Super Mario Bros. Angry Sun is Angry for me

The Desert Land scene is flat and rough. Anything you jump into, such as blocks embedded in the pyramids, interrupts your movement; it always sounds like Mario's foot is caught on the edge of the block. Desert Land – at least until the Angry Sun – is slowly moving around the globe, at least traditionally "fun" in the game. But again, a few of them are actually not that fun.

Midway through the Desert Land, you see a level on the map represented by a quicksand lake. So far, all levels of non-Fortress, non-Airship are numbered. This quicksand pool is a break in the way it was used; We know we will find something unusual, but we don't know.

We quickly see what's wrong on the first screen. There is the Angry Sun, with its compressed teeth and teeth, in the upper left corner of the screen.

Angry Sun emphasizes the essence of the desert. In the first part of the level, it's just scrolling along with you as you go to the right. There are several quicksand pits, which will pull you down if you fall into them. Piranha Plants aim fireworks at you as you negotiate uneven ground, which increases your chances of missing your jump.

After that you get the first and final storm of the game. When you walk straight or go right into it, you get caught and a breeze hits you in the back. Finding the past is contradictory: You run at high speed and introduce yourself directly to it. With enough force, you fly above or below it.

Fortunately, the storm does not hurt you. But when contacted, he investigates helplessly as the Angry Sun walks around the corner with a straight, bitter expression, like the Sword of Damocles. You have no control, which raises trouble.

Mario the games come to life and die right out of them. Controls are extraordinarily straightforward, and the rules are simple but do not change. Mario does exactly what he tells him to do, and the situation he always responds to, the way you expect it to be done.

The quality of the Angry Sun challenges that comfort. Between the quicksand, the pristine terrain, the Piranha Plates, and the storm, you get the impression that nature has turned against Mario. Nature itself is your enemy. The symbolic solid ground you once stood on is pulled out of you.

And then the Angry Sun starts bombing out of the sky.

It starts with making a windup in the top left corner of the screen. It quickly enters a deep circle repeatedly, delaying its attack. After that, it drops to the bottom-center at the bottom of the screen before heading back to the top right corner, where it blows and repeats this pattern. If you remain stationary, the arc is monitored and flexible. But if you go right or left, the arc is pre-programmed to adjust your movement. It creates the feeling that Lang Angry is changing its course of flight, during flight, to hit Mario.

The first time this happened to me, I was eight years old. My hands shook and my heart beat against my chest. Many of Mario's enemies are single-minded opponents; They walk in a straight line and mostly pay attention to their business unless Mario is straight to them. But the Angry Sun feels intentional in a way that neither Gomba nor the Hammer Brother.

I found out years later that you can kill the Angry Sun with a good Koopa Shell. But that comes with its difficulties. The only way to get your hands on the Koopa Shell is to hit one of the Koopa Paratroopas twice: once to remove the wings, and take Koopa out again. Between the Koopas explosion and the Angry Sun & # 39; s bomb, it would be more of a problem than it should be. When I tried to kill the Angry Sun recently, it took me two attempts to do it.

When I was young, I didn't think of killing lines for Anger Day. I jumped near the end of the section on a mad dash, resulting in all sorts of mistakes. You can, for example, find yourself stuck in a huge quicksand pit at the end of a level. If you give the Jump button to get out of it, you make these little pigs and you suck the sand. Getting out of the quicksand requires calming – you have to set the time for your jump right when Mario's feet are above the face. But try to do that when Angry Sun tries to kill you.

Once you complete this level, you get rewarded for your problems. The next floor is actually a bonus level: an oasis with palm trees in a huge pool of water, full of tons of coins and a few obstacles. It's a moment of calm after the hell you just passed through.

Super Mario Bros. 3 slow things down at the beginning of Desert Land, speed things up until the speed of cracking when the Sun hits you, then slow things down once the level is complete. It's a powerful pull-and-pull force – a cinema tactic – that is deliberately unpleasant. As Alfred Hitchcock puts it, "Always make the audience suffer as much as possible." In the day of wrath, Super Mario Bros. 3 he knew how to make us suffer, but he enlightened us with a sense of security that we might suffer again as the game went on.