Game Review: Super Mario World

Game: Super Mario World
Console: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Developer: Nintendo
Release Date: 13th August 1991

After a trio of successful Super Mario Bros games on the NES, Nintendo set about developing a 4th installment of their flagship series. Adding the dinosaur that Shigeru Miyamoto had wanted to put into the games in the form of Yoshi, it began a new 16-bit era for the games which cemented their place as bona fide classics in the platforming genre. Combining great level design with hidden and bonus areas, the only new gameplay features are the spin jump, the feather powerup (giving Mario a cape) and the ability to float with it.

After the events of Super Mario Bros. 3 we're told that Mario and Luigi decided to take some time off and visit Dinosaur Land, the home of Yoshi who explains that his dinosaur friends have been kidnapped and imprisoned in eggs by the evil Koopas. It's up to the Italian brothers to save all of Yoshi's friends and defeat Bowser and his Koopalings through overground, underground, water and castle based levels.

Controls are similar to the NES Super Mario games, with the new spin jump mapped to the A button and running moved to Y. The shoulder buttons aren't used and it's really as simple as you can get in a platform game whilst including a few interesting features. The game as a whole feels well programmed and controls very well as you'd expect. With many different types of blocks and enemies across the game's 96 levels there's a lot to discover.

Most of the game's levels are overground, although there's a good selection of underground and water locations too. The challenge of the game steps up a notch with castle levels and particularly towards the end of the game but it's never out of the player's reach. In this way it reminded me of Donkey Kong Country in that the level of challenge was high but not too high. Most difficult levels can be completed with a stock of lives and some memorisation of the hazards.

The game is navigated through the map screen which shows each level and castle that is accessible. Levels with red dots have secret exits, and castles show a white flag once beaten. Players are allowed to backtrack and collect more lives/powerups to face the upcoming levels but there's no storage system for power-ups as in SMB3. This means that if you come up against a particularly difficulty level, the focus is more on memorisation than on using power-ups.

The overall level design is spectacular with almost perfect placement of obstacles, secret exits and challenging parts. The use of ghost houses and underwater levels which offer different gameplay features is good and not overused, and progressing through the main game feels like a quest of reasonable length. With 8 castles to defeat it's important that the action never slows down in any of the zones between castles.

Graphically the game is fairly basic most of the time, building upon elements of the NES games with more detail and attention paid to character sprites and the construction of levels. Enemies are nicely varied and it's fairly easy to see what needs to be done to neutralise them. The music of the overworlds is based off the central theme of the game, with castle themes and boss battles adding contrast to the sound whilst remaining within the general style of the game.

Overall Super Mario World is an excellent example of a platforming game with great level design, a good level of challenge which sits between difficult and achievable, and interesting enemies and power-ups which contribute to the mood and enjoyability of the game. The music and graphics are retro but of high quality and make sure that the game is still playable today without it feeling outdated; this is a true SNES classic.

Rating: 90/100
Grade: A