3rd May 2010, 4:46 PM
Well it was some cheesy platformer where you were a kid who turned into a chameleon, because it was "radical" that way. It was released when the SNES was already out I'm pretty sure. I know he rode a skateboard, and there were little panels floating around that were powerups for things like shooting fireballs.
I've read a lot of interesting things about the FDS along those lines. I've read VERY thorough documents all about both Dream Factory: Doki Doki Panic, SMB2, and Super Mario USA. It's weird that, considering saving had been removed from the game, they had to go even further and limit your continues to 2.
There may be some limitations in your emulator when it comes to disk saving. I don't know because I don't know about all the emulators out there. Instead of actually writing to the ROM as FDS games did, for example, it might make a seperate file (allowing those games to be "reset"). Considering I now actually own the original version of Lost Levels (it's still called SMB2, it's the Japanese ROM, and is apparently completely in English anyway, as many old Japanese games were for some reason), I may just "extract" it. It's easier than finding the ROM. As it turns out some nice homebrew person made a neat little PC app that lets you extract game ROMs from the various Wii Virtual Console files. Just copy them to an SD card, tell it what sort of system it is, and presto. I don't know if it works for all systems, but it seems to work fine for Genesis, NES, N64, and SNES games. I wish I knew where I found it so I could get an updated version. Apparently they kept the emulator mostly unchanged from game to game, so it knows what to look for if it just knows what emulator combo-file it's working with.
Anyway, for now I'll say that Lost Levels uses the same "continue" system as SMB1, hold down B (or A?, I forget the button) after a Game Over and you can continue from the last world (but not level). In SMB1 it could be done an infinite number of times, but it was lost when you turned off the system. In Lost Levels it seems to have no problem remembering the last world for this "trick" even after power is cut. "Seems" because it's, again, Nintendo's emulator here, so they may have some special bookmarking they're doing.
I've read a lot of interesting things about the FDS along those lines. I've read VERY thorough documents all about both Dream Factory: Doki Doki Panic, SMB2, and Super Mario USA. It's weird that, considering saving had been removed from the game, they had to go even further and limit your continues to 2.
There may be some limitations in your emulator when it comes to disk saving. I don't know because I don't know about all the emulators out there. Instead of actually writing to the ROM as FDS games did, for example, it might make a seperate file (allowing those games to be "reset"). Considering I now actually own the original version of Lost Levels (it's still called SMB2, it's the Japanese ROM, and is apparently completely in English anyway, as many old Japanese games were for some reason), I may just "extract" it. It's easier than finding the ROM. As it turns out some nice homebrew person made a neat little PC app that lets you extract game ROMs from the various Wii Virtual Console files. Just copy them to an SD card, tell it what sort of system it is, and presto. I don't know if it works for all systems, but it seems to work fine for Genesis, NES, N64, and SNES games. I wish I knew where I found it so I could get an updated version. Apparently they kept the emulator mostly unchanged from game to game, so it knows what to look for if it just knows what emulator combo-file it's working with.
Anyway, for now I'll say that Lost Levels uses the same "continue" system as SMB1, hold down B (or A?, I forget the button) after a Game Over and you can continue from the last world (but not level). In SMB1 it could be done an infinite number of times, but it was lost when you turned off the system. In Lost Levels it seems to have no problem remembering the last world for this "trick" even after power is cut. "Seems" because it's, again, Nintendo's emulator here, so they may have some special bookmarking they're doing.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)