Associated link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz0PaPpmGa8&fmt=18
The YouTube video above links to an amazing modification of the SNES classic Super Mario world. If you were to read this before linking to the video, you would probably assume someone simply took the game and either hacked sprites in, perhaps some swapping of music, or maybe just modifying the levels slightly. fortunately, the video above is an extreme of all of these traits of any game modification.
Adaptly titled "Automatic Mario", this video has spread vastly since the original posting on the Japanese site "Nico Nico Douga". The audio heard in the background is an original to the site, the "Nico Nico Medly", which is composed of a vast quantity of video game and anime music. Thankfully, to some, one individual took months out of his life to make a modification of Super Mario World to produce tones matching the original video's pitches. In a site that interviewed the creator, he said approx. 7 months went into creating this, and that was putting in about 5 hours per day of work on this, along with other daily work, and school. This brings us to a very interesting topic.
When do games become purely art?
Within the last few topics we have reviewed, gaming has become a persistant topic. We have often mentioned about games blending art and gameplay. The game modification presented has completely removed the gameplay aspect of the original, and replaced it with a purely artistic piece that is watched, rather than played. This takes the whole aspect of modding a game for visual and auditorial enjoyance, rather than physical interraction.
I love looking at gameMod videos. Since I first saw footage of Counterstrike, I’ve always wanted to work on gameMods. Once I got a chance to play with someone who had modified their Xbox and Halo to have shotguns that fired sniper rifle ammunition. That was a really cool set up and it made the game new again.
ReplyDeleteThe amount of time that person spent making that level mod shows a lot of determination. The best part is that he made the level correspond to the entire song and made each thing match very well. I would love to do things like this if only I had the time to sit down and play with games for 5 hours a day.