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DESCRIPTION
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"The Bob-omb Mafia has welshed out on a deal with Bowser and it is up 
 to Mario to retrieve five of Bowser’s shells from the bob-ombs. In 
 this hack Mario--with the help of Mallow--must defeat a series of 
 bosses including a large Thwomp, two clowns, and a forest witch, and 
 defeat the diminutive mafia boss who is under the guard of two large
 bob-bombs and a vicious, bloodthirsty ant. There is also one puzzle 
 room, as well as a few side-quests."
 
This is a much improved version over 2.0 which itself was infinitely 
superior to the awful mess that was v1.0 (v1.0, I'm afraid, has 
permanently scarred the reputation of the hack). There are no new 
monsters or areas, but many changes have been made.
 
Welcome to version 2.3 of “The Bob-omb Mafia”. This new and improved 
version has more balanced mechanics as well as a more linear storyline. 
Monsters give more experience, so less “grinding” is necessary to hasten 
leveling up. Minor changes include slightly weaker monsters early in the 
game and some script mods. Also some items and treasures have been added, 
changed or moved around to balance the gameplay. Changes from v2.2 include
a new title screen, a switch that needs to be hit in order to access
Baba Yaga's room, and a minimum of 3 instead of 5 battles with Radish.

In other words, this hack is both easier to play and faster to complete. 
The player will not have to guess what must be done next, because v2.2 
places roadblocks to certain areas as a means of guiding them to where 
they need to go next (ie. a more linear storyline). Certain items must 
be acquired to enter new areas, and the difficulty of the monsters in 
these areas should reflect the player's current level. The final boss, 
however, is of the same level of difficulty as in v2.0 but still not 
impossible (in fact, quite easy with enough Bane Bombs, Ice Bombs, Red 
Essences and Power Blasts). Some item rewards have been switched around 
and/or changed as a way to sustain a balanced level of difficulty. A 
couple of items were added to the town shop, and two bugs I noticed in 
v2.0 were fixed: you can no longer run away from the green/blue wigglers, 
and you cannot skip the radish by jumping over it using a flashing dog as 
a platform. This hack also includes tile and solidity mods in the main 
town area for the three locked doors. That means the mod feature in Lazy 
Shell works without crashing.

The new version of this hack has all (presumably) bugs fixed, usage of 
world maps, new bosses, better strategy, two new spells, several new 
attacks, more organized and balanced gameplay, a more linear storyline, 
easier early battles, and faster leveling up.

FEATURES:
*35 entirely new levels
*50+ new overworld events
*100+ new dialogues
*12 new bosses
*several new items
*2 new spell animations
*actual game strategy

This hack most predominantly demonstrates the capabilities of the level 
editor and event script editor portions of the editor.
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WALKTHROUGH
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The file "walkthrough.smv" is an Snes9x movie of the author playing through
entire hack and getting all items and completing all quests. To watch 
the movie, you must use this version of Snes9x:
http://code.google.com/p/snes9x-rr/downloads/detail?name=snes9x-1.43-rerecording-v17-win32.zip&can=2&q=
If that link is now dead, try searching on Google for snes9x-1.43-rerecording-v17-win32.zip.

The following is a brief list of tasks which I recommend doing in their
designated order. The hack itself does a fair enough job guiding the
player through these in a reasonable order, but if you get confused
try following this sequence.

1.  Reach lv.5 in house
2.  Fight red thwomp
3.  Reach lv.10 in forest
4.  Fight yellow treasure chest
5.  Fight green wiggler
6.  Fight green stumpet
7.  Fight green jester
8.  Reach lv.15 in sewers
9.  Fight red treasure chest
10. Fight BB-Soldiers
11. Fight green belome
12. Fight green crooks
13. Reach lv.20 in plains (fight Radishes)
14. Fight green/blue Guy bros
16. Fight Baba Yaga
17. Reach lv.25 (fight secret boss)
18. Fight bob-omb mafia

WARNINGS:
*the treasure chest in the sewers connected to the 2nd area is a monster
*the treasure chest in the forest underground in the 3rd area is a monster
*touching or jumping on the green wiggler will trigger a battle
*all of the ant's attacks can be blocked except one

TIPS:
* use Yoshi Cookie on the green bombs
* there is one secret area
* focus on beating bosses before trying to get shells
* sleepy bombs and bane bombs have a lot of use in boss battles
* any extra coins you have, donate to the gardener, try to go up to 2000
* use power-ups before red essences otherwise they'll have no effect