Ok, I've watched it now.
WARNING: ENTIRE POST CONTAINS SPOILERS DISPERSED AMONG A SHITLOAD OF COMMENTARY. IF YOU'RE ALLERGIC TO SPOILERS, SIMPLY DON'T READ IT YET AND WATCH THE VIDEO FIRST. I WILL NOT - I REPEAT -
NOT DISGUISE EVERYTHING I SAY WITH A SPOILER TAG BECAUSE YOUR EYE WILL NOT PICK UP ANY SPOILERS JUST BY GLANCING AT THE PARAGRAPHS. SO IF YOU CAN PICK ANY OF THEM OUT, THEN IT'S YOUR OWN DAMN FAULT. NO GO WATCH THE VIDEO. THANKYOU.
Gamechamp said:
Plus the shameless way he popped in archowl.com at some points.
Yeah, I agree with Gamechamp. That was pretty cheap. I get the sense that the person was doing it for stylistic purposes to draw attention to the fact that this was an amazing video gaming feat, but if you're going to go that far and bring editing into play - even if it's something as simple as adding text - then you might as well go all the way and do something like showing a picture-on-picture of the guy being interviewed afterwards and talking about it or something. That's what I would have done. Otherwise, there's no real good reason to draw the viewer's attention away from the video like that. Simply mentioning a website doesn't justify the distraction. It's a moment of non-committance in video production. Shoulda hired someone like me to make a decent documentary-like production out of it.
Also, it was clear that the person had good handles on the controls, but there were a few moments where it was obvious that he messed up but tolerated it and went on because the messups weren't so bad. Some intances of this that I can think of off the top of my head are the two times where he tried to jump through the princess'es stain glass window in the tower. He missed to the left of it the first time he tried going through it on both times. Also, when he was in there the second time and had to jump off the ledge to land on the path below, he bounced off the gaurd rail on his way down. Any shorter and he would have missed. There were some other things that were questionable too. In the Bowser lava level, the first couple of times that he jumped across the place with the fading rafts that where covered by lava and sidelined by flamethrowers, he amazed me by jumping on exactly the right points while avoiding the lava. But I think the third time he did it, he touched the lava, and I think it was accidental since the butt burning didn't seem to take him anywhere he wouldn't have gone if he didn't do that. There was also a moment like this in the third Bowser level when he was on top of the circular platform. I forget exactly WHAT burned his but there, but I remember seeing him getting burned and then going around in circles on the rotating platform while waiting for it to wear off. So I think that was accidental, since it also didn't get him anywhere he couldn't have already gotten without doing that. There's probably some other instances, but that's all I remember.
I'm thinking that to pull this kind of thing off, he probably had to (1) get used to the game for hours upon hours upon hours upon days upon days upon days upon weeks, months, and so on... (2) he probably had to figure out where the quickest and most convenient string of consecutive stars were and map out both his path to get those stars on the big map as well as how to get TO the stars on the level maps, and (3) he probably also had to map out the minute details inside the level of where the tricky moves would be and come up with a repeatable and reliable strategy to do the move correctly each time, along with some back-up or worst case scenario strategies of what to do when the move fails or gets modified. And then of course, there's the glitches which had to be mastered.
I think the most surprising thing about this video to me is the fact that he had to grab the bunny. I know that it was necessary to get that one big glitch, but still, I'm amazed that that was part of it because I know how difficult it is to get that thing, and I would probably take 20 min alone just to do that. Stuff like that adds a tremendous amount of risk into the attempt because it depends on completing one big daring move and there's little room for variation or recovery. It's like trying to get through those extremely tight places or dips in the wall in helicopter.
