Hacker News Reader

Nintendo has a lot of clever hacks that Keen doesn't use: e.g., the 'trees' are also the 'clouds'. The 'victory' music is the Mario theme backwards. I suspect (Carmack and Romero are on here, and can totally correct me) that Keen has little music and plain grey backgrounds to fit into memory without resorting to those kinds of hacks.

View on HN

What? The cloud tile re-use is from the first game, and no part of any Mario game plays back the melody backwards to generate the victory music. The victory music is a distinct musical track.

> What?

Just ask for a citation or state a correction. No need to be rude.

> The cloud tile re-use is from the first game

That's correct, it's used in earlier games, it's not from SMB 3. The point about Nintendo doing hacks for efficiency purposes still stands.

> no part of any Mario game plays back the melody backwards to generate the victory music.

I've seen a video somewhere recently that showed how sound affects were re-used - some of the re-use went unnoticed for over 20 years. Trying to find it now.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com