When I think of a games similar to Super Mario World, the first thing that comes to my mind is Doom of all things. It's not as though the two are similar thematically, visually, or even gameplay-wise—rather, it's that they owe much of their sustained prominence to their devoted fanbases. Don't get me wrong, the base games are plenty of fun and all, but they're just the tip of a massive historical iceberg. Both communities are alive and well in 2023, releasing new custom edits every week, often with superior visuals, stage design, graphics, music, power-ups—you name it. And while a smattering of Doom clones have transcended to a commercial debut (REKKR, Age of Hell, Supplice), Super Mario World hacks remain just as impressive in their own right, requiring equal amounts of skill, dedication, and technical know-how to create.
Yet what really ties these two together in my mind is that in nine out of ten cases, I'd rather play the fan creations than revisit the originals. Part of it is simply oversaturation, having played both games until the stages were embedded in my mind like the creases of my brain. But another part is that the games are unimpressively solid, being good enough to recommend to genre newcomers... yet never blowing me away on replay. I confess it's a strange stance to hold; I wouldn't wince at anyone calling either title their favorite game of all time, as they're both worthy of such adoration. Perhaps I just find Doom and Super Mario World more mundane than magical nowadays, unable to rekindle the same spark that jolted through me as a child.
But enough with the comparisons—let's dig into the SNES's launch day juggernaut: Super Mario World.
From the moment the player is put in control, World reveals that it is a joy to play. The nuts and bolts of Mario's physics have been tightened to pit stop perfection, ramping up the plumber's acceleration while granting more control over his aerial movement. Gone are the racoon leaf and p-wing, replaced by a versatile cape that requires a bit more work in order to stay airborne. But once you master it, the cape grants unparalleled freedom, allowing the player to bypass entire stages up in the safety of the clouds. Yoshi is also a welcome addition, capable of different abilities based on the last shell slurped up. Additionally, Yoshi provides the player with a small buffer of health, one they can replenish so long as they can catch the scuttling dinosaur after taking a hit. Neither of these power-ups are game changers in the grand scheme of things, but they're honestly the most fun renditions of their kind (flying & mount) that the series would ever see.
Super Mario Bros. 3 is a difficult act to follow up on, but World tries its damnedest, handing the player 73 varied courses to sprint through. Unlike SMB3 however, these stages are rarely rapid-fire affairs; expect chunky gauntlets stuffed with 5 dragon coins, a mid-level checkpoint, and the occasional hidden exit. This boosts World's playtime to over double that of 3, but new players need not worry—saving is now a staple for every Mario game going forward! No more frustrations with power-outages tanking your runs or having to start over if you want to replay your favorite level. In fact, replaying stages is now encouraged, as there are two routes through every overworld (sans Dinosaur Island), with the fully optional Star World itself housing a super-secret, extra-challenging Special world. The golden age of brief, single-session Mario games is over—the sprawling overworld buffets are here to say.
And filling the buffet trays are a curated blend of new obstacles mixed with old. Of course, World still includes the traditional Mario staples like koopas, bullet bills, lakitus, and podoboos. But the imaginative new additions are the show stealers: spell-slinging magikoopas, towering pokeys, patrolling fuzzies, fireproof dino rhinos, and the doggedly-annoying rip van fish, just to name a few. The spectral bestiary also receives its own expansion, with a host of Boo cousins (big boo, boo circles, fishin' boo) coming over to crash at the ghost houses, which have transformed from wannabe-castles to (the superior) puzzle-mazes. And last but certainly not least are the ever-tenacious chargin' chucks, the natural evolution of the hammer bro that ditches the obnoxious tool-tossing for a wider variety of attacks, adding a little extra spice to your platforming purview.
Super Mario World isn't content to stop there either: there are plenty of non-hostile objects to encounter along your journey, like climbable fences, rope pulleys, portable springs, countdown platforms, magic keys, and a balloon power-up that... well the p-balloon kind of sucks, but the other items are cool. However, the game's most interesting "item" has to be its colored blocks, which make their first (and only!) appearance in the franchise here. To activate them, you must first find a secret exit that leads to one of the four colored switch palaces, and then beating said palace will activate its corresponding blocks permanently for every level they appear in. This grants a range of benefits, from additional power-ups, to pit protection, to even a new means by which to reach a secret exit. The colored blocks may come off as little more than set dressing if you're used to playing with all of them "on" at all times, but I appreciate how much more difficult the game becomes if you opt to skip all of the switch palaces, giving World its own pseudo-"hard mode". I think it's worth a playthrough if you've never done it before.
Of course, if you really want to to crank up the challenge in Super Mario World, the Special stages eagerly await your attendance. Here you will be tested and battered, starting with a rain of projectiles in Tubular, to brutal single-block jumps in Awesome, to the busy bullet bill forest of Outrageous. It's a fantastic set of bonus stages that, while downright tame compared to the torture chambers fans cook up nowadays, struck terror into many a young child—myself included. It's an excellent postgame gauntlet similar to the lettered worlds of Japan's Super Mario Bros. 2, albeit a lot easier to access and considerably more creative. Sure, the reward for beating the Special stages is essentially a lame novelty (some bizarre palette swaps), but the levels merit a playthrough on their awesome challenge alone. Despite the optional nature of the Special stages, I always make sure to cap off a replay of World by blasting through them.
Would that I could lay the same praise upon Star Road—the unique warp zone world—but here are where my Super Mario World gripes bubble to the surface. While every other world is packed with decent-to-excellent levels, Star Road reeks of nothing but stinkers. Stage 1 feels like a subzone outtake, Stage 2 is a featureless hallway, and Stage 3 is probably the shortest—and thus worst—Mario level of all time. Only Stages 4 & 5 have any sort of competent level design, and even then it's nothing exceptional. The best thing about Star Road is that it's thankfully short, but even then you'll still have to play through it twice if you're looking to achieve the game's 96 exit completion.
Worse yet is that Star Road is useless as a warp zone; its only practical use is as shortcut for the overworld once completed. Using Star Road to skip worlds is impossible due to the fact that the warp nodes leave you stranded unless you've completed the pathway to them on the overworld. The one level you can reach early is Bowser's Castle—the final stage—which is a far cry from the flexibility of 3's warp whistle. Plus most folks will have to discover the red and blue switch palaces to finish Star Road's Stage 4, which makes roughly a third of the game mandatory to play through anyway. From top to bottom, Star Road is a celestial blunder.
Another lackluster addition to Super Mario World are its newfangled dino coins. Spread around each stage are five golden bits that will grant you an extra life once gathered together, marking the start of what would eventually become New's collectible star coins. The dino coins are neat in that they double down on the exploration aspect of Mario... except for the fact that World doesn't keep track of any of the coins you've picked up. Even if it did, the coins are startlingly inconsistent: some stages have more than five, some should have them but don't, and a ton of coins are placed in utterly effortless spots. While it's not fair to blame World for failing to utilize its collectible in a way that future titles would, I still can't view the dino coins as anything but missed potential. There's a reason that among the vast additions World brought to the series, nearly nobody mentions this prehistoric specie.
And then there's the game's hideously boring bosses. On one hand the Super Mario Bros. series has never been fixated around its boss fights—and thus doesn't need them to be compelling—but on the other hand there's plenty of games with excellent and creative battles, illustrating how well a boss can fit when done right (Yoshi's Island, Land 2, NSMB Wii). Super Mario World doesn't have a high bar to clear when compared to its predecessors, but its feeble boss roster fails outdo the variety of 2 and the dynamism of 3. Reznor and Big Boo are fought in nearly the same manner in every encounter, and the only good Koopa Kids are the Lemmy/Wendy variations. Every other fight ends just as quickly as it started, and I could write a thousand words alone on how pathetic the Bowser finale is. I'll just say that any final boss that allows you to crouch in a corner like a coward for the majority of the fight is a real stinker in my book.
Lastly—and the point I'm least passionate about—is that the Super Mario World is kind of ugly. There are a couple of addendums that come with this gripe, like how the game a launch title, that the pastel palette hasn't aged as poorly as other SNES titles, or that its simplistic art matches World's laser focus on pure platforming. But these are ultimately excuses—not remedies. Foreground blocks are mostly made of a single color, backgrounds are sparsely detailed and frequently repetitive, and the animations aren't anything to write home about. World looks its best when you're inside of a ghost house of all things, but what you'll see far more are the repetitive gray caverns of the underground—areas which fail to leave any kind of impression on your memory. For the record, I don't hate or detest the art style... but I'm far from being enamored with it either. Honestly, World's visuals are just disappointingly dull in retrospect.
Looking back on what I've written, what befuddles me the most about all of this is that Super Mario World remains a 9/10 experience at the end of the day, capable of rivaling the best platformers of the last thirty years. All of its issues are vain, minor blemishes that only stand out if you're paid to scrutinizing the game, as your first reaction upon playing it isn't to gawk at the flaws, but to simply mutter in amazement, "wow this is fun." What makes World excel is that it is Mario to its binary core: a fun platformer with controls that prioritize speed and ease, the two things that Donkey Kong Country would steal and hone in on. During a casual playthrough, World's missteps come across as eccentricities you'll blow by faster than the rolling hills in the background, all while you bounce atop the heads of paratroopers and monty moles. It's only under a lens thick enough to hammer nails with that the game's ugliness comes out—and even then, it's rarely more than a trifling crack.
Perhaps an unshakeable issue I have with Super Mario World is how the game fares in hindsight. For me at least, a lot of other Mario titles offer a more enticing package: some games have better overworlds, or more dynamic levels, or more powerups, more stages, better bosses, better visuals, etc. Though one could make the same argument for Super Mario Bros. 3, I feel that time has been kind to that 8-bit goliath, its vicious limitations making it shine even brighter in retrospect. Super Mario World is great—phenomenal, even!—well-deserving of its favoritism and fandom... but I just don't find it as immutable or flawless as its siblings. The fact that fans have made more impressive iterations on World using its formula means there's room for improvement; as gratifying as an "A-" is to receive, the existence of an A+ means things could be better.
Of course, even after saying all of this, I'll still fully play through Super Mario World at least a dozen more times before I kick the bucket—and I'll have a ripping good time every time I do. I can reason out a myriad of excuses for preferring 3 or Galaxy or NSMB Wii over it, but none of those post hoc arguments can take away from the fact that the game is sheer fun distilled into a delicious little brew. It's something the World community has known about for decades, understanding that World's sublime engine—not its nostalgia—is what gives the game it's immortal reputation. Super Mario World may not be the best game of all time, but like with Doom, it will forever stand shoulder to shoulder among the best.
