Well folks, time for another interview here at Gaming Reinvented! And unlike many times we’ve interviewed creators on the site, this one is very much in the same vein as the previous one.
Since like the Infinite Mario Wii interview, it too is about an interesting New Super Mario Bros Wii mod. This time, Super Mario Bros: Extreme Adventure, an awesome looking hack of the game with yet more creative level concepts, intriguing custom mechanics and other exciting additions. So, check out this trailer to see the game in action…
Then keep reading to learn more about the work that went into it, as well its developers’ ambitions for the project as a whole.
Let’s get started!
The Interview
With the question being about the team behind the project. So who’s involved in this one?
M: Hi everyone! I’m Mone and I’m the leader of the team. I am 17 years old from Italy and my role in the project is to create the final world, organise all the In-Game contents, guide the other staffers to what they need to do, provide most of the ideas and game codes to implement new features and improve the development ideas of Level Makers, guide the other staffers and above all to create the pages dedicated to the most common things about the project managing them in the best possible way.
L: A special greeting to all those who support us! I’m Lavrenzy and I’m 16 years old from Italy. My main role is Level Maker of World 1 and 2 but I also work on 3D models for my related Backgrounds, In-Level Decorations stuff for the Model Loader Sprite and also for SpiteTex styles, for which Mone dedicates his time to create the required code if it’s not already made by the Newer Team. I am also dedicated to the creation of the Koopatlas maps and the translation of the game into Russian (postponed for the Full Version) although we would prefer a native speaker to join to avoid covering too many roles. I can also define myself as the Major Requester of custom codes, all designed for the mechanics of my levels.
P: Hello! I’m PopCat_Productions, I am 14 years old, and I am from Spain. I have been doing the Spanish Translation for the mod and probably all of the Level Names in the game. At the moment I think that because the Full Version is not released, I will only receive the Names by Mone of the ones for a DEMO version of the Game written in English to become in Spanish.
J: Sup! I’m JacopoPlays, I am 13 years old and I’m from Italy. My main role in the production team is to create custom layouts for the game, but in the first versions of the DEMO I did the Beta Testing of some levels made by Lavrenzy and Mone.
And how did you get into gaming? What was your first game?
M: Nintento’s Games are all from my childhood, when I was young the only console I had at that time was the Nintendo Wii that I still have and sometimes I use it to test stuff about the mod XD. Other than this, I don’t remember which was my first game in my life since I played before the Console Games the common Android Games like Minecraft Pocket Edition, Subway Surfers etc. but I assume that New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 got a place in my heart immediately until now.
The Super Mario Galaxy games were some of Mone’s first games
L: In my childhood I never really opened up to the world of Nintendo, I often played the Hungry Shark series, Evolution and World respectively, and then moved onto Minecraft (first on the mobile version, then on Java). In the years to come I started Geometry Dash and Terraria, while when I started Rom Hacking with Mone, I became hugely interested in the Mario series, managing to play NSMBW, Newer SMBW, NSMBU, SMB DS, NewerSMBDS, SMBWonder and completing NSMB2. Recently, I also played Donkey Kong Country Returns and almost completed it.
P: My childhood is described in two words: Mario Games. My parents had a Nintendo Wii with Mario Kart Wii, and at only 4 years old I beat all my entire family in Mario Kart, so it is noticeable that I LOVE Mario Games. When I became eight years old, my parents gifted me a Minecraft Java account, and since then it has been one of my favourite games. After I became nine my parents gifted me Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 and, well it is my FAVOURITE game in the entire series, the OST, the innovation in that time, the level design and the story, oh men I cried the first time I saw the final of SMG1 and even now I cry every time I see it.
J: I got into gaming when I was 4 years old, my first game was NSMBW. While I was growing up I started to play other things like: Geometry Dash, Just Dance and many more.
What games are you playing at the moment?
M: Honestly, at the moment I’m not playing any games at all because I finished school on 7th June and started tryharding make stuff for the project.
L: At the moment, I’m playing Geometry Dash, but I’ve also started Sons Of The Forest (unfortunately not very graphically compatible with the computer I have).
P: Right now, I’m playing Minecraft, Geometry Dash, and yeah obviously replaying the 2 Mario Galaxy games after four years without touching them, it’s an unforgettable moment. And I’m trying to reach 5K points in MK8DX.
PopCat_Productions is trying to reach 5K VR in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
J: At the moment I’m playing Geometry Dash, MK8DX and some old Mario games when I’m bored.
What was your first experience with New Super Mario Bros Wii?
M: My first experience…so..I played the entire game alone at that time and it’s sad. But I swear, I don’t know what I ate in the morning everyday in my childhood, but in my entire life, the first time that I played the game I NEVER died at World 1. When I got to World 4 and up my first anger issues had the first start and didn’t stop until I got to World 9, I remember that I finished the game in something like 1 year or before.
L: Having started modding NewerSMBW first, playing the completely original version of NSMBW was a bit disappointing: certainly the levels were not at the peak of originality, and even worse, if compared to the worlds, which Nintendo always decides cyclically to put the same ones on.
P: My first playthrough of NSMBWii was very funny ‘cause in the 2nd world I discovered the ability to pick-up other players and throw them, so because I was playing through the entire game with my family every time I performed a difficult jump and my parents were struggling at it, when finally they arrived with me I threw them to the void XD. But I enjoyed the game a lot.
J: I don’t remember my first experience because 9 years have passed by XD. But I remember obsessing with my parents to get all the star coins because I was and am a hundred percenter.
Is it your favourite game in that series?
M: Obviously, the question above of this one replies automatically to this new one. XD
New Super Mario Bros. Wii forever. But the Mario Galaxy Games also had a place in my heart.
NSMBW was one of Mone’s favourite games
P: Not really, I really like NSMBWii but like I said before, Super Mario Galaxy really hits different, and it’s my favourite game in the entire Mario series, but I can’t choose between SMG1 or SMG2 because the two are a Masterpiece, in terms of story SMG1 without doubt, but in terms of content and enjoyability SMG2, because the purple comets that had the purple coins spread all around the galaxies really pissed me of XD.
J: No, it isn’t actually. My favourite game of the series is NSMB because even if i got it only 2 years ago it left a big space in my heart, but NSMBW places second
Onto game development now. How did you get interested in that?
M: When I saw Newer Super Mario Bros. Wii for the first time, I was shocked and got so many doubts about how it was made by the developers since it was really cool. At that time, In my mind the question didn’t arrive: “But if I try to make a mod?”
On a random day of 2022, when I was on call with Lavrenzy, I decided with him to start modding the original game first.
L: As Mone has already specified, in April 2022 it was he who invited me to carry out Rom Hacking on a Mario game that I had never considered before, therefore my first experiments if brought to light today, would turn the eyes to the experts. Luckily, I’ve gotten better at creating layouts and actual ideas as well as playing and discovering the world of Mario.
How about ROM hacking/modding? What’s your history with the hobby?
M: I started ROM-Hacking with Lavrenzy at the same period in 2022, at the first days we didn’t know anything about Newer Super Mario Bros. Wii and started making stuff on the original game, but after a short time we moved on to use all of the new stuff that the Newer Team made for the game like the new WorldMap system and much more that gave us new possibilities to upgrade our skills.
P: One day I was watching YouTube a video in my section of recommended appeared, the title was <> and when I saw the video I was shocked because I didn’t knew that there was a programme that permitted you to create your own levels because I played NewerSMBW before but I thought it was pure programming but since then I discovered that modding was easier then I thought and from there started a very long journey.
What are your favourite hacks of the game so far?
M: Newer Super Mario Bros. Wii, Super Mario Bros. Extreme Adventure, (of course XD) New Super Mario Lost Worlds (I’m also a staffer on that team), Luigi Land Wii and probably other mods that I don’t remember the name of now.
L: NewerSMBW, since for me it is the most moddable in terms of custom codes, levels and mechanics, maps etc.. unlike other ROM hacks that use the original game (NSMBW) as a base for the project.
P: Newer Super Mario Bros. Wii, Super Mario Nightfall, Super Mario Bros. Extreme Adventure, New Super Mario Lost Worlds, and my mod called Sugary Super Mario Bros. Wii that I’m developing with Mone.
Any others you’re looking forward to?
M: At the moment I’m not looking for new mods but at least if someone releases custom sprites or new tools about the modding. I also prefer focusing on the project now.
P: Like I said before Super Mario Nightfall, because the tilesets and BGs are awesome, but apart from Super Mario Nightfall no, focusing on my mod (SugarySMBW) and Super Mario Bros. Extreme Adventure is my priority.
Still, let’s move onto Extreme Adventure now. What made you decide to create this game?
M: As I said on a previous question, Me and Lavrenzy started on New Super Mario Bros. Wii exploring all of the possibilities of modding on it. At some point, we decided to make our first mod called Super Mario Bros. Alternative Kingdoms (Now the Extreme Adventure), where there were 40 WORLDS with different themes for each but since it was our first mod we decided to obviously reduce the content amount also because there wasn’t still not a story behind the project. Since the change of the name to the current one, we got an idea of what the project story can be and from October 2022, we started working on it. We decided to make everything on Newer Super Mario Bros. Wii to start because Me and Lavrenzy didn’t do something similar before since I have known him since 9 years ago and we always played Minecraft until before 2022.
Fun fact: He didn’t know nothing about the Super Mario series and he just started modding the game without knowing what was in it XD
Where did the name for the project come from? What makes it so ‘extreme’?
M: We called the mod “Extreme” because the main concept we decided to apply was that the levels needed to increase the difficulty one by one after beating the previous but in a different way like the original game. For “difficult” levels we never meant like a KAIZO mod or a spamming of enemies, but just something different of “hid difficult mod” in terms of difficulty in being able to understand the exact movements to be made in certain circumstances in the levels from the first attempts and this greatly influenced the loss of lives within the game and then being forced, after the game over, to have to start again again unless you saved the game at some point. Also the use of mechanics that makes the project as different as possible to other concepts used by the Newer Team or Nintendo it’s our target.
The name of the project came from the difficulty of each level being ramped up from the last, plus the unique mechanics
P: I’m 100% ok with what Mone said, honestly I don’t have too much to say about in which circumstances the mod is really extreme in terms of the difficulty since I joined the staff really recently. One day I was navigating in the Horizon Discord server, when I saw an application for being a Staffer in Super Mario Bros. Extreme Adventure, so I applied for the Level Maker role, (because at that moment I was very new at modding NSMBW so I didn’t know how to mod other stuff but levels.) I was in a call with a friend and I asked him if I should apply and he said, “yeah” so I applied and when Mone contacted with me to share him some other levels I had already made to see my experience, I sent him some levels and he was surprised (me also because I didn’t expect his reaction XD) he said me that they were really cool. But in the end I joined as a game translator to spanish, because it’s a very easy thing and they were searching for one. It’s funny to see that all of this was a total coincidence, if I hadn’t applied, I could struggle a lot if I wanted to continue modding, but thanks to Mone I know a lot more than before, and also a huge thanks for helping me <3.
One thing we notice right away is that the levels seem rather unique compared to many other projects, with things like the train level and factory-like levels standing out quite a bit. How do you come up with level themes for this game?
M: The project contains a couple of worlds that have different themes for each similar to a real life moment,season etc..
World 1 Theme is the Wild City in development by Lavrenzy and he made an UnderGround Metro Level that matches a real life thing adding the Boo as the main enemy to make it look haunted. World 2 Theme is the Music in development by Lavrenzy and he fused the Snowy Ambience with it using a Piano as the main object of the world, regarding to this the world name is Snowy Piano and for finish World 3 Theme is the Desert in development by me and I added the lava making it “hot and dangerous” with Dry Bowser as the main character of it and the world name of King Koopa’s Desert. If we take a look to the Opening Cutscene in the version 1.3 of the DEMO, we can take a look at the second picture where Lakitu says: “Moss, Snow and Fire are elements, near you, possessed by Bowser” and these are completely saying secretly what about the Worlds are.
Part of the opening cutscene for the game
L: Our idea was to distinguish ourselves from other MODs; let’s not misunderstand, however, since Rom Hacking masterpieces like NewerSMBW are unique and indisputable, yet they did not reflect our vision regarding the MOD; some customs levels are too “simple” and as if made specifically for Mario’s typical “jumpy” style. We wanted to make it difficult to tackle the levels, through thrilling mechanics to the point that players say: “How could such a difficult challenge come to mind??!”. Furthermore, it is also interesting how I thought of creating worlds that are not just “biomes”, but real “themes”. For example, the Snowy Piano world is a hybrid between Music and snow, also because I, who study the piano, imagine these two elements put together to form levels and mechanics perfectly in sync with each other.
Are there lots of new enemies and mechanics not found in the original game here? The train definitely looks new for sure…
M: We are using some Custom Sprites made by Synel: A member of the New Super Mario Bros. Wii modding community and, yes, he programmed the Train sprite for the Ghostly Metro level of World 1. Other to this, in the 1.3 version of the game there aren’t too much custom sprites but at least patches of original ones like the Muncher but with Rotated perspectives and the Checkered Spring Block that contains 88 different SFXs of Piano Notes recorded by Lavrenzy for the 1.3 version of the DEMO and re-done by Isaac. (An EX member of our staff)
Ghostly Metro is one of the most unique levels due to the train sprite
A snow level with diagonal Munchers from this game
How about boss fights? Sadly, complete custom bosses still seem like a rarity in the NSMB modding scene
M: For Custom Boss fights we don’t have so much stuff under the works except for one of them that we won’t showcase publicly until probably the release of the Full Version. ;).
Onto some other things now. How do you choose what music to use here?
M: Most of the music in the project currently used are from MKW, Super Mario Galaxy Series and Super Mario Bros Series. We always choose the song to use in the meanwhile that a level is in the works looking about how the difficulty level is.
And are there any completely original songs planned?
M: There is no Custom Music by us in the making, But!, before Isaac left the staff he made 2 Custom OSTs: One that will be used in World 3 and the other one for the Title Screen on the Full Version of the game. Hope you enjoying listening to them!
We’re also very interested in all the translation work done here too, since you don’t often hear of hacks being released in 4 or so different languages. How did this all come about?
M: Making different languages for us is like making the project to be more understandable for the people that don’t speak English very well or at least if they want to use the language they always speak during the Gameplay. And yes, it’s also true that a mod about a Super Mario Game multilanguage is very good to see and to play if the content is well made. All of this came because on our staff there are people from different cities that speaks French, Japanese, Spanish etc, and they gave us the idea of introducing other languages due to it now being possible :).
Are there any other languages you want to release the game in that you don’t have staff for yet?
M: I think at the moment we are only searching for a Russian translator, since we don’t have a native Russian speaker on staff yet.
L: My idea has always been to implement as many languages as possible, since I believe that adding them can bring many cultures closer together. Knowing only Italian, Russian (that I started the translation for it but, As Mone said, it’s better to search for a native speaker) and English, I certainly couldn’t do other translations, so Mone and I asked for German, Spanish and French. All three of these languages had characters already implemented in the vanilla game, but the same cannot be said for the others: Italian has accents that do not exist in the Level Info editor, and the Cyrillic characters for Russian were never added from Nintendo in NSMBW. I have already done some tests to add the characters exported from NSMBU, already starting to translate some sentences, but the problem lies in the quality of the character images. The problem will be solved in the release of the Full Version, with which we should have been able to add characters with better quality and translate the entire game, hoping to have already found a native speaker member who knows Russian better than me that I’m still studying it.
What are some of your favourite levels made for the game so far?
M: Honestly, I don’t have a favourite level in the project because we have the problem that more we upgrade our skills making them, that for how much this is a good thing, the more we think that the previous ones we make are not matching the current ones and we think that we need to remake them losing our time. Other than this, I think that the Ghostly Metro Level and the Snowy Piano levels have their potential.
L: The question is quite complicated, since I have several ideas in my head, which could leave the players speechless (I don’t know if from anger or amazement), so at the moment I don’t know how to answer.
Any neat concepts or ideas you’re interested in sharing early?
M: It always depends on us if we continue changing our ideas or if the content is supposed to be released as a preview to everyone. We decided that the next Sneak-Peeks that we will release will be only on Completed levels that if they will be showcased as a video will have a different duration depending on what the content is.
Are there any level ideas that haven’t worked out and hence got scrapped?
M: In the development of this project I never found what I really wanted to do and this led me to change the Theme of my world several times until I decided to create a desert dominated by Dry Bowser. Yes, to this question I can say that I have various levels and I believe that Lavrenzy also has an industrial quantity of them: Since version 1.0 of the DEMO my main theme has been, if I remember correctly as I don’t have the downloaded version, the Theme of Adventures and of the areas under advanced security where in this case I dealt with the Bunkers by creating underground levels together with the Vaults.
L: Obviously yes, I think I have more discarded levels than complete ones XD; the reason is quite elementary, and derives from what I call “awareness”, that is, the more things we learn to do, the more we want to update the old ones, also because we realise that ultimately those ideas were not who knows how beautiful, upon entering in an infinite loop that leads us to waste time.
Still, once the project is done, what next? How do you plan to promote it?
M: I was thinking about making it as an endless project: something like expanding it, making new updates that add New Worlds or something similar. But Honestly I still need to think about it because making another different mod, this time easier, is probably the best way to take.
What future plans do you have? Is a sequel in the cards?
M: As we can make a sequel, we can also decide to completely change the game to mod next time. Honestly, I don’t really know what to do next. XD
Btw of this, but I think that if Lavrenzy and I make other mods, we will each do them on our own.
L: Honestly, I find it difficult to think of a further project; I already find it difficult to dedicate time to the MOD, or when I do, I find myself in an increasingly dynamic conflict of ideas.
Finally, what advice would you give to anyone trying to get into ROM hacking, or game development in general?
M: Always being convinced of your ideas from the beginning is something that must have its high priority before anything, but beyond this you must always be satisfied with your work even if in the first few days you may receive criticism from other modders only because maybe a texture, level or whatever is not made according to the point of view of someone else who perhaps has more experience. Most people lose their will and motivation as soon as they have a negative bias, this is really wrong.
J: Surely if you want to start modding NewerSMBW you first have to “experiment” with the things you can do before diving into a full mod. Then you can decide if you want to make a proper mod and start organising your ideas from the beginning like Mone said.
P: When you’re starting you need to experiment like JacopoPlays says, if you make mistakes and your game crashes you should investigate the source of the crash because if you only undo what you did, you’ll never understand what was making the crash to happen and probably you will do again the same mistakes in the future during the development of your project. My advice is you to start with easier things to mod like levels, and let the complicated things for when you are more talented like hardcoded stuff, you need to be confident with yourself, and enjoy modding and whenever you have a problem or doubt always ask in Forums, Discord Servers or even friends that are more experimented.
L: Starting a Rom Hacking about a game or modding a NSMB Series game without ever having had experience can be a big effort, and not so much immediately, but only by continuing do you realise past mistakes therefore what I recommend is to modify and redo different tests different times until the result is the correct you want.
Thanks guys! That’s some good advice there, especially when it comes to experimenting with things and investigating issues with what you’re working on. Game development (and programming in general) has a lot of trial and error, and you’ll have to work with that to get good at things. So if you don’t have the patience to learn from your mistakes, you may want to pick a different hobby.
Regardless, that’s the interview over with. Hopefully you enjoyed getting to learn about the game and its development plans, and see what went into its development so far.
Still, what do you think? Do you have any other questions about the game? What other Mario hacks and fan games are you excited for? Leave your thoughts in the comments below, on social media, or on our Discord server today!