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So here it is- the first game! Play Super Mario World and keep the thread updated with your opinions of it (ie what you love, hate, etc., where you've gotten stuck, what level is your favorite thus far… The list can go on forever!)

Oh, and before I forget, I want to ask someone who's beaten it to please give me a ballpark of how long the game takes to beat so that we can give a sort of deadline for people to beat it before we vote on our next game- thanks!

Before I start, myself, I'd just like to say I've never played this before, but I'm pretty hyped for it nonetheless. Have fun, everybody!

Hm, Super Mario World on the Game Boy Advanced took me roughly 3 weeks to finish. But that is mainly because I was horrible at the game, but stubborn as hell.

But if you take the shortcuts: less than an hour.

Oh, I didn't know you guys were doing this. As it happens, I just started a fresh replay of SMW about a week ago.

It can take a while, since there are not only a lot of levels, but a lot of hidden secrets in the game. Perhaps the best-hidden secret is at the very end of the game. If I recall correctly, there are five "Star World" levels, each of which has a regular exit and a "hidden" exit. The fifth "Star World" level's "hidden" exit is actually easier to find, and you can fail to notice that the regular exit was never located. If you do find the regular exit, you have the option of restarting the game with an altered set of graphics.

But yeah, like Natsuru said, (and like many other Mario games) how long it takes depends a lot on how thorough you want to be, since there are shortcuts.

EDIT: I don't know why I keep noting things like this, but… You guys realize I beat this game before most of you were born, right? Crap, my family owned a Pong console in 1980; I am feeling o-o-o-old…

I nearly have all exits.
Give me a moment…

Well, if you go through all the castles and levels (#1-#7), the game takes about roughly 36 hours to complete. This is going off the SNES version. For the GBA… I'd say maybe another 4 hours for the Special Levels (the ones connected to the Star Road Levels)… hard as f*ck to unlock and pass.

So, I thought I'd bring back the nostalgia by posting the theme music on here! Enjoy!
SNES Version:

GBA Version:

The Super Mario Advances were such amazing remakes! And when they added Luigi to singleplayer, I just lost my cool and jumped up and down in joy! Ah… childhood.

Hands down my favorite Mario platformer.
Gonna go fire up my emulator SNES and relive some old memories.

Hey! It just so happens that I have this game. Sorry for not signing up in the first thread. It took me several months on-and-off to beat, but that's because I reset the game every time I took damage (I finished with around 300 lives) and got stuck on Chocolate Island and kept going through the wrong end-of-level-goalpost thing.

Patrick wrote:

Oh, and before I forget, I want to ask someone who’s beaten it to please give me a ballpark of how long the game takes to beat so that we can give a sort of deadline for people to beat it before we vote on our next game- thanks!

Depends on how you play the game. Make use of the star world and you can get to Bowser with only completing the first world. There are also various sidetracks, plus the forest can get you lost quickly if you don't watch out. Then there's the difference in normal completion (defeating Bowser), and special completion (completing Special World).

Assuming you play it normally, a few sidetracks, all castles in order: 30 hours is a good estimate, but can differ based on your skill. So if you want to make up a time period for how long it takes people to beat it, 1 world per few days is certainly doable.

Brucker wrote:

It can take a while, since there are not only a lot of levels, but a lot of hidden secrets in the game. Perhaps the best-hidden secret is at the very end of the game. If I recall correctly, there are five “Star World” levels, each of which has a regular exit and a “hidden” exit. The fifth “Star World” level’s “hidden” exit is actually easier to find, and you can fail to notice that the regular exit was never located. If you do find the regular exit, you have the option of restarting the game with an altered set of graphics.

Incorrect. For starters, going through the first warp star right away can get you through the fifth (the one that teleports you next to Bowser) by completing the star levels in a matter of hours. Completing the star world also doesn't get you the different graphics, to do that you need to get to special world through the fifth star level. Special World is 8 levels, all pretty difficult, and may also need the "hidden" exit to move on. Completing Special World gets you the graphics.

I had that game at 100% at age 9, so you can understand how much I loved it.

If anyone can't play the game themselves, there's an online emulator to play it here.

I've been needing something to play.

Thank you for reminding me that I have this game…
… And also that I've never beaten it.

@RandomMan:
So I did not recall correctly, eh? I just remembered that there were these five star levels (and it was Star Road, not Star World) that unlocked a secret that led to the special graphics version of the game. My memory is awfully fuzzy, though obviously. I don't recall how to get to Star Road, nor how much of the game it allowed you to skip. Even very early in the game, in the small amount I managed to play through this time around, it's clear that there are multiple ways to work through it.

So… since most of the people have a fond memory of this wonderful game, let's discuss a few unimportant matters… which color Yoshi is best Yoshi?
For me, it would have to be, hands down, Blue Yoshi! Being able to have wings no matter what you eat is amazing!

BTW: Made it to Butter Bridge right now… on SNES version.

Made it to Donut Plains Ghost House on SNES version.

I don't remember the controls being so slippery. I also don't remember the sudden difficulty spike after the first castle.

I don't know if I'm a good enough gamer to finish the game because
A. I'm not an experienced gamer – if anything, I'm a casual.
And B. I'm not good at pushing myself to finish things: I'm forgetful and I get bored of things easily.

I'm still gonna keep going though.

I'VE GOT TO FINISH AT LEAST ONE GAME IN MY LIFE DAMN IT

@Mark
I've yet to meet a Yoshi other than the classic green so far, and I unfortunately seem to be incapable of keeping one for more than 30 seconds ;_;

@Joe
Haha, iktfb… I'm in the Donut Plains myself, and as you may recall from my first post in the other thread, I hate platformers. Why? Because I'm capital T E R R I B L E- terrible at them! I don't know why, but I can play just about any other type of game without much of an issue, but something about platformers causes me to turn on the suckiness… The sad thing is that my first game was Sonic for the Genesis, so I really have no excuse! Regardless, I am having a lot of fun playing SMW, regardless of my occasional falling off the side of a ledge due to my own stupidity.

Don't give up hope, though! We can do this, man!

RE:platformers

I suppose it just takes time to adjust to gameplay styles. I recall when the game was new, most of the basic stuff was second-nature to me, and I only had to adapt to things like controlling Mario while flying. Playing it all these years later, I'm finding it really tough because I haven't played many platformers recently. So many games these days are 3D free exploration type games, which takes a different sort of skill I'd just started getting used to.

Super Mario Galaxies was probably the first truly 3D game I played, and I remember just flailing to figure out what I was doing at first. When I say "truly 3D", I mean that I don't quite count games like the Crash Bandicoot series, which are technically 3D, but the levels of the game are pretty linear and might as well be 2D platformers viewed from the back instead of the side.

OK, right now, I'm on Choco Island, stuck at the ghost house. I decided to call it a day, so I just surfed the web for Yoshi, and found this.

Did anyone else know about this? I've never heard of it before, but it actually had some good humor for a kid's show and retained fairly well to Super Mario World. And I found Yoshi to be ADORABLE in this show!

@markhoax14:

Know Your Meme: Mama Luigi

@ Milhouse

This was a meme, and I didn't even realize it? Wow… I feel so unconnected. Thanks for showing me!

Am I allowed to call you Mama?

I'm gonna use the emulator ZSNES. I am terrible at any and all Mario games, so I'm probably going to fail miserably…
EDIT: Especially considering that I'm not going to use any cheats, like the built-in GameGenie or save states…

@S.C.O.E.:
Which "save states" are you referring to? I know the game has save slots already, so I'm not sure what one would add to them.

Emulators have save states which allow the player to save at any location in the game at any time. This essentially allows infinite retries along with being able to restart at your own custom checkpoints. It's a pretty neat feature.

I've been stuck on that goddamn doughnut world ghost house forever… Anyone have any advice?

Donut Plains Ghost House Map
Exit G= Top Secret Area
Exit F= Regular Exit
Hope that helps!

RE: Donut Plains Ghost House
Right, how could I forget? That's pretty typical of the way they like to hide stuff.

Anyway, according to the world map on that site, there are a total of 76 levels with 24 secret exits, which should give people a vague idea of the size of the game.

I'm gonna go hook up the SNES to a better TV (the one I have it on now has some color issues) and make some more progress. I'm only about half way through Vanilla Dome.

Oh man, the number of times I almost threw my GBA out a window playing that game. And the sweaty palms I'd get when battling the castle bosses. The Ghost Houses pissed me off to no end with their time eating shenanigans.

Huh, I just bought this game the other day after watching my brother play the brawl demo of it.

@Intergalactic Joe

Lol yeah, I found myself running back to the first or second level to get more 1ups pretty quickly.

I managed to find everything possible and yet my file would still say I only have 99% complete.

@Adam DeLand:
Are you sure you really got everything, then?

@thread:
Well, I've been playing for the last few hours, and while the game is fun in general, I've gotten in a lot of frustrating and embarrassing situations. It seriously took me about 25 lives to get through Lemmy's castle, and the thing is, there are tricky parts, but almost all of those were me walking into slow-moving fireballs. Over. And. Over. Again.

Although I've made reasonable progress since then, I'm getting stumped on finding the secret exit for Cheese Bridge, and I'm seriously tempted to check a walkthrough guide. I just looked at the one for the ghost house above, though, and I feel lame cheating twice in just a few hours of gameplay.

(Okay, I gave into temptation, and frankly, I'm glad. I don't think I'd have ever thought of that trick, and don't know how I apparently did the first time I played way back when…)

EDIT: Ludwig's castle, which seemed objectively much more difficult, I ended up beating in one try. Go figure.

Made it to Bowser's castle! (via Star Road, of course) I still wanna go through the whole game, but I wonder if I should go ahead and hit the castle once anyway so long as I'm here.

I don't know if it was just luck, but Forest of Illusion was really easy. It certainly took me less time to get through that whole area than it took me to get through Lemmy's castle. Chocolate Island has so far been a real pain, though.

So what are we supposed to be discussing here, anyway?

>tfw had to farm lives for hours to beat a children's game
>tfw had to load from a save state because I felt bad about using an invincibility cheat and wanted to start anew from the beginning of Chocolate Island, only to find I hadn't saved since the end of Vanilla Dome

I actually managed to beat Bowser through a battle I was admittedly too invested in, and I have never had such a rewarding sensation spread through my body. Oh, and I didn't think it would be an Eggmobile-esque battle (like in the first Sonic game) against his Clown Car thing, so that was a pleasant surprise.

As for what we are to discuss, I want to hear anything and everything, Brucker! I started the whole shebang because I wanted to hear about how a videogame's story impacted the people playing it and whether or not they enjoyed their game-playing experience. Seeing as SMW is a bit lacking in the narrative department, that leaves us with the latter.

I thought the game was fun, but as someone who sucks at platforming, I had moments where I was only a hair's breadth away from punching a hole through my screen. Again, it was enjoyable, but I can't help but feel like I was just not good enough at certain levels and bosses to beat the game and had to walk away several times so as to not rage.

A guy can only walk off the same cliff so many times, you know?

Still, the soundtrack was upbeat and enjoyable, the enemy designs were cute and inventive, and the levels were well done and challenging. I would give it ~8/10, but I still say Super Mario Galaxy is still my favorite Mario game.

Just beat this game… and I felt like I cheated taking the back door. BUT I never looked up guides (only to help Crona out with Donut Plains, and I had already beaten the ghost house by then), so I didn't technically cheat. On the GBA version, I finally collected all those Yoshi coins and got the graphics for that version as well, so it was a major success for me.
This was in my opinion the second greatest 2D Mario game for me (#1 goes to SMB3), and I had a blast playing it again. There were some frustrating moments that I laughed at first by remembering, then got really irritated by repeating the same mistakes over and over again (Special Levels), but it was an overall nostalgia trip for me. Hope everyone else enjoys this game by the end of their playthrough!

This is the only game I can enjoy speedrunning.
It's such an amazing game I replayed it over and over a lot. Nothing would stop me from beating that game when I was a wee weasel. I loved it so much.
I remember my first time finding a 3-up moon and unlocking the special world in one go.

Now years later all dragon coins, all moons and all exits collected, found and beaten. I would've still have that save on my old SNES. I don't have this game anymore, I lost it, which makes me very sad. I can't replay this masterpiece, but I still feel I played it a few seconds ago. The controls and the elements were the best part. That music too, I loved the tunes. The levels were such great designs, so many fantastic secrets. Truly fun.

I can say this is my favorite 2-D platformer video game.
I give it a 19/14.

One of the things that's really striking about this game (although it's almost certainly more common these days) and actually other Mario games is that it's a platformer with such diversity of enemies. Some take one hit, others take two. Some simply die, others leave behind a shell. Some walk off the edge of a platform, others turn around and go back. Some just move in a straight line, others follow you. Some can be eaten by Yoshi, others can't, and a few cause changes in Yoshi if he eats them. Some are fireproof, and some don't die when hit, but merely flip on their backs. To get through the game, you need to figure out the correct way to interact with each of the dozens of different characters and objects, including some that blur the distinction. (Have you gotten to the ghost house in which the ghosts don't simply freeze when you look at them, but turn into blocks?) Although games in this era were getting more diverse in their offerings, I think the Mario games were real trailblazers, at least in the platform genre.

I could be wrong, but I think Super Mario 3 was the first platformer using the map interface that allowed you to go back and play levels over again and/or play levels out of order, which is a pretty cool idea. Actually the first Super Mario may have been the first scrolling platformer, which we certainly take for granted now, but was a huge innovation.

Regarding Super Mario games and innovation, this is relevant:

Learning Through Level Design with Mario

…

Thankfully, Nintendo's designers understood this responsibility, perhaps on an instinctive level. More so than any games that had come before them on any format, Nintendo's early NES classics (Super Mario Bros., Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda) treated their opening moments as if they had training wheels attached. In the days before tutorials, these games didn't teach by holding players' hands; rather, they dropped gamers into a live situation and gently guided them through organic level design. Metroid forced players to come to terms with multi-directional scrolling and tool collection by placing a barrier to the right of the starting point that could only be passed with a power-up acquired by first running left. The Legend of Zelda taught players to explore by dropping them in a maze with no equipment and letting them wander into danger. If you didn't think to enter the cave immediately north of where the game began, you'd quickly find yourself helpless against the monsters on adjacent screens until it occurred to you to look around and find a weapon.

Still, those games had nothing on Super Mario Bros., which took a far more casual approach to instruction. Rather than confront the player with obstacles and insurmountable challenges, the game's first stage laid down a gently expanding set of in-world objects and hazards, teaching through repetition, iteration, and escalation.

…

This guy sees a level of genius in the SMB games that is easy to miss because it's been designed so seamlessly into the experience of playing. It's a fascinating article.