Review Information
Game Reviewed Super Mario Epic, by Jeff Silvers
Review Author Vitiman
Created Jan 12 2017, 9:27 PM

General Commentary and Game Overview
Super Mario Epic 2 is often hailed as a classic MFGG fangame that, while certainly not PERFECT by any stretch of imagination, is definitely a charming, polished experience - especially for 2004. Epic 3 was the stuff of legends, joked about its constant delaying and how much it would raise the bar in comparison to its predecessors.

But wait! Isn't there an original Super Mario Epic? I mean... you have 2, then 3... so that'd mean there is just a regular plain old "Super Mario Epic", right? Well yeah, of course.

Buuut maybe it's best left unspoken of.
 
Pros It's certainly not unplayable
Graphics work okay with each other
 
Cons Killing enemies requires a power-up that is just as quickly lost as it is found
Crappy platform movement engine
Unfair health loss inconsistency
Mediocre and generic, nothing terribly special about it
 
Impressions
Gameplay
3 / 10
Ah, an early Mario fangame. You know it's old because it starts off with a "Smells Like Teen Spirit" MIDI for Jeff Silver's old production logo. Geez, this game must be a dinosaur!

Anyways, as early Mario fangames typically go, this is unsurprisingly wacky in the gameplay department. You have Mario being unable to properly kill enemies with his trademark jump, instead relying on a Fire Flower powerup. This wouldn't be so TERRIBLE if it wasn't for the fact that it works like a regular old Mario powerup in that if you get hit even once, you can kiss that lonesome self-defense goodbye - and trust me, as the levels progress, the enemy placement pretty much assumes you'll never lose that thing (and/or somehow hold onto it between levels, which I never found out if that's even programmed into the game - nope, you can't assume here, this is an old fangame so "carrying elements between screens" was not exactly a given like it is now).

Thus, this lends to frustratingly boring gameplay. Didn't have fun here. Hasn't aged well in the slightest, moving on.
 
Graphics
6 / 10
The graphics are all kinda clashy but at least for their time it's nothing offensively bad sooo... it's all good? What else can you say, YI Koopas and Shy-Guys, SMW Mario and Plant Enemy Baddies, SMB3 Sun, SMB2 Pansers... it's basically your typical 1999 smorgasbord of old fangame sprite element guff. Could work nowadays if pulled off correctly, but else... ehhh.
 
Sound
4 / 10
Same old MIDIs. Same old sounds. Fun fact: despite having the CNC32 dll files required to run old Clickteam games without the sound glitching on you, the game still wound up doing the laggy repeating sound glitch anyways - I had to find the dll files in the Windows folder and slap them into the marioepic directory as well. Can't really blame that one on Jeff Silvers so much as the Games Factory executable being stupid, though.
 
Replay
2 / 10
A piqued curiosity and... that's about it. It's fun to see where such a popular and (in my opinion anyways) nostalgic fangame series started off with, especially since I never really played the first SME growing up despite it having been on the main site for a few years before SME2 even came out, sooo... it's a little odd that I haven't really played it until now.

Can't recommend it, honestly.
 
Final Words
3 / 10
Super Mario Epic 2 is one of the best Mario fangames of the pre-2006 Game Maker Boom, so you'd think maybe the game that preceded it would at least be amusing, right?

Don't hold your breath, kids.

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