{"id":65,"date":"2006-02-13T15:14:38","date_gmt":"2006-02-13T20:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=65"},"modified":"2006-12-31T13:11:13","modified_gmt":"2006-12-31T18:11:13","slug":"an-interview-with-darhkdaiz-creator-of-mario-adventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/65\/an-interview-with-darhkdaiz-creator-of-mario-adventure","title":{"rendered":"An Interview with DahrkDaiz, Creator of Mario Adventure<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mario AdventureJust yesterday I had the opportunity to conduct an email interview DahrkDaiz, creator of the impressive hack Mario Adventure<\/em><\/a>. Mario Adventure<\/em> is a completely new Mario game made from modifications to the Super Mario Bros. 3<\/em> game engine for the NES. The game was the subject of a recent piece on VC&G<\/em><\/a> and has proven to be quite popular now that it has been given wider attention on our site.<\/p>\n

Vintage Computing and Gaming:<\/strong> Thank you for agreeing to this interview. First off, where are you from?
\nDahrkDaiz:<\/strong> Knoxville, Tennessee<\/p>\n

VC&G:<\/strong> What do you do for a living?
\nDD:<\/strong> I’m currently a student at ITT-Tech and working full time at a fast food restaurant.<\/p>\n

VC&G:<\/strong> Do you aspire to be a professional game designer?
\nDD:<\/strong> I hope so one day but in reality I know game design is a tough field to crack, so I’ll continue to pursue the dream in my spare time while focusing on a realistic programming career, working for businesses to make a living.<\/p>\n

VC&G:<\/strong> What’s your favorite video game? Favorite Mario game?
\nDD:<\/strong> A tie between Sonic 3 & Knuckles<\/em> and SMB3<\/em>. [Favorite Mario Game:] SMB3<\/em>, no surprise there.<\/p>\n

VC&G:<\/strong> What inspired you to make Mario Adventure<\/em>?
\nDD:<\/strong> The total lack of a proper Mario sequel. I was disappointed with the Mario Advance<\/em> series and I saw other people’s attempt at creating a new SMB3<\/em> experience and decided to take the matter into my own hands.<\/p>\n

VC&G:<\/strong> Mario Adventure<\/em> has been very popular on VC&G<\/em>. It been downloaded over 11,000 times from our site in the last few days. Is there anything you’d like the players of Mario Adventure<\/em> to know or keep in mind while playing?
\nDD:<\/strong> This hack was made with the hardcore SMB3<\/em> player in mind. I could practically beat the original with my eyes closed and figured it was time to up the difficulty. However, I tried to include ways to pass hard obstacles easily. Use your power-ups to their fullest abilities and you should do fine getting through the game.<\/p>\n

Mario AdventureVC&G:<\/strong> What’s your favorite new feature of Mario Adventure<\/em>? Also, what’s your favorite world in the game?
\nDD:<\/strong> Definitely the key collecting idea. I always liked having to back track through levels or world to get something out of the way to continue in a game. Point A to point B grows old quickly. [Favorite World:] Colossal Classics. The giant nostalgic look just has something about it that pleases me. Though I thought I could have a slightly better job with it.<\/p>\n

VC&G:<\/strong> What development tools did you use to create Mario Adventure<\/em>?
\nDD:<\/strong> FCEUd (emulator with an excellent debugger), YY-Chr (graphics editing), Mario 3 Improvement (archaic SMB3<\/em> level editor), Hex Workshop (hex editor).<\/p>\n

VC&G:<\/strong> How long did it take you to complete Mario Adventure<\/em>e?
\nDD:<\/strong> Approximately 16 months.<\/p>\n

VC&G:<\/strong> Was reverse engineering the Super Mario Bros. 3<\/em> Game engine and implementing new rules, power-ups, etc. difficult? Tell us more about how you made changes to the Super Mario Bros. 3<\/em> game itself.
\nDD:<\/strong> At first it was very difficult. I slowly began to see a certain logic used behind the game. However, when reprogramming the code, I had to find unused space in the ROM, so that was pretty much hit and miss. Admittedly I did a poor job at coding it, hence all the bugs and glitches, but I did what I could with what knowledge I knew. A lot of time stepping through code and even writing code out on paper while at work during my break was required.<\/p>\n

VC&G:<\/strong> Did you do all the level design in Mario Adventure<\/em> yourself?
\nDD:<\/strong> Absolutely everything was done by me in this.<\/p>\n

VC&G:<\/strong> Do you think Mario Adventure<\/em> would work properly if somehow put on an actual hardware cartridge and played on a real NES\/Famicom? Have you ever attempted this?
\nDD:<\/strong> Unfortunately, it will not. I reprogrammed the game to take advantage of a bug most emulators have, however, I did not realize at the time that it was a bug. The hack would work on a real NES, but not properly all time. The main bug being the status bar moving up over the screen at certain times.<\/p>\n

VC&G:<\/strong> Have you ever heard from Nintendo about your Mario hacking exploits?
\nDD:<\/strong> Surprisingly, no.<\/p>\n

Mario SeasonsVC&G:<\/strong> Have you done any previous game hacking projects? If so, tell us about them.
\nDD:<\/strong> Before Mario Adventure<\/em>? No, but there were a few things I did while working on Mario Adventure<\/em> and afterwards. Most of it is unknown unfinished test projects. I created a cool parallax (SNES style) background scroll in Mega Man 3<\/em> for Snake Man’s stage. I hacked Castlevania 3<\/em> to start and stay as Alucard. I completely hacked Ms. Pac-Man<\/em> to have 32 unique levels, a mode to play levels at random and a pellet counter. This hack is known as Pac-Man 3<\/em> and will be available on my site once it relaunches.<\/p>\n

VC&G:<\/strong> What can you tell us about your next hacking project? When will it be ready?
\nDD:<\/strong> I can tell you now the next big project is another SMB3<\/em> hack. Most people may sigh at this, but I took a different approach with this hack and differs from Mario Adventure<\/em>. The scale is that, if not more than Mario Adventure<\/em>. It makes Luigi and Mario be separate characters with each having special powers of their own for different gameplay, including Luigi’s floaty jump and slippery control and a new item box for Mario found in Mario Adventure<\/em>. Each character has their own separate 8 worlds to play through, so this is literally two hacks in one. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen.<\/p>\n

VC&G:<\/strong> Is there anything else that you’d like our readers to know?
\nDD:<\/strong> Mario Adventure<\/em> is a real gem, but I’ve listened to a lot of good and bad feedback on it and this new project I’m working on addresses those issues. But I like to thank everyone who’s played this hack and given so much praise for it. It’s really inspired me to take game development as a serious career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just yesterday I had the opportunity to conduct an email interview DahrkDaiz, creator of the impressive hack Mario Adventure. Mario Adventure is a completely new Mario game made from modifications to the Super Mario Bros. 3 game engine for the NES. The game was the subject of a recent piece on VC&G and has proven […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,11,14,32,22,21,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-video-game-design","category-video-game-emulation","category-video-game-projects","category-interviews","category-nes-famicom","category-news-current-events","category-new-retro-reproductions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}