"Super Mario World" (Super Nintendo)

The game that represents the pinnacle of 16-bit beauty. Incredible challenge, excellent controls and a title that inspired many hacked versions, this is the game that represented its peak during its release.

You've all been waiting for it, so here you go: our review for one of the biggest, yet most popular video games in history, SHOWSOTROS style. It's almost impossible not to think of this game when you're talking about the 16-bit console required to play it (to be reviewed soon). This game defies everything in your human arsenal to beat complete the game.

The graphics are a beauty of the 16-bit era. All the colors and gradients are spot-on, and even when upscaled via RGB, it looks wonderful. The controls are perfect, with no glitches, no delays and no hang-ups (though many gamers have spotted some glitches in the game going beyond the limits). The music is your typical video game music: catchy and arranged in a way where it can loop forever. For the gameplay overall, there's nothing bad to say about it.

The goal if this game to save Princess Toadstool to restore peace in Dinosaur Land. You're certainly most familiar with this screenshot:



The run-through: A button makes Mario spin-jump—useful when killing most enemies and deflecting against spikes from Porcu-puffer and/or The Big "Boo," B button makes Mario jump normally, X/Y button while pressed with the D-pad makes Mario run/dash. When riding on Yoshi, the X/Y button gets Yoshi to capture objects and/or enemies with its tongue (yes it's spelled tongue, not "tounge," people). Throughout the game, there's an instructions/information box you could hit that happily helps you, with tips and tricks, throughout your journey in knocking out enemies left and right, plus clearing the stages. However, if you've played this game time and time again, like I have, then you know where everything is—the secret areas, how to access Star World and much more.

With the secret areas, this game features 96 levels of video gaming goodness. You may not be able to finish it all in one sitting, unless you know a proper cheat and/or are a tool-assisted speedrunning gamer, so getting through the entire game requires some patience, skill and some luck. The game isn't too hard per se, but some require all of your attention (some enemies on the game get ruthless, however, like Torpedo Ted).

Again, as the difficulty of this game is moderate, it requires second-guessing, lots of exploring, logic, some puzzle solving (especially at the Forest of Illusion), good timing, where to find the keys to open secret passages and areas, and just straight-up going all out smashing anything that moves. Possibly the most difficult set of levels would be the Special world, featuring 8 levels of top-level difficulty. The last level is named Funky, and when beaten, you see a string of coins written and that message is:

"YOU ARE A SUPER PLAYER !!"


Nice!

When you beat that final level, you get to access what's called the Alternate World. You'll notice a change in colors and environments on the World Map, and that's normal. Plus, you see a change in enemies too! Koopas are now Masked Koopas; Bullet Bill is now Pidget Bill; Jumping Pirahna Plant are now Jumping Pumpkin Plant. There's no way to revert back but it's an extra feature in the game.

When you get to Bowser, defeating him shouldn't be too much. It takes three sets of hits, and to hit him, you use Mechakoopas, which Bowser summons, that you hold and toss upward hoping it'll land on Bowser's head. Three sets of hits equals 6 hits in total. When he's defeated, Mario saves Princess Toadstool! The game ends with credits, with enemy roll call and a nice illustration of Mario, Princess Toadstool and Luigi.

When you defeated the castles, you saved an egg. What are those eggs you saved while saving Princess Toadstool? It had to do with the Yoshi family as they are baby yoshis. Not too bad.

You notice that even when you cleared a stage/level, you can always go back to it. However, when you beaten a castle stage, or fortress, you can't go back and play it again. Here's a trick: go on any castle or fortress you've defeated, then press the shoulder buttons L and R. Oh, you're very welcome, anytime.

This is as classic and timeless as you can get. In fact, when my parents bought this for me back in 1993 which included this as a pack-in game, it's certainly one of my most played game growing up. It's that good.

I'm sure you've played this game at least once in your lives. Now, see if you can complete the whole game. No rush, we'll be here. Happy gaming!

Kris Caballero

Founder of KCU Network and KCU Plus, Kris has been writing since he managed a personal blog made back in late 2005. Officially back to doing computer programming (software development) and video production, Kris enjoys reading books on Mathematics, Quantum Computing, Philosophy, playing old video/DOS games, digital video archiving, and listening to sports, public radio and classical music.

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