arcade999 wrote:ÉDIT: wait wait, are you saying that you can break totally how mario works?! Cuz with your logic, I can said like
"Oh, but I CAN put an smb3 bowser at the end of a the very first level, cuz see, I don't needs to follow how those real games are working, and I CAN put munchers as coins, coins as lava, lava as peach, peach as yoshi, yoshi as Luigi, luigi as toad, toad by toxic shroom, toxic shroom by ropes, ropes by wart, wart by fire flower, fire flower by smb1 goomba, smb1 goombas by smw platforms, smw platforms by volcano lotus, make blind jumps, a goomba with 100 lives as the final boss and all the levels will contains tons of booms booms, because see, it's not because the real mario games aren't doing this that I cannot!!!" I mean, this is not ONLY mario level rules, they are VERY basics videogames rules; DONT start your game roughly with big monsters and bosses, because your game will be too hard, and won't be well selled! Also I never said that your first level should be a grassland; it was an EXAMPLE, Just don't start with lava and spikes and everything classic from hard last levels, because as I said, no matter what the videogame is (mario, sonic, rayman, goldeneye, angry bird, etc), the game must have a PROGRESSIVE difficulty to be fun to play.
I won't talk about your massive paragraph on sprite replacements that is completely unrelated to the topic you're trying to adress.
Game Design doesn't care whether you are SMB2-styled, SMB3-styled, SMW-styled or rayman. It only cares about what holds the game together. SMB2USA is a great game and it has a boss in every level. Hm. There has to be something wrong here, because you claim the game, as a result, is too hard, and
doesn't sell well.
Here's the thing, though. There are reasons for why you would WANT to have a boss in the first stage of your game. The birdo fight is the conclusion to the first level, a test on the player's abilities to jump and pick up/throw objects. It checks if the player has learned the game's mechanics. SMB1, SMB3 and SMW do not rely on picking up & throwing objects, so those skills aren't essential to be taught in the first stage.
Other games sometimes put a later reoccuring boss in the first stage to make the player experience a threat firsthand. Mega Man X comes to mind.
The "don't put lava and spikes" thing, too, is kind of a meaningless statement. What does 1-1 from SMB1 have again? Bottomless pits. What's the difference between a spike and a pit? You might survive... the spike.
There's no harm in breaking a formula and using its tools to shape your own creation. In fact,this is how creativity works. Take what you know and mix it in new ways. Think outside of the box. Figure out what's fun.