kaizo
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: kīʹ-zō
ipa: /ˈkaɪ.zoʊ/
rhymes: -aɪzoʊ
Etymology: From Kaizo Mario World, the name of an early set of fan-created levels in this style first released in 2007, where kaizo is from Japanese 改造 (kaizō, “revamp, remodel, modify”).
Senses: examples: text: I like too, he stole kaizo. Like, that name, that's the ubiquitous term for romhacks that are more annoying to play. […] Is kaizo now just like an internet adjective for anything that's, like, mildly irritating?
ref: [2011 April 1, Michael "Slowbeef" Sawyer, That's so Kaizo!, archived from the original on 20 Jan 2023:
text: I recently played the kaizo hack known as Invictus.[…]As my sore hand recovers, I’m left asking this question: is “kaizo” good game design?
ref: 2019 May 5, Josh Bycer, “The Bizarre World of Kaizo Games”, in Medium (published in SUPERJUMP):
text: What if it could be different? What if there was a way for your average Mario player to learn these tricks? That’s what GrandPOObear, one of Mario Maker’s most prolific streamers, is trying to accomplish with his already-impressive “tech talk” series, where he combines detailed video tutorials explaining basic kaizo techniques alongside Mario Maker 2 stages he’s specifically designed to help anyone accomplish those very same techniques.[…]GrandPOObear wasn’t born with inherent kaizo knowledge;
ref: 2019 July 11, Patrick Klepek, “'Mario Maker' Expert Creates Easy Way to Learn Game's Secret Kaizo Tricks”, in Vice:
text: Troll and kaizo levels, however, are designed to generate very different sets of emotions in their players, and to understand these we must understand first their construction and the intentions of their designers, before considering their players.
ref: 2020, Mark R. Johnson, “Playful Work and Laborious Play in Super Mario Maker”, in Pablo Abend, Sonia Fizek, Mathias Fuchs, Karin Wenz, editors, Digital Culture & Society (09: Laborious Play and Playful Work I), volume 5, number 2/2019, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, →ISBN, page 110:
text: A kaizo trap is an obstacle that will kill the player if it gets triggered, but there is no way of knowing where a trap is unless it gets sprung.
ref: 2020, Joshua Bycer, Game Design Deep Dive: Platformers, CRC Press:
text: Many Mario Maker 2 kaizo stages can take over 25 hours for a top-level player to beat. Even at its most impressive, solving a kaizo level is an incredibly repetitive act: Each one of them will take hundreds (if not thousands) of attempts to clear, meaning that any viewer will essentially be watching the same level for hours on end. For some reason, watching GrandPOObear, or other kaizo speed runners try and fail, over and over again was the only thing I could focus on, the only thing that kept the fear out of my mind.
ref: 2020 January 20, Sam Greszes, “Waiting and watching: How brutally difficult Mario levels helped me through my mom’s stroke recovery”, in The Washington Post:
text: “There’s still a stigma in the [Super Mario Maker 2] community that troll levels have, which is that people think the super expert hot garbage levels are troll levels,” Chichiri said. “And the well-made troll levels are so much the opposite. They are carefully designed levels made with a lot of planning and psychology in them. It’s not just ‘Lul kaizo block’ or ‘Lul enemy spam’ or ‘Lul this required item was in this hidden block you’d NEVER ever find.’ So I wish people would stop calling the hot garbage levels ‘troll levels’ when they’re really not.”
ref: 2020 April 1, Michael Goroff, “These Super Mario Maker Level Designers Have Elevated Trolling Into an Artform”, in Electronic Gaming Monthly:
text: A simple, unexpected obstacle is not only funny but also creates that special sauce that makes kaizo so fun to watch.[…]The most classic example of a kaizo troll is set up like this: You’re jumping over a pit, but midway through the jump you bonk your head on a block that wasn’t there before, sending you to your death.
ref: 2021 June 18, Jeremy Signor, “Six Super Mario kaizo trolls that surprise and delight”, in Polygon:
text: While the game doesn’t touch the main plot or structure of the original Pokémon Emerald, this Kaizo edition changes basically everything else. […]Pokémon Dark Rising: Kaizo. That last one is a remake of the first, only much more difficult like you’d expect from a Kaizo game, but also has some significant plot and structural changes that make it worth experiencing again.
ref: 2022 May 27, Jesse Lennox, Digital Trends:
topics: video-games
glosses: A philosophy of game design distinguished by very high difficulty levels and hidden traps that can only be solved by repeated deaths and trial and error, especially associated with romhacks of Super Mario games.
Derived terms: kaizo trap