Super Nintendo #3: Super Mario World

Well here's another one of those world altering games that I love writing about so much. Actually, I'm starting to get a little sick of writing about groundbreaking games. There's only so much I can say about them. I think I'll play some completely derivative games after this. At least those don't require so many positive adverbs.

But anyway here's Super Mario World, the game that defined the early 90s and ruined my childhood. Now don't get me wrong, it's a wonderful game in almost every regard, but it did help kill off the NES. I couldn't really see the big picture back then. This was before all the used game stores and tribute websites. These days it's hard to think of the NES as being gone. I can go to just about any town in the country and find some store that at least has a couple of dusty old games for it. In 1992 though it almost felt like the SNES was going to eat the old systems leaving nothing behind. At least it had some great new games to play.

Super Mario World took the overworld map system from SMB3 and greatly expanded it. This time, instead of eight distinct worlds you have one long world with plenty of branching paths. There are eight Koopas to fight, but the world isn't split up into eight distinct areas like the other games. It's closer to six with some mini areas between them. Considering how sacred the number eight has become in Mario lore I doubt Nintendo would ever do something like this again. I think it works very well though. It gives the game a more natural feel, and keeps you from knowing what the next level is going to be like.

This game is kind enough to have a save system this time around, but the developers still didn't get it quite right. To save your game you have to go through a special level such as a ghost house. This means you'll have to beat certain levels over and over again just so you can save your game. This is certainly better than starting the game over every time, but it still could've been refined a little.

I guess my biggest complaint with this game has to do with flying. Mario has a system of gliding which allows for continuous flight. This makes it entirely possible to fly through entire levels. Actually it's pretty easy to do. I think it ruins a game somewhat when you can practically skip levels without even having to cheat. If you're good you can skip just about everything. It's a shame too because the levels are brilliantly designed. They're good enough to use an adverb for anyway.

I did enjoy playing through it again, although I did mostly stay on the ground. I was surprised by how quick the game was. I didn't get to all 96 levels before writing this, but I got to over 70 of them. I'd say only took a couple of hours. I can't believe that this game took up so much of my time and energy when I was a kid. I must've been bad at games back then.

It's likely that you've already played Super Mario World before. In that case I'm probably telling you things you already know. Writing about popular games can be tricky because they will be read by more people but there is less to say about them. I imagine there are 100s of articles about this game on the internet alone. Even if you've never played it I bet you know a few things about it. Even with all this saturation though it is still a great experience. It seems to be in a constant state of rediscovery. In fact you should probably go out and play it today. Just make sure you don't fly through all the levels. This isn't cheating, but it sure is cheap.