Review Information
Game Reviewed Super Mario Star Search, by Yoshiguy
Review Author Vitiman
Created May 23 2016, 7:11 PM

General Commentary and Game Overview
Let me fill you in on a little backstory in attempting to run this game. Originally, I was just going to download it and give it an install. Not ideal, but what's the harm, right? Weeeellll... it didn't even want to work. I tried setting the compatibility mode back a few settings, even tried 256 colour mode (although I regret doing so as it's a pain in the arse to set that back after you do it once), but nothing would get it to just install.

So I was left with two options: give up and consider this the fangame that couldn't be reviewed, or be stubborn about it and try to run it in a virtual machine. Now of course, I'm not THAT stubborn - I happened to have a Windows 98 VM ready and willing for whatever reason, so it's not like I set one up /just/ to run this old, likely mediocre fangame. That said, I did go out of my way to get it to work after that:

First, the mouse refused to work properly. This seemed to be a leftover issue regarding the original VMWare Tools I added on and I had to fiddle in the VM's configuration file to get that working. Second of all, I couldn't download the game! I tried everything, ranging from hoping MFGG would work in Internet Explorer 4 (newsflash: it doesn't) to copying the direct download link hoping that would work (critical update: it didn't). I eventually had to resort to downloading an older version of the Opera browser just so I could get on MFGG, albeit rather crudely, and download the game. Thankfully, from there it was mostly smooth sailing... minus the part where WinZIP started acting up for a bit. That confused me a ton.

So after ALL that trouble, was getting this game to work even worth it?

No. Not even kind of. More at 11:
 
Pros The song chosen for the first level was neat!
I like the concept
Graphics were decent enough
 
Cons As per usual, too many to list here
 
Impressions
Gameplay
2 / 10
Take a simple concept: a Mario platformer involving collection some stars scattered throughout the level, and then make it relatively straightforward - in this case, no backtracking, as the stars are laid out from start to finish more or less right in front of you each time you find one. This should be an alright game to play, right?

You'd be wrong. For SOME reason, and I'm not sure if it was my virtual machine or the game (going by a comment left by Frogjester, it might actually be the game), it would just speed up randomly after freezing randomly, and there was no apparent reason WHY it just... would.

Aside from that, the platforming engine itself is buggy and jittery. I kept swinging from one direction to the other constantly, and it was really hard to make jumps - sometimes, I'd be stuck moving forward as if my velocity was stuck in gear. Absolute madness.

All in all, unremarkable, mildly creative, poorly made.
 
Graphics
3 / 10
Like with the gameplay, nothing truly remarkable here. It's just your typical graphics you'd see in fangames of the time, and probably one of the first instances of the now famous Ninja Custom Mario graphics! Obviously not THE first, but definitely one of the first.

The graphics work together, even though tiling yet again has some gross cut-offing, even for the era. It's almost as if people couldn't be half-arsed to find the end ground tiles for the left and right sides!
 
Sound
5 / 10
Best part of the game was probably the unique musical choices. I don't know what that song was in the first level, but I actually really liked it a lot! The other music choices weren't too bad, and all in all it was a decent effort.

SFX were bland, typical stuff from this era, though. Can't say that's either for or against it, so the score remains the same.
 
Replay
1 / 10
After all the trouble I went through to even play this, are you kidding me? Again? No, absolutely not. I refuse, and you should too.
 
Final Words
2 / 10
I had to tinker with a Windows 98 Virtual Machine in VMWare just to play this game, and I won't hesitate to tell you it wasn't worth it in the slightest. Go play some other old fangame, because this one isn't only a pain to setup nowadays, it's not even good to make up for it.

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