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November 25, 2020 2:45 PM

Herald of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Nov 21st marked the 30th anniversary of Super Mario World.

A pack-in for the launch of the system, Super Mario World quickly became the best-selling game of its generation. Among other things, the game introduced the world to Yoshi, who would go on to become a mainstay of his own series. It also gave us the Koopalings, who - despite their name - apparently bear no relationship to Bowser.

The game was a master class in level design from Shigeru Miyamoto, with a gentle difficulty curve to ease in the newer player, and plenty of secrets for the more mastered. It's still got plenty of surprises for folks who played it, even after all these years.

Now a mainstay of speedrun marathons everywhere, SMW also gave rise to the Kaizo Mario phenomenon, for those who really want their Mario games to hurt them. If that's not your cup of tea, you can also watch people finish it in just under a minute.

So, if you have a chance, take some time this Thanksgiving to grab a feather, let your cape flutter, and give this classic a birthday whirl.

posted by Zargon X (13 comments total)

If someone modded in the playable characters from Mario 2, this would unquestionably be my favorite (jumpy, non-Yoshi-series) Mario game. Actually, that feels like something that probably already exists. Does it?
posted by Lonnrot at 4:06 PM on November 25, 2020

It also gave us the Koopalings, who - despite their name - apparently bear no relationship to Bowser.

Well actually the Koopalings first appeared in SMB3 on NES.
posted by pwnguin at 4:13 PM on November 25, 2020 [10 favorites]

Well actually the Koopalings first appeared in SMB3 on NES.

You are 100% correct, pwnguin, and I am frankly offended by my own sloppy oversight. I got too excited talking about the strangeness of the whole order of the Koopa Kingdom
posted by Zargon X at 4:26 PM on November 25, 2020 [3 favorites]

If someone modded in the playable characters from Mario 2, this would unquestionably be my favorite (jumpy, non-Yoshi-series) Mario game. Actually, that feels like something that probably already exists. Does it?

Dollars to donuts someone has probably built exactly that in Super Mario Maker2 and you could play it on the switch. (I played the first one on the wiiU but I forget how character selection works.) I bet there's a fanbase online with codes to find it in the game.
posted by sexyrobot at 4:57 PM on November 25, 2020

we got the SNES Classic last year and ever since my son has been obsessed with Mario World. It's the first video game he's ever played and he's getting seriously good at it. And I'm discovering that I have far more of that game memorized than I would have thought possible (considering how much of my life from that time that I remember otherwise). Perfect game.
posted by Reyturner at 5:57 PM on November 25, 2020 [2 favorites]

I'm pretty sure I ranted about this before somewhere on MeFi but most of the Super Mario games are incredibly well designed, and it's something I didn't learn to appreciate until decades later and getting in to watching speed runs from the game, and this mostly all holds true for the SM64 and later 3D variations.

You can be a total noob at these games and have fun. Or you can be a world class expert no-tool speedrunner and still be severely challenged to run the level, especially as designed.

This pretty much goes all the way back to Super Mario 1 or 2. Most of the main platform features and puzzles have an easy way to do them and fast/difficult way to do them and just for variation there's often at least one medium difficulty way to do it.

Compare this to, say, the original NES Metroid, which was notoriously difficult from the first screen until you build up your skills, and then it just got worse from there. I'm pretty sure I have legit PTSD from trying to finish that game and the very real terror in the final stage of being relentless pursued and dead over and over again by the Metroids that simply don't leave you alone until you finally finish (that round!) of the game.

Or Blaster Master, which was stupid hard once you got a few levels in to it and had a known bug that made it difficult or impossible to beat.

Or Contra, or Lifeforce, or Gradius and on and on. Almost any of these games that we could compare tended to have a really strict linear path of action without a lot of choices about how entertaining it might be to play through again after developing your skills. (Well, Metroid did, by just sending you through an even harder run of the same game.)

Get really good at Lifeforce or whatever and then the beginning levels are now essentially permanently boring.

But Shigeru Miyamoto's Super Mario games? As well as all the others that rise to this challenge? It's like each level is really two, three or more variations.

It's a lot like rock climbing or indoor bouldering. The same wall or pitch might have a bunch of beginner features and larger grips and then a full on 5+ right on the same wall. Miyamoto invites the user to take baby steps or go for the double dyno not just in the same game but the same screen and it's all over his games.
posted by loquacious at 6:12 PM on November 25, 2020 [8 favorites]

Super Mario World was great in large part because it marked the point when most game designers had finally moved away from the punitively difficult gameplay they learned from making arcade games, where the entire point was to take your quarters. It was still challenging, but never felt like it was taking cheap shots at you.

Ironically, SMB2 was the same way thanks to its original as not actually a mario game, but SMB3, while fun and interesting for its new twists with the suits and world map, still liked to beat you up out of the blue for no apparent reason other than habit.

I don't mind challenge, indeed I like challenge in games that aren't intended to be interactive films. Feeling like you're given no chance at all unless you memorize the fact that enemy x will pop in out of nowhere at y point and kill you before any reaction is possible, on the other hand, just piss me off.

The bigger problem with old games like SMW in the modern era is display and input latency. SMW is a lot harder when your TV has a minimum latency of like 100ms, even in "game" mode. Thankfully for people with even only a few hundred bucks to spare, TVs have gotten a lot cheaper thanks to being sold basically at cost (thanks ads/tracking!) and the vast majority have improved latency by an order of magnitude compared to the average of a few years ago.
posted by wierdo at 6:47 PM on November 25, 2020 [7 favorites]

Wait a second. In that "things you didn't know about SMW" list, it says that "The Lost Woods From The Legend Of Zelda Debuted Here":

In Japanese, the Forest of Illusion in Super Mario World is named Mayoi no Mori which happens to be the same name for the Lost Woods in The Legend of Zelda. The two even have the same premise, being forests that trick those who enter into looping around until they can figure out the trick that’ll lead them to an exit. Next time you're in the Lost Woods, just remind yourself that Mario did it first.

Surely the Lost Woods debuted in the original Zelda on NES. I've a mind to write a sternly worded letter!

More importantly, though, SMW is amazing. Truly one of the best games of all time and it must be a top 5 in the 16-bit era.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 7:05 PM on November 25, 2020 [2 favorites]

I spent a lot of time playing this at Sears, since there's no way my parents would ever buy me a second gaming console.
posted by TrialByMedia at 7:39 PM on November 25, 2020 [5 favorites]

I don’t recall parents being generally unfamiliar with video game upgrades as I recall the Sega Mastersystem to Sega Genesis upgrade being prior to Nintendo. Also the upgrade was actually pretty awesome because the first few games weren’t that great and the NES’s giant library went from $40 to $20 basically overnight.

Also I find NES and Super NES games to be easier now because the larger screen size really helps. Maybe rich kids had 30” screens but back in the day most of us were playing our SuperNES on a 19” tv and black and white TVs were still regularly sold.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:15 PM on November 25, 2020

I did the same playing it at the store thing, right up until Christmas morning when there was a SNES and a copy of PilotWings to boot. At first, I definitely preferred PilotWings since I'd already played a bunch of SMW. (At Walmart, actually, they were the only ones in my town that had a demo setup)
posted by wierdo at 12:03 AM on November 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

Compare this to, say, the original NES Metroid, which was notoriously difficult from the first screen until you build up your skills

Why didn't you just grab the big energy tank hidden in the ceiling of that first room? (Lol.)(I just saw a youtube video of someone aquiring that tank from the very beginning, without any upgrades, by doing some very fancy jump moves involving being injured by the one bad guy, bouncing off and jumping off the wall. I was impress.)
posted by sexyrobot at 5:38 AM on November 27, 2020

I'm gonna link to something I found here on MF:

https://www.metafilter.com/149503/Scroll-Back-The-Theory-and-Practice-of-Cameras-in-Side-Scrollers

which leads to:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iNSQIyNpVGHeak6isbP6AHdHD50gs8MNXF1GCf08efg/pub

SMW was amazing (although M3 was magical and actually had more secrets and out-of-the-box surprises (like costumes and ways to literally go behind the literal scenery).

I have fond memories playing this at my best friend's house, getting 100%, mastering a game in full for the first time.

And as the above link shows, it did a lot so *right* that it set a standard.
posted by MacD at 11:55 AM on November 27, 2020