Maria Sister
Release type: Freeware
Release date: August 2, 1995
Levels: 1
Author: Mary Martin
Related games: Blork Carnage, Martin Bros., Badman
Maria Sister is a side-scrolling platformer designed by Mary Martin, sister to Pierre and Sylvain of PPP Team. Maria must spurn the advances of endless male followers, collect beauty items, and search for an escape.
The game reuses sprites from several PPP Team games, including the protagonists from the now-lost Martin Bros., Jack Boost from Blork Carnage, and various enemies from Badman. Beyond the sprites, the music is drawn from the same archives as most PPP Team games (largely Dan Froelich's early material for Epic Megagames), the menus have a similar style, and the controls have the familiar PPP Team layout.
Despite the title, there is little real similarity to Super Mario Bros.. Rather, the title and premise are sort of a two-way pun. For one there is Time Warp Productions' infamous Super Mario knock-off The Great Giana Sisters, which found immense popularity in Europe. In that game, Maria is the Luigi to Giana's Mario. For another there is Mary Martin, sister to the family's usual designers. Building off of those two points, one can see Maria Sister as a spin-off of or an answer to PPP Team's Martin Bros.
The game has some commonality with Tom Hall's Commander Keen series (which itself started life as a failed pitch for an official PC version of Super Mario Bros. 3), including a strong thematic focus on collecting and a structural focus on careful platform-jumping in a large enclosed space.
The jumping mechanics, combined with the solidity and placement of platforms, can cause some problems. Whereas the floor has a 3/4 slope to it, reminiscent of brawlers like Double Dragon and Final Fight, the only way for Maria to move down that slope is to leap high into the air and to allow gravity to pull her down until she hits the opposite wall. Likewise to move up the slope she can only make small jumps.
Floating platforms appear to be solid only on the top surface, yet have a large collision box that can make it trickier than necessary to climb background structures. Adding to the difficulty are the specifics of Maria's jumping movement, in which her 45-degree jumps are both faster and much stronger than her vertical leaps, which can lead to a loss of control on the player's end. Furthermore some platforms seem to be placed with all of these disadvantages in mind, specifically to frustrate the player.
Regardless of the issues, Maria Sister is a very appealing game. Brief, as with many PPP Team games, but refined.
Story[edit]
The goal is to collect all the beautiful little combs to open the exit ...
Instructions[edit]
On the numerical keypad:
- 4, 6: Walk left, right
- 7, 8, 9: Jump left, up, right
- /, -: Project broken heart left, right
Credits[edit]
Maria is a game by Mary Martin of Maria Software.
Availability[edit]
Prior to its addition to the Archive, this game was only available in small-scale distribution amongst the close associates of PPP Team.
Archive History[edit]
Along with several other PPP Team titles, this game was added to the archive on September 29, 2010. It was located on an FTP archive maintained by Pierre Martin, after contact with his brother Sylvain Martin, through his blog and social media -- who in turn was located through a link on cly5m's Game-Maker page.
Links[edit]
Downloads[edit]
- Maria Sister (779.2 kB)
