Super Mario World:
The Second Reality Project 2 - Zycloboo's Challenge
Version 1.2
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Bugfixes in version 1.2:
-I set up the right sprite mode for the intro level. In the previous versions, Zycloboo's second hand showed up over his body, but it should be behind his body, like it is now.
-I fixed some issues in the level "Hotel Horror". The keys and the locked doors are gone, because it happened some time, that they just aren't working right, and I don't want that in the hack.

Bugfixes in Version 1.1:
-There was a glitch in the Midnight Canyon-level, so there was no way of ending it. It works now...

Important: This hack will not work right on ZSNES 1.42! But older versions like Version 1.36 and the newest Version 1.50 should work!

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So, this is it. After 4 years in the making, it's finally completed. This hack contains 91 long and challenging, sometimes puzzling levels, and there are 109 exits to find.

Storyline:
A One-Eyed Big Boo called Zycloboo wants to conquer the Mushroom Kingdom, and like Bowser in "The Second Reality Project 1" he wants to use the power source from another dimension called the Second Reality to get to his goal. To get Mario out of sight (or maybe for some other reasons?) he warps Mario and his Castle in the Second Reality. Mario's only chance to stop Zycloboo is to find the Power Supply station, which can give him the power he needs for the task - or at least that's what Zycloboo told him, heeheehee!

About the game:
The levels for itself are most of the time very "big" compared to the typical SMW-level. From the lenght, they have more from a Yoshi's Island-level. You can find a lot of hidden stuff here and there, dozens of bonus rooms and so on. There are also a few levels, where you can go different roads. Sometimes, the second route is more hidden and harder to beat, but it will lead to a secret exit. There are a lot puzzles in the hack as well, but with one major exception near the end of the game they aren't on the normal route, which means the secret levels are usually more puzzling than the normal ones, but very often they are also more "special".

Unlike my first hack, this time it's not neccessary to find all the hidden Switch Palaces to beat the final boss, but it could be helpful to find them nevertheless. If you stay just on the normal route (without finding any secret exit) you can complete the game after 55 levels. But in that case, you would leave out 36 additional levels. You see, there is much to explore. ;)

About the worlds... nothing outstanding here:
World 1 is the typical grassland-World,
World 2 is the typical Forest-World,
World 3 is the Beach and the Desert,
World 4 and 5 aren't really themed. Here you can find Ice-, Canyon-, Cheese-level and whatever.
World 6 is the Venom Underground World, which contains some of the first levels I did for this hack. 
World 7 is the typical futuristic Base-World, with some underground parts (World 7 covers two submaps).


Some other things you should know...
I know that I have quite a few different graphic styles in the hack. I wouldn't do it this way, if I would start a hack today, but what done is, is done, and frankly I don't care that much about that. I really enjoyed taking the GFX from some of my alltime-favourites and creating some levels with that, so it doesn't bother me much. ^^
Maybe you know my first hack, and if yes, you already know that I like long and challenging levels. The difficulty-level in this hack is almost the same as in the first one, I would say, but I'm not very sure about that.But I think, everything is possible here, even without savestates (But it's nothing wrong to use them, since the levels are very long - too bad, that you can only have one midway point, that really sucks). So, if you like to simply run from the left to the right in some short levels to beat the game after one day of playing, that's definetely not the right hack for you. This one needs time if you want to find everything. ;) 


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About glitches/bugs in this hack:
-There aren't that much glitches in the hack (I think), the only problem that appears here are and there in some levels are related to the palette and the colors, so that means sometimes the colors aren't fading all to black at the level-end or in some few cases the status-bar have different colors than usual... and something like that, nothing major, it doesn't affect any gameplay.

-After you've found 99 exits, the title screen will say A0 instead of 100. This will continue in this way until you reach the highest amount of exits, which is 109.

-In addition, there are small troubles with the end credits. Besides a short "Lose a life"-single at the beginning there is no music during the credits. The end credits-sequence is flickering a little bit, but only on ZSNES, for whatever reason, but it's nothing major either. And, after the Yoshi-hatch-sequence the sequence fades to black in a very weird way, and after that the game will end, there is no "Cast"-sequence anymore.

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Last but not least I wish to thank a few people who helped me out a lot in the last 4 years:

-First, FuSoYa. Without Lunar Magic, I would have never been able to hack this game.
-jonwil, because of Block Tool of course, but not only because of that. He offered me some help with my hack some time ago, and since I couldn't get the ON/OFF-controlled blocks in my hack (it was much harder to do that these days) I asked him, if he could help me with that, and so he inserted the blocks for me. Many thanks!
-Bouche, of course, since this hack is based on Demo World 3 because of the different music. Normally I prefer the SMW-music, but since my first hack already had the SMW-music I decided to use the Demo World 3-hack for some variety.
-Devin432. Some time ago this guy created a block which could be destroyed by throwing a goomba at it. Later, I replaced the block with the "Sprite Smashable brick", but I want to thank him nevertheless, because he was the first at the time who created a block like this.
-Surlent, he helped me understanding Block Tool a very long time ago, hehe. ^^
-Smallhacker, for the Status Bar editor. I did nothing special with the Status Bar (because I think it is good in its current form), but I changed some minor details to make some palette-problems with the Status-Bar easier fixable.
-Glyph Phoenix, for his "Counter Break Y"-patch. He created the "Counter Break"-patch a while ago, this patch resets Yoshi status, powerup status, item box status, and coin status every time you change levels. I asked him, if he could create a patch, which only resets the Yoshi-status (so you can't go with him in different levels) and he was kindly enough to help me out with that!
-icegoom, he created a special sprite-GFX for me... for which sprite... I don't tell, lol.
-mikeyk, he created Sprite Tool, and besides that he fullfilled a request of mine and created a friendly Mega-Mole-sprite for this hack.
-Davros, he created the "Normal shooter"-sprite.
-BMF54123, he helped me out a lot with creating the "Slowdown-fix", because this was something this hack really needed. Thanks to a lot custom blocks, the slowdown in some level areas was almost intolerable, so I'm very glad that I was finally able to get rid of the slowdown-problem. BMF54123 did also the "Fade-Fix"-patch, which I'm also using in this hack.

In addition I would like to thank all the people on AcmIns Board, who helped and supported me as well. Without all your help this hack would not be what it is right now.

I would also like to thank Nintendo for Mario,
Sega for Sonic,
HAL for Kirby,
Mindscape for Alfred Chicken
and Sunsoft for creating the allmighty Powercats without knowing it, lol.

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And now, 
enjoy the hack... ;)


FPI Productions
2002-2006
www.fpi-productions.de
