Yup, Doors would be fitting the best, I think.
And that idea of the backgrounds, I like it . It reminds me of the cannon levels in NSMB. (If you go into a level, you can see a little bit from the world where you go to, such as: When you go to world 4, you can see trees far away)
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I apologize to everyone for my horrible English.

So here is a story idea had:

Luigi, tired of being Player 2 kiddnappes Peach to get revenge on Mario. He locks her on the Top Floor of his mansion and locks the door with 7 different keys. So Mario must go through Luigi's Mansion, and collect all 7 keys to go and Stop luigi once and for all.

omgno
You can play as Luigi, and that would also require a custom boss.
Thats not even problems with the story!

I mean, why would Luigi hate Peach? And its not like he hates Mario either.

Well, the L+R+A to play as Luigi code could be disabled via ASM hacking or Luigi could be replaced with another character of the Mushroom Kingdom...like Daisy.

However, as  SaturnYoshi said, the story is a bit strange...to be in an usual Mario game. Luigi wouldn't never be an enemy...after all, he's designed to be Mario's faithful bro that would never betray him.

After beating the game, maybe you can play as luigi.

I hope you realize that a plot twist lose its impact if you do it only after the flaw has been pointed, right ?
What I mean is that had it been a real book, the critics would have absolutely murdered you.

A plot twist of this caliber would have required Luigi to have a loosely defined personality by the canon to the point it leaves its interpretation open to the readers, which you have guessed is not the case here for reasons already explained by  SaturnYoshi and thereturnofdoritosxD.

Now don't let my opinion scare you, after all this is only an opinion of mine, and yes I'm fully aware this is not a real book.
I say all that so that next time you don't repeat the same mistake

If I fix it up and make a new story, will you guys lissen?

we are listening, your story just has some flaws.
So yeah, go ahead! Make a new one .

Also, I did like your idea for Luigis mansion as the hub, but it didnt seem like it would fit good in the CR.

Ok so here we go:

It's a nice peaceful day in the mushroom kingdom. Mario and Peach are taking a walk through the woods for a picnic. Suddly, Wario jumps out of nowhere and kiddnapps peach! He locks her in the highest building of his castle and splits the key into 7 peices. Only Mario (or Luigi) can save the day!





Hub idea is the same as before, except it's Wario's Castle not Luigis.

Sounds alot better, but why would Wario want to kidnapp Peach?
A plot twist isn't good if you can see it coming.

Actually it's a little more complicated than that.
In a story you should be able to see a plot twist coming if you pay attention to details, but not if you read the story as-is.

To achieve that, you need some literary devices, one of them being the foreshadowing.
Basically the foreshadowing is the act of scattering some subtle clues about something important that's going to happen later down the road.
That being said even if you didn't take notice of the foreshadowing, said plot device when it happens shouldn't disrupt too much the flow of the story.

The difficulty of the foreshadowing is that :
_say too much, and you spoil the surprise (though this can be done deliberately to setup a "counter plot twist" AKA a red herring)
_say not enough, and you might be accused of pulling a Deus Ex Machina (depending on the suspension of disbelief necessary for the plot twist to be believable)

All that being said, this doesn't really apply for Mario mainstream games since their story are quite straightforward and can always be resumed with the same synopsis :"Bowser kidnaps princess Peach and Mario has to save her."


"That's good and all Sharks, but I would like to see you come up with your own story."
I can give it a try.


Synopsis:
Bowser plans to take over the Mushroom Kingdom, again, and kidnaps princess Peach, again… but this time for good reason !
Bowser seeks to gather the 9 Magical artifacts of the Soaring Dragon, a story passed down since ancient times says that "one who make the Ancient Weapon whole again, this one will rule as God".

Turns out that Bowser has already found the Ancient Scepter, which is key to find all 8 other items, Peach is left aghast.
If someone like the ruler of Dark Land succeeds to assemble the Ancient Scepter, the Dragon's Core and the 7 Magical Claws into 1…
The mere thought made Princess Peach shudder, there's no way she is going to let that happen while she can still do something.
She tries to use her magical abilities against Bowser… but to no avail ! Bowser doesn't seem affected at all !
Bowser, laughing, explains that each of the items has a magic on their own ! Turns out that the Ancient Scepter's protects its owner from disruptive abilities, pretty much ensuring that Peach can't magically harm Bowser in any way while he is in possession of that scepter !
The Koopa's leader threatens Peach that if she doesn't comply, all Mushroom Kingdom inhabitants will be turned into stone statues, and if she tries reversing the spell she will collapse of exhaustion way before it breaks, courtesy of the power-up granted by the magical device !
The sovereign is gritting her teeth, but she still has one trick up her sleeve. Bowser needs her voice to open the magical door leading to the secret room of Princess Peach's castle where the Dragon's Core lays dormant !
She knews it ! Of course she can always refuse, which she does. And this leverage would have been really effective, if not for the fact that at this is very moment a second voice made itself known, one whose owner is : Bowser Jr. !
The heir to the Koopa's throne shows the latest invention of Kamek, a device that allows its holder to imitate any given voice (frequency and wavelength); once Bowser Jr. speaks with the device on, his voice is indistinguishable from Peach's !
Bowser is pretty positive that the fake voice will be enough to lift the magical enhancement of the door, but still he would like for the original owner of the voice to lift it.
The Mushroom Kingdom's princess is cornered, she has no choice now but to reluctantly agree, knowing that now it was ironically the only way to gain time !

Once the Dragon's Core and the Ancient Scepter are reunited, a portal appears out of thin air, the Portal of Firmament leading to the 8 Heavenly Gates (Author's note: read the 8 Worlds).
At the end of each of the gates from 1 to 7 one of the Magical Claws can be found, Magical Claw 1 once embedded on the Weapon unlock access to Gate 2, Magical Claw 2 once embedded unlock Gate 3, etc.
Gate 1 is unlocked by default once the Dragon's Core and the Ancient Scepter are one and the same.
Gate 8 is the final gate, sort of a ultimate test to see if the current bearer of the Ancient Weapon is really worthy of it.
Bowser, Bowser Jr., Princess Peach and the Koopa's troops disappear into the depths of the Portal of Firmament.
[…]
Mario and Luigi look the sky from afar, witnessing a wide cyclonic formation whose eye is above Peach's Castle.
The twin brothers look at each other into the eyes and nod silently, seems like its time for them to save the day… AGAIN !

Oh jolly

After months of not being here and mainly being on the Ace Attorney forum, and then checking back here, the post of  MeroMero makes me excited

So let's dive in.

I really like the idea of Bowser having a legitimate reason to capture Peach, and the backstory of the 'Soaring Dragon' seems really cool, maybe we could add some backstory to the dragon (this might go a little too deep for a Mario game, but I'm enjoying myself soo...), it could be like:

-An ancient guardian of the Hyrule Kingdom
-A threatner from the past who got slain by Mario (a bit like Okami, if you know that game)
-A myth

(just ideas of course )

It might be a little OOC of Bowser to not threaten Peach with, idk, death when he forces her to open the door (even though this would mean that there's practically no way in but Bowser is kinda dumb, and I doubt Peach would die for her kingdom), also, I might miss something here, but how does Peach save time if she says something rather than Bowser? (Again, probably going too deep here).

The idea with the claws is really clever, I like it , the scepter in itself is a cool idea as a whole.

That's all for now^^


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I apologize to everyone for my horrible English.

First of all, I'm pleased that you like my attempt of a story



For the 'Soaring Dragon' backstory:

Actually the 'Dragon' is really, or used to be rather, an ancient meteor that exploded in the atmosphere several millennia ago.
When it exploded, some fragments survived, which would later be identified as the 9 Magical Artifacts.

Why a meteor ?
This is inspired by the Pokémon Rayquaza who is a Dragon ; it is said that when Rayquaza flies, it flies so fast it looks like a meteor.
This is the basis for the Soaring Dragon ; the trailing smoke and flames the meteor left behind due to the atmospheric entry made it look like a dragon.

Author's note: actually the Soaring Dragon didn't even have a backstory, but since you mentioned it I came up with this.


I think Bowser would never, ever use a death threat against Peach (it is Peach after all).

Yes here Bowser, and his army as well, are cleverer than usual (though Bowser has been canonically shown to be smart from time to time).
Pretty sure that Bowser seems dumb because the plot demands it, which Mario always takes advantage of ; which is sad because Mario should never, ever realistically win against Bowser, the king of the Koopa Troops is supposed to be a brutal powerhouse.
Yep, the plot-armor is really strong for Mario.



While it doesn't save time per say, she only has 2 choices, either she comply or she doesn't, and if she doesn't the Mushroom Kingdom ends right then right here, so she doesn't have much of a choice really.
Hence why she 'saves' time because it's the one choice that doesn't end in the kingdom immediate demise.


Thanks.
Maybe the idea came naturally to me because I actually want to make a comic (both storyline and drawings, nothing to do with NSMB ), the story is as follows:
_first half
_time-skip
_second half
I already have the precise idea of the first part flow, I know how I want to end the story, I know what will be the catalyst for the final fight between the protagonist and his nemesis, what will be the catalyst for the time-skip, etc.
That's not something that came into my mind yesterday, officially I begun this project the 28^th march 2013.
As you can see I'm in a creative mood lately

Ahh, that's my bad XD. Sorry, I totally misinterpreted that.


I probably went a little too over the top with the death threat, but it still seems weird because to me that if the device wasn't there, and because the device gets mentioned later I think it can be assumed that Bowser didn't know of it (the device) at the time, that the dialogue would have gone something like this:

Bowser: Peach, open the door to the Dragon's Core NOW!!
Peach: No.
Bowser: Dang.

I agree that Bowser wouldn't be able to kill Peach, so I'm asking if Bowser knew about Kamek's invention beforehand . but then again, if he knew about it beforehand, would he really need Peachs speach as clarification? He could've sneakily got it without anyone noticing.
BUT THEN AGAIN Bowser probably doesn't know where the chamber actually is, so that might not be possible either



Ahh, well I guess that's pretty important XD, I guess I missed something again. That makes sense actually


I see, good luck with that. I hope to read it someday
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I apologize to everyone for my horrible English.

You don't have to apologize, if anything I should thank you since you gave me an opportunity to give the Soaring Dragon a backstory




That's a legitimate question you got here.
Even though it is not written, it is implied that Bowser did know beforehand about Kamek's invention, the only thing he didn't have yet was Peach's voice, hence why he kidnapped her.
You can also imagine that Kamek of all people probably set up a council, with Bowser participating of course, to talk about his latest invention ; I mean it would be very stupid not to do so, even by Bowser's standards
Oh and actually Bowser knows where the chamber is located, otherwise he wouldn't know that Princess Peach's voice is needed to open the door



Thanks, I'll make a thread to let everyone know, but it wont be before the end of 2015 at best, more likely spring-summer of 2016 though.

Alright, I like that! Thanks for clearing that up.
1 last question which I probably should've asked earlier:
Since the bearer of the Ancient Scepter needs to complete the Heavenly Gates too become the ultimate ruler, so we can assume Bowser and Peach need to do these 'trials' as well.
So it might be a fun idea to not make Bowser the final boss of the game but a sort of miniboss before the end of the last level, (not sure if even doable) and after Bowser, you fight the last boss. The one Bowser couldn't defeat.

I kinda figured this made more sense since if Bowser completed the 8 Gates, he probably wouldn't risk losing such a precious item which gives him the power of world domination.

It also may act as a nice little plot twist, the player thinks he's gonna fight Bowser as the last boss, but it actually isn't
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I apologize to everyone for my horrible English.

Actually my headcanon was that Bowser actually completed all the trials, including the final one.

Does this mean that he basically conquered the world ?

Not quite, the Ancient Weapon actually has 2 restrictions : he needs to charge up, for an unspecified amount of time before being able to fire its energy, also it won't work until its current owner has completed all 8 trials.

In-game this happens when Mario and Luigi are in World 7.

Basically this is a counter-measure to prevent Ancient Weapon's abuse, otherwise one could just spam the attack endlessly.
Given how powerful the weapon is, I find it fair.

This is the time-frame Mario and Luigi are given to kick Bowser's ass and to thwart his plans by deactivating / destroying the Ancient Weapon before the point of no return.

Usually the bread and butter formula for (N)SMB games is that Bowser is always the final boss, this is a constant that's not likely to change.

So are we going with this plot? It seems to complex for me. I don't play Mario games for plot. I play it for levels and gameplay.

Aww that's kind of a shame^^. I did like my idea even though it's probably not even doable. Even though we can say that we should be paying homage to the main series by making Bowser the final boss.


Me and  MeroMero are basically the only 2 who are discussing this at this point, so I can't really say anything for certain. Also, Story/Text is certainly not the highest priority in the NSMBCR, and the plot could still be changed to some extent (even though I like it). It might just seem there's a lot of attention going towards here because this topic is (finally) getting some posts .

That and I enjoy doing stuff like story design
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I apologize to everyone for my horrible English.