Reflections on Mario
Since it’s the only action game I ever claim to dominate, I often go back to Super Mario World for a nostalgic romp. I always play for 100% completion, and the game rarely feels tired or tiresome to me.
The funny thing is, I’m very opinionated about the “worst” things in the game, and my favorite things seem much more vague.
I hate Choco-World (the area before the Valley of Bowser), a painful afterthought punctuated by the awful Ghost Ship. Mario really shouldn’t rely on plot too much, but if they had done something to shore up (ha) the reasoning for that stupid ship, that would have helped.
Only the “Bridge Areas” following the arduous Vanilla Dome can compete with Choco’s non-world status. You literally feel like you’re on a bridge between two much better areas.
I assume much like the nerd-favorite, commonly-hated Part Two’s of famous trilogies, the Forest of Illusion has grown on me enough to say it might be in the favorites list. I bet a lot of other people hate it. The only issue with it is, much like Vanilla Dome, the “red levels” (multi-exit) make a 100% completion run very tedious, as you replay nearly everything at least once. If I were just running through it would be even better.
Donut (second world, where the feather shows up) has a sense of Mario-purity only slightly marred by the water and cave levels. Donut 1 is what I think of when I think Mario of any vintage.
I don’t normally like water levels, ever, but Soda Lake finds a way to be difficult but not in the normal water way. It’s like ballet timing and grace, and it’s the only time the Torpedo Teds show up, which are artistic treasures akin to the falling blocks’ angry faces.
Star World always felt a little labored to me; the solution was either instant (the cloud-riding one) or extremely drawn out and a little chancy (the last one). I believe each one has to be played both ways to get completion, though checking that might save me some agony.
A lot of the Special World scenarios are really neat experiments a bit too edgy to make it into the mainline game. Special 2’s fly-or-die P-balloon situation remains the hardest single experience I find in the game, far exceeding Soda Lake’s challenge. It’s still a crapshoot for me, and it takes several tries to get it right.
It’s surprising to me that so many of the boss battles are copied: the Valley of Bowser’s castle (not Bowser’s Castle, mind you, another feeling of game compression) is only one detail away from an exact match with the first world’s. The multi-use of Reznor as the fortress boss is another puzzler. You’re making the flagship game to a system whose success had to be fairly obvious. Why recycle stuff like that?
And you can say memory or processor, and I would point out the fall-themed, Mario mask koopas couldn’t have been easy on the memory situation. Especially for something only 2% of players will ever see.
Anyway, fun game, even after all this time.