Dude the first game had literally every single creepypasta _game design_ trope there is - Long unskippable cutscenes that play every time you die - Long levels with instant deaths and no checkpoints - Random, inconsistent difficulty spikes as a result of not enough playtesting - The word HIDE appears probably to warn you, but you have less than a second to react before Mario.exe appears - Long horizontal running sections where a scary .png slowly catches up to you
@@karlgerg2626 I think he means Vinny constantly getting stuck in sections like the hiding section or one of the chases. In comparison, he did better than he did with playing Mario 85.
Really a shame that the first two games played so poorly because they had some really nice visuals at times, especially the second one. The part where the hands break the map was cool and very unique! I think that dev has a lot of potential and I hope they keep working at it.
the issue with these .exe games is that some have potential to be unique (that or im being way too nice) but they all follow the same tired old tropes, you’d think that with a whole decade and years of these games they’d improve off each other but they always manage to be the same thing, its impressive really
Reverse engineering the original controls requires time and knowledge of assembly language, you can't just slot them in They could use a fan engine like SMBX but maybe they felt like it'd be cooler to program a game from scratch themselves
@@dtscurvy7601 Thanks for the answer. I was wondering why these games were so hell bent on using anything but the regular controls. As that's why Mario 85 took so long for Vinny
@redcomet_622 In regards to Mario 85, there was actually an effort to reverse engineer the controls of SMB1, which can be seen in the game's accurate collision which allows for wall jumping and corner clipping. However, the developers made a couple of key mistakes: first, they neglected to cap the player's downwards velocity, so gravity acts more intensely upon the player, making the game feel heavy. Second, they attempted to recreate the Luigi physics from Lost Levels, but only included the higher jump and not the slippery ground movement, making it feel uncanny to people who have played either SMB1 or Lost Levels. They could easily fix these problems with minor tweaks; it's a shame that something they clearly put a good amount of effort into had a bad showing because of these easily fixed mistakes. Of all these games, Mario 85 undoubtedly has the most accurate physics.
"My TV then exploded and I was rushed to the hospital. After returning home, I came across a letter addressed to me, slathered with pasta sauce. Inside it read: "why u play gaem???".
Kind of fun to see how horror sometimes shows what the creator is scared of, more than what the audience is scared of. With the first one, I get the vibe that Mandella Catalogue (or stuff like it) left a huge impact on them. The raspy text-to-speech voice, the "live action image warps at the last second" thing, these probably rattle the creator in ways they don't fully understand, which is why they're implemented so awkwardly. They're trying to recreate something that scared em' but they don't have the science down. Not trying to roast, I kind of think thats what makes horror writing interesting.
@@xanethestrange7659 there's a godzilla one that does a pretty good job I think, since it slowly builds up to it across the entire game and builds up anticipation before any of the real scares happen, but its pretty much the only example of one done right I can think of
@@verity_amo It's such a blatant attempt to overthrow Mario '85 and it shows. It even has the same light reflection in the CRT filter and story flow. I mean, at least they tried!
"Peach says it's my turn to be a monster tonight, and you are a small child named Lucas." "Koppa says it's my turn, so I HATE YOU and I get to be an eldritch horror this time."
It genuinely kind of impresses me that the second game there had such well done visual effects but still managed to control like a greased ear of corn sliding down a sewage pipe... like, dang. Tutorials for these things exist, yknow? Also "Luigi is in your PC" is the modern sequel to "Mario has logged in." that we needed. Also grey leno when
Imagine a real life demonic entity was possessing your NES cart but he's just busting ur balls cause he can't rlly come out of the TV he can only go BLLLAAGGHGH really loud in the TV and make you play the same lvl a bunch lol
@@AnAverageGoblin You need to give your TV demon enrichment toys like nontoxic wood blocks or leather strips so he doesn't develop a habit of screeching.
thats why i love the Mario 85 game so much since my introduction to it was that twitter video where he gets absolutely washed by the kid playing. jumping on his head, breaking his knees trying to turn around, falls for the same "let him jump over me so he has to stop and turn around then i jump and keep running" shit 3 times, even cheats by pulling out the le epic scary bigger true form and still gets styled on completely. normalize creepypasta protagonists being better at the game than whatever is possessing it.
it'd be hilarious to see something like that. and when their bluff gets called they're just like "dude- c'mon man. i've been working REALLY hard here, at least pretend to be scared."
Honestly it really bugs me when these games are unnecessarily difficult. People don’t play these types of games/hacks for difficulty, it’s for the scares and the cool stuff they put in. If you make the game frustrating, a large chunk of the players won’t even get a chance to see any of the cool horror stuff they programmed into them.
Fan gamers and rom hackers cannot help but make their work extremely difficult for no apparent reason. It's been a thing since the beginning of the hobby, it's basically universal, and speaking as someone who has worked on modding and rom hacks, it is a VERY HARD THING to fight, you need to be super conscious about it and more important you need other people to playtest your stuff, which is hard to do when you're a kid making creepy mario games in your bedroom.
Honestly, even though as an outsider these come across as really cringy and edgy, I'm glad that these games exist. Like, sure, it's mostly just the same game over and over again with stupid jumpscares and cheap tricks... But, hey, it actually got these (assumed) kids motivated enough to learn how to make a game and then put it out there, which is more impressive than anything my lazy ass has done.
Thank you. Things don't have to be good for them to show effort and passion. People seem to just dismiss these games as nothing, which sucks. It really feeds my paranoia of releasing something, having it be disliked by everyone and then feel like my time and passion doesn't add up to anything because I just added a bunch of it and it became nothing and so I become so discouraged that I quit doing what I originally loved for good. ...but I will say that holy shit I can't even begin to fathom how these games can be so bad. Like how can you screw up the physics so badly? You know how the original game controls and feels. Why did you not try to mimic it? Or did you try but you aren't like me who hyperfixates on problems when I make a game and spend months trying to fix it, stunting the development for ages?
I feel like overall, Mario '85 really hit all the boxes: eerie atmosphere, decent "story", single level with a clear goal, difficulty level that seemingly doesn't cross into bullshit level if you memorize the level layout, and was fun to watch. A lot of these were seemed like a mix of "unfun to watch" and "unfun to play". The unforgiving difficulty and cheap jump scares are kind of boring, as is the "Mario killed someone and this is his Silent Hill" plotline. I hope when Mario '85 gets a full release it keeps what makes it special.
8bit games made into horror has so much potential to be something interesting but these devs just can't seem to help but use the same checkbox of tired cliches and it amounts to a showcase of how _not_ to make an effective horror experience.
@@SneesToMeetYou I understand the obsession: analog horror has some cool ideas and is supposed to play on our audience expectations of a medium. (I.E. A VHS played on a CRT). Then again some 16 year-old without any exposure to an actual VHS thinks the punchline is supposed to be static and loud noises or something
I hope someone makes a "supah scare mario gaem" romhack or something, these are all so by the numbers you could make a really funny hack with it like making the monochrome photo obituary actually Mike from RLM
the thing is its just fuckin sonic.exe again, one game (mario 85) gets popular and then everyone on the planet just clones it to high heaven just for kicks... mario 85 is good though unlike sonic.exe so its even more upsetting to see
Gameplay in my exe|s? Back in my day, all you had to do was hold the -> key and watch the animation play, this innovation is uncalled for how dare they.
After 10 years of EXE evolution, this is a real game changer. The scary exe games industry will never be the same again. Who knows what these innovations could bring in the future? Next they may create RPG exes. Open World exes. The possibilities are truly endless and I am afraid of this.
@@dysr The winners write history. You only know about the good ones cause they were popular. No one remembers Paula's Pizza Brothers 1.5, which was a "dromake" (rhymes with omake) of FNAF 2 and SMB2 JP, but Miyamoto personally went to their house and served the DMCA notice up their cloaca (rhymes with joemake).
@@moosesues8887 one child's creepypasta then filtered through 1000 other children attempting to make the same scary story, the quality will fall off quick 😂
44:04 I CANNOT get over the timing of the One Eyed Joe, first, Bonzi going "I warned you" with the buzzlightyear dot jpeg approaching and then the kill syncing with the COTTONEYEJOE
The first game is scary in the same way that Family Guy cutaway gags are scary. I love having the dev constantly interrupt the game to go "HOLY CRAP LOIS, REMEMBER MANDELA CATALOGUE? REMEMBER SONIC.EXE?"
Every single cutaway these games do to “spooky mario doing a scary face” makes me laugh without fail I don’t understand how they do it. Fuck analog horror, these people gotta work on shitposts because their comedic timing is excellent.
I think Mario is just to silly and wholesome to make seriously eerie like a threatening “It’s a me” is just gonna make me laugh no matter how scary you try and make it lmao
This is true because even the creepy stuff in the series happens TO mario/luigi, not making mario or luigi the scares themselves. Like river twygz bed, the ghost in 3D land, or kinda all of luigi’s mansion happen *to* the brothers
@@l-l all it comes to me when I hear Brother is that one ancient meme about the badly drawn victorian pigs eating oats "Brüther, may I have some oats?"
yknow i'd love a scary mario game that just has mario reacting very happily and earnestly and beating the crud out of monsters and stereotypically handling it in a mario fashion and over time the horror atmosphere kind of turns inwards as the enemies panic over how freakin' untouchable mario is
It’s funny how something like B3313 manages to be infinitely more unnerving and creepy than these .exe games. There’s only like… 3 jumpscares in that entire game. The rest is just great atmosphere and uncanny valley.
That is the only good Mario related horror that I’ve ever seen. And that one speaks to me on her deeply mental level. The whole Sam’s 64th personalized thing is kind of weird cause I can say I’ve had dreams of places that don’t exist in the game.
b3313 is actually good and made by talented people. these are made by relatively less skilled people who (probably) won't improve because of unearned egos
@@AnAverageGoblin that's a bit unfair, you can complement the b3313 dev without putting down these ones, because it's obvious that some of them have genuine talent and passion for what they're doing. for example, the smb+ dev did a great job on the custom sprites, and that fake out in the other game they made, with Luigi grabbing the sides of the world map, was pretty creative. most of all, it's probably only the first or second attempt at making a game by children who just want to put something out there and, while i believe accepting critique is necessary to be able to improve, this kind of scalding is demoralizing.
@@AnAverageGoblin The people who made these games are really good at pixel art. Like pretty damn good. But when it comes to story and gameplay.... Holy shit haha.
Creepy pasta games are interesting to me because none of it has a chance of being scary to me but there's some consistent tropes that appear: blood eyes, audio that is so loud it clips, whispering for no reason, hopelessly distorted audio you can't understand, annoying high pitched noises, saying "I am god", extreme color desaturation, fake glitches as inherently scary, etc.
They're always about a fucking ghost in the cartridge or whatever. To me, the scariest games are the ones that play by the rules and genuinely immerse me. 4th wall bullshit pulls me right out.
People dont know how to make mario games scary. You literally just make a normal mario game and then put a spooky dooky face in one level halfway through the game that you have to wait 4 minutes at the end of the stage to see
@@Faircraft3 my man I'm talking about Mario 3D Land and Treasure Tracker which have Easter eggs that consistently appear on "disturbing things that shouldn't be in kids games" lists
I wanna imagine the Buzz exe was just Andy trying to play with his toys when he became an edgy 12 year old. *"AND THEN BUZZ RIPS THE HEAD FROM THE ALIENS AND MAKES WOODY HANG HIMSELF WITH HYPER REALISTIC BLOOD"*
38:00 Literally waiting to get into Helldiver 2 atm and I hear him telling me to try again and Window + G Enable 43:59 The One Winged Angel Cotton Eye Joe timing is immaculate
At this point i'm convinced that they just call all of these games "Demos" because they have no idea how to properly end them, so they just make as much game as they feel like and then just tack the "thx for playing the demo" thing on. Which is totally fine if you ask me.
For clarification, Luigikid isn't the developer of these hacks. He's a RU-vidr and streamer that primarily makes content on creepypasta romhacks. All of the romhacks that say LuigikidEXEChallenge were made for a contest he held where people had to make creepypasta rom hacks.
The spritework is hit and miss. The monsters look excellent, but then there is issues like incorrect pixel size in those true/false faces. It isn’t entirely NES faithful which kiiinda hinders the presentation.
@@doodledangernoodle2517 You may be right but remember in Godzilla NES creepypasta itself the sprites "evolved" so to speak. Even the character in the story along with the screenshots explain and shows it progressively getting more detailed beyond what an NES could do.
It feels like most of these games are so cliche and poorly thought out (unless it's meant to be ironic of course) that they just become hilarious instead of scary
Some of them might sincerely be demos but I bet a few of them are doing the "early access" dev trick - claim its early access so people wont be too critical of it, then just never actually finish it.
I don’t get why so many exe-type games use SMB1 as a base. SMB1 doesn’t have a lot of room for any aesthetic or mechanical liberties without feeling weird since the limitations are so rigidly aligned with the experience. They all end up feeling so samey since they’re always limited to the same greens reds and browns with not much room to create definition or texture with them.
I just dont understand why so many horror and .exe games are so deadset on being as difficult, infuriating, and player-unfriendly as possible. So many of these games are just a chore to watch and probably play through.
the devs didn't realize how difficult they made their game. this can also be spotted in that one famous ALTTP romhack that was infamously difficult because the dev didn't have playtest them. whats easy for you might be hard for someone else or they just thought making you play through the UBER SCARY SO SERIOUS REEEEE sections repeatedly would make it more scary because they suck lmao
I'll put it this way... I play Mario Maker 2 a lot, and I played the first one as well! When I was a kid, I always made my levels easy for ME, and everyone else seemed to have a hard time with them. When I got a little older, I realized that I had to make them easy for me in order to make the difficulty feel regular for everyone else, but that's still somewhat of a challange to do. I think these people suffered the same thing I did. Making things they think are simply somewhat challenging, but to everyone who isn't them, it is unfair gameplay.
Idk why I didn't notice this but it's kinda depressing that back in the day Vinny didn't HAVE to say "it's fine if you enjoy this though" after every time he says he doesn't like something since it was kind of a given but nowadays you have to state that as a streamer or else you're gonna make people REALLY angry over very minor stuff :((
I'm taking a stand. It's not fine if you enjoy this. Genuine .exe fans, or at least the few of you that are over the age of 13: I'm begging you to play actual horror games. Please.
@@SenisPucker It's fine. Really. It is bad, but if you enjoy it It's fine. The thing is we shouldn't have to SAY that it's fine. Most people should already know and should not get butthurt if you say something sucks (not that you don't enjoy it, but that it sucks).
Yknow someone should sneak in that one pretty cool Cthullu-mythos themed Mario romhack into one of these. Though it'd probably be better as its own stream.
A random stranger on the internet's thoughts on these games (again): SUPER MARIO BROS. +: First things first, never make "up" the jump button in a Mario fan game, especially if you're going to have the run button be "X" still. That was some quality voice acting at the beginning too. The sudden bass boost distortion didn't help set the mood either. It kind of sounds like the TTS voice is saying "DISCARD OF THE CARTRIDGE OW!" The beginning with Toad was pretty much just the first level of Sonic.exe, just walk right and slowly get chased by the evil dude. It's also 10 times less threatening when Mario's Italian accent is actually written out rather than just written normally. Throughout the game, I got the vibe that the creator was either inspired by the Mandela Catalogue, the Walten Files, or both. Absolutely nothing wrong with that (I love the Walten Files), just an observation. The first time he died, I didn't realize it was the orange light orb that killed him, I thought that was some sort of background element. The Mario at 7:15 looks like it was drawn in mspaint in 5 minutes, which is a bit confusing because the other full-screen art actually looked pretty decent. Maybe it was done by a different artist or was going for something but missed the mark. Side note: I feel like we've gotten to the point in video game horror where "evil video game spirit who haunted protagonist as a child and has come back years later" is definitely overused. Even in older Creepypastas like the Godzilla NES one it doesn't really do anything for me. I like how the "HIDE" warning only appears on screen after the big scary Mario has started careening across the screen, might as well not even have a warning at that point. If that powerup really is the "Devil Wings" that gives you the double jump, maybe make them look more like wings, at least when Mario gets them? I didn't realize the powerup Vinny picked up was supposed to actually be the wings mentioned at the start because they didn't really look like wings, and Mario didn't get a pair of wings when he grabbed it. The graphic just kind of looks like the leaves on a Fire Flower. Vinny died a lot at the first part of that hiding level, but I feel like it wouldn't have been so bad if he or anyone in chat actually knew those were supposed to be the Devil Wings. During the underground chase part, I realized that at least some of the soundtrack was almost definitely made by applying an 8-bit/NES soundfont to a MIDI. It sounds exactly like the soundfont and kinds of remixes I made using that same method. Doesn't sound bad, but I would definitely recommend the devs learn how to use Famitracker to make the music sound even better. Though after getting to the part with the 3D foreground elements I realized that they definitely weren't going for NES realism. Mario getting his head popped off was kind of funny. Seemed more like a Mortal Kombat fatality. Ultimately, this is still definitely way more interesting than most of the other games in this pack from a gameplay perspective. There's a unique mechanic introduced every level, which forces the player to keep paying attention and stay involved. I also went to the Gamejolt page and found out that this was the creators' first real game project, so I can't fault them too hard for the game not being the greatest game of all time right out of the gate. That being said, overall I didn't really find any of this game scary, but I appreciated what it was going for. TOO LATE.EXE: More like "To Late.exe" (I'm sorry). The controls look fucked just from watching Vinny play. Granted it's hard to perfectly replicate a game's controls, but the controls look pretty questionable. That Luigi is pretty goofy looking. "Beady cartoon dot eyes" are hard to make scary. Also, I instantly recognized the Secret of Mana track. Kind of confusing that it's in this game?? I have to admit, Luigi grabbing and snapping the world map in half was pretty cool, even if he looks doofy. The music in the forest area was pretty cool, but after they used "Ceremony" and that SOTN track, I don't think I can credit the devs for that. BUZZ.EXE: I'm not even going to say anything about this one. The only thing I'll comment on is that the static looks like a photo of some asphalt or something. This truly was a Desktop 255PFVU moment. ANIMA MESSOREM: Fun fact: the title translates to "The Reaper's Soul" in Latin (or something along those lines). Right off the bat this feels like it's trying too hard. "This isn't your Grandma's Mario 85. He's the _Crimson Hunter_." As Vinny pointed out, the CRT TV filter is pretty bad. Also the minor key Overworld music does not sound right at all. It sounds like they looked up the G minor scale and then automatically transposed all the notes to that scale without manually adjusting any of them to make sure they go well together. The Fire Flower actually looks pretty cool. I'm sensing a theme with these games, with half of them being an SMB1-styled game where you get to the end of a level and have to run back through it the other way by being chased by spoopy Mario. "This is not Mario 85." Riiiight. Also why do they even show a right arrow when you're supposed to run? Is that just there to fuck with you and get you killed the first time? I might be wrong but it also sounds like the chase music is using the default MIDI soundfont. That was a horribly anti-climactic ending, even if it was a "bad ending" it was also just a shitty ending. RUINS.EXE: I really like the fucked up Cosmic Horror look this game is going for. The phrase "LUIGI IS IN YOUR PC" is needlessly funny to me. I was into the out-of-game puzzles until the "Press the L Switch" one. That one just confused me. Surprisingly, that's all I really have to say, considering this was probably the longest segment of the stream. It was kind of cool, mostly the visuals, but probably the most involved out of all the games. Overall, I feel like not many of these games are treading new territory. It feels like just the same horror game tropes we've been doing for years. Even Ruins.exe with its placing files in the computer is kind of not a surprise anymore. Like Vinny said, they're much more fun to watch than to play. It's also a shame that a good chunk of these games (in general, not specifically the ones in this pack) are seemingly just youtuber/streamer bait, made to get popular from Let's Players rather than made out of passion. There's definitely some good ideas in these games, but they're often overshadowed by cheap scares and overused tropes. I'd like to see more of these games actually try to be scary in unique ways rather than rehashing everything that's already been done before. If anything, these games need a little bit more time in the oven.
Id argue in favor of Mario 64 Classified and B3313 but the former is more akin to Analog Horror and the latter you have to go out of your way to trigger the spooky stuff.
My own personal headcanon is that these games are genuinely trying to haunt Vinny but he's too stupid enough to realize it so the ghosts give up and leave
Always love how these are meant to replicate a game made by a professional company programmed by veteran designers but always fall flat in that regard and are full of holes and mistakes that common amateur game designers make.
The weirdly sad thing about hacky horror games like mario + is that on the very off chance that someone were to actually have their soul bound to a video game cartridge there's not a chance in hell it would ever be taken seriously
aren't red and blue the absolute worst colors for giving someone a seizure? the unaware thoughtlessness of anima messorem especially is something to behold (if youre not in the hospital with brain damage from it)
i really wish so many of these werent just I THINK I AM RAZZDAZZLEDOO TRY MY GAME ITS UNRELATED TO MARIO 85 IGNORE THE PART WHERE YOU GO THROUGH ONE DASH ONE BUT THE SKY TURNS BLACK AND THE BLOCKS ARE EMPTY OR YOU HAVE TO GET CHASED BY BIG SCARY MARIO OR BIG SCARY MARIO KNOWS YOUR REAL NAME OR bla bla bla cus spooky mario is such a fun concept that you can do so many things with but nobody does anything to innovate ... its just reformatted whatever...
especially since the way these packs are put together vinny ends up playing the ripoff before the real one so it seems like a reissue of something you already did when it was the original in the first place...
I think it is literally impossible to make Mario creepy. He's too cute and happy. It's funny how mascots from the 30's and 60's etc can be scary, but Spongebob, Mario, Sonic are immune to being scary.