Super Mario World
I did not expect to be surprised by this game as much as I was. As a kid, I frequently played the GBA port, so I thought I had a good idea of what I was getting into. I quickly realized that I probably never made it past the first three or four levels in any of my dozens of restarts, so most of what Super Mario World had to offer was a new experience for me. Unfortunately, for as much as I was surprised by the game, I was underwhelmed by how it felt to actually play it.
Super Mario World is almost a perfect follow-up to Super Mario Bros. 3, taking the foundation established by the previous console's final game in the series and creating something that is simultaneously familiar and brand new. The map screen introduced in SMB3 is back, albeit in a much more attractive form thanks to the SNES's 16-bit architecture. The expected run-and-jump platforming also returns, with new power-ups, enemies, and set pieces to help give Super Mario World its own identity. The big standout addition being Mario's dinosaur friend, Yoshi. With the help of his ridable green buddy, Mario has to defeat each of the seven koopalings on his way to challenge Bowser and save the kidnapped Princess Peach.
The simple story is at home in an early Mario game, and the return of the koopalings is actually pretty fun after seeing them depicted in 8-bit in the previous console game. The levels themselves can look really pretty, and the addition of new platforming features, from simple things like slants to more complicated implementations like climbable fences, really improves the game's variety compared to previous titles. Unfortunately, some new additions felt a little more frustrating than fun, putting a damper on the rest of the experience for me.
I'm fully aware that my issues with the game are dumb, so don't let them hold you back in any way, but I can't pretend they didn't affect my experience. My biggest frustration was the hidden exits. Having secret ways to finish a level and open up new paths is a fun concept, but I didn't want to do much replaying during this playthrough, so I tended to just accept whichever exit I found the first time through a stage. With this mindset, I was generally able to ignore the existence of the secret exits, but I was a little disappointed to clearly be missing out on levels. The real trouble came in the Forest of Illusion, though. This world was full of secret exits, which is fine, except that one of them is required to get to the next world, which left me looking up a walkthrough. I appreciate what they were trying to do, but I just wanted to turn my brain off and I was frustrated when I wasn't allowed to.
Thankfully, my experience with Super Mario World was overall pretty good. While I would say that I'm on team SMB3 for the best classic 2d Mario game, I still think this is a good game in its own right. There's plenty to play, and there's even more to discover if you want to put in the time. Although I decided against searching for the extra content during my time with the game, I was impressed with what I did play, especially from a technical perspective when comparing Super Mario World to its 8-bit predecessors. Maybe someday I'll play through the GBA version and give my nostalgia a chance to redeem the experience, but for now, I feel just a little lukewarm about the whole thing.
