Replaying Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World has become a yearly thing for me somehow. I guess there’s a sort of simplicity to their design that makes them easy to come back to. Regardless, the simplicity of World even in comparison to 3 gives me pause in considering it one of the greatest 2D platformers.
Pivoting to 3 for a bit, it’s no secret that it has more than its fair share of short levels and autoscrollers, but something that I think it holds high above World’s head is its theming. Desert Land has the Angry Sun level and a Pyramid where you have to find the way out by breaking blocks with buzzy beetles. Water Land has a neat boat to interact with on its world map, plenty of water levels as you’d expect, and an abundance of Frog suits to facilitate movement through those. Sky Land’s world map starts you on the ground, but has a mini fortress that acts as an ascension into the actual sky part of the map. Pipe Land’s world map and even some of its levels are actual mazes traversed via pipes, and tons of the level design relates to pipes at the very least. The level design is not always stellar, but I find its attempts so admirable for an NES game.
That’s all to say that Super Mario World feels severely lacking in comparison. Its diversity mostly starts and ends at cute food themed level names along with a palette swap of the ground you stand on. Level design is certainly longer than 3’s, but often feels like a smattering of enemies rather than presenting anything interesting thematically or mechanically. I find that the game shines brightest in its fortress levels, where there’s little room to cheese its design, more vertical platforming, and more danger in the form of hazards rather than enemies which feel more engaging. But those fortresses are few and far between.
Another thing that feels a bit too simple in execution is the game's secret exits. They’re always simple solutions that amounted to coin havens in SMB1 or rare powerups in SMB3, and they either end up being abrupt ends to a level midway through it, or are placed at what is basically the end of the level anyway. Even the ghost houses which you would expect to have more involved exits are guilty of this; one of them just has the other exit some steps left of it. I think it would have been much more natural to have branching paths of a level that lead to different exits (which is ironic considering 3 has this with one exit and without allowing you to replay levels).
I know I’ve been giving World a lot of shit but I do think it’s a good game. I gave praise to 3 but it’s easy to lament aspects of it as well, however it’s hard for me to not feel like the developers did what they could on the NES. The same could be said for World in a sense considering it is just a launch title for the SNES, but I feel like it doesn’t excuse enough of its flaws. Platformers are my favorite genre and I always felt a bit weird seeing this game revered as one of if not the greatest 2D platformer ever.
Pivoting to 3 for a bit, it’s no secret that it has more than its fair share of short levels and autoscrollers, but something that I think it holds high above World’s head is its theming. Desert Land has the Angry Sun level and a Pyramid where you have to find the way out by breaking blocks with buzzy beetles. Water Land has a neat boat to interact with on its world map, plenty of water levels as you’d expect, and an abundance of Frog suits to facilitate movement through those. Sky Land’s world map starts you on the ground, but has a mini fortress that acts as an ascension into the actual sky part of the map. Pipe Land’s world map and even some of its levels are actual mazes traversed via pipes, and tons of the level design relates to pipes at the very least. The level design is not always stellar, but I find its attempts so admirable for an NES game.
That’s all to say that Super Mario World feels severely lacking in comparison. Its diversity mostly starts and ends at cute food themed level names along with a palette swap of the ground you stand on. Level design is certainly longer than 3’s, but often feels like a smattering of enemies rather than presenting anything interesting thematically or mechanically. I find that the game shines brightest in its fortress levels, where there’s little room to cheese its design, more vertical platforming, and more danger in the form of hazards rather than enemies which feel more engaging. But those fortresses are few and far between.
Another thing that feels a bit too simple in execution is the game's secret exits. They’re always simple solutions that amounted to coin havens in SMB1 or rare powerups in SMB3, and they either end up being abrupt ends to a level midway through it, or are placed at what is basically the end of the level anyway. Even the ghost houses which you would expect to have more involved exits are guilty of this; one of them just has the other exit some steps left of it. I think it would have been much more natural to have branching paths of a level that lead to different exits (which is ironic considering 3 has this with one exit and without allowing you to replay levels).
I know I’ve been giving World a lot of shit but I do think it’s a good game. I gave praise to 3 but it’s easy to lament aspects of it as well, however it’s hard for me to not feel like the developers did what they could on the NES. The same could be said for World in a sense considering it is just a launch title for the SNES, but I feel like it doesn’t excuse enough of its flaws. Platformers are my favorite genre and I always felt a bit weird seeing this game revered as one of if not the greatest 2D platformer ever.