I mean, its mario. it doesnt do a whole lot to stand out from the sea of 2d platformers honestly. Theres a lot of good 2d platformers even during and before the time period this game came out. I like the 3d marios a lot more because those game typically have cool looking levels, great music, and a lot of things to shake up the gameplay with the bosses and the game gimmicks. This game is like mario 3 but now it looks more generic and instead of tanuki leaf you get big and small mushroom. Theres also the blue shell but i didnt really care at all about that. Maybe the game is a product of its time but i cant even bring myself to finish the game and its only like 8 hours long. it gets stale at the 15 minutes mark and goes on for 8 more hours. It throws all the new stuff the game has for you early, then it just slowly burns away. If you like mario 3 youll probably like this game, but i dont.