I should mention that there is no music on the title screen. The font and the graveyard only compound the sinister atmosphere.
Okay, that's pretty cheesy. Determination is the easy joke (because you know, I've already referenced Toby Fox) but while elegant violence sounds cool, it gave me this image when I went to look it up on google images:
Like that is perfect. I should also mention that the first letter of each sentence lines up to spell "MURDER", which is both cheeky and brilliant at the same time.
Oh no, the screen is covered with evil trees, sixes and
there's a Boo!!
All joking aside, let's get this started.
[Current OST: The Haunt - Entrance]
I have no idea if this song is from something or Kc made an entirely new song just for The Haunt, but I love it either way. It sets up the mood
perfectly, especially with how they removed the normal Super Mario World HUD to enhance the atmosphere.
The graphics are equally impressive. The black sky, the rain and the new Boos all make this wonderfully spooktacular, so that gets a merit on its own.
To progress, you press down on a certain grave. It was cryptic enough to have Kc point it out, so oops I guess.
[Current OST: The Haunt - Underground]
Wow, okay, and I thought the other song was good. The Underground version is arguably
even more chilling, which is appropriate considering we're in a cemetery.
Thankfully, at least they use coins to show you where to go down here.
Eeries are easily one of the most annoying enemies in vanilla Super Mario World and they still are here. Trust me on this.
Now here's a bit of an asshole move. To progress, you don't go to the other graves... but instead re-enter the one you just came out of.
It makes as much sense as its sounds.
The trees sport weird faces in this too, like you'd think this was Mortal Kombat 2 or something.
Oh hey, we finally get to meet the Big Boo from the title screen. What's up, my man?
JESUS FUCK!
No joking here, that face is legitimately terrifying. It's easily the scariest thing I've seen in any rom hack yet, especially when compared to how cute Boos tend to normally be. I tip my hat to whoever Kc asked to do the sprites, because damn that's cool.
Fun fact - I originally had a really badass screenshot where the Big Boo revealed his face on the
instant the lightning struck, but it got lost when I realized all of the screenshots I took were in the wrong format, so...
There's a bloody Mushroom hidden behind him, which makes me question what the hell these guys have been doing if they managed to mess up even our power-ups.
Nope. Not dealing with that.
By the way, if you stand around long enough in front of a Boo, they'll make this face. That's both hilarious and disturbing at the same time considering you can't harm them at all.
Something I like about The Haunt is that Kc gives you multiple entrances - this is the normal entrance, but if you make the effort...
You can go over and grab this spring and use it to jump up a hidden entrance.
Taking you to an otherwise inaccessible spot with a mushroom. That's neat.
[Current OST: Metroid Fusion - Environmental Disquiet SMW edition]
Also,
what the fuck kind of nightmare house are we in?
There's so much blood here you'd swear we walked into a Creepypasta game. Nice touch with the Metroid Fusion soundtrack, though.
Thaaat's pretty gruesome. Poor Monty Mole.
Wait, there's Yoshis here too?
You cold-hearted bastards. There's just body parts lying all around this place, so the ghosts weren't kidding about their "elegant violence".
The Haunt isn't hard, per se, but it
is described as a puzzle hack. Given how this is essentially a Ghost House with a dark red coat of paint, you'll see what I mean.
[Current OST: A SMW version of the Halloween theme]
... Appropriate music, I suppose. The version in the actual game seems to be unique to The Haunt, as I can't find it anywhere else.
Yeah, this is what you have to do to proceed. That's pretty devilish considering you can't drop down on those ledges.
There's a P-Switch here... along with a Boo that's about to take Mario on a ride. That won't end up pretty.
Pressing it here reveals a door where you originally found the switch, but we'll see where that takes us later.
At the end of the room, you'll find another door...
Which leads into a secret one-way hole behind the main room. Believe it or not, we now have access to both of the endings based on where we take this P-Switch. For now...
Ugh, there's
you. This jump is nearly impossible to do without getting hit as Big Mario... unless you coax the Boo into moving by turning your back to them.
For some reason, their pathfinding doesn't lock straight onto you if you're directly below them, so that makes this much easier.
Although, I still somehow managed to make it awkward.
One damaged ego later, let's see what this door's about.
Oh...
dear god. If anybody has coulrophobia in the audience tonight, I'm so sorry.
I don't even know why clowns are here - they just
are.
This is where the P-Switch door back in the Halloween theme room would have taken us, completely bypassing the evil clown faces. It's definitely a shortcut, alright.
Now, the spring there looks like it would be useful right?
Not really. You just use it to jump over this idiot and that's about it... which, to be honest, is still a good idea because he's pretty big.
The next room over, we have more insanely creepy clown faces. There's bats in here too, so you have to be careful of either falling or getting hit.
At the end, you have a door and a P-Switch. The door is your last chance to get the fuck out of here while the P-Switch takes you deeper into the rabbit hole.
... As pressing it when you backtrack reveals a row of blocks.
But first, we have a secret! You better make good use of it, because you're stuck down here.
[The Halloween theme plays up again]
Oh lord, this doesn't look good. We're trapped in a pit with a dead Monty Mole and the big Boo... so I guess we should go out with a bang.
AAAAAAAH.
I swear I've seen these eyes from Dr. Boo's "scary" GMOD maps.
OOOOOH. SPOOKY!~
Seriously though, if The Haunt was an actual game packed with normal Super Mario World and I saw
that as a young kid, I'd probably shit myself. The realistic graphics contrast so much with Mario's 16 bit sprite that I'm surprised this could even be put in... at all, given that this is a SNES we're talking about.
EEEEEEEE.
God damn it with the clowns. Still, how's it going, Pennywise?
Fuck I hate spiders. Burn 'em, nuke 'em, blow 'em to hell!
Yet I still like Muffet for some reason. I think it's because she's adorable:
There's just pumpkin faces all over the place. We may as well take the evil pumpkin orb and get out of here.
Well, we're screwed.
Disturbing, to say the least.
But still, I have like seven of them, dude. I'm coming back on the next one to kick your ass. If anything, you should be grateful this was before they allowed you to have lives past the double digits.
Back in the mansion, this is what happens when you activate the P-Switch here.
It leads into another secret area with 1-up mushrooms and you exit by going down the tree stump... The ghosts did some really weird shit to this place, I swear.
They remove the info block so you can easily get down here, which is good because this is where we have to go.
This may be a bit unintuitive, but man Kc really thought out the level design for The Haunt. It's no wonder why it won first place for that category, actually.
A dark room that's only lit up by a disco ball? What, are we gonna get funky fresh here?
I'll admit this one is a bit obvious, given how there was a block in the middle of the room that turned off the lights for... no reason.
For you see, it leads into another secret room! That's nice. I like that Kc put these in to reward clever players, even if I question why Mario would ever grab a blood-soaked mushroom.
Speaking of blood, holy crap this room is practically flooded with it.
You have no idea how hard it was to make this really precise jump. I had to jump high enough to remove the coin and jump on the P-Switch, but not high enough to go up a level because these are the ledges you can't drop down from.
The result is one big cocktease as you're already one level higher than the secret door.
This is what the secret room would have looked like if you pulled it off successfully. It was unforgiving just to even get here, so maybe it wasn't worth it.
Okay, is anybody else getting Megaman vibes from this room? You know, a hallway with two doors but you can't backtrack? I feel a boss coming on.
[Current OST: I assume this is based off of Breath of Fire 2's A Crisis, so have the actual song instead]
To think, if I didn't use A Crisis in my regular let's plays, I would never be able to recognize this song.
We're being chased down by evil skull ghosts, so this is no time to think about JRPG music!
Shit gets pretty dicey in here. These ghosts want you
dead.
I made it a personal challenge to get through this place without losing Big Mario, which is pretty impressive because this place is Hell to not take damage in.
More severed heads, blood, ghosts and spikes. We must be getting to the end of it based on how this place is structured, though.
There's even a special custom door. Let's go bust some ghosts.
*Cracks knuckles*
[Replay A Crisis]
The only real boss fight of the hack involves taking down the Big Boo that's been following us around for the entire gig.
It's... kind of easy, actually, especially when compared to the scrolling labyrinth we had to endure to get here. Sure, there's a million Eeries on screen and they never stop coming, but the Big Boo himself can't hurt you at all - you pass right through him. Despite having a scary face and being overall way more sinister than a normal Big Boo, he's no more difficult to kill. The Haunt in general is nothing more than a creepypasta-fied Ghost House.
A few more blocks later and we finally kick his pasty ass back into Hell. Hooray!
Now that's what I like to see.
Everything's cherry.
But wait, before we leave, there's one final secret I have to show off.
Instead of going through the secret door there, let's try activating it here and spin-jumping onto that Boo.
How anybody figured this out is beyond me, but props to Kc for being clever.
Hell of a way to end the episode if I can say so myself. All in all, The Haunt is a really cool hack with great level design, graphics, custom music and is actually kind of spooky. If anything, I consider it more terrifying than MATTAN's Mario Wakes Up creepypasta hack due to the more intense graphics and overall ambiance... even if it is hella cheesy and confusing at times.
If I had to give it a score, it'd be an
80/100 (Good) - it was certainly very interesting for what it was. For now, though, that's all I got. Maybe I'll interrupt the FFTA playthrough to do Radiation's Halloween Hack for maximum spooks.
