The 20th LDC ends with a winner decided!

The LDC dedicated to all things Mario ran by Mario himself (played expertly by 30-year old user representative extraordinare Doram Baramour) ended this early morning at around 4:00 am PST.

The winner, in a surprise twist, was moderator Buffooner, who finally graduated from bridesmaid to bride after entering nine LDCs over the entire history of the site!

Buffooner's level, which scored a staggering 17.69, was a flawless, perfect tribute to Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, creating a new level, Shyguy Island, in a flawless replica. Buffooner faced many challenges, including losing both of his collaborates and having to rescue this level out of the ashes of the collaboration, as well as having a simple platformer level compete against a story-driven series, a full new Mario level series with six boss battles and many other high-caliber platformers, concepts and tributes. In the end, though, Buffooner defeated a whopping 26 competitors to grab the gold medal, as well as one of the highest scoring levels of all time (as well as the highest scoring 'pure platformer' level of all time.)

Competition was straight on his heels, though, with rising designer SuperMIC finally creating a successful execution to one of his high-concept works. His Super Paper Mario (Wii) prequel, Timpani and Blumiere: The Untold Story, told the story of the two famous characters of the Wii game, being one of the very few successful tellings of a romance over level. SuperMIC was well known for trying many high-concept story/platformer crossovers, but was often a victim of the circumstances of competing in a level designer contest. This time, he beat the challenges and finished his series, and it paid off, giving him incredibly high critical acclaim, and a finish just barely behind Buffooner, with a 17.62 out of 20 (the highest score ever given to a silver medalist, passing the former leader by nearly half a point). SuperMIC shows that the recent trend of story-driven levels is certainly not a fluke and that it is possible to create good levels outside of the typical platformer concept.

Third place is certainly not to be forgotten. Two gold medalists, one fresh off of her victory, teamed up to create a gigantic game-within-a-game, Super Mario Adventure: Mirror Island, which took players through new levels to fight a new villain while facing custom-made bosses that resembled enemies of Mario's past. It's a staggering build and came with many challenges in its construction, and as a result suffered only from being hard to load and a few minor bugs. Regardless, it took a bronze trophy with pride, with a score of 17.375 that topped their prior gold medalists and became the highest scoring bronze medalist of all time.

The ribboning entrants were also exceptional platformers. Perpetual fourth-placer Nwolf designed a surprisingly solid Super Mario 64 remake and a stellar solar interpretation of a favorite Mario Kart racetrack at once in Big Boo's Rainbow Road which scored a recordbreaking 16.81. Recent legend blackyoshi also took on SMW2: YI with two staggering, maze-like levels under the name Yoshi Mania, which scored fifth with 16.17. In sixth was old-school designer Kirby859, who creates his most acclaimed level since 2009 with a tribute to the online culture's greatest Mario challenge- Kaizo World, with a small but fiery level named Not Tubular.

Overall, this LDC was a stunning success and was a fitting 20th Contest and a fitting Mario tribute. Congratulations to everyone who entered and for those who didn't, fret not! Click on the comments to try out all of the levels that were entered into this excellent LDC!

New Last Legacy Song

Here is another part of the soundtrack intended for Last Legacy. We are planning on using this song in a couple levels in the game that are particularly dark and ominous.

Sanctuary Echo - 2 minutes, 5 seconds.

Last Legacy Screenshot - Sand

After the last update, some of you have been expecting sand to appear in this game.

There are a few other new things here as well. To go with the sand theme, there is a new ocean background and new palm trees. But wait, is that a boulder? I wonder if the player will be able to roll these boulders down slopes and onto switches...