A Super Mario Thing

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Hey there Raocow, this is everyone!

A Super Mario Thing is an aptly named ROM Hack of Super Mario World by Talkhaus, the community surrounding Let's Player and YouTuber raocow. Originally made as a "tribute" to his hack-related efforts, it's a game that follows his at-times-surrealistic commentary to a T - even moreso if one doesn't know about the plethora of insider jokes with which the community could not help but fill the game. It was started and originally managed by Kristian, and later taken up in the management department by YoshiCookieZeus.

The game stars Demo, an armless cycloptic demon alien minion, which pretty much summarizes the nature of the game. During an attempt to purchase vegetables for her anonymous master, something goes wrong and she is sent to what appears to be the Mushroom Kingdom of the future, falling right into (or as it were, onto) a deep-seated political conflict about food and is sent out to create a peaceful understanding between the two parties. Mayhem ensues.

...Okay, so we lied. The real goal of the game is to murder the king of the Charlies (Chargin' Chucks), who is located deep within a volcano beyond a great veil of Nintendo Hard platforming, item puzzles, silly Touhou shout outs and other assorted obstacles.

You can find the game as an .ips patch on ROM Hack archive SMWCentral.

A sequel, A Second Mario Thing (A2MT), is currently in the works, featuring several new characters, and attempting to deviate from a Raocow based fan project to a more general fan project, as per request of Raocow himself. Demo also stars in another ROM hack, What the Hell?, by Raocow himself that is otherwise unconnected to ASMT.

Tropes used in A Super Mario Thing include:

• Action Girl
• Alliteration: Present in the ending as seen in Raocow's LP:

???: We have been awaiting the voluminous vegetal victuals, minion. We are so pleased you have finally returned.

• Advancing Boss of Doom: King Charles
• Advancing Wall of Doom: Pressure Point
• After Boss Recovery: The Very Definitely Final Dungeon has 2 mushrooms after each of the pre-boss bosses.
• Anticlimax Boss: Black Plague
  • According to Raocow himself, who designed that battle as a joke, what little difficulty involved was supposed to come from the time limit. The timer in that room is disabled.
• Arc Acronym: ASMT shows up in a fair number of levels.
• Armless Biped: Demo, Iris, and a good number of enemies. Arms are not appreciated in the Mushroom Kingdom of the future.
• Bad Future: The game takes place in the Mushroom Kingdom many years after the disappearance of all the familiar characters, with Mario missing, King Charles taking Bowser's place as Big Bad, and the Yoshis living as refugees.
• Bee-Bee Gun: One fortress level has cannons that launch bees.
• Bee People: Acting as minions for a snail. Yeah.
• Bilingual Bonus: Tête D'Feu is (Quebecer) French for "Head of Fire"
• Book Ends: At the end of the intro cutscene after you warp to the Mushroom Kingdom, you end up landing on a Charlie's head. At the beginning of the final stage of the King Charles fight, you end up landing on his head.
• Bottomless Pit Rescue Service: The credits
• Bullfight Boss: King Charles
• Bubbly Clouds: A whole world of them!
• Bullet Hell: Fittingly, Rumia and Yukari are about as close to Bullet Hell as SMW can get.
  • Panic in the Outhouse is filled with Bullet and Banzai Bills, making it, effectively a bullet hell stage in its own right. Notably, there are a bunch of coins that spell HELL.
• Call Back:

(at the beginning of the game) Demo: Oh dear. This certainly isn't a grocery store. What to do? (later, at the beginning of the bonus world) Demo: Oh dear. These certainly are not my master's quarters. What to do?

• Convection, Schmonvection: The big standout in this hack is level Overly Hot Beach. It's a beach...with lava at the bottom instead of water! Also, Boss Bass is in the lava, apparently a reference to Cheep Cheeps being able to survive in lava in Super Mario Bros 3 and Super Mario Sunshine.
• Crosshair Aware: Yukari Yakumo
• Cut and Paste Environments
• Cute Kitten: The fishcats.
• Cyberspace: Midway through King Charles's castle.
• Death Course: Trial of Iron
• Development Hell: A Second Mario Thing is (as of May 2012) very far behind schedule.
• Dude Magnet: Con and King Charles both fall for Demo.
• Dummied Out: Technically, the Yellow Submarines. See "Unique Enemy" below.
• Dungeon Bypass: Some parts of levels are skippable if you have a cape.
  • One glaring example is in Trial of Iron which has a door at the beginning which takes you straight to the final boss.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Demo first appeared in Raocow's personal Super Mario World ROM hack, What the Hell?, which he developed parallel to ASMT.
• Elaborate Underground Base: King Charles' castle takes place in a volcano, and is rather large.
• Evil Overlord: King Charles, in a sense. He reigns over nearly everything.
• Eyes of Gold: Well... Eye.
• Fake Trap: "the hardest lvl" is a parody of Kaizo hacks. (That said, not everything in that level is a fake trap.)
• Fake Difficulty: Trial of Chaos
• Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables: Radish, Cactus, Leek, and Popcorn.
• Final Boss, New Dimension
• Fission Mailed: OAME GVER.
• Foregone Victory: The credits, you can get hurt, but you cannot die.
• Game Mod: Super Mario World ROM Hack
• Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: Parodied with Black Plague.
• Gimmick Level: The later in the game you get, the more of these you see.
• Gravity Screw: One sublevel of King Charles' Castle.
• Gusty Glade: Currents.
• Hailfire Peaks:
  • "Below the Ice" contains ice blocks in lava caves... somehow.
  • The area in King Charles's castle with tides of lava AND water.
• Harder Than Hard: Parodied and subverted in the hardest lvl.
• If I Can't Have You: King Charles when he realises Demo's affections towards Con.
• I Know Madden Kombat: Charlies (Chargin' Chucks)
• Invisible Anatomy: Demo has no arms, despite the fact she can lift shells and such just like Mario would normally.
• Kaizo Trap: You are told to press L via coins at the goal of Overly Hot Beach. If you don't, a Boss Bass eats you during the victory sequence.
  • Red Koopa's Red Sparkling Death is filled with exit-spheres that cause Demo to walk into BottomlessPits.
• King Mook: King Charles the Fourth and Master Snailington
• Ladder Physics: With vines and fences, and without arms
• Laser-Guided Karma: The Revenge of a Much Abused Horse is all about this.
• Lethal Lava Land: King Charles' Castle, in parts.
• Let's Play: The game is unique in the sense that it was actually made (with some level of quality) for the sake of being LPed, with the LP predating the actual release. You can find it here.
  • Pink Kitty Rose does a detailed Let's Play of this game, sometimes showing off some dungeon bypasses.
  • Seems Japan has noticed the hack as well: Japanese LPer Ryuu tries his hand. Not many Japanese having heard of Raocow, though, means they are quite bemused by this game.
• Mad Libs Catchphrase: In a sense, the Switch Palace messages, which have different line at the end of their otherwise identical messages:

Red Switch: I know. It's amazing. Blue Switch: Seriously? Seriously. Green Switch: It's a thing. Yellow Switch: It's pretty rad.

• Marathon Level: King Charles' Castle, potentially. Trial of Iron.
• Meaningful Echo: When you start up the game--"Hey there Raocow, this is everyone!"
• Meaningful Name: Iris (who is the second player), Tête D'Feu
• Monster Arena: The Arena
• Mordor: Totally Rad Volcano, where King Charles' Castle is located.
• My Name Is ???: King Charles and Black Plague when introduced.
• Never Say "Die": Those aren't deaths, they are very much intentional demos.
• Not Good with People: Con when you try to talk to him in person.
• One-Man Army: Or armless cyclops lady.
• Our Monsters Are Weird: Doughnuts of Doom! A flying lighter that throws out enemies who don't want their heads on fire, torpedoes with Groucho Marx faces, Yaranaika Bullets.
• Palmtree Panic: And So It Began, Water Water Everywhere, Overly Hot Beach
• Pipe Maze: In a literal sense in The Switch Where Yoshi Jumps A Lot. Played straight in a later level.
• Platform Hell: Although the game normally qualifies as a Nintendo Hard hack, there is one section in King Charles's Castle that first of all, disables Spin Jumps. So? Well there's a spinning Koopa Shell that you have to jump over and avoid ... while in a room with a disco-light like dealing with giant spiked pillars, Thwimps, Thwomps, blocks that enemies can fall go through but you fall through, and Fishing Boos. Raocow even calls this specific room "Hell".
• Player Headquarters: Well, plot headquarters, And Then There Was A Resistance Base.
• Promoted Fanboy: Inverted, Raocow helped out designing some levels in the game.
• Raocow: Pretty much the reason this hack even exists.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Big Squee is so called for a reason.
• Ring Out Boss: King Charles, Spinning Sand Castle Thwomps
• Ruins for Ruins Sake: Munchy Plant Ruins
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Pink Kitty Rose's no death run.
• Series Mascot: Demo
• Sequel Hook: Added in the public release where Demo returns to her returns to her master's ship to find everybody gone.
• Shout-Out: The game is basically made out of shout outs to Raocow and stuff he played, such as other Hacks (2chan's Vip and Wall Mix series in particular), Cat Planet, Touhou and a lot of other things.
• Stationary Boss: Phase 1 of King Charles' battle.
• Stealth Pun: Raocow likes to call Yoshis horses. Some Yoshi Turncoats have joined the Charlie army. Put them together and what do you get?
  • World 3's castle, Chocolate Castle. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Trial of Chaos.
  • Trial of Chaos got heavily toned down and is much more playable in the public release thanks to all the interface screws being removed.
• Time Limit Boss: The World 7 boss. Good luck navigating that shell!
• Unique Enemy: The Worms' Cave is the only level in the game that has Blarggs other than the credits, and in one of the strangest examples of this trope, multiple enemies are only used in the credits sequence due to lack of coordination between level designers.
• Waddling Head: Tête D'Feu, Furba
• Widget Series: Inverted: Japanese Let's Players seem to be utterly confused by this hack.
• World of Chaos: As if the Mushroom Kingdom wasn't strange enough already...
• Voice with an Internet Connection: Con, your Yoshi informant.
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair