Something (ROM Hack)

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Something is the name of a Super Mario World Rom Hack by Yogui, known for its well-made levels.

The plot is... there is none, because someone went and stole it, and it's up to Mario to thwart whoever the villain is and retrieve it. It's slightly oddball in that aspect - just as well, since many people know of the ROM hack series from raocow's playthroughs of the games.

Yogui also created a sequel, Something Else, which focuses on Luigi and his adventures in another world.

The patch can be found here.

Not to be confused with the various other somethings around here, such as a song by Aerosmith, a song by Andrius Pojavis, a song by The Beatles, a song by Dark Lotus, a song by Escape the Fate, a song by Girl's Day, a song by Joe Cocker, a song by Lasgo, a song by the Move, a song by Shakira, or a song by TVXQ.

Tropes used in Something (ROM Hack) include:

• Abhorrent Admirer: The pink Rip Van Fish that appear in "The Only Water Level" chase Mario as usual if woken up. Their sleepy Zs are replaced with hearts, and the creator suggests that they're dreaming about finding love.
• Acrofatic: Bow-- er, Ballser speeds up during the last phases of his boss fight, including gaining a pair of wings to become even faster, and uses his weight to create earthquakes and stun-lock Mario.
• Action Bomb: In addition to Bob-ombs, the pink Bullet Birds, the red Bomb Boos and the dull red Yoshi Koopas explode.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The game brings up the save prompt after level completion, as opposed to only after a Ghost House, Castle or Fortress level.
• Author Appeal: Yogui likes to put crude penises in various places. He also likes the Mega Man series, with many references to those games appearing throughout the Something series.
• Author Avatar: Yogui's Avatar shows up when you achieve 100% Completion and congratulates you for completing the game.
• Auto-Scrolling Level:
  • "Perilous Ice" which is made even more dangerous than normal because of the ice physics, Pokeys and tiny Mario clones. Luckily, Yoshi is there to make things easier, and you'll need him for the Switch Palace exit.
  • "Vertical Chao", where Mario has to dodge many enemies and obstacles while riding on a very tiny platform.
• Big Bad: Ballser is the one responsible for stealing the plot.
• Book Ends: The game begins with a text blurb about the stolen plot, and ends with a description of the plot itself.
• Boring Return Journey: Mario calls a taxi and heads back to the Mushroom Kingdom after recovering the plot scenario from Ballser.
• Born as an Adult: Some of the eggs in "Kinder Surprise" hatch into Pidgit Bills, Masked Koopas and Caped Koopas.
• Boss Arena Idiocy:
  • The boss of the Chateau du Vent has plenty of throw blocks in its arena. If these blocks were replaced with an ordinary platform, the boss fight would be impossible.
• Boss Rush: The True Final Boss level. To make things more difficult, you'll have to do it as Small Mario.
• Breath Weapon: The Sakura Tori is a pink bird that spits fireballs at its foes.
• Brutal Bonus Level: As is standard with Super Mario games and ROM hacks.
• Bullet Hell: The boss of "Yōsu no Tera", who forces Mario to dodge patterns of sprite-swapped bullets in a room of spikes.
• Cool Shades: All of the Galoombas wear shades, not unlike their appearance after beating the Special Zone in the original Super Mario World.
• Collection Sidequest: One level has a gatekeeper that requires you to collect 75 of a given item to gain passage. The level has an alternate exit, making this sidequest optional.
• Cyclopean Creature: One enemy is a Banzai Bill sprite-swap with one red eye covering its face.
• Double Jump: When Yoshi is hatched for the first time in Happy Horse Bridge, he says not to drop him in a pit. Guess what you have to do to access either of the level's exits.
• Eternal Engine: "The Space Hideout", whose graphics are ripped directly from Scrap Brain Zone Act 2.
• Evil Knockoff: Small hostile Mario clones appear as enemies, and are spriteswaps of Monty Moles.
• Excuse Plot: The plot of Something is to retrieve the plot stolen by Ballser, which turns meta when Mario reads the sheet describing the plot of the game.
• Faceless Eye: Bigeye is a giant eyeball who is quite easy to beat.
• Feathered Fiend: The Pidgit Bills and Bullet Birds, which get a Mario-seeking variation and an exploding variation respectively.
• Frogs and Toads: Amphibian enemies that are immune to fire and ride on pogo sticks appear throughout the game.
• Fundamentally Funny Fruit: Jumping Piranha Plants and regular Piranha Plants appear as pumpkins, borrowed from their appearance after beating the Special Zone in the original Super Mario World.
• Gender Flip: The Rip Van Fish are edited to be pink, and their sleepy Zs are replaced with hearts.
• Generic Doomsday Villain: Ballser. In fact, the scenario describing the game does not even mention his name at all.
• Gimmick Level: All of the levels have a unique gimmick to make them stand out, which is considered one of the selling points of the hacks.
• Gratuitous Japanese: "Yōsu no Tera", which may roughly translate to "Temple of Signs".
• Green Hill Zone: An unusual example in "Night Of Spikes".
• Gusty Glade: "Chateau du Vent" has wind constantly blowing in from the east, making rightward movement much more difficult.
• Goomba Springboard: As with most Super Mario World hacks.
  • In "Bouncing Training", Mario has to jump on Koopa Paratroopas to cross the wide gaps and the lava pits.
  • Spin-jumping off Torpedo Teds is the primary gimmick of "Pain Fortress".
• Hailfire Peaks: World 4 is a desert/ice world. In "So Sand or Snow?", Mario can use pipes to switch between the desert and ice halves.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Wigglers as usual.
• Hard Mode Filler: "B Ghost House" is a remix of the first half of "A Ghost House", but with black fog, Pidgit Bills, and no coins to indicate the locations of the ceiling smashers.
• Helpful Mook: Punches serve this purpose in "Punches on Cold Ice" - their punches do no damage to Mario, but send him flying quite a bit, and Mario must uses this to cross the vast gaps in the level.
• Irritation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery: Masked Koopas re-use their Mario-like appearance from the original Super Mario World after beating the Special Zone in that game.
• Invincible Minor Minion: Gordos, Munchers, and Spikitus. The level "Hungry Vegetation" is infested with Munchers in particular.
• Invincibility Power-Up: The Super Star, whose them is a remix of "You Spin Me Right Round". The invincibility lasts only a few seconds.
• King Mook:
  • Von Toad II is the leads of the frogs encountered in the game, and uses a UFO rather than a pogo stick.
• Kung Fu-Proof Mook: Spikitus and Spike Magikoopas can't be stomped, and are immune to fireballs as well.
• Lethal Lava Land:
  • In the first half of "Skulls Cave", Mario has to dodge obstacles while riding a one-block wide skull raft over a river of lava.
  • "Chateau du Feu", which uses the graphics of Fire Man's level from Mega Man 1.
  • "Intestinal Problem" combines this with Womb Level.
• The Lost Woods: World 3 takes place in a forest. Like the Forest of Illusion, there are many secret exits.
• Mad Scientist: Von Toad II, who is the inventor of the machines that he rides in the series.
• Magic Mushroom: "Hasardous House" is a level based around the ? Mushroom, a new item whose effects are randomized.
• Man-Eating Plant: The Munchers and Pumpkin Plants.
• The Maze: "The Maze of Ice Cubes".
• Mordor: The last world is a dark-grey field, with levels including a Ghost House filled with ? Mushrooms, an obstacle-filled Fortress, and Ballser's Castle.
• Nerf: Yoshi can no longer be kept between levels, which is done to avoid making the game a cakewalk.
• Neon Sign Hideout: Bowser Ballser's Castle.
• Nostalgia Level:
  • According to Yogui, Oldschool Temple is a level from an unfinished hack, so its quality is worse in comparison to the other levels in Something.
  • Else Castle :3 has Yogui's previous contest level entries combined into a single level and randomized, similar to Chocolate Island 3 in Super Mario World.
• Odd Name Out: The Chateau level names are based on the elements in the French language (Feu, Eau, Vent, and Terre), but the final Chateau has the name of Chateau Finale.
• Our Mermaids Are Different: The mermaids in Something are sprite-swaps of the helpful Dolphins that only appear in the secret path of the Mysterious Maze.
• Pipe Maze: Pipes n' P-Switches, which is based around retrieving P-Switches to get rid of the coin blocks and Munchers.
• Post End Game Content: The bonus worlds in all of the Something Series. Something even advises you to complete the game before taking on the bonus world when you press the Switch Palace in World 4.
• Punched Across the Room: Used as the main gimmick in Punches on Cold Ice. Mario has to be punched by the titular enemies in order to cross the massive pits.
• Ratchet Scrolling: Kinder Surprise, which makes dodging the Kinder Surprise eggs much harder.
• Ribcage Ridge: Skulls Cave, which happens to be a reference to Skull Man's level in Mega Man 4.
• Shout Out: See this page for a list.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World:
  • "Perilous Ice", which is also an Auto-Scrolling Level. It's also the location of one of the Switch Palaces.
• Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom:
  • Chateau de la Terre is filled with big smashers, and the platforming is extremely difficult.
• Space Zone: "A Day in Space" is a mix of this and Green Hill Zone, and is a Brutal Bonus Level with an abundance of Munchers and pits.
• Spikes of Doom:
  • Night of Spikes. The only enemy around is the Tick and most of the obstacles are spikes.
  • Hell Ship in the Sky has a Spikitu toss Homing Pidgit Bills. Another one joins and makes things worse.
• Spike Shooter: Tick. It appears only in Night of Spikes, and they attack Mario if he's above them.
• The Spiny: In addition to the usual Spiny, there's now a kind of Lakitu called Spikitu. They have spikes for hair.
• Storming the Castle: Mario has to storm the Elemental Chateaus at the end of each world.
• Super-Persistent Missile: The Homing Pidgit Bills. They're featured in Hell Ship in the Sky and they will always aim for Mario's position, no matter what. Later on, Spikitus start throwing them.
• Tactical Suicide Boss: If Von Toad II didn't send in his toad minions during the boss fight against him, attacking him when his saucer rises higher would be impossible.
• Temple of Doom:
  • Oldschool Temple in. The graphics come from the Pyramid Levels in Super Mario Bros. 2 and the Labyrinth Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog, and the music is a remix of Marble Garden Zone Act 2 from Sonic the Hedgehog 3. The level is filled with large pits in the first half, and Thwomps and spikes in the second half.
• Title Drop: The word "Something" appears in a block formation in "Fuzzy Tower" and "So Sand or Snow?"
• Toothy Bird: Bird enemies that are sprite-swaps of Rip Van Fish appear in The Last Castle.
• Under the Sea: There is an aquatic section in Lost Path's switch palace exit, made difficult by the presence of Phantos. There's also the aptly-named "Only Water Level", which is the only level to consist entirely of underwater sections and has a unique blue Angry Sun pursuing Mario at all times.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change:
  • Yosu no Tera has a section where Mario has to use the P-Balloon in order to navigate the pseudo-shoot 'em up section.
• The Von Trope Family: Von Frog II.
• Warmup Boss: The four Red Birdos are no stronger than most Mooks, and go down very easily.
• Wrap Around: "A Trip in A Tree" is an homage to World 5-3 from Super Mario Bros. 2, including the Bob-Omb and Albatoss enemies.