Is there any reason why the timer in "Super Mario Bros." is not in seconds? The 400 "seconds" that you have for completing the levels are actually 400 time units of 24 frames each.
Couldn't they have just implemented a timer that changes every 60 seconds? Why 24?
I think that matches the 'frame rule' for the game?
"Frame rule" is a term used by speedrunners when a game doesn't check for a clear condition immediately, and only does it every N frames. It is then said to have a "frame rule" of N.
But I'm probably wrong here, the SMB1 frame rule is 21, not 24.
Clearly they were doing it in anticipation of the Super Mario Bros. movie, which was shot at 24 frames per second.
On a serious note, there's also an interesting related quirk of SMB3; I don't know if it's also relevant to SMB1 at all, but SMB3's timer only ticks down if there aren't any pending PPU updates for that frame. This has the practical effect that running quickly through a level can cause the timer to slow down very noticeably.
Revenant wrote:
This has the practical effect that running quickly through a level can cause the timer to slow down very noticeably.
Which already undermines the advantage again. Because when you run very quickly, the timer won't be a problem for you anyway since it's there to prevent players from taking too much time.
Okay, maybe "practical" wasn't quite the right word to use there.