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Videogame facts that blow your mind (SuperMarioBros. SHOCKING SECRET INSIDE p #70)
- Thread starter Chris Michael
- Start date
SpaceDrake
Member
So way, way back in the stone ages of the thread, someone asked why the clouds were re-used as bushes in the original Super Mario Bros.
Here's a mind-blowing fact for you: it's because the original Super Mario Bros - a game that, arguably, changed the way videogaming worked forever - had a data weight of forty kilobytes.
All the game levels, all the art assets, all the music. Everything. It all weighs substantially less than a single screenshot of a game today. More to the point... for purposes of cost, they HAD to use that space. A 40kb cart was the most Nintendo could afford back in those days. So some corners had to be cut wherever possible - and that was one place they could be clever.
So just think about that. There are people out there who were able to fit a game like Super Mario Bros onto a cart with a data capacity with less than a millionth the capacity of a DVD.
It's not about hardware, it's about what you do with it.
Here's a mind-blowing fact for you: it's because the original Super Mario Bros - a game that, arguably, changed the way videogaming worked forever - had a data weight of forty kilobytes.
All the game levels, all the art assets, all the music. Everything. It all weighs substantially less than a single screenshot of a game today. More to the point... for purposes of cost, they HAD to use that space. A 40kb cart was the most Nintendo could afford back in those days. So some corners had to be cut wherever possible - and that was one place they could be clever.
So just think about that. There are people out there who were able to fit a game like Super Mario Bros onto a cart with a data capacity with less than a millionth the capacity of a DVD.
It's not about hardware, it's about what you do with it.
Professor Beef
Banned
Seifer never wore a bandanna in FF8, but I see where you're going.jaxword said:
Taco_Human
Member
I like this fact, but it was pretty easy to realize since ROMs run amok. The file sizes for NES games speak for themselves.SpaceDrake said:
SpaceDrake
Member
Taco_Human said:
Well, it's easy to look at the ROM sizes, sure, but it's a whole other thing to realize what the fuck those sizes actually mean. What the programmers and designers back in the day actually did and had to pull off.
I mean...
http://cdn.steampowered.com/v/gfx/a...3e0bb7ab812c1a448a86dc9f4fbb07b.1920x1080.jpg
That one JPG-compressed screenshot, right there, is bigger than Super Mario 1 and 2 (US) put together. One screenshot. Bigger than two legendary games. If that's not mindblowing I dunno what the fuck is.
Correctomundo
Member
electroplankton said:They're pretty similar, uh?
I think that's more indicative of Nomura's awful design sensibilities than anything else.
randomlyrossy
Member
Drkirby said:
He's way later than that, that fact was revealed a good while ago in this thread.
SuperAngelo64
Banned
I love Nomura's designs.
electroplankton
Banned
sn00zer said:
I do think so! The Bouncer was stilistically great in my opinion, but it didn't achieve so much success, therefore some ideas were used in other games. Sion's design is an example, I wonder if it happens with some other characters.
Dominique was great, and Echidna as well!
electroplankton said:
Not a video game example but a few ideas in Family Guy (the Peter-Brian dynamic, Quagmire's design and job as a pilot) originated in a short Seth MacFarlane did for Cartoon Network
electroplankton
Banned
Lijik said:
Yers, I know other examples but I was referring to the Bouncer in particular
The Shadow
Member
SpaceDrake said:
Absolutely.
Oddly, I've never really considered the NES so much as older PC games like Elite on the ZX Spectrum or Star Raiders on older Atari computers. We're talking about an open world sandbox game on 8192 bytes of code.
Unreal. Blows my mind even to this day.
spindashing
Banned
what the FUCKSilentProtagonist said:Sonic Boom:
DiipuSurotu
Banned
electroplankton said:They're pretty similar, uh?
SuperMarioFan462
Banned
Jasoco said:
I can't blame him, NeoGAF has no organization tools and posts are difficult to keep track of.
The Hermit
Member
Tizoc said:lalalala~
This is awesome!
AbsoluteZero
Banned
Saw this recent video of Bill Farmer. Now I knew he voiced Sam in the original Lucasarts Sam & Max game, but I'm surprised how much his normal speaking voice sounds like him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08uyz7Aw4G8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08uyz7Aw4G8
ULTROS!
People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks.
Nothing really mind-blowing but it's pretty hilarious.
I remember using this controller around 2008-2009, this is my cousin's GC/Wii (psychic yet bootleg) controller. Notice the grime for not being used for a long time:
Can't believe this controller predicted the name of the new Wii.
I remember using this controller around 2008-2009, this is my cousin's GC/Wii (psychic yet bootleg) controller. Notice the grime for not being used for a long time:
Can't believe this controller predicted the name of the new Wii.
Azure Dream
Member
DoDonGouki said:
Also, compare the speed of the Amiga version to the Genesis version. Obvious mistake, I don't know how the game made it into production.
It also follows the time-honored tradition of "What does this console adaption have to do with the actual series?" It's like the Genesis Gargoyles game where Goliath is pretty much the only surviving Gargoyle, you kill Xanatos (and several humans along the way, that scream!), and you fight some sort of phoenix-styled Demona at the end.
SciencePilot
Member
It's been quoted enough, but seriously, this blew my mind. Amazing.SilentProtagonist said:
Rinoa said:Seifer's coat only gets ruined later in the game. Though KH Seifer has a hat like Snow.
edited w/pic that has similar pose
Seifer's hat there is a woolen cap, though. Snow wears the bandanna, the Locke trademark.
Basically SNow was designed to elict the image of the dashing FF ragtag leader, and they did that great. Coulda shown a bit more of NORA though.
TheJollyCorner
Member
Rinoa said:Seifer's coat only gets ruined later in the game. Though KH Seifer has a hat like Snow.
edited w/pic that has similar pose
interesting.
Makes me wonder if Nomura was just messing around with designs for an older FFVIII crew (i.e. VIII-2?
) years ago and ended up just using an older Seifer as Snow?Fimbulvetr
Member
jaxword said:
A major theme of the story shouldn't be mindblowing. >_>
Especially with such blatant lines like: "Humans and fal'Cie are like brothers orphaned by the same parent."(I'm paraphrasing, but that's the jist of that bit of dialogue).
The final boss is named Orphan, dude. You can't get more obvious than that.
The final boss is named Orphan, dude. You can't get more obvious than that.
TheJollyCorner said:interesting.
Makes me wonder if Nomura was just messing around with designs for an older FFVIII crew (i.e. VIII-2?
It seems he was deliberately looking at his old designs and subverting them to different degrees to see how the characters would be received.
Cloud, a self-absorbed ex-soldier versus Lightning, a female ex-soldier with a chip on her shoulder. Cloud's is deliberate due to his schizophrenia, Lightning's is due to family.
Barret, an angry black terrorist leader who shoots first and asks questions later versus Sazh, an easygoing guy who has guns but is more concerned with avoiding battles and thinking things through first.
Vanille: Your typical spunky young girl whose immaturity and irresponsibility actually HAS terrible repercussions. Remember how Yuffie steals materia, or Rinoa runs out on the assassination plot, Rikku blowing things up to kidnap Yuna, and all of those girls never get reprimanded in the long run?
Vanille was totally designed to be the spunky sex appeal girl that the player suddenly has second thoughts about because she REALLY screws up.
Snow is the best example. He's Locke, Zidane, Tidus, all of the headstrong heroes who get a ragtag group of kids to join him to protect the girl without really thinking logically or carefully. Except this time he suffers repeatedly for this stubbornness, whereas every other hero got praised for it.
Fang was...well, Fang is every suddenly angry character that turns on the party at some point. This was probably the weakest cliche characterization, though her love for Vanille certainly is a valid reason.
Compared to, say, Amarant attacking you just to be a dick, or Mind controlled FF4 heroes, or Vossler, who all have their reasons that pretty much are "I'm suddenly mad at you guys.'
Now, this doesn't mean it works for everyone. But I liked that part of FF13, how the heroes were all very flawed in a meta commentary way on the rest of the series.
Fine Ham Abounds
Member
This entire FF meta discussion has made me envision a game where all of the worst developed, useless, or irritating FF characters woke up on an airship that had crash landed on a sparse planet in some parallel universe inhabited entirely by these shadowy ghosts which represent the lost idealistic portion of Square Enix fans' souls. There they'd be forced to gather resources, help the inhabitants build cities and abate their self-loathing, and ultimately they'd develop into effective characters.
At the end, all of the inhabitants would rejoin their estranged souls, and the reborn crappy FF characters would repair the airship they woke up on and escape back into their own universes.
The abandoned city of ghosts would remain behind as a monument... to just how much work was necessary to make these characters tolerable.
At the end, all of the inhabitants would rejoin their estranged souls, and the reborn crappy FF characters would repair the airship they woke up on and escape back into their own universes.
The abandoned city of ghosts would remain behind as a monument... to just how much work was necessary to make these characters tolerable.
Ahoi-Brause
Banned
He's just re-using tired old anime and videogame clichees.jaxword said:
You are reading way too much into this.
Professor Beef
Banned
I would definitely rent a FF game filled with the "worst" characters in the series.Fine Ham Abounds said:
I posted this in the SMB LTTP thread and figured it might be worth while here:
Super Mario Bros is probably set in a desert or during a drought. All the ground is dry, cracked mud.
There's only the occasional
bush, tree, and hill in the background, but most of the game is barren.
I mean, the ground basically looks the same as the level in Brawl:
and that is supposed to look ancient and deserted.
Super Mario Bros is probably set in a desert or during a drought. All the ground is dry, cracked mud.
There's only the occasional
cloud
I mean, the ground basically looks the same as the level in Brawl:
and that is supposed to look ancient and deserted.
KittenMaster
Member
This is too much of a stretch I think, because if you look past Level 1-1 and the Smash Bros. representation of it the game is anything but barren. World 4-1 comes to mind with the upright white trees.
That, and the Smash Brawl screenshot shows that the bricks were likely man-made with natural terrain behind it.
EDIT:
Rinoa said:
Sneaky Gato
Member
This just blew my mind.
Take a look at those three guys in the back. I knew that they looked familer until just recently. Turns out the're pretty much copies of Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader era Space Marines. It's most obvious if you look at the one with the beaked helmet on the left.
The one on the left of the Strider pic has the beaked helmet, the wierdly porportioned shoulder pads of the first few minis and the gun is a direct copy of a Bolter. With the one in the middle you can clearly see that the sharp kneecaps are almost a direct copy of the Rouge Trader era minis where they were part of the leg armor and came to a point instead of being seperate and rounded. . The one on the right is carrying what I think is the old version of the Melta or Flamer. All of them have those weird cables on thier body which I think is the most telling sign of where they come from though. I'm not sure but I think the faces are copies though I would have to do a bit of research to prove that.
Take a look at those three guys in the back. I knew that they looked familer until just recently. Turns out the're pretty much copies of Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader era Space Marines. It's most obvious if you look at the one with the beaked helmet on the left.
The one on the left of the Strider pic has the beaked helmet, the wierdly porportioned shoulder pads of the first few minis and the gun is a direct copy of a Bolter. With the one in the middle you can clearly see that the sharp kneecaps are almost a direct copy of the Rouge Trader era minis where they were part of the leg armor and came to a point instead of being seperate and rounded. . The one on the right is carrying what I think is the old version of the Melta or Flamer. All of them have those weird cables on thier body which I think is the most telling sign of where they come from though. I'm not sure but I think the faces are copies though I would have to do a bit of research to prove that.
Anybody remember the animated intro to The Amanda Show?
For anybody that's played Spyro the Dragon it may be more familiar than you think.
For anybody that's played Spyro the Dragon it may be more familiar than you think.
hikarutilmitt
Member
Easy_D said:
Yeah, I was pretty sure it was just an angled hole based on him smashing through it as a bat.
Lord Ghirahim
Member
Old, I guess.