed of the plot is that Bowser sent his forces to invade on too many airships and tanks, so the Mario Bros. put a stop to that nonsense. Classic. At least some of the stages have funny names.
Let’s Talk About Design!
As has been exemplified by the various iterations of Betterified, The Invasion is not an especially great episode. By far, it suffers the most from a lack of checkpoints, as many of the levels are too long and spammy with foes to have the player take it from the top every time they die. Never mind that SMBX was traditionally set such that the player dies in two hits like the original Mario, instead of anything more sensible from later in the series. While it’s not particularly hard, it is unforgiving. It’s easy to fault the episode for this now, but this was before checkpoints were even included.
Apart from that major drawback, the other big issue is the lack of variety, which was also due to so few inclusions in the program. A light smattering of SMB2 & 3 monsters are all they had to work with, and as mentioned, they were stretched as far as possible. Redigit tried to make the most of it, like making Shy Stacks that waver crazily, but there’s just no saving it. The clever bits are diluted with too much bland Mario schlock.
The lack of variety especially hurts the boss fights, as all but the finale are against Boom-Boom or Birdo. With the former of those being such a basic opponent, their only solution was to have fights against 3+ of them, which creates its own problems. Boom-Boom’s behavior is slightly randomized, meaning they get out of sync with each other, shell sliding and jumping at different intervals and bouncing off each other. This makes groups of them a lot less predictable, increasing the likelihood of taking hits, dying, and having to repeat the entire stage prior. Meanwhile, Birdo has the opposite problem: it’s so slow and predictable that dying is your own clumsy fault and there’s no challenge to be had.
Outside of the basic platforming issues, it’s also a chore to fully complete this episode as it has a large number of secret exits which aren’t flagged on the map. Red level icons weren’t included back then, so it’s a tossup which levels have secrets and which don’t. It’s not a necessity to find every path, but if you’re the completionist type, you may go slightly mad looking for missing paths when your only clue of where not to look is if the path placement makes further exits impossible, and the secrets are inscrutable enough to be literal leaps of faith.
And don’t get me started about pwnhammer and the Clown Car stages.
Let’s Wrap This Up…
The original Invasion was supplanted for a reason. Not saying The Invasion 2 is a spectacular upgrade, but most of the old version’s problems are due to the program’s early development phase. There were a lot less features and options. There was only so much they could do. It would’ve been wiser to design around the program’s limitations rather than in spite of them, but later inclusions and expanded capabilities only go to show how hindsight reveals these weaknesses. If anything, it’s a wonder it worked as well as it did. Let’s just be thankful those days are far behind us and SMBX is capable of so much more now.
2/5
![Image]()
Anger is the correct emotion to feel.
Next Up: Epic Fights
Queue:
Delightful Adventure: Enhanced
Full Let’s Play
The Invasion is the 1st SMBX episode ever created. No, not The Invasion 2; this is the original version from the program’s infancy, available with legacy copies of SMBX. Being from a time so far gone, it really shows its age and just how far SMBX has come, if only for all the things it lacks.
Let’s Talk About Assets!
All default SMBX stuff, meaning graphics and music from SNES Mario All-Stars & World, plus the occasional rogue non-Mario BGM. Only so many of the tiles and NPCs had been included at the time, so the available resources were stretched threadbare across the 50 or so stages. Nostalgia is all it has going for it, though the visual consistency and theming is at least coherent.
Let’s Talk About Writing!
There isn’t any. They either hadn’t implemented text boxes yet or didn’t use them. I doubt Redigit would have left out a feature if it existed, so my guess is the former. Anyway, what can be construed of the plot is that Bowser sent his forces to invade on too many airships and tanks, so the Mario Bros. put a stop to that nonsense. Classic. At least some of the stages have funny names.
Let’s Talk About Design!
As has been exemplified by the various iterations of Betterified, The Invasion is not an especially great episode. By far, it suffers the most from a lack of checkpoints, as many of the levels are too long and spammy with foes to have the player take it from the top every time they die. Never mind that SMBX was traditionally set such that the player dies in two hits like the original Mario, instead of anything more sensible from later in the series. While it’s not particularly hard, it is unforgiving. It’s easy to fault the episode for this now, but this was before checkpoints were even included.
Apart from that major drawback, the other big issue is the lack of variety, which was also due to so few inclusions in the program. A light smattering of SMB2 & 3 monsters are all they had to work with, and as mentioned, they were stretched as far as possible. Redigit tried to make the most of it, like making Shy Stacks that waver crazily, but there’s just no saving it. The clever bits are diluted with too much bland Mario schlock.
The lack of variety especially hurts the boss fights, as all but the finale are against Boom-Boom or Birdo. With the former of those being such a basic opponent, their only solution was to have fights against 3+ of them, which creates its own problems. Boom-Boom’s behavior is slightly randomized, meaning they get out of sync with each other, shell sliding and jumping at different intervals and bouncing off each other. This makes groups of them a lot less predictable, increasing the likelihood of taking hits, dying, and having to repeat the entire stage prior. Meanwhile, Birdo has the opposite problem: it’s so slow and predictable that dying is your own clumsy fault and there’s no challenge to be had.
Outside of the basic platforming issues, it’s also a chore to fully complete this episode as it has a large number of secret exits which aren’t flagged on the map. Red level icons weren’t included back then, so it’s a tossup which levels have secrets and which don’t. It’s not a necessity to find every path, but if you’re the completionist type, you may go slightly mad looking for missing paths when your only clue of where not to look is if the path placement makes further exits impossible, and the secrets are inscrutable enough to be literal leaps of faith.
And don’t get me started about pwnhammer and the Clown Car stages.
Let’s Wrap This Up…
The original Invasion was supplanted for a reason. Not saying The Invasion 2 is a spectacular upgrade, but most of the old version’s problems are due to the program’s early development phase. There were a lot less features and options. There was only so much they could do. It would’ve been wiser to design around the program’s limitations rather than in spite of them, but later inclusions and expanded capabilities only go to show how hindsight reveals these weaknesses. If anything, it’s a wonder it worked as well as it did. Let’s just be thankful those days are far behind us and SMBX is capable of so much more now.
2/5
Anger is the correct emotion to feel.
Next Up: Epic Fights
Queue:
Delightful Adventure: Enhanced
Statistics: Posted by halibabica — Tue Jan 30, 2024 4:57 pm
