Game

So, I used to be big into romhacking. I got into it in the early 2000s, on a website called ACMLM’s Board, and still occasionally hack stuff to this day. My main game is Super Mario World, which is funny cause like, I don’t actually like SMW that much. I’ve made a few hacks. But the things you can do with SMW are NUTS. It’s fully open to do anything. I always say you can do anything you want in this game.

There’s a whole community for SMW hacking. It’s called Super Mario World Central, and they put on romhacking contests every few months. One such contest is QLDC, or the Questionable Level Design Contest. Originally called the Awful Level Design Contest, they decided to change it because playing intentionally bad shit is unpleasant, but playing WEIRD shit is fun. This is a contest for weird, unique ideas that might be a little strange and hard to grasp, but can still be fun.

They’re not always fun or good. But this one is. This is one of the best ones submitted ever for the contest. This is called “My QLDC Level”, and is by Faro and MM102.

Game

So, you’ve played SMW, right? You have side scrolling levels interspersed by the world map. But what if the game… WAS the world map? Well, you can move in all the directions of the path on the world map, and we can also probably add a button for a run. But is that a game worth playing?

Turns out, yes! It goes without saying this turns SMW into a completely seperate game. It’s very unique and fun. It’s a collection of mostly single screen rooms with little puzzles and timing mechanics to move back and forth between the world map poimts and get to the end, or “the level”. There’s a level promised at the end of this, and lemme tell you, it is worth it.

Game

In the end, this is one of the best SMW hacks. It’s quite short, there’s an achievement for beating it in seven and a half minutes. But size don’t matter. It’s a questionable, but creative little hack.