This is part 2 of the Mount Pentimento review, check out part 1 HERE:
https://froginaboxstudio.blogspot.com/2026/09/games-from-frogs-box-26-mount.html
STARRY NIGHT 1
Holy hell, bright purple and white outlines, now that is a color palette.
The switch at the beginning breaks all the lines the ropes travel on, making the level much harder-
But it's necessary for the secret exit.
Short and sweet, fun gimmick- great start to the Star World!
MOUNT MINAKARI 4
A big, open level filled with platforms and buzzsaws.
Volcano plants are raining their pollen EVERYWHERE, watch out for Mario's allergies.
And CHargin' Chucks try to score a strike on your face.
Still, it's not really a hard level- moreso just a long one.
KINTSUGI HOUSE B
This one is a complicated maze of square rooms and pipes.
Fireballs patrol around the claustrophobic walls, and firebars can catch you through the pipes!
Getting all the coins is a lot harder here, you'll have to keep your eyes peeled.
There's more than enough coins to get to 60, but the Dragon coins are the real pain.
INTONACO MANSION
It's a snakeblock pit in this fuschsia manse- Karnak would be proud.
The rings of boos come in many shapes, and go really fast.
Don't slip off the broken stairs, and keep clear of the sine-wave ghosts.
Add a surprise fishing boo and p-switch chase, and you have a great level.
PASTIGLIA MANSION
Ghostly porcupuffers linger in this flooded house.
But friendly dolphins keep you safe from ectoplasmal spines.
But the real hazard is in the air, with the army of Boos...
The underwater segment is a lot easier even with the Boos, honestly.
MOUNT MINAKARI 5
A vertical icy level crawling with Spike Tops.
Slipping means falling, possibly to your death.
Vines and stringbeans aid your ascent, the former even going through red blocks.
Side note: love the blue and white palette here.
MINAKARI DETOUR 3
A cheerful little autoscroller, with the penguins from New Soup Wii.
They look utterly adorable here, with their wing flapping after they lose the shades.
But the level is fast enough to leave you in the dust if you're not keeping up.
The second half doesn't autoscroll, but leaves you with less space to dodge the penguins.
#4 GEORGIA'S CASTLE
An underwater castle, full of Thwomps, Rip Van Fishes, and Urchins.
Or so it seems- there's a top half, with only shallow pools.
Once again, travel between them for secrets and safe passage.
Get through the rising and lowering water and beat down the ghostly painter with a trio of keys!
STARRY NIGHT 2
Enemies popping out of blocks, blending in with the rest of the yellow squares.
They can catch you off guard real easily in this neon forest.
There's no powerups here at all except for the start, so be careful.
As for the secret exit, find the key and carry it back to the start- and watch out for the Phanto!
HABOKU LAKE 1
A cave labyrinth full of skeletons, thwomps and secrets.
Finding the Dragon Coins is easier, since there's more than 5.
Carve through the mountains of Grab Blocks to find the switch and get out.
The secret exit's not hard to find, just a bit obtuse.
HABOKU LAKE 2
A slippery stage with a lovely crystal background.
Bumpties fly about, and they can make great impromptu bounce pads.
Mines and cheep cheeps flow below and those slopes are diabolical.
And the water currents can carry you into hazards, too.
REPOUSSOIR MANSION
Oh god, it's the fishing boo, ready to catch a new meal!
In the first half he scrolls offscreen, but in the second, you have to spinjump on him!
Bouncing fire completes the set of hazards, limiting your free footing.
And those tiny broken stairs and note blocks can really be a pain to stay on.
HABOKU LAKE 3
Caped koopas take to the skies, eager to play superhero.
And Monty Moles burst out of the background, jumpscaring you over and over.
Slipping and sliding all over the place, with falling platforms for spice.
But perservere in this moody level, and you'll pull through- just don't get beaned by a baseball.
IKEBANA BRIDGE
Oh god, there's no time, you only have 100 seconds, go go go!
Dino rhinos jump in your way, and piranha plants' fireballs really slow you down.
Getting the dragon coins amid all this is a major test.
And beware Koumei's trap, lest you tick down to zero...
HABOKU LAKE 4
Now that's a LOT of lines and right angles, holy heck.
Anyway, this level has a lot of intersections between platforms and buzzsaws.
The whole thing can be hard to parse, but once you get it, this level flows beautifully.
Especially with the autoscroll that adds just the right amount of tension.
HABOKU LAKE 5
An interesting level indeed- a huge vertical shaft, split right down the middle.
The left is congested, but the right one even more so.
Bouncing fires and Urchins take up all of your space.
Climb up the vines and carefully grab the blocks, and you'll make it out unscathed.
HABOKU SECRET
The level's kind enough to tell you how to get the secret exit, so I won't mention it here.
Anyway, this is a fairly normal forest stage with Wigglers, moles, and Boomerang Bros.
But if you go for the fun secret exit, the level turns into an autoscroller.
The secret room with the star and banzai bills is a fun powertrip, too.
SHIGAJIKU ISLAND
Another line platform stage, but this one goes big.
Buzzsaws everywhere on this macrostructure, threatening to cleave you in twain.
Footing dipping below the screen, only for other footholds to come up, platforming for your life.
It's short, but blisteringly challenging.
#5 HOKUSAI'S CASTLE
Spikes are all over the ceiling, and smashing down!
Buzzsaws roaming the floors and traveling rails, ready to slice you apart.
It may be understated, but that doesn't mean it's easy!
Careful navigation and timing will win you the day in this hot pink abode.
PASTEL BYPASS 1
Blarggs menace you in this green, fiery cave.
Bubbles drop enemies, and Chargin' Chucks block your path.
But the real surprise is CRUSHERS MADE OUT OF RED SWITCH BLOCKS- which move so fast it's unreal.
Also, that dragon coin you need to bounce on the football guy to get is BULLSHIT, and nearly made me use a savestate on this level.
PASTEL STRATUS 2
A thankfully much easier stage than the last one.
Torpedo Teds cruise across the sky, and Bros have taken up launching Bullet Bills.
The relaxing Cave Story music and muted palette contribute heavily to my enjoyment.
Make sure to look for the bullet wall secret, it's very cute.
PASTEL BYPASS 2
An autoscrolling level full of sine-wave ghosts, rhinos, and bonefish.
It moves at a quick clip, but it's nothing that hasn't been seen before.
In which case, I'll shout out the aesthetics- this dark negative palette is wonderful.
Oh, and watch out for the ice physics, lest you slip into the void.
KINTSUGI HOUSE C
Two paths at the start- left and right.
But oh god, there's homing bullet bills!
If you exploit the d-pad controlled coin trails, you can beat the level easy.
But the dragon coins, as usual, are the real challenge.
#S CLAUDE'S CASTLE
Watch out for the nuclear waffles!
Oh, and the giant crushing spikes- and they move fucking FAST.
Thwomps, bats and drybones round out the set of gimmicks.
Just don't get caught by the scrolling crusher room... that one's mean.
STARRY NIGHT 3
A land of spin blocks, with a lakitu tossing spinies.
The normal exit is effortless, but a secret passage takes you up, up, up in several Lakitu clouds.
Through a lot of surprising places, you'll eventually reach the end.
Only to realize the solution for that secret exit is deceptively simple- a great gag.
KINTSUGI HOUSE D
Only 40 coins to win, but there's a twist.
Fishing boos stalk both halves of the level, top and bottom.
And all coins are hidden behind p-switches!
This level is a real test of your patience- but a clever one.
WATERCOLOR MESA 1
Koopas kicking shells everywhere in this delightful winter wonderland.
Don't get swept away on the currents, or you're a goner.
Ninjis and piranhas are placed sparsely but deviously.
Don't miss the dragon coin to the left once you resurface.
WATERCOLOR MESA 2
Yellow blocks and lakitu, a lethal combination.
Don't spinjump, or you'll dunk yourself right in the lava.
Except if you're small, and if you have a fire flower you can nerf the challenge.
But Regular Super Mario has nothing to offer here.
WATERCOLOR MESA 3
A silhouetted sunset stage straight of Donkey Kong Country.
This level looks gorgeous, but the flying koopas and rhinos are feisty.
The only real obstacles are the foreground trees hiding enemies, but who cares.
The dragon coins are out in the open, so look for those ellipses.
WATERCOLOR MESA 4
Hammer Bros. that toss shells, the most devious evolution yet.
Giant Fireballs travel around the platforms to limit your space even more.
Always jump with perfect timing, and you might make it out without bruises- and collect those godforsaken dragon coins.
The secret exit requires some really tight timing and ridiculous stunts, though.
#6 JACKSON'S CASTLE
Another bold aesthetic choice- translucent purple lava.
But it's not just for visuals, since you can see the platform lines through it.
The thwomps, fireballs, and drybones complicate matters even further.
Since the stage autoscrolls in all directions, you'll be grateful for that gesture- one missed jump is death.
WATERCOLOR SECRET
A new enemy appears, these flowers that spew fire up in the air.
You can spin jump on their projectiles, though that's rather difficult.
The secret exit is a flurry of sinking platforms under fire, so be careful.
Falling down equals death, or worse- being booted out to the regular level!
STARRY NIGHT 4
Now this is the coolest gimmick exit ever.
Carry the key all the way to goal, while dodging around keyholes that block your progress.
Meanwhile, a Phanto is on your ass the whole time.
Absolute peak use of vanilla assets.
GONGBI VALLEY 1
A sprawling evening maze, where the way forward is obscured beyond belief, divided into two realms.
Koopas, chomps, and boos wait to grind your hits away in the light world.
Spike tops and Ninjis in the dark world, but also the switches you need.
And good luck finding those dragon coins!
GONGBI VALLEY 2
Ride the skull raft down the purple rivers, and don't fall behind!
Don't get caught by the Fuzzies or buzzsaws, either.
Chargin' Chucks throw rocks everywhere, but they're easily dodged.
This is a fast-paced stage, but a fair one.
SGRAFFITO MANSION
Run for your life under the timer of a P-switch sequence.
Boo lines and buzzsaws patrol around everywhere to put you in the greave.
One wrong move and you'll plummet into the pit that is the entire stage.
Especially when you have to carry a P-switch all the way to the next one- tick tock, tick tock!
GONGBI VALLEY 3
Yet another ultra-fast autoscroller, now with extra pain from the sinking platforms in the air.
Fuzzies, thwomps, and falling spikes block your way, ready to punish errant jumps.
Better keep your fingers fast, and your senses sharp.
And remember that you can spinjump off those little gremlins.
#7 HENRI'S CASTLE
All the enemies are translucent, and you can see the background through them.
Anyway, this stage features sloped moving platforms- not slippery, thankfully.
Go back and forth to hit the switch blocks and open the way.
And enjoy the leisurely disco ride in the dark, too!
GONGBI LABYRINTH
The penultimate normal stage is a absurdly long labyrinth that's as complicated as it looks.
Firebars, spike balls, skeleton turtles, fireballs, rainbwow shells, all lurk around every corner.
It's a claustrophobic mess, but surprisingly linear for its size- but no powerup will help you here.
It's the ONLY level in the hack with multiple midpoints, that's how long it is, and it will PUNISH you the whole way through, in the most ridiculous ways imaginable-
Okay.
...I have to break the four sentence rule now. This level gave me a LOT to say, and very little of it was good, so prepare for a wall of text, and GBreeze, if you're reading this, please don't take this personally. I loved the other 99% of this hack's levels. But this one got under my skin so much. On a subatomic level, I hate this stage.
This is the only level i had to use savestates in, to get the last dragon coin, and to get around a stubborn rainbow shell near the end. Jumping out of the water and trying to dodge that thing is really hard.
Because doing this entire freaking marathon without checkpoints to get all of the dragon coins is not fun, no thank you.
Considering I didn't feel the need to use any, for the REST OF THE ENTIRE GAME, that says volumes about long and brutal this level is.
I know that getting the dragon coins is optional. But not going for them doesn't make the level any more fun. It is full of incredibly cramped spaces, nasty traps that require pixel perfect timing to get past, far too few powerups for its length and deadliness, and above all else... there's not enough checkpoints. At all.
To be precise, there's two midpoints in this level. And that is several too few for how sloggy the proceedings are.
Now, I know SMW hacks often only have one checkpoint in each level despite the ability of modern hacks to fix that, for any number of reasons. That's fine. But THIS level is one of the only ones that has more than one, which means there COULD have been more checkpoints in this level and they just weren't provided for whatever reason. Especially the last part, with its ultra-fast firebars in the water that prevents you from dodging around them effectively... UGH.
This level is not a difficulty spike. It is a difficulty cliff to run into like Wile E. Coyote, flattening yourself against it. It is NASTY in ways that the rest of the hack doesn't succumb to, with its absurd length.
Especially when said length consists of careful jumps, through narrow spaces, with fire bars EVERYWHERE that demand perfect timing or death.
I've mentioned before in previous reviews how absurdly long or brutal levels that outstay their welcome are a Mario game's worst enemy, and it baffles me that for 98% of this hack's runtime it follows that principle, only to run screaming headlong into it in the endgame. That level really, really, REALLY should have been ironed out. There's a couple other ones that rankled me, like Pastel Bypass 1 and Watercolor Mesa 4 but at least those had the decency to be short.
Also, special mention to these skeleton turtles, that turn around randomly and screwed up several of my jumps. I know you can wait for them to put their spikes up and they'll stay still. But the level is so godforsakenly tedious that you don't WANT to wait after dying to it fifty plus times. So you start going faster, diving into the hazards without proper timing, screwing it up.
And every time you do, you have to do it all AGAIN.
The average mario level is anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes. A single playthrough of this stage can take upwards of ten minutes, and that's not even taking into account this level's sheer deadliness.
And every time you die, there's nothing you can do differently. No room for expression. This level wants you to play one way, and that way is "jump through the firebars fifty times until the level is over."
Even ignoring the possible skill issue, this level beats its gimmick into the ground so much that it's six feet under.
Gongbi Labyrinth is just too much harder than anything else in the entire hack, and it feels like it should have had more checkpoints, be shortened, or have more powerups. Just SOMETHING so that it didn't feel as much like a gigantic slog. Hell, the last dragon coin in it being SO much farther away than the first four feels like a troll, like "oh, you want to get those coins? have fun doing like 5/6ths of this incredibly long and brutal level without checkpoints."
This level gives you 900 seconds to get through it, and chances are, you may actually run out of time. I did when I was trying to get the last Dragon Coin. That's how you know it's too long.
And powerups don't make it easier. You can't kill anything in here with a fire flower, and the cape is only marginally helpful for killing the skeleton turtles- everything else is still there. There is no way to get through this stage without a soul-sucking, rage-inducing grind.
The best part of it is the ending room with its ominous ambience, because it means you don't have to play the level any more.
Bottom line: this level does not lack for cleverness, deviousness, creativity, and personality. It squeezes so much out of vanilla assets, and very few rooms feel like obvious copy-pastes of another. Clearly a ton of effort went into it, and even if I absolutely despise playing it, I can respect the hell out of it. There's probably a lot of players who look at this and go "damn, this sounds fun, I need to play this."
But the whole is dragged down by the sum of its parts. I haven't seen a level exemplify "too much" like this one has in a long time.
Okay. I'm done now. Let's get through the rest of the endgame now.
STARRY NIGHT 5
An immensely relaxing stage, in the dark waters of space-time and dotted with a smattering of enemies.
Nothing here can seriously challenge you, except the hunt for the secret exit.
Requiring a chain of item babysitting, but still not that complicated.
This is the calm before the storm- the Special World.
LEONARDO'S PALACE
Breaking the five sentence rule again... the first part is an outdoor stage full of Lakitus in pipes, swinging platforms, bouncing fireballs, and assorted fodder, and a phenomenal mountain backdrop.
Once you get inside, you have a choice of various paths to take, equally painful and hazardous.
The main hub splits off into MANY side paths, and between them almost every hazard in the game is present, for oodles of creative design.
Sadly, I do not have the patience to play through all the paths- I might have, but Gongbi Labyrinth right before it brutalized me so badly that another marathon didn't sound like much fun.
I could go on for ages about this level, but let this suffice- it's like Sinuous Course from Spatial Whirl, but beefed up to final level status, and it's as amazing as that sounds.
Now for the Special World, which ended up being an incredible palate cleanse from the stain that one level left in my mouth about this hack. Good thing I played it last.
MODERNISM COURSE
The Special World does much to heal the pain of that godforsaken labyrinth, starting off with a lovely vertical level.
Bullet bill cannons line the walls, and you'll have to climb on moving ropes and vines to get up to the top.
The occasional fuzzy and koopa will pop up, but they're nothing you can't handle.
And the lime green palette is to die for.
SURREALISM COURSE
A leisurely flight on a Lakitu cloud, in a washed out pastel land.
Too bad there's fire-spewing plants and lava here to get in your way.
The buzzsaws and thwomps are the hardest things to dodge, but proper timing will win the day.
I appreciate the restraint with potentially frustrating gimmicks.
FAUVISM COURSE
An icy autoscroller infested with red piranhas and parakoopas.
There's a unique twist here- ice blocks that are meltable.
Better keep your Fire FLowers that they pass out like candy, because the dragon coins are frozen too!
Ptooies under platforms keep you on your toes, but it's still a breezy and fun challenge.
MINIMALISM COURSE
Well, that's an ironic name if I've heard one, with this bold color palette.
Bob-ombs rain from the sky and own the place, and Hammer Bros toss out even more of them.
As long as you keep moving, you shouldn't get blown up.
Surprisingly easy, but I'm not complaining.
KINTSUGI HOUSE E
The only level of this type to be an autoscroller, this is a spicy stage indeed.
Only 30 coins needed to win, but a lot of them are in flying or grounded blocks.
Not to mention, you know, avoiding falling to your death taking up most of the attention.
It's a brutal test, but a fair one- especially the Dragon Coins, that leave regular coins behind on replays- very convenient.
POINTILLISM COURSE
This is the biggest surprise yet- a completely normal level.
And I don't understand what the name has to do with it.
The only notable part are the Hammer Bros that are a bit annoying to get past.
...This feels like an outtake that got tossed in at the last minute compared to the rest of the Special World.
MOUNT PENTIMENTO
Last time I break the four sentence rule.
The titular mountain is a perfect way to end the game, with a white and blue course high above the land.
An icy stage full of thwimps, fireballs, caped koopas, and tough jumps galore- the biggest hazard are the baseball-tossin' chargin' chucks.
The music especially has a feeling of finality to it- I'm glad I did this level last, and not the normally exhausting finale.
Never has the YOU ARE A SUPER PLAYER message felt so sweet.
(And I appreciate the restraint of not making the final Special World level another marathon, thank you. Too many hacks do that, )
FINAL THOUGHTS
Well. That was a beefy one, wasn't it?
Let's get the negatives out of the way first. Towards the end of my playthrough, I was starting to get exhausted. The levels were really starting to run together. Not because they're bad, but because *any* vanilla hack that goes on this long will have this problem. That's not a huge issue.
The big elephant in the room... Gongbi Labyrinth. That level NEEDED to be nerfed, since it sticks out above everything else the hack tosses at you. My thoughts on that stage are already up there, so I won't repeat them.
Personal quibbles aside, this hack is a monumental achievement in variety, level design, palettes, and general quality. To have THIS MANY levels in here and only ONE that I would consider to be outright heinously out of place? That's an achievement by itself.
The fact that I was able to beat like 99% of it without savestates, no matter how brutal, is a testament to this hack's fairness in design and wonderful challenges.
I would recommend this one for SMW enthusiasts or people looking for a challenge- but do not marathon it, you'll only exhaust yourself. And THE DRAGON COIN CHALLENGES ARE ONLY FOR EXPERTS.
GAME LINK:
https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=43071
(A few extra screengrabs I forgot to take were from SMW Physicist's playthrough of this hack, thank you.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOrdtQzHCCQ&list=PLcaeWVuU1IKk&index=3