Topic: Super Mario World - RFN RetroActive Discussion Thread

[GoldenPhoenix]

OMG that is so sad.

[TheYoungerPlumber]

I had forgotten how useful Yoshi actually is in this game. When I think back, I usually think of Yoshi as just being "there," and not used for many of the secrets. However, when I started playing the game, I realized just how much I use the double-jump he provides to hit blocks and maneuver around obstacles.

[CaptainK.923]

I'll never forget the Special World. I remember being on my seemingly never ending quest to reach *96 and I finally found the entrance to the Special World. Took down Gnarly with no problem, but then my most hated of levels came afterwards: TUBULAR! This is the one where you have to float through the level as a P balloon and its psychotically hard, or at least it was for me back then. After a few tries I eventually got frustrated and needed a few minutes. I put the controller down and left the room to get a drink. As soon as I came back in and picked up my controller the map music changed to the original Super Mario Bros. theme and I just had to stop and listen. What an outstanding little easter egg! That's a perfect example of why I loved this game so very much. There seemed to be no end to the amount of secrets you could find.

And as a side note, I eventually did reach *96. The Cheese Bridge secret took me forever to find!

[anand]

I love that cartoon. It's the funniest thing ever.

Anylord, what do you guys think about the spin jump? I feel it's kind of symbolic of the overstuffed nature of SMW, compared to the lean, mean SMB3. I don't remember it ever being very necessary, except for spinning off of Yoshi.

I think the spin move was most likely born from the devs coming up with actions for the extra buttons.  Same with the L and R level scroll feature.  Which is fine by me since the spin move was integrated pretty thoroughly in the game.  Yeah it was used to jump off Yoshi.  But it was also a second type of jump attack, kind of a pre-butt stomp.  It also made Mario invulnerable against certain enemies and hazards.  So I used it a lot.

That may be true, the extra buttons. Sort of like a Super Tennis thing? Thinking about it, the spin jump always kind of bugged me, because I felt it was a bit uncomfortable to hit the Y button. I recently realized that I've always disliked symmetrical, diamond-shaped button layouts, where there is no centrally located 'home' button to rest your thumb on. It just feels like bad ergomomics. I should try going back and playing all of those Super NES games with the GCN Hori SNES pad, but I don't know if it would work (or map correctly).

It's funny. When I go back and think of some of my favorite games of all time, like SMB, River City Ransom, Bionic Commando, and Power Spike V-Ball (go Technos!), many of them had only two buttons to work with. It doesn't seem like a good thing, but maybe that was part of their purity.

(That said, I'm also playing through StarTropics for the first time, and that game could REALLY use another button. Or they could just utilize Select in the dungeons...)

[Pandareus]

I should try going back and playing all of those Super NES games with the GCN Hori SNES pad, but I don't know if it would work (or map correctly).

It would. And by would, I mean wouldn't. It would be like playing with a regular GCN. It would "correctly" map the Y, X, B and A buttons of the SNES pad on the Y, X, B and A buttons of the Hori pad, making the game "correctly" nearly unplayable.

[noname2200]

I have a love the spin jump. It's incredibly useful, so much so that I rarely used the regular jump my first few times around. But I've taken to using it less and less, because it makes enemies too easy. I kind of wish there had been more of a tradeoff involved in using it over the regular jump, but that would probably have been too complex for some gamers. Pale's wife provides a good example, although I'm surprised she's having difficulty with this when she's accustomed to Little Big Planet.

I also have to say that I enjoyed how they added the fences. It's a little slow-paced, but they helped to mix things up a bit more and differentiated the castles from all the other levels.

Anyhow, I'm about to tackle my favorite part of the game, the Special World, again. Looking forward to going through lives like Madonna goes through adopted children.

[anand]

Angelina Jolie would probably be a better example.

[Mop it up]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v644/gojira1980/2117095528_5dc326d7c6.jpg

What's even more sad is how often that happens.

[adadad]

Started playing through this game again and I have to say I just find it boring so far. Clearly it's well designed and it ticks the boxes as a "Platform Jumper", but the gameplay style is not for me. I didn't find anything particularly notable about SMB3 either to be honest, although I do love SM64 and the original SMB and the sadistic japanese sequel.

I wonder if people's affection for this game is perhaps born out of nostalgia, or am I just being cynical? The exploration angle is fun at times - for example it is very satisfying to come across a secret exit - but to me SMW feels stale and far too familiar to hold my interest. Mario is a slippery chap who's easily hit and I find this encourages me to take it slowly and safely, which goes against my instinct to race through and puts a dampener on things. Can anyone tell me what is notable about this game to them? Despite never having played this when I was young I feel as though I've played it a million times before in knock offs and imitators.

I hope Yoshi's Island will come out on the VC eventually...

[Stratos]

Hilarious. I felt guilty doing that to find the one secret exit behind the first on the bridge level (I'm guessing that is the Cheese Bridge level people are referring to). Can that be the podcast cover art for the RetroActive section this week? I think it would be great. Please?

I love how you can go back to a classic game like this and make new discoveries like the 3-up and smiley-coin-cloud like referenced earlier. It just adds to the joy and excitement of playing.

I really liked how the land terraformed as you beat levels and opened new secret paths. I would try and look for where secret paths would go on the overworld before playing levels. Speaking of changing the land, I thought the different Master "!" Switches really were a great breakthrough. You would see those block outlines and later when you hit the corresponding color switch they filled in to allow access to secret areas or made levels easier. I think that was one of the first times I saw something like that where an action impacted other levels in that way.

[Jonnyboy117]

Great discussion so far! I want to add a few personal observations from playing the game this week, to help open up the conversation even more.

- The non-linear aspect is spotlighted from the start, as you can play the first two levels out of order. In fact, you could play very far into the game (maybe even beat it) without activating any of the switch blocks.

- Cues to the previous games are shockingly few, especially in the early levels. You don't see Goombas or hear any recognizable Mario songs until deep into the game. Yoshi's Island 1 and 2 seem designed to hammer the point that this is a brand new world for Mario.

- Mario's signature move is jumping up to break blocks, but in SMW, you break blocks from above, not below. The game flirts with directionality in other ways, too -- some levels scroll right-to-left, while others go top-to-bottom. This would usher in a more open era of 2D platformers.

[Stratos]

That is true about a lack of Goombas. Though there are a few in the game they seem to be different. Don't you not stomp on them normally to kill them? Rather odd.

[Sundoulos]

I've never thought about that before, either.  Since Goombas were originally supposed to be citizens of the Mushroom Kingdom that sided with King Koopa, it makes sense that there wouldn't be as many in Dinosaur Land.

I seem to remember reading something in an old Nintendo Power publication that Miyamoto had to scrap several power up ideas in SMB3 because of technical limitations.  One of the most odd was a Centaur power-up for Mario.  I have to wonder if the idea for an animal mount (Yoshi) was born out of that.  I'll try to find a source for that if I can.

[anand]

Did you guys read the Iwata Asks interview where Miyamoto basically acknowledged that, in a Mario game, the enemies are just flora and fauna that exist in the world and go about their business, and Mario just murders them for existing?

Metroid is a more obvious example, but Mario is definitely genocidal.

[adadad]

How about those bloody ghost houses?! Boring repetitive guessing game for the most part. The castles are plain annoying too. The wizards with their horrible random placement, ugh, especially towards the end of the game drove me crackers.

Genocidal sounds about right.

[noname2200]

Angelina Jolie would probably be a better example.

Good point: I was just going with the more recent example.

Started playing through this game again and I have to say I just find it boring so far. Clearly it's well designed and it ticks the boxes as a "Platform Jumper", but the gameplay style is not for me. I didn't find anything particularly notable about SMB3 either to be honest, although I do love SM64 and the original SMB and the sadistic japanese sequel.

I wonder if people's affection for this game is perhaps born out of nostalgia, or am I just being cynical? The exploration angle is fun at times - for example it is very satisfying to come across a secret exit - but to me SMW feels stale and far too familiar to hold my interest. Mario is a slippery chap who's easily hit and I find this encourages me to take it slowly and safely, which goes against my instinct to race through and puts a dampener on things. Can anyone tell me what is notable about this game to them? Despite never having played this when I was young I feel as though I've played it a million times before in knock offs and imitators.

I hope Yoshi's Island will come out on the VC eventually...

Nostalgia may play a role, of course, but I think that even without that you're probably in the extreme minority. World is a well-executed platformer with a good sense of balance: It offers a brisk challenge throughout, while almost never overwhelming the player. It has a near-perfect risk/reward system in place: if you want to play it conservatively, you can beat all the main levels quite easily, but if you want to get all those Yoshi coins and find those secret levels, you're going to have to push yourself a bit more to do it. In that regard, World gives you just as much as you're willing to put into it, and I really like that.

As for taking it slowly, it sounds like you're making the game less fun for yourself (the phrase about getting what you put into it applies here). Treat Mario like you do Luigi in the Lost Levels; he can't stop on a dime, so rather than trying to make complete stops, use whatever momentum you build up, take advantage of the fact that you can change direction mid-air, and above all spam the spin jump. If you have any reflexes to speak of, you'll blaze through most levels: honestly, I've always thought Mario in World was as fast as Sonic in Sonic 1 2 and 3, only with more responsive controls and with the added advantage that the camera actually let you see what was more than two feet ahead of you.

Anyhow, long story short, try a more aggressive playstyle. It will really change the game up for you, and after a few levels I think you'll find yourself liking it more.

[Killer_Man_Jaro]

- Cues to the previous games are shockingly few, especially in the early levels. You don't see Goombas or hear any recognizable Mario songs until deep into the game. Yoshi's Island 1 and 2 seem designed to hammer the point that this is a brand new world for Mario.

Personally, I feel that the inclusion of all these original enemy types was a design choice that very few Mario games has been able to replicate. Most other successors have used the enemies that debuted in the NES trilogy. I really like how Super Mario World introduced foes with more complex attacks and methods to defeating them. Even the familiar faces like Goombas and Koopas had changed unexpectedly.
When I consider all this, I'm really perplexed as to why so many of these enemies made this one-time appearance and then never showed up again. The one in particular I'm thinking of is Charging Chuck, the football player - he had several different forms & moves and was one of the more difficult foes to kill. So I wonder why he, and numerous others, didn't carry over to the following instalments.

[GoldenPhoenix]

I hated the goombas in SMW, they looked like walking apples. Terrible design.

With that said I played SMW a few years after it came out so I don't think my appreciation for the game is colored by nostalgia.

[Bboy]

Isn't the spin jump a shorter jump? If it isn't, then I've always made this game harder than it is.

Something that really pisses me off is that some of the secret exits are the real exits, and the straightforward path doesn't do anything.

[yoshi1001]

Isn't the spin jump a shorter jump? If it isn't, then I've always made this game harder than it is.

Something that really pisses me off is that some of the secret exits are the real exits, and the straightforward path doesn't do anything.

As I recall, there is no way to beat the game without finding at least two secret exits.

One choice I find interesting is that right from the start, the player is given a choice of what level to try first-Yoshi's Island 1 or 2. Virtually every other Mario game has one starting point, but this one has two.

I do have a problem with the cape, though. In the end, I think it's too good, allowing you to skip over virtually any open level easily. While limitless flight might be fun, it ultimately proves to be too powerful, allowing players to skip large portions of this game. By comparison, I think the carrot and fire flower in Super Mario Land 2 are much better balanced.

Also, scrolling does have a use-in some levels, you can use it to control when the Swoopers and Blarggs are triggered.

[Patchkid15]

I've been playing the game on my DS (via the GBA slot) and it is everything that i remembered it to be. Level design is fantastic, and small gimicks like multiple exits excites me. I am down to only about 10 levels to go and here are some of my quick thoughts.

Yoshi is actually really usefull and needed to get to some secret access areas, He may be hard to keep in those levels, but fun none the less.

I dont some of the secret areas... there is no way that people would know they existed sometimes. I know only from my childhood, and i dont even know how i figured them out back then. I just feel that they are added just to add them, Flying to the roof of the ghost house seems like something I would never do.


Other than that, it is a great game, that has lasted quite some time, and is still enjoyable to this day.

[noname2200]

Isn't the spin jump a shorter jump?

It is. That, and the fact that you can't keep flying with the spin jump were the two drawbacks. But note that the spin jump is only a little bit shorter than the normal one.

[Peachylala]

This discussion is awesome. Yet on the subject of castles, they didn't have the danger feeling that the Airships had in SMB3, but the traps more or less made up for it.

And to relive bad memories, anyone remember the DiC cartoon from the 90s? They completely ruined Yoshi, completely ruined him. =(

[vudu]

I hated the goombas in SMW, they looked like walking apples. Terrible design.

HOLY ****, THAT'S A GOOMBA?!

I For the past 18 years I honestly thought they were walking (and flying) apples.

I'm sitting here, reading through the threads saying to myself "where the Hell are these Goombas people keep talking about".  I had no idea they were in front of me the whole time.

My life has been turned upside down.

[Sundoulos]

First of all, kudos to the design team in Mario for going with a creative world design with unique area themes...instead of having the generic water world, ice world, desert world...etc.
I've never thought about it before, but it's not normal for a Mario game to have an entire world set in a forest.  It's one of my favorite sections, thoguh

The person upthread who said that the graphics and music suffered a little in the transition to a GBA cart wasn't kidding.  I haven't noticed a huge change in the graphics, but the music that is so great on the SNES version suffers greatly.  I do like that they give the player the option to play as Mario and Luigi, though, even if Luigi has sort of wonky controls.

This game, along with SMB3, are two of my favorite childhood memories.  I was one of those kids who would beg my parents to take me to Toys'R'Us just so that I could play SMW on the demo kiosk that was there.  During those few weeks before the SNES came out, there was always a line there.  Mario Madness was in full swing.

At the time, I was amazed by the music and the graphics effects of the game.  In particular, the Ghost houses (with the transparency tricks for the clouds and ghosts) really stood out at the time.  I don't think that anything quite like it had been done on a console up to that point. 

It's perhaps inevitable that this game is compared to SMB3 since they share so many elements and gameplay features.  While I prefer all the cool power-ups that SMB3 had to offer and some of the cool settings like the airships, I've always found this game to be easier to pick up and play.  I think it comes down to the feeling of freedom, speed and control that the I get when playing this game.  I've always loved that you can kick shells up in the air.  I like all of the new attacks that Mario has (the ground-pound with the cape, punching through the fence, etc., Yoshi shell power-ups).  Also, in general, SMW just feels faster than SMB3.  Mario accelerates more quickly, and, and it's easier to change directions in mid-jump.