Angry Puppy

If you want to make a recording of a game level, you might splice together several different attempts to get one clean run.  At Mechanically Separated Meat, they’ve posted a video showing what happens if, instead of rewinding and splicing, you superimpose all 134 attempts made to get through level 1 of Kaizo Mario World.

The effect is like what used to happen on the TNG Enterprise when divergent timelines were exploding out of themselves.  Or like playing on acid.

The concept alone produces a surprisingly hypnotic result, but the game choice is not accidental. Kaizo Mario World, which translates as something like Hacked Mario World, is so impossibly difficult that the guy who created it nicknamed it “Asshole Mario.” Since most of the fun in watching someone play is in seeing him fail again and again until he figures out the trick, this is a lot more interesting than watching a clean run-through.

I like how you can almost see decisions “pulse” out from the center Mario before the whole mass surges forward, dropping the ones who made bad choices. If you think of it as real-time, simultaneous play instead of overlays, this must be what it’s like for Midnighter when he calculates all the millions of possible scenarios of a battle before making a decision. Neat.

Here’s a link to Kaizo Super Mario being played without the overlays.  It’s dull up to the 0:56 minute mark, which is a simple, yet elegant moment in hacking assholism.

Via Kotaku