MFGG - Mario Fan Games Galaxy

Review Information

Game Reviewed	Super Mario Sketch, by Yoshimaster
Review Author	Vitiman
Created	Jan 1 2016, 6:52 PM

General Commentary and Game Overview

Released at some point prior to 2003 (thus making it one of the many early EARLY MFGG games), Super Mario Sketch is a driving force behind an alleged quote of Mr. Miyamoto himself: "Gamers will play anything as long as the graphics look good". Well, it's something to that effect. While the graphics may not look all that spectacular now, the for-its-time very impressive all drawn look garnered this game a decent amount of attention. Unfortunately, even back then I knew it was a buggy, barely playable mess that seems to prove that some people only want something pretty to look at and don't care a thing about anything else.

Pros	The drawn look, aside from a lot of harder to make out stuff, has aged relatively well The music choices are okay, if a bit bland
Cons	The engine is sloppy, even by "Awful Default Movement" standards Level design is horribly lackluster Unfair, sometimes deliberately cruel enemy placement Choppy, stiff animation etc.

Impressions

Gameplay 2 / 10	Playing this again brought back mediocre, frustrating memories of when I first started to get into fangaming. I was decidedly young back then, so I figured perhaps it was just my incompetence as a child setting me back and not the game's fault. Well... nope. Not at all, this is entirely the game's fault. Yoshimaster has done something truly outstanding here, and somehow made the default platform movement -worse- than it usually is. Incredibly awkward jumps, horribly frustrating spring blocks (that often leave you moving slightly in one direction, making it damn near impossible to stay still and wait for yourself to build any sort of momentum), and a variety of downright hateful climbing sections are just some of the things that make this a chore to play through. You see, what makes the climbing sections so vile and nasty is that they're on the vines are at an ever so slight angle, meaning you have to avoid falling off by simply holding up and actually move a little to the right as you go upwards. That's ridiculous! That's straight up unnecessary, and all the vines in the game are like this as far as I can tell. Complete and utter trite. Another thing that bothered me to no end are the mushrooms. Most of the time, they hinder your progress and often glitch the game making some parts literally impossible - no longer having the ability to climb, getting stuck in blocks and being pushed out into a pit, etc. But then there are times when you TRY to avoid the mushroom but can't: just touching a ? block even a little bit gives you what's inside it. THEN there are times when you can thankfully dodge the "power" up, but then you find out that you actually needed the mushroom's slight jump boost to progress further into the level. Garbage. Pure garbage.
Graphics 6 / 10	Probably the only decent aspect of the whole entire game, and that's not too much of a shocker considering it's also the gimmick of it. However, this unique style of drawings over pixel art has a few setbacks: the levels end up being very bland and lazy because of how much effort it would theoretically take to draw entire tilesets, and a lot of stuff is at an awkward angle (as I mentioned earlier with the frustrating climbing segments), so it just comes across as holding the game back. Of course, if this never used drawings for the art style, then we wouldn't be talking about this game at all, as it wouldn't EXIST. Moving on...
Sound 5 / 10	Nothing special, nothing blasphemous. It's just your typical MIDI soundtrack, so I wasn't really all that surprised by it. It's there, it's harmless, it works I suppose!
Replay 1 / 10	Never in my days would I ever play this again. The game is actually very generous with how many lives it gives you (and I never ran into any 1-Ups, so that's all you're given as far as I know), and yet I still managed to get three Game Overs this one time playing it again after so many years. It's just... it just isn't worth it.

Final Words

Super Mario Sketch is a game that's proof that something can coast on good looks and gimmicks without needing to be entertaining or well designed.

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