SMW Custom Boss - PERCHANCE FINAL BOSS ("Super Mario" from SMB3)

Download here. Perchance. https://smwc.me/s/38173 The idea vs. the man. So alright, I'm modifying the description finally to talk about the boss. I meant to update this sooner, but it is how it is. I was commissioned by ‪@Papanug‬ to create the final boss of his Kaizo ROM Hack "Perchance," and in total development for the boss took a little over 2 months of development to make reality. Super Mario from SMB3 has 9 main attack split across 3 phases: MUSHROOM Mario will jump and when he crosses over the player, he'll ground slam. In Phase 2, he'll do this twice. FIRE There are two variants of this attack. One is to shoot multiple fireballs, and the other rains fire. The amount of fire depends on how much damage Mario has currently taken. The fire rain will be displaced horizontally depending on the amount of health Mario has left. SHELL There are two variants of this attack. One is just to summon a shell and kick, and the other is the same thing except there's a fire wall that forces you to shell jump. There's a shocking lack of bosses in Kaizo that force a shell jump from you; at most you bounce on them normally. I can count the amount of bosses from one hand that's not just "the boss is part of a level-designed stage". TANOOKI LEAF Mario will run across the arena and start flying. He'll summon leaf shields that move up then aim at the player. It lasts longer depending on how much damage Mario has taken. In Phase 3, he'll throw these projectiles even as he lowers to the ground. This attack is exclusive to Phases 2 and 3. FROG SUIT (+ FLOODED ARENA) The stage will flood and summon spikes in the ceiling so you can't touch the top. Mario will aim across you horizontally 3 times, then he'll aim across vertically 5 times. This gets faster depending on how much damage Mario has taken. This attack is exclusive to Phases 2 and 3. TANOOKI SUIT This is a variant of the mushroom that will randomly select a position to jump to and slam 3 times. Unlike most attacks, this does not dynamically change depending on the damage Mario's taken. This attack is exclusive to Phase 3. HAMMER SUIT Mario will throw hammers at a wave pattern throwing far and close. This attack is exclusive to Phase 3. --- But you may be wondering, what happens during Phase 4? Well the last 3 attacks happen here. --- SMALL MARIO Mario goes on one final persuit to try to kill you, and will be upfront and personal about it. He's on a timer that dictates if he's allowed to jump once he's close enough to the player. If the timer has ran out, he'll jump. If not, you gotta jump over him. SHELL CHASE While in the previous state, he'll summon a shell and attempt to kick it. When he'll kick is consistent, you just gotta deal with the jumping. Once you steal the shell and throw it at Mario, the fight is over. In fact, the fight can be done as early as 2:30 if not for the final attack... MUSHROOM DROP This is a mushroom that drops from the ceiling. You'll hear the powerup drop sound, but it's not from your item box...it's from the boss's. Mario will be able to touch it, and the entire fight restarts back to Phase 2. There's only two ways of dealing with this attack: either kill him with the shell or steal the powerup for yourself. There's a chance Mario will jump for it, but if you bait the jump before the powerup is summoned he won't be able to. Fun fact: The mushroom drop was meant to completely restart the fight, as was requested. I argued that if it restarted the whole fight, it was no different from just outright killing you. So I took a note from Pizza Tower and only set the fight back to Phase 2. Keep in mind that everything I programmed was under the instruction of Papanug, so I gave him what he asked. --- Overall this is the hardest boss I've ever designed, and the reason I say that is because, to paraphrase, he was getting the boss the way he wanted it. So it was going to be a brutal kaizo boss, one arguably harder than most. Despite this, it was a fun programming challenge that tested everything I had done prior from the past decade of ROM Hacking. I had a tiny hand from "caw" discussing better ways of programming, and the three of us had to fix a few softlocks (especially with the attacks not being allowed to be called until they've all been called, aka a "deck of cards" system) but we got it out on time for release. As papanug stated on his streams, this boss is about 4000 lines of code, which given the amount of time I spend working on the boss, it's pretty bonkers. Despite this, I think the hardest coding challenge I've done was still creating a boss in 8 hours, as seen here:    • I remixed this boss in less than 8 hours. ...   (Timelapse)    • SMW Custom Boss - Holly Jolly Bowser (from...   (Result) This was the most taxing thing I've ever done, and it wasn't even close. I'd say this was the third hardest thing I've ever done (second would be making 7 bosses in ~omh~ in the span of a month). Overall, I'm happy people like the boss for the most part! :)