The greatest games - A Personal list of Neocracker~

[Bubba]

Ah, Super Mario World. 75 levels of pure, unadulterated fun! I had a NES for years before upgrading to a SNES when I was ten years old. I remember having two games when I opened it on Christmas morning... Super Tennis and of course, Super Mario World.

Super Tennis was great but it didn't get the hours of play that I put into Super Mario World. It was very close to the perfect 2D platformer. Here are a few reasons why...

- Playability - The controls were flawless... incredibly responsive. You just had the perfect level of momentum. Whenever you mis-timed a jump, you have no-one to blame but yourself! As well as the standard platform jumping, it introduced new elements such as climbing fences. You also had the new spin jump to smash through blocks from above... not to mention the new power-ups which I will get onto.
- The Introduction of Yoshi - Genius. It again added another dimension to the gameplay. Being able to eat apples, hold shells in order to fly, stomp or spit out fire. Plus, the coloured Yoshi's you can acquire later in the game to ease your attempts at Special Road.
- Level Design - SMB3 really advanced the level design from the original but this game took it even further. Brilliantly challenging platform jumps, high routes, branching paths, short-cuts, countless hidden rooms, falling for minutes into nothingness avoiding enemies... I always thought Sonic had the edge in platform design but at the time, this could not be matched.
- Power-ups - It was a shame not to see some of the kookier suits from SMB3 (Tanooki, Hammer) but it more than made up for it with the introduction of the cape. This more than anything added another dimension to the Mario formula. It opened up the levels to an incredible extent. This led to lots of sky-based treats to be found, providing you have enough room to take off! It did lead to some levels being far too easy to bypass but that is tantamount to cheating in my book.
- Music - Anything Koji Kondo touched in this era was guaranteed to be special and this game was no exception. A fantastically diverse selection of music that added so much to the whole atmosphere of the game. The little touches really raised this to another level... like the additional drum beat whenever you're riding Yoshi... or the amazing reggae version of the Mario theme that starts when you've been sat on the Special Road map screen for a few minutes. If you're in any doubt as to how good these tunes were then listen to this... Super Mario Medley - YouTube the majority the SMW tunes are found in this amazing video.

The game wasn't perfect. The difficulty level was far too low for a Mario game. Especially considering the game could be completed in about 30 mins using Star Road. The bosses too (even Bowser) were ridiculously easy as well as the cape being more than a little broken for certain sections of the game. It's this reason more than any that I would still give the edge to SMB3 as my favourite 2D platformer.

It's a small gripe though on what is an incredibly fun game to play. It has sprinkles of Nintendo genius all over it and I still dust off my SNES to go back to this every now and again. As soon as I turn the game on to hear the sound of that first coin... I am immediately ten years old again.