Mario World is remembered a tad too fondly. It's a landmark in game history for paving the way for what was to come. but it doesn't hold up at all. It's definitely something I'm surprised to no longer enjoy after growing up with it.
I get this is a preference thing, but Mario controls horribly in my opinion. To me, every level genuinely feels like an ice level. I think this is due to you not really being able to stop Mario by pressing back on the d-pad. This applies in the air too, when you're trying to position yourself to stomp on enemies heads in, you know, a precision platformer. When in the air he'll fly the other way too quickly when I'm just trying to get him to stop moving forward. It was something I still have not been able to get used to.
The graphics are very bland. I get it's an early title on the system, but the backgrounds and color usage are so monotone. Every level looks the exact same, and it's honestly tiring to look at the same exact set pieces throughout the entire game. Why not add something other than a purple coral squiggle in the background of the water stages? Even SMB3 makes better use of colors and aesthetics than Mario World, by all accounts.
The lack of power-ups in this game is kind of annoying. We went from having 4 in SMB3 to a meager 2 in this game. There's Yoshi, which kind of counts, but you can't bring him into the castle stages. But we only have the fire flower and cape. The cape is really good and kind of makes the flower undesirable due to how much worse it is. The Cape also has a flying mechanic where, if you build up enough speed, you can jump into the air and fly with proper timing. You can use this to skip a chunk of levels, which seems odd. I get rewarding players for mastering the game, but skipping the whole level?
The level design is also all over the place. Stage layouts are extremely repetitive and get old quickly. The level layouts seem like they were randomly constructed with no real progression. It's confusing and at times, deceiving. I vividly remember the optional fortress leading to Star Road, which you can access from a secret exit in the Forest of Secrets, having these crushers come down from the ceiling. There are crevices in the floor, and you'd think to stay in them and duck to avoid the crushers, but instead you'll get crushed in the screens auto-scroll or have a spinning blade creep above you when trying to jump out. Also, Fortress 7 has the snake block trail with no checkpoint and a strict time limit as you wait for a Kamak to hopefully break open the blocks for you. The special stages are complete messes too. They're not actually hard because they just prey on artificial trial and error. Tubular is a great example because you need to repeatedly get P Balloon powerups to last until the end of the stage but you won't know which question blocks hold the item until you trial and error your way through. These are cherry-picked examples, but the entire game lacks craft for its level design, sometimes less evil than the times I mentioned.
The one redeemable quality I find about this game is the secret exits. This was a really cool idea that rewards exploration and is made better with the World Map that lets you trek back to any levels you completed. I liked the option of stopping your main quest to look for secrets or continue on.
I get this is a preference thing, but Mario controls horribly in my opinion. To me, every level genuinely feels like an ice level. I think this is due to you not really being able to stop Mario by pressing back on the d-pad. This applies in the air too, when you're trying to position yourself to stomp on enemies heads in, you know, a precision platformer. When in the air he'll fly the other way too quickly when I'm just trying to get him to stop moving forward. It was something I still have not been able to get used to.
The graphics are very bland. I get it's an early title on the system, but the backgrounds and color usage are so monotone. Every level looks the exact same, and it's honestly tiring to look at the same exact set pieces throughout the entire game. Why not add something other than a purple coral squiggle in the background of the water stages? Even SMB3 makes better use of colors and aesthetics than Mario World, by all accounts.
The lack of power-ups in this game is kind of annoying. We went from having 4 in SMB3 to a meager 2 in this game. There's Yoshi, which kind of counts, but you can't bring him into the castle stages. But we only have the fire flower and cape. The cape is really good and kind of makes the flower undesirable due to how much worse it is. The Cape also has a flying mechanic where, if you build up enough speed, you can jump into the air and fly with proper timing. You can use this to skip a chunk of levels, which seems odd. I get rewarding players for mastering the game, but skipping the whole level?
The level design is also all over the place. Stage layouts are extremely repetitive and get old quickly. The level layouts seem like they were randomly constructed with no real progression. It's confusing and at times, deceiving. I vividly remember the optional fortress leading to Star Road, which you can access from a secret exit in the Forest of Secrets, having these crushers come down from the ceiling. There are crevices in the floor, and you'd think to stay in them and duck to avoid the crushers, but instead you'll get crushed in the screens auto-scroll or have a spinning blade creep above you when trying to jump out. Also, Fortress 7 has the snake block trail with no checkpoint and a strict time limit as you wait for a Kamak to hopefully break open the blocks for you. The special stages are complete messes too. They're not actually hard because they just prey on artificial trial and error. Tubular is a great example because you need to repeatedly get P Balloon powerups to last until the end of the stage but you won't know which question blocks hold the item until you trial and error your way through. These are cherry-picked examples, but the entire game lacks craft for its level design, sometimes less evil than the times I mentioned.
The one redeemable quality I find about this game is the secret exits. This was a really cool idea that rewards exploration and is made better with the World Map that lets you trek back to any levels you completed. I liked the option of stopping your main quest to look for secrets or continue on.
4 Comments
Finally someone willing to be critical about this game. It ain't a masterpiece and it's honestly a pretty unremarkable game in every single aspect. People act like the secret exits alone make this one of the best games ever made, but like, no?
@JCLKaytwo Kind of ironic too since the reward for discovering the secret exits was just more levels that I wasn't having fun with. Even the Mario Land games are more memorable than this to me because of how creative the ideas were, especially in 2.
😭 zamn
NOWITSREYNTIME17
3 months ago