Collection essentials #263: Super Mario World (SNES)

Time for a big one. It’s not only the most iconic SNES game, but also what is most likely the first video game I ever played, ever. The original cartridge that I played still exists, but lives at my parents house. There are two instruction manuals here, the one on the right with the cover and pages missing being the manual that came with the original cartridge I played.

Super Mario Bros. was the real catalyst for the success of the NES, releasing shortly after the system’s American launch. And so, Nintendo wisely deduced that having a brand new Mario adventure to release alongside their next console would be the right move. 

Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES was a huge success and considered a practically perfect game by many fans. They perhaps could have made a game with all the same basic gameplay fundamentals, just with new levels. But that’s not what happened. Super Mario World does its own thing, evolving some elements from Super Mario Bros. 3 and also leaving out a bunch of stuff from that game altogether while going in somewhat of a different direction. I’d say this was a good move, and helped it feel more fresh and unique.

In terms of Mario’s basic moves, the big change here is Mario’s new “spin jump”, which has more power and can kill some enemies in one hit that the regular jump can’t (though you don’t always want this outcome) and has other utility outside of that. The new power-ups from 3 do not return, but World instead adds the “cape” power-up which is sort of a successor to the raccoon tail from 3. With the cape, Mario can glide, swing it to attack enemies in front of him, and best of all…fly! Though flying is not as simply as casually moving through the air, as you first need to build momentum, and then use timing to stay airborne with no ability to turn around or slow down. 

Instead of adding new power-ups, there’s something else Mario World introduces to enhance gameplay, a steed who would go on to be one of the most iconic characters in the history of the company…Yoshi! He’s a dinosaur that Mario can ride who makes Mario invulnerable to damage (getting hit just makes Yoshi run frantically leaving Mario behind), and he can stick out his long tongue to pull something into his mouth to eat or use in some way. “Yoshi” is not only the character’s name, but the name of the species as a whole, as there are various other Yoshis you will meet in the game of various colors. (There’s a little more to how Yoshis work but I don’t need to fully describe all the gameplay elements in this little post!)

A “world map” where the player can move around and select levels was used in Super Mario Bros. 3. Now, Super Mario World doesn’t have shenanigans like enemies and minigames showing up on the world map, but it does take the concept and bring it a step forward. In 3, all eight worlds were separate from each other. But in Super Mario World, every level in the game is interconnected on the map. Many levels (the ones colored in red on the map) have two different “exits” the player can find, and each different exit to a level opens up a different path on the map. And so, that brings me to the biggest way Super Mario World stands out from its predecessors: it has a big emphasis on exploring and finding secrets. In 3, once you beat a level, it was basically erased from the map, and if you wanted to play it again you’d have to restart the game and get back to that point. But Super Mario World lets you replay levels as much as you want! And you’re encouraged to do so because you can’t reach everything in the game simply by beating each level once. There’s even one area in World where the most obvious level exits just send you in a circle on the world map, and finding the more obscure exit is the only way to actually make progress. 

Another thing from 3 that World doesn’t have is the ability to earn power-ups to spend on the world map. But instead, World lets you store one power-up that can be used mid-level.

A downside to games about exploring and discovering secrets is that they can have less replay value, since you can’t truly discover the same thing more than once. Once you know where stuff is, it’s not as exciting to find it again. But Super Mario World makes up for this a bit by being extremely fun to master. The controls are so spot-on that it’s fun to replay the game and see how much better you can do in subsequent playthroughs. It’s a fun game for “speedrunning”, where the player’s goal is to finish a game (whether that be getting to the credits or beating every single level) in the fastest time possible.

“Hacking” old video games to modify them is a rather popular thing among fans. Many years ago there was a program called “Lunar Magic” that made it extremely easy to hack Super Mario World, in a way that practically any layperson could do. And so, Super Mario World is one of the most hacked games of all-time. The basic gameplay engine is so great that it makes the game practically perfect for fan hacks. There have been so many incredibly creative and fun fan-made Mario games that have been made in this way.

Now, as for my personal history, as I said, this was more than likely the first video game I ever played. My dad got it for his birthday in December of 1991, a few months after the Super Nintendo’s American launch. Every SNES console back then came bundled with Super Mario World, a brilliant move on Nintendo’s part, so it was his first game, and only one for a while. My dad had never really played much Mario before, but became fully engrossed with Super Mario World, working hard to find all of its secrets and having a great time. It went on to become his favorite video game.

I was not even 2 years old when the Super Nintendo entered our household, so I didn’t play it right away. At age 3, I was late to being potty trained, in part because my mother had a hard time getting me to sit still. I didn’t really want to just sit down and watch TV for an extended period of time. But Super Mario World was the thing that actually made me stay seated on the potty, and the rest is history; not only do I love video games, but I use the toilet like any other normal human being!!

I caught on to playing video games much faster than the average young child does, and I soon learned to properly play the game and progress on my own. There’s a home movie (that I put on YouTube) of me beating a level at 4 years old. And pretty much ever since I can remember I’ve known every secret this game has to offer. Which means as an adult I’ll never know the joy of discovering it all from scratch. What a shame!! The game was incredibly popular, so it’s no surprise that many people I know also owned and loved Super Mario World. It was an instant classic and the number one game of my childhood. One of the best platformers of all-time, a true “quintessential essential”.