How Mario's 16-bit masterpiece eased me into a world that felt so technologically and aesthetically distant.
The buildup to a next-generation console's arrival was supposed to generate feelings of anticipation, excitement and wonder. It was supposed to be a period in which we were invited to dream about bigger and better things--about amazingly expansive video-game experiences that were far beyond anything our old, outdated gaming hardware could produce; about graphical and technical performances that blew away anything we'd seen previously; and about all of the radical new ideas and concepts that a superpowered machine could help bring to fruition.
And had I been a normal person, that's exactly how it would have been for me during the SNES' buildup period. I would have been ecstatic about the idea of a console that allowed Nintendo to create games that were graphically and technologically superior to any of those I'd played on the company's other platforms.
But the truth was that I wasn't a normal person. I didn't think about consoles in those terms. I had my own view of them. I had my own idea of what the console scene should be like. And for me, the current order was ideal. That's why I saw the SNES, which was said to represent "a monumental shift in the way we play games," as nothing more than a grand disruptor.
And unlike everyone else, I was pissed about its imminent arrival!
The way I saw it, the SNES represented only one thing: the untimely death of the NES, which I considered to be a vital piece of my ongoing childhood. I absolutely loved that old gray box and didn't want its run to end. I mean, this was the console that introduced me to Super Mario Bos., The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Contra, Mega Man, Rygar, Castlevania, and other world-changing games that were responsible for providing me many of my best memories, and I felt as though it hadn't yet exhausted that power. It was, I believed, still very capable of providing amazingly memorable gaming experiences.
I didn't know or care about the industry's economic realities or the fact that the console market was becoming increasingly competitive. The only thing that was important to me was the NES. And all I desired was more of what the NES had given me up to that point: wonderfully enchanting 8-bit games whose imagination-stirring visuals and highly evocative music could do so well to enrapture my friends and I, bring us closer together, and help us to strengthen our bond.
And the SNES, which was promising to change all of the rules, was a threat to that desired reality.
"Why can't they continue making games for this console?" I continued to protest, angrily. "What's forcing them to fully abandon the NES?"
To me, the answer to the second question was a simple one: The SNES was what was forcing companies to end their support.It, alone, was the culprit. It was the entity that was creating the conditions for the NES' death. And for that reason, I strongly resented it.
Oh, sure--I had a tiny bit of interest in the SNES because its lineup, I'd read, was going to include new entries in all of my favorite long-running series, but still I just couldn't bring myself to embrace the console. The screenshots that I was seeing in SNES previews prevented me from doing that. Their imagery was repellent to me; their visuals spoke of a world whose values were completely antithetical to the NES'. And I wasn't sure that I wanted to travel to that world.
At that point, I still didn't have any plans to actually buy the SNES, no, but I was very much caught up in the hype surrounding it!
And Nintendo's hype machine was amazingly effective. Before long, the SNES was being talked about everywhere. I'd hear about it on the news. I'd see its image on the cover of every video-game magazine. I'd come across ads for it in every store I visited (including local establishments like the Optimo store on 86th Street). The kids at school wouldn't shut up about it. And even my friend Dominick, who I didn't think would be interested in the SNES (because he already owned a Genesis), would frequently tell me about his plans to buy the console as soon as he was able to save up enough money.
But because I was still fearful of the potentially destructive consequences of the SNES' arrival, I decided that the right thing to do was pull back and do my best to steer clear of all of the hype. I had to do that because I didn't want to participate in a celebration that was partly about putting the NES, my old friend, out to pasture. I didn't want to betray my feelings.
At the same time, though, I couldn't deny that Nintendo's marketing propaganda was starting to work on me. It was chipping away at my defenses and softening me up. It was invading my brain and causing me to have desirous thoughts. And after a while, it even caused me to warm up to the idea of actually buying an SNES!
"Could it be that I do need this console in my life?" I wondered.
At the time, I wasn't ready to make a firm decision.
The turning point came when SNES kiosks started appearing in Toys R Us and electronics stores. That's when I was able to get my first real look at SNES games and gain insight into what they actually were. And when I saw them in action, I began to understand their power and appeal. I became entranced by them. And consequently I began to covet the SNES.
Some stores had games like F-Zero and Pilotwings on display, but most others, including all of those that belonged to large chains, put all of their focus on what was obviously going to be the launch-period's biggest game: Super Mario World. And that was great for me because Super Mario World was the only launch game that really had my attention (I wasn't much of a fan of racing games or pilot simulators).
Unfortunately, though, I could never get very close to any of the stores' demo stations because they were always being occupied by groups of obnoxious kids that seemed determined to spend the entire day playing the demo over and over again. So all I could do, rather, was watch on from a distance and imagine what it would be like to play Super Mario World. And considering how awesome the game looked, I imagined that the experience would be nothing short of mind-blowing!
But really, I didn't mind not being able to play any of the demos. It was for the best, I thought. To me, store-kiosk play wasn't an ideal way to be introduced to a new console. That's why I decided that if I was going to buy the SNES, it had to be under the condition that I hadn't yet directly interacted with its games or held its controller in my hands. I wanted to have a "genuine" first experience with the SNES, and in order for that to happen, two conditions had to be met: (1) My first interaction with the console needed to occur within my bedroom, which I considered to be the most intimate setting for gaming experiences, and (2) my first SNES game needed to be played on my 20-inch Sony-brand television, whose screen had been reliably serving as my entryway into magical new worlds since the beginning.
That, I felt, was the best way to create the most memorable and most indelible of first experiences.
And for Nintendo, the pieces were continuing to conveniently fall into place. Every move that the company was making was working to further allay my feelings of apprehension and push me closer to being an enthusiastic day-one SNES buyer. It was almost as if its executives were aware of my emotional struggle and centering their entire marketing strategy on helping me to overcome my fears and bravely embrace change!
And wouldn't you know it: The SNES' planned release date, Nintendo Power announced, just happened to be late August of 1991 and only a few days after my birthday, which was definitely going to be a time in which I was flush with money but short on interest in all other current gaming products (there were no NES games on my radar, and the only Game Boy game I was interested in owning was Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge). The timing couldn't have been more perfect! And when you combined the factors of a timely release date and what I saw as the desirable prospect of getting a hold of a brand-new console before any of my friends could, you had the conditions for a day-one purchase. At that point, it was very likely that I was going to go out and buy myself an SNES the moment it became available!
Though, because I still had a lingering fear that the NES was on the verge of being stripped of all of its relevancy, I wasn't quite ready to fully commit to the decision of buying an SNES on day one. "Maybe I should wait a few months," I thought, "and in the meantime give the NES more time to shine."
I just didn't want to be in a position in which I no longer had any time or energy to devote to my all-time-favorite video-game platform. I still wasn't ready to move on from it.
In the end, I decided that the best thing to do was to commit to buying an SNES but do so while exhibiting a performatively resentful attitude. This way, I could feel as though I wasn't truly betraying the NES, my old buddy. Rather, I would be defending its honor by saying, "Yeah--I'm going to buy you, SNES, but I'm not going to be too happy about doing so! Don't think that I'm just gonna let you come in here and push my trusty friend aside!"
That's how I was able to ward off any feelings of guilt.
Back then, there was no such thing as a solid release date, so I didn't know which day, exactly, the SNES was going to arrive stores, and I couldn't even be sure that it wasn't already available! So I did what was always appropriate in those situations: I recruited Dominick and my poor mother to help me search all over Brooklyn for the SNES!
During our days-long hunt, we repeatedly we came up empty. Some stores hadn't yet received SNES shipments while others had already sold all of the product they'd received. And soon the dream of owning an SNES on "day one" was look to be unachievable. "We'll probably be doing this until Christmas," we thought.
But then something entirely unexpected happened: Miraculously we managed to get a hold of the very last SNES that was in stock at the Toys R Us over by Caesar's Bay Bazaar. We couldn't believe that it actually happened--that we'd somehow snagged an extremely popular item from the area's busiest, most crazily mobbed toy store. As we exited the store, we were filled with the sense that some divine force had intervened and manipulated conditions in a way that allowed us to stealthily snatch a coveted item right out from under everyone's noses.
Though, Dominick and I didn't care to dwell on the topic for very long. How we got an SNES didn't really matter to us, no; all that mattered, rather, was that we actually got one! And we couldn't wait to get back to my house and start playing it! And as we speed-walked our way toward the car, we urged my mother to hurry up and drive us back to the house as quickly as she could!
As soon as my mother finished parking the car in the garage, Dominick and I jumped out and then proceeded to rush up the front steps, charge into the house, and then dash up to my room. And then we wasted no time in unboxing the SNES.
As we hastily and eagerly removed all of the console's cables from their plastic wrapping, an intense feeling of excitement began to fill the air. We could barely contain ourselves. We were dying to get started!
The only thing that threatened to temper our excitement was the process of hooking the console up to the TV, which we hated doing because, inexplicably, we found the process to be super-complicated (and we were supposedly the "smart kids). We hoped that the SNES' setup process would be easier than the Atari 2600 and the NES'.
But unfortunately it wasn't, and we wound up wasting a half an our trying to figure out how to hook the SNES up to my TV. At first, we weren't sure if its AV cables were able to stack onto the NES', and during the process, we forgot which cable belonged to which console and had to sort things out by running a number of tests. Also, we didn't realize that you had to attach the TV's coaxial cable to the SNES' AV cable, and consequently we spent several minutes repeatedly cycling through the channels and fruitlessly trying to find a confirming image of a graphically advanced Italian plumber.
I mean, we eventually figured out what to do, but man--what a mess.
It had always been the case that we'd spend the afternoon period of any warm summer day engaging in a marathon session and playing all of our favorites (Balloon Fight, Ice Climber, Metroid, Mega Man 2, Double Dragon II: The Revenge, Gauntlet II, Altered Beast, Golden Axe, and such), but that wasn't what we were doing on this particular summer afternoon, no. Rather, we were doing something extraordinarily different. We were breaking from the norm in the most adventurous of ways. We were sailing over to the shores of undiscovered land and boldly venturing into the wild unknown.
And, really, neither of us knew what to expect.
I liken our initial reaction to Super Mario World to the one we had the first time we saw the opening of Star Wars and watched on as an absolutely enormous spaceship flew onto the screen and spent several seconds revealing its unfathomably large frame: We were in awe of what we were witnessing! As we observed the title screen's activity, our eyes widened and we were overcome with feelings of astonishment and wonderment.
We were so entranced by the title-screen sequence--with its breathtakingly vibrant imagery and wonderfully exuberant music--that we couldn't help but watch it multiple times.
I mean, we'd seen technologically advanced games before, sure. We were both longtime arcade-goers, and we'd been playing Genesis games for almost two years, so we certainly weren't strangers to graphically advanced games. But this was something different. This was the next generation of Nintendo. This was Nintendo like we'd never seen it before. Up until this point, we'd only known Nintendo as the company that produced graphically limited 8-bit games and machines. That's what it had always been to us. But here we were, now, witnessing the birth of a new Nintendo--one that was ready to ascend to the next level and become a technological powerhouse!
And we were excited to see it happening!
From the moment we pushed the SNES' purple power switch into the "On" position until 10 o'clock that night, we remained deeply engrossed in Super Mario World (we stopped only to have dinner). We were enchanted by every aspect of it: its richly vibrant visuals; its sublime orchestral-level music; its delightfully creative world-map design; its smooth, refined controls; and all of its great new gameplay additions. We loved how it looked, sounded and played.
Super Mario world gave us everything we wanted and more. It delivered in a big way. And for that reason, our first experience with it was just as magical as the one we had with Super Mario Bros. 3.
And, of course, we were very impressed by all of the game's advanced graphical effects and mechanical tricks (the ones that Nintendo Power had been endlessly boasting about).
There were so many new things to see and experience: Each stage was filled with sloped surfaces, spinning blocks, diagonal pipes, and moving platforms of every variety. When you stomped on a Koopa Trooper's shell, the underwear-clad trooper would fly out from it and then attempt to hurry back and reclaim its protective case. You could climb on fences and use their flipping panels to switch planes and climb on fences' opposite sides (and to me, there was nothing more advanced than plane-switching), and all the while, you could knock away the Koopa Troopers that were climbing on opposite planes by punching the fence sections that were currently passing across. In some Ghost Houses, dozens of Boos could be seen hovering atop the screen, and sometimes packs of them would dive down at you. Enemies and objects rotated, stretched and expanded in size. And you could use the controller's newly added L and R shoulder buttons to scroll the screen forward or back and get a sneak peek of what was waiting for you on adjacent screens.
And we were enamored with all of it. We loved each and every new thing that Super Mario World was showing us.
At first, though, we weren't sure how to feel about the addition of Yoshi--Mario's new rideable dinosaur friend. Nintendo Power had spent so many months excessively advertising the character that we were afraid that the game would be centered around him and that his presence would work to steal focus away from the Mario Bros. and turn the game into something unrecognizably different.
But that didn't happen. Instead, Yoshi turned out to be a purely optional assist character and one whose abilities helped to enhance the gameplay in a number of cool and interesting ways. We loved how Yoshi functioned. We had a ton of fun experimenting with our new dino buddy and all of his different-colored variants, each of which, most interestingly, would exhibit a unique power when it was holding a Koopa Trooper shell in its mouth. Red Yoshis would spew fireballs! Yellow ones would stomp on the ground and cause earthquakes! Blue ones would gain temporary flight! And the standard Green Yoshis could exhibit any of the aforementioned abilities by eating and holding onto a shell of a specific color!
"What a cool character!" we thought. "All of his abilities are amazing!"
Though, most of our time with Yoshi was spent running around stages with the aim of testing the limits of his ingestive powers. We were eager to find out which enemies he could and couldn't swallow. And it turned out that he could scarf down a great many of them--including the normally unassailable spiky and fiery enemies. "How awesome is that?!" we said to each other.
Another thing we were happy about was the return of the Koopalings. Their presence, we felt, provided a important touch of familiarity to a game that was otherwise visually and aesthetically distant from the ones we'd played on the NES. It created a connective strain and helped us to feel comfortable in this new space. And what was great was that they were back with all-new tricks, most of which helped to showcase the SNES' Mode 7 special effects! Our favorite was the Iggy battle. We fought him on a large rocking teeter-totter-like land formation and vied to knock him off of it and send him into the lava! We were super-impressed with how the land formation tilted and rotated in reaction to the characters' shifting their weight around, and as we observed the battle, we learned a lot about the game's physics system and how wonderfully advanced and complex it was.
At other times, we platformed our way across dangerous waters by jumping from one leaping dolphin to the next. We traveled over extended lava pools and did so while dodging the dragon-like Blarghs that were popping out from the lava and trying to eat us (just like they were doing in all of those screenshots we'd seen!). We maneuvered our way around and through large circling ghost rings. We traversed caves and mazes that were formed from massive undulating structures. And we used Mario's new spin-jump (which I saw as an "advanced maneuver" that could only be pulled off in a 16-bit game) to joyously shatter series of blocks and bounce off of enemies (including those that were normally deadly to the touch).
Super Mario World was a game of moments. Each time it showed us something new, we felt as though we were witnessing a world-changing event. Each time it exhibited an amazing technical or graphical trick, we looked on intently and thought, "We are watching the glorious evolution of gaming in real time!"
Super Mario World, we felt inspired to say, was a truly special game.
And we gave equal attention to Super Mario World's smaller additions and details, each of which also had something important to add to the game.
We liked how your mounting a Yoshi would cause the stage music to incorporate a layer of tropical-sounding percussion. How you could throw shells straight upward and in arcs and even catch them as they were dropping. How you could use the new cape item to gracefully glide across entire stage sections (before we accidentally discovered that you could spread the cape and fly, we ignorantly determined that it was nothing more than a cosmetically altered version of Super Mario Bros. 3's Raccoon Suit). How you could engage Reznors by jumping onto their rotary devices' platforms and tactically assailing them (though, we always preferred to tempt fate and take on the challenge of trying to eliminate all four Reznors from the ground). How unaccompanied baby Yoshis could act on their own and eat enemies that dared to come near them. And how Mario would demolish the Koopalings' castles in visually interesting, creative ways like scrubbing them out of existence, column by column, with a long-handled scrubbing brush; wildly hammering them to pieces, Donkey Kong-style; reducing them to rubble with kicks and stomps; and lifting them up and tossing them away (and therein doing his best to channel Popeye, the character who inspired his creation).
To us, these aspects, too, were as "advanced" as anything else the game was showing us.
And I can't go without mentioning how much we loved the game's ending theme! It was incredibly cheerful and uplifting, and it continued to build and escalate in the most stirring way. Just listening to it felt highly rewarding!
It was an inspirational piece. It made us feel great about our experience and extremely excited to be playing our first next-generation Nintendo game. That's how powerful it was. It was the best Super Mario Bros. ending theme ever, and we felt as though it was worth playing through Super Mario World just to get the chance to listen to it and absorb its wonderfully inspiriting energy. (You could say that Super Mario World started the trend of Nintendo-developed SNES games having amazingly epic ending themes.)
My takeaway from this fun-filled day was that the SNES was an awesome console and that I was a fool for ever questioning its existence. And I knew, now, that I needed the SNES and games like Super Mario World in my life.
I was so excited by what I'd seen from the SNES and Super Mario World that I felt inspired to use whatever remained of my money to buy more SNES games. And in the following days, I went out and purchased F-Zero and SimCity. And likewise, I had great fun playing them and being impressed by their next-generation visuals and advanced gameplay mechanics.
For the first few weeks, though, I spent the majority of my time with Super Mario World. I played it at every opportunity, and I did so whether I was alone or with friends (none of whom were fortunate enough to own an SNES in the early months). And each time, I made sure to derive maximum enjoyment from the experience. I made sure to find every secret exit and achieve a perfect 96-exit total.
I loved Super Mario World so much that I couldn't help but play it in full each time. I greatly enjoyed playing it, and I was happy to do whatever I could to extend the experience and spend more time with it.
Super Mario World, it seemed, never ran out of surprises. It always had some cool new thing to show me. It continuously introduced new ideas.
The most stunning surprise was the transformation that occurred after I completed the Special World and then exited it via its spawned warp star. I was astonished to find to find game's entire overworld map had changed colors and that some characters had been cosmetically altered (Koopa Troopers began donning Mario masks, Piranha Plants became jumping Pumpkin Plants, and a few others also took on interesting new forms). I was blown away not just by the color and sprite changes but by the fact that Nintendo had taken the time to throw in even more content and do so simply for the purpose of providing the most persistent players a nice reward. I loved that Nintendo went the extra mile and included literal world-changing content. I considered said content to be emblematic of what Super Mario World was working toward.
I was so obsessed with Super Mario World that I saw each piece of newly reported information as a huge deal. Anytime Nintendo Power's Classified Information section revealed something about the game, I'd be all over it--even if it was something minor like the ability to (a) reenter a defeated Koopaling's castle by simultaneously pressing the L and R buttons or (b) trigger the original Super Mario Bros.'s main theme by remaining idle on the Special World's map screen for two minutes. And I'd use each new discovery as an excuse to return to the game and spend even more time with it!
Another thing that I loved about Super Mario World was that its cast included a number of enemies from Super Mario Bros. 2, which, in my view, Nintendo had been sadly overlooking. It brought back Pokeys (who were there mostly to help Yoshi demonstrate his ability to swallow multiple enemies in rapid succession); Pidgets (or "Pidget Bills," as they were now called), who replaced Bullet Bills after you cleared the Special World; Bob-ombs; and even Ninjis, who unexpectedly (and thus very memorably) appeared in the final hall of Bowser's castle ("There are freakin' Ninjis in this game?!" I yelled, in a greatly surprised fashion, the moment the first Ninji came into view).
So that was definitely an area in which Super Mario World was better than Super Mario Bros. 3, which, disappointingly, brought back only one Super Mario Bros. 2 enemy (Bob-omb).
Super Mario World gave Super Mario Bros. 2 its proper respect, and I strongly appreciated that.
But my favorite returning element was the airship from Super Mario Bros. 3! It appeared in the Sunken Ghost Ship stage (in sunken form, of course), which unlocked after you completed Chocolate Island. In the stage's opening section, you swam around the ship's exterior portion, which was designed to resemble the exterior portions of Super Mario Bros. 3's airships. And I loved that it was designed that way. I'd get goosebumps every time I'd enter the stage and see all of the ship's familiar-looking crates, guardrails and planks.
What I liked to do was open up separate issues of Nintendo Power and compare the two games' stage maps and attempt to figure out who the sunken ship belonged two (I remember concluding that the ship belonged to Morton Koopa Jr. because it, much like his, had stacks of crates and some proximate Bullet Bill blasters).
I obsessed over the Ghost Ship partly because I felt that it created a strong visual and aesthetic link to Super Mario Bros. 3 and the NES games in general. And that link was important to me because it helped me to become more accepting of the SNES. It allayed my fears by saying, "This new console isn't going to destroy the things you love, no. Rather, it's going to expand upon them and make them even better!"
And that was something I needed to know.
Also, I loved everything about Super Mario World's new-style world map: how it looked and animated; how its contiguous layout allowed you to freely move between the game's separate map areas; and how it would shapeshift in response to my actions and reveal secret routes. It was explorable and shapeable, and it was hiding loads of secrets. And because it was so open and interactable, it always gave you the sense that there was more to see--that there were even more secrets to find and even more ways to alter its shape. That's why I continued to eagerly explore it and interact with it long after I found all 96 exits; I was always convinced that there were huge undiscovered secrets lying below and within its surfaces, and I wanted to be the first to find them!
In particular, I liked how the Switch Palaces' switches functioned to fill in all of those empty dotted-line blocks and turn them into solid Exclamation Blocks. The solidification of blocks would work to drastically alter stages' layouts and consequently provide you access to sections that were previously unreachable. Also, certain block formations would help to make your life easier by blocking in enemies like Thwomps and Thwimps and providing you access to conveniently placed safety-granting platforms. And two of the block types even supplied extra power-ups: the yellow ones contained mushrooms and the green ones contained cape feathers (I always felt that the red ones should have contained fire flowers)!
"This is such an amazingly clever idea!" I'd think whenever I'd come across a stage-altering collection of Exclamation Blocks. To me, block-solidification was another one of those "advanced mechanics" that helped the SNES to separate itself from the 8-bit consoles. It made me excited to see what other "advanced" things the console could do.
And I was fond of the map's musical themes, too. They were pretty great. My friends and I would always argue about whether or not they were better than Super Mario Bros. 3's, but even while doing that, none of us would ever change our opinion that they were, regardless, some of the best map tunes around. And we all agreed that the Vanilla Dome theme was the best of the bunch. Whenever it would play, we'd make sure to stop and listen to it for a minute or two and do what was proper: put our controllers down and bop our heads in rhythm to its hot beats!
And I was always finding new ways to express my fondness for Super Mario World's map. In particular, I liked to recreate sections of it in Mario Paint. I'd do so using the laborious method of pasting together dozens of 16-by-16 sprites, all of which I'd slowly and meticulously create with the game's Stamp Editor. And I tell, you man: I put together some really convincing recreations!
It's just too bad that I wasn't able to save any of my creations for very long (my copy of the game would delete them after about a week; it must have been bugged).
And in the end, Super Mario World succeeded in completely allaying my fears and proving to me that the SNES (the "Super Nintendo," as I was apt to call it) was a console that I absolutely needed in my life. It was my new favorite game, and I couldn't imagine living without it.
During that era, Super Mario World was one of my most-frequently-played games, and for a long while, it remained my go-to Mario game. I loved it, and I couldn't stay away from it. I considered it to be the best platformer ever. It had, in my view, surpassed Super Mario Bros. 3 and taken the platformer crown. That's how highly I thought of it.
To me, Super Mario World was gaming royalty, and I knew that I'd never stop playing it.
Sadly, it didn't work out that way. As time went on, I slowly drifted away from Super Mario World and eventually reached a point in which I wasn't playing it at all. Why that happened, I'm not sure. It might have been that I played it way too much and consequently suffered Super Mario World fatigue, or perhaps it was the case that new favorites like Mega Man X, Super Metroid and Donkey Kong Country had stolen all of my attention (or it could have been a combination of these two factors).
Remarkably, this was a step-for-step repeat of my history with Super Mario Bros. 3: I instantly fell in love with it, I played it to death over a years-long period, then I slowly drifted away from it, and ultimately I completely cut it out of my life. Both games shared the same sad fate.
I didn't return to either game until the early 2000s, and at that point, the only thought that was running through my head was, "What were you thinking? These games are so damn good! How could you have ignored them for over a decade?!"
The answer was simple: I was a fool. Somehow, to my eternal shame, I let myself forget how special these games were to me.
It might have been the case that I drifted away from Super Mario World because its flaws became more glaring to me over time. I couldn't ignore that the game had some troublesome structural problems. Mainly, it had a pacing issue. There were too many snail-paced water and auto-scrolling stages, and as I played through them, I'd be filled with the sense that they were designed specifically to slow me down and bore me. As I waited for structures to move into place and undead enemies to slowly waddle into position, I'd drift off and start thinking about other things.
Also, it was impossible to rhythmically run through many of the later stages because they were crowded with inconveniently placed enemies. Any time I'd try to move speedily, I'd run into a storm of flying Koopa Troopers, Boos or flying Cheep Cheeps and be forced to slow down and wait. This, too, worked to damage the game's flow.
And parts of the game were strangely abbreviated. The Twin Bridges, for instance, was so short that I didn't realize until years later that it was actually its own world! I just assumed that it was a Vanilla Dome secret area that served as a shortcut to Ludwig's castle.
In my most recent play-throughs of Super Mario World, I've been noticing these same flaws, and I still feel the same way about them.
For years, neighborhood kids would have "Which one is better?" debates about Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World, and at the time, I was firmly in the Super Mario World camp. My opinion was that it outclassed Super Mario Bros. 3. But in 2015, after I've replayed Super Mario Bros. 3 a bunch of times and been reminded of how brilliant and near-flawless it is, I no longer hold that opinion. I find that Super Mario Bros. 3 is better in terms of pacing, level design, variety of stage types and power-ups, and the amount of content that it offers. It has superior scale and depth. And it easily takes the title of "greatest 2D Mario game in existence."
My opinion now is that Super Mario World is at best a close-equal to Super Mario Bros. 3. It's great but not quite as great as Super Mario Bros. 3. That's still a good place to be, yes, but nevertheless I can't help but feel that a next-generation Mario game should have endeavored to be more. It should have sought to blow away its predecessor and take the series to a much higher level. But it didn't do that, and consequently all it does is give me a new appreciation for what Super Mario Bros. 3 was able to accomplish on inferior hardware.
Now, please don't take any of this to mean that I no longer hold Super Mario World in high regard. I absolutely do. I still have a great fondness for it. I still consider it to be a top-tier platformer and an all-time-classic video game. And that's how I'll always feel about it.
Also, I'll continue to hold it dear because of how vitally important it was to my personal gaming history. It did so much for me: It helped me to cope with the changes that were happening around me and subsequently embrace them. It inspired me to create. It brought my friends and I closer together. And it provided me some of the best, most memorable gaming experiences I'd ever had.
And still, I can't imagine what my life would be without it.
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