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Super Mario World Game Review

Super Mario World is a 1990 platform game published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It’s a renowned classic that has its issues, but is mostly terrific.

This game was the first one to be released for the SNES, and was actually bundled free with that console’s release. Thus, it remains one of the best-selling games of all time. It is also considered to be the greatest Mario game ever created by many in the industry, but I wouldn’t personally go that far, though I still find it to be excellent.

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The plot is simple once again, but I liked that it was a true sequel to its predecessor and that we got to see a different world in the franchise as Mario and Luigi left the Mushroom Kingdom and settled in Dinosaur Land, which is one of the most memorable Mario settings for sure.

There is a lot to talk about here in terms of the gameplay, but I will start this section by praising the side-scrolling platforming that has become perfect by this point due to the utilization of the new SNES console’s powers. The choice to include more levels was also praise-worthy as this game is much larger and thus more fun than its predecessors with 96 level exits in total.

Probably the biggest difference in gameplay here is the non-linear choice of level progression. The game gives you the option to traverse the map however you like, but the biggest new inclusion is the different level exits and how they can take you faster through the game. I probably landed in the middle in this regard. I didn’t quite sail through the game, but it did not take me too long either.

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This might be controversial, but I honestly appreciated the overworld map of ‘Super Mario Bros. 3’ more than I did the map of World. This one is more visually appealing, but lacking the many puzzles and mini-levels of the original, and it just felt simpler overall. As for the inclusion of the exploration element, that I have to admit was incredible.

At first, I was annoyed that in the forest levels I had to find a secret level exit in a previously beaten level to find another level path on the overworld map, but eventually I’d come to fully appreciate this newly added element as it bolstered true gaming exploration and a great sense of adventure. Finding every new hidden exit was quite joyous and so much fun. It just might be the game’s greatest element.

This entry in the series introduced the haunted house levels, which I adored. These levels appear in every world and they feature a bunch of ghosts, big and small, inhabiting the entirety of the screen, and they cannot be killed, so you have to carefully go past them to the end. The cartoony designs worked while the creepy score was also a delight.

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The multiplayer option is there, but I wish that Luigi could have been chosen in the single player campaign as well. The power-ups are quite interesting here. There are the usual Mario staples such as Fire Flower, but one new major addition is the Cape Feather, which literally makes Mario a superhero that can fly and float through the air. This was essential to reach those hidden level exits, but it was very hard to control. In the end, I did not quite master flying it fully, but I did admire the way the game made this whole new flying mechanic for this power-up, thus ensuring it’s not too easy, which would have destroyed the game had it been easy.

This is the first game to introduce the Yoshi character in the fully playable form. You can ride him, and he can eat most enemies. When eating a Koopa, he acquires its abilities according to the color of its shell. Yoshi is cute here and it was fun playing him, but I personally mostly played with Mario alone as it was simpler and easier for me to play the game that way.

The enemies are mostly the same from the previous installments with some new additions such as the fun Dino-Rhino. I liked all of the enemies, but I personally did not find the bosses as great as everybody else did. Yes, finally a Mario game included a true boss battle that wasn’t repetitive and overly simplistic, but these bosses were still too easy for me personally as I ended up beating most of them in one go. The mechanics and level designs changed, and that was impressively varied, but the difficulty level needed to have been higher.

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And that goes for the overall game. Some levels are incredibly easy and way too short, but only a couple are very hard, and I am used to my Mario games being super hard, so I needed a bigger challenge personally speaking. But I did like most of its worlds. It has eight worlds, but seven are usually seen as the eighth one requires a secret passage being found.

Yoshi’s Island is the most colorful and endearing of the bunch while Donut Plains was also quite charming, starting the tradition of the food theme in this game. Vanilla Dome was darker in aesthetic while also being inhabited with more unique enemies. Twin Bridges was quite memorable in the platforming bridges changing movements and the color palette was great here. Forest of Illusion is by far the best of the worlds as it is the most mysterious, most ripe for exploration and adventure and very appealing in design. Chocolate Island was quite interesting in utilizing its area to the best as it requires you going down, up, left, right, and even some dead ends. Valley of Bowser is the only world I did not care for as it was too short and not as difficult as the last worlds need to be.

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Graphically speaking, Super Mario World is brilliant. It is colorful, very well animated, gorgeously designed in levels, enemies and backgrounds, and also quite rich as a lot happens on the screen simultaneously. This was quite possibly the biggest visual improvement that that franchise has seen as it looks infinitely more modern than its predecessors. I also adored its score, which is the best since the first entry. That most famous theme here is one of the best Mario themes ever. It’s iconic and just incredibly fun and endearing.