Super Mario World

Link: http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/Magical+Trevor/

Okay, decided to write about SMW. Recently I unearthed my old Super Mario World cartridge below a pile of other crap, and plugged it into my Nintendo DS. I basically went, “Holy shit,” as I realized how much time I’ve spent on this game.

Here’s all the crap I’ve accomplished:

- 600 Lives, just accumulated as I did all the other crap.
- Completed the Star World, found all secret exits.
- Completed the Special World.
- Defeated Bowser.
- Found every exit in every level.
- Grabbed every Yoshi coin in every level.
- 9999990 points, the max attainable amount.

This may not seem very significant if you don’t understand how huge a game SMW is.

There are 22 normal levels, 15 levels with more than one exit, 7 castles, 4 button switches, 5 ghost houses, 4 fortresses, a ghost ship, 5 Star World levels that require you to find the secret exit, and 8 ultra-difficult Special World levels and the final Bowser castle. That’s 67 levels in total.

Every one of these levels has at least 5 Yoshi coins, mostly in annoying and obscure areas.

Now, this game is one of the most awesome games ever made. Unlike many other games, which just introduce you to the game, and you basically do the same things over and over again with more and more difficulty, SMW actually has a ton of content introduced through the entire game.

WARNING: Spoilers ahead.

The game starts out on Yoshi’s Island, which is a very simple area designed to get you to know the game. Then you move onto the Donut Plains, which introduce some interesting new content. The first one you encounter is the Cape, which allows Mario to fly, if you can learn to control it. You also go into your first-ever underground level here, with the self-scrolling screen and crushing pillars. This means that if you’re too slow, you’ll either be crushed by a pillar or by the edge of the screen and a pillar. Donut Plains also introduces “secret” exits that lead to different areas of the map, as well as Ghost Houses filled with Boos and mysterious exits. If you find the secrets in the first two levels of the Donut Plains in reverse order, you also unlock the first underwater level. The DPs also contain the first entrance to the fabled Star World, as well as the first “slippery” ice level.

After the DPs, you move onto the Vanilla Dome. This area has two paths, the regular path and a secret path. The main section of the Vanilla Dome is completely underground. If you choose to take the regular path, you go through various areas, including a ghost house, and discover many interesting things, including lava. The normal route finishes with the regular finish, the castle. It is worthy of note, however, that this castle is one of only two castles which can be skipped in the game. If you so choose, you can take the secret passage, which introduces you to the first vertically-oriented map, Donut Secret 1. As well, it introduces you to DOLPHINS! Yay dolphins. Anyways, the secret passage ends with Vanilla Fortress, the first fortress in the game.

After you beat either the Fortress or the castle, you move onward to the Twin Bridges area. This area is the shortest area in the game, because it is divided into 2 different sets of levels depending on which exit you decided to take out of the Vanilla Dome. If you opted for the regular exit, you end up on the bottom bridge. This bridge is called the Cheese Bridge, and fittingly-named, the level here is called the Cheese Bridge Area. There is a secret exit here to Soda Lake, which is an underwater level filled with torpedos (ugh). After that, you go on to Cookie Mountain, which is filled with annoying moles that pop out of walls and the ground. After that is the castle.

If, instead, you decide to take the secret path, you go to Butter Bridge. This is a series of two similar yet very different levels, Butter Bridge 1 and Butter Bridge 2 (omg, how do they come up with these names?). The first level is a self-scrolling level where you need to jump from platform to platform at just the right speed. Too quick and you end up sinking (the platforms sink), too slow and you fall to your death. Butter Bridge 2 isn’t very significant a level, except that I can just fly through it and ignore all the enemies. After BB2, you end up at the castle, which is where the two paths converge again.

The fifth area is the Forest of Illusion. This area is really annoying. It has lots of catepillars, and many paths in this area make you go around and around in circles. The real exit in this level is the secret exit in FoI 3, but there’s also a secret exit in FoI 4 that takes you to Forest Fortress and then Star World.

After FoI, we go to Chocolate Island. This area is special because of all of its big and little dinosaur things. Choco-Ghost House introduces you to Boos that turn to stone if you look at them, and allow you to step on them without penalty. CI 3 has a secret exit that allows you to proceed further, to Chocolate Fortress, but if you take the normal exit, you end up going around in a big circle, back to CI 3. How irritating. CI 4 is a very strange level. It’s difficult to explain, but it’s strange. After CI 5 you get to the castle, and then onwards to the last area of the game, the Valley of Bowser.

The first level is a Sunken Ghost Ship. This area is annoying because there is a middle segment where tons of Boos are always appearing and disappearing, making it hard to travel. A hint: the Boos always appear in the same spots, relative to your screen position. Use that to predict where they will appear next. After this level, you get to “officially” enter the Valley of Bowser.

Now here we are, at the last area of the game. Even at this stage of the game, new concepts are still introduced. For example, in VoB 1, we’re introduced to the Giant Moles that we can step on without killing. This is useful when there is a surface filled with black cutting thingys (don’t know what they’re called ) and you need to get across: just ride on its back. In VoB 2, there is a secret exit that allows you to go to the Valley Fortress, past which is the secret Back Door that allows you to skip half of the final Bowser dungeon. Even in the final dungeon, new stuff are still introduced. There is a dark level, where everything is difficult to see. However, there are light switches that will turn on a light for a short period of time. Afterwards, you battle Bowser, and hopefully win.

So you’ve won. Now what? Well, you can try to beat the Star and Special Worlds. You start with the Star World. Hopefully, by this stage in the game, you’ve discovered at least one entrance to the Star World. If not, I’ll tell you where they are: Donut Secret House, Vanilla Secret 1, Soda Lake (after Cheese Bridge Area), Forest Fortress (after Forest Secret Area and FoI 4), and finally, Valley of Bowser 4.

These Star World levels are special in a very unique way (redundant, I know). Each level gives you a coloured baby Yoshi. You can hold it, and when you walk into small enemies or objects the Yoshi will eat it. Once it eats enough, it’ll grow into a full-grown coloured Yoshi, and before where only green Yoshis would appear, these would start also appearing randomly.

Once you beat Star World 5 and find the secret exit, you’re set for a special treat: Special World. By far, Special World is the hardest area in the game. It is so difficult, that once you beat it, the game will start keeping track of high scores on each of the levels. For each second left on the clock at the end, you also get 200 points, so it’s very difficult to attain a “perfect” score, especially considering the difficulty of the levels. There are 8 levels in total, and there’s not much I can say about them. They are: Gnarly, Tubular, Way Cool, Awesome, Groovy, Mondo, Outrageous, and Funky. What happens when you beat all of them? Something very significant and interesting. I won’t ruin the surprise, although you probably could just find it on Google.

So that’s my SMW blog post. Hope you learned something. Go play. (I’m not telling you to download a ROM and emulator and play it, nor am I advertising that I can provide links to such items. It’s obvious that you should buy a Game Boy Advance and a copy of Super Mario World just to enjoy this one game. I would never have illegit copies of ROMs (my copies are legal, they’re backups of the game which I do indeed own.). )

So yep, enjoy the game to the fullest. I certainly did.

- Vinny