Super Mario World

Super Mario World

YOU ARE A SUPER PLAYER!!

Protagonist(s):	Mario Luigi
Genre(s):	Platform
Platform(s):	Super Nintendo Entertainment System Game Boy Advance
Release Date:	SNES: JP: November 21, 1990 NA: August 18, 1991 EU: April 11, 1992 AU: July 1, 1992 Game Boy Advance: JP: December 14, 2001 NA: February 11, 2002 AU: April 2, 2002 EU: April 12, 2002 KOR: September 23, 2002 iQue Player: CHN: March 15, 2006
Developer(s):	Nintendo EAD
Publisher(s):	Nintendo
Series:	Super Mario
Predecessor:	Super Mario Bros. 3 (canonically) Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (chronologically)
Successor:	Super Mario 64 (canonically) Super Mario's Wacky World (cancelled)

Super Mario World is a platform game released as a launch title for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and was also included in later releases of the compilation game Super Mario All-Stars.

The game was ported to the Game Boy Advance in late 2001/early 2002, under the title Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2.

Plot

After Mario and Luigi defeated Bowser and the Koopalings, saved the seven kings and Princess Peach (known back then as Toadstool), and reconciled Mushroom Kingdom in Super Mario Bros. 3, Mario, Luigi, and Princess decide to take a vacation on Dinosaur Island. When the Princess goes missing, Mario and Luigi realize that Bowser is up to no good again. It's up to Mario and Luigi, and their new ally, Yoshi, to defeat Bowser once more.^[1]

Why It's Superb

It subtly contributes to the franchise's worldbuilding, as it takes place in a new location: the Dinosaur Island.
This is the debut of Yoshi, a character who would be featured very frequently in the Mario series.
Extremely fluent and responsive controls.
72 levels to explore, with various themes such as grass, water, ghost houses, castles, sunken ghost ships, and ice.
24 of the 72 levels have secret exits.
It introduced the Star Road, an optional world that spawns different colored Yoshis, each with various abilities and super challenging levels.
If you complete the bonus world, the whole game has a "Seasonal change", making it look more autumn like and alternating some enemies' appearance.
Great soundtrack. In some levels, bongos are added to the music when Mario is riding Yoshi.
Every time you beat a Koopaling's castle, you get to see a cutscene where Mario destroys the castle in a unique way. Here are the ways Mario destroys the castles for each Koopaling:
- Iggy Koopa: Mario activates a bomb crumbling the castle in process.
- Morton Koopa Jr.: Mario kicks the castle two times and stomps the castle resulting to be crumbled in process.
- Lemmy Koopa: Mario smashes the castle with a hammer destroying it in process.
- Ludwig Von Koopa: Mario activates a bomb, but the castle flies like a rocket and crashes into a hill leaving that hill bandages after that.
- Roy Koopa: Mario activates a bomb, but the bomb doesn't work. He cautiously approach the castle before it humorously proceeds to blow up just as Mario investigates, leaving him covered in soot and tattered as well as a poof of steam emerge from his head.
- Wendy O' Koopa: Mario wipes away the castle with a mop.
- Larry Koopa: Mario lifts the castle up and kicks it away before it breaks apart offscreen, with Mario then posing.
A new power-up, the Feather, which gives Mario or Luigi a superhero cape that helps them fly. Unlike the Super Leaf and Tanooki Suit power-ups, the Cape allows indefinite flight, but requires some practice.
Mini-games that allow for extra lives.
A Top Secret area can be found in the second world, allowing for a stack of Mushroom and depending on the choice, Fire Flowers, or Feathers.
A secondary power-up can be held for later use or in emergencies in a box on the top screen.
A new spinning jump attack, which can destroy blocks when fully grown. It will also allow you to defeat tougher enemies like Koopas faster and negate damage from spiky enemies.
Several new enemies are introduced, including the infamous Charging Chuck and Banzai Bill.
Five dinosaur coins can be found in each stage. In addition to the coin count, finding all the five grants an extra life.
The Game Boy Advance version adds so many new features. For example, it allows you to swap between Mario and Luigi by pressing R on the world map. Luigi trades speed and traction for jumping height. And Mario and Luigi are able to speak.
The graphics are very appealing, vibrant, and colorful, which is the gold standard for just about any Mario game.
Very fun and epic final boss battle with Bowser.
The Special World theme song has an Easter Egg in it. If you listen to it for a certain period of time, a remix of the original Super Mario Bros. theme will play.

Bad Qualities

To save, you have to enter a ghost house or a castle (US and PAL versions only).
In order to launch with the SNES, a lot of content had to be cut.
Despite Super Mario Bros. 3 introducing the new "lose a power-up" system, Super Mario World still uses the old one were you can only get hit two times, which can be annoying for many players, especially in the harder parts of the game. When a power-up is lost, any stored power-ups will come down automatically, but the player has to be mindful to grab it in time.
- Thankfully, the Game Boy Advance version fixes this by updating the power-up system to match the SMB3 version.
The Koopalings have terrible sprites with inaccurate color schemes, such as Larry and Morton being puke green and Roy and Iggy being blue. Two of the Koopalings, Lemmy and Wendy, have an inconsistent art style when compared to their siblings. Even worse, Iggy's sprites depict him appearing to be rather just a bespectacled version Larry hence the slicked-back hairstyle and having the same style of boss battle. Many of them have copy-pasted boss fights. The exceptions are Ludwig, Bowser, and the Big Boo.
On that topic, this game's boss battles are very hit or miss.
The P-Balloon tends to be outclassed by the Cape Feather and some levels with it have little margin for error. To make matters worse than they already are, one of the levels, Tubular, requires the player to complete it by using P-Balloons.
Super Mushrooms can replace Fire Flowers and Cape Feathers as your secondary power-up, which, in certain cases, makes them a nuisance you must avoid which will otherwise downgrade Mario or Luigi's advantages.
- For example, if you enter the Warp Pipe while transitioning from the second portion of Chocolate Island 2 to the third one with less than 235 seconds remaining on the clock, you will end up in the area with these rather basic power-ups.
If you die in a level without collecting all the dragon coins, the game does not save your progress on your current dragon coin collection, even if you find a checkpoint. This can cause unnecessary backtracking for completionists.
Like Super Mario Bros. 3, Luigi's appearance in the original standalone SNES version of the game is a cheap palette swap of Mario. In later ports of the game, including Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World and Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2, Luigi is given new sprites with a more character-accurate appearance, and same applies to Super Mario Maker 2 for this game's style.
False Advertising: The artwork used to represent an example of Special Zone that is based on the level Awesome and has the exact same enemies as in the game shows Blurps — but in the actual game, Cheep Cheeps are in the level instead of the said species of fish enemies in the artwork.
The Cape Feather is kinda broken, because you can skip a lot of levels with it.

Reception

In Nintendo Power's top 200 games list, it ranked number 8. In the magazine's final issue, it ranked Super Mario World the fifth greatest game of all time. It is often considered one of the best Super Nintendo games and the second best Mario game ever, behind Super Mario Odyssey.

Many ROM hacks of the game have spawned over the years.

Videos

References

↑ Instruction Booklet Pg. 3

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[1] Instruction Booklet Pg. 3

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