Super Mario Epic 2: Dream Machine
| Super Mario Epic 2: Dream Machine | |
|---|---|
| |
| Developer(s) | Jeff Silvers |
| Announce Date | May 2003 |
| Release Date | September 11, 2004 |
| Genre | Platform |
| Players | 1 |
| Input | Standard keyboard |
| Medium | The Games Factory, Multimedia Fusion Express |
| Platform | Windows |
| Status | Released |
Super Mario Epic 2: Dream Machine is a fangame created by Jeff Silvers. It is the follow-up to his first fangame, Super Mario Epic. A sequel, Super Mario Epic 3, is believed to be canned.
Contents
Overview
Story
From the opening sequence of the game:
- After Mario last defeated Bowser, the Mushroom Kingdom returned to a state of peace. The Mushroom People were finally free of the evil menace that had plagued them for so long. They were eager to continue their carefree lives under the rule of Princess Peach.
- But...
- High atop his sky castle, the sinister frog Wart had invented a new device he called a "Dream Machine." With it he could send nightmares to any sleeping person in the Mushroom Kingdom. Now the peaceful days that the Mushroom People had enjoyed were overshadowed by their horrible, restless nights. Wart promised to continue his nightmarish reign of terror until the Mushroom Kingdom surrendered Princess Peach. Refusing to do so, the kingdom instead sent Mario to defeat Wart and destroy the Dream Machine.
Gameplay
SME2 uses the built-in "platform movement" engine built into The Games Factory. Unlike most games that use this engine, SME2 implements several features to bypass some of the infamous glitches associated with the built-in movement.
Power-ups and moves
In this game, Mario is able to take on two forms from classic Mario games: Fiery Mario and Hammer Bros. Mario (first seen in Super Mario Bros. 3). He is also able to stomp most enemies to kill them, a feature which was missing from the original Super Mario Epic. Mario can also pluck vegetables from the ground in the style of Super Mario Bros. 2.
Reserve box
Another addition to the Epic series was the use of the reserve box first seen in Super Mario World. Mario can store one additional power-up in the reserve box at the top of the screen, which he can call upon at any time.
Save files
SME2 allows players to save their progress in one of three different save files by going to Princess Peach's castle and entering the "Save" door. This will save their progress on levels as well as Advance Coins (their score, however, will not be saved).
Advance Coins
Another new feature in SME2 is the use of Advance Coins from Super Mario Advance 4's e-Reader levels. Collecting all five Advance Coins in one level earns Mario an extra life. The map screen keeps track of the levels in which Mario has found all five Advance Coins. Once all Advance Coins in the game have been found, a secret room in Peach's castle named "Room 12" is unlocked.
History
In April 2003, Jeff Silvers released his first fangame, Super Mario Epic. It was met with mixed reviews and quickly spread across the Internet (mostly on foreign-language European websites). Silvers began planning a sequel that would address many of the issues players had with the original's engine, including the inability to stomp enemies and the lack of essential Mario elements such as ? blocks.
Production begins
In late May 2003, Silvers began working on the core engine for SME2 in The Games Factory. This engine featured many elements painfully absent from SME, though it still used the built-in platform movement. Eventually, features such as static object enemies, ? blocks, and stompable enemies were implement, which would allow Silvers much more freedom in level design than he had with SME's engine. Early in production, he introduced Rage Mario's veggie carrying engine, which allowed the player to pluck vegetables from the ground, a la Super Mario Bros. 2. This was a feature that, at the time, wasn't included in many fangames, and would prove to be majorly influential in SME2's level design.
The first demo
In the summer/fall of 2003, Silvers released the first demo of Super Mario Epic 2, which by now was subtitled Dream Machine. The demo received little attention, though it was given two mostly positive reviews on MFGG. The demo featured an early version of SME2's first level, Grass Fields. The demo version of the level was somewhat different than the level seen in the final release, and the engine was still pretty far from what it would eventually become.
Production hiatus
Sometime in late 2003 or early 2004, Super Mario Epic 2's production went into its first hiatus. Silvers began pursuing other projects to prevent himself from becoming burnt out on Dream Machine. The first was Mega Man Vendetta, an ill-fated Mega Man fangame which was marred by a poor engine and uninspired level design. The next project Silvers pursued was Wasted Smiley Pinball (originally Jeff Silvers Software Pinball), a poor pinball simulator which used the ball movement object in The Games Factory and featured no realistic pinball physics whatsoever. The game was released in May 2004 to universally bad reviews. With two new failures under his belt, Silvers once again set his sights on his Mario fangame.
Production resumes and corruption ensues
Around this time, Silvers began to run into numerous problems. The Games Factory began to corrupt his source files seemingly at random, which would undo weeks of work at a time. This led to several instances in which Silvers considered abandoning the project out of frustration. When file corruptions began to occur on a nearly weekly basis, Silvers switched production of the game over to Multimedia Fusion Express, a program that was essentially the same as The Games Factory but less prone to file corruption. The file corruption incidences became much rarer after the switch.
Anticipation builds
In mid-2004, Silvers began releasing SME2 screenshots on the MFGG Forums. MFGGers immediately took notice of the game, and anticipation began to build. Subsequently, Silvers became nervous that what he was producing would not meet the high expectations people had formed. He pondered abandoning the project under the assumption that people would forget about the game if he quit talking about it. He was eventually persuaded to release a second demo. The new demo, the first public beta release since late 2003, featured Shyguy Hills, a level that consisted mostly of Shyguys, Snifits, and Lakitu. Though some complained of the difficulty, most agreed that the demo was entertaining, and Silvers decided against dropping the project.
The release
Super Mario Epic 2: Dream Machine was released on September 11, 2004, on MFGG and The Daily Click. It received mostly positive reviews, and placed third in that week's "Game of the Week" poll at The Daily Click. Like its predecessor, it began to spread to various download sites across the Internet with virtually no assistance from Jeff Silvers. Caiman.us added the game to their site shortly after its release, where it has enjoyed a constant place on the upper half of that site's Top 60 Downloads and Top 60 Average lists (to date, it has been downloaded more than 57,200 times from that website alone). It was featured on About.com, and went on to receive five 2005 MFGG Awards (Best Game of 2005, Best Level Design, Best Story, Best Secrets, and Best Setting), as well as two other nominations (Best Engine and Best Usage of Resources).
Trivia
- SME2 featured many Easter eggs and hidden references. Here's a detailed list:
- If you access the high plateau at the end of the Cheese Mountain level (where the ! Switch is located), walk to the very far right edge and you'll see Supertoad2k of sitting next to a half-eaten chunk of cheese.
- Walking through a wall in Wart's Palace will reveal Fanguy polishing a giant golden statue of Thunder Dragon while Fanguy's evil alter-ego, the Green Mage, watches on.
- In the graveyard, there is a tombstone featuring the image of "Soveryhappy", as well as two tombstones that read "KPP" and "Nightwing", respectively (both were members of MFGG who, at the time, were quite notorious for various reasons).
- When Mario plucks a vegetable from the ground in the graveyard, it is black and has a yellow face. That face is the "wasted smiley," an emblem which appeared all over Jeff Silvers' least successful game, Wasted Smiley Pinball (with the inclusion of the wasted smiley as an Easter egg in Silvers' remake, hiding the symbol in his games has become a sort of tradition). The symbol itself is an old image used in advertisements and logos for the band Nirvana.
- There is a Super Mario Epic NES cart in Macro Zone.
- Two levels, Kalimari Desert and Cheese Mountain, were also featured in the original Super Mario Epic (albeit in different forms). They are both also slated to appear in Super Mario Epic 3, which would make them the only two levels to appear in all three games of the Super Mario Epic trilogy.
- SME2 was originally scheduled for an August 2003 release. It was then pushed back to Winter 2003. It was then pushed back to early 2004 before Silvers abandoned the idea of having a pre-determined release date. The constantly missed deadlines earned the game the nickname "Half-Life Epic 2" from ShadowMan.
- A secret level set in a pyramid was about 40% completed before it was ultimately scrapped. Silvers also produced much of an SMB World 1-1 remake (complete with a forward-only scrolling system) before abandoning that idea as well.
- All levels were created in the order they appear in the game other than the Graveyard, which was created last. It was intended to be a hidden level along with the scrapped pyramid and 1-1 remake. When the pyramid level was removed, the Graveyard was made into a normal level. If it had remained hidden, it would've been accessible through a secret door in the Ghost House.
- The unlockable Room 12 was named after MFGG's Forum 12.
- The game was parodied on P-Switch Predicament.
