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Title: Super Mario World
Author:Nintendo
Rom Player: ZSNES
Reviewer: Dr. Boogie
Synopsis: Submitted for your approval, a tale of evil and magic known only as… Super Mario World. In this game, you play a powerful warlock named Mario who can double his body mass and shoot fire from his hand with the help of his assortment of living ingredients. His task is to free the war-torn world known as the Mushroom Kingdom from the Great Beast known as Bowser and his nine demonic children. To do this, he must fight through cloud monsters, horrible underground beasts, and the undead. Along the way, he will enlist the help of a species of carnivorous fiends known only as “Yoshi’s.” They will use their unquenchable thirst for blood to aid him as a mount. Anyway, back to reality: You have to go through all sorts of strange locations that mainly consist of caves, plains, the sky, and underwater levels. This raises quite a few questions; such as how do Mario and his little Yoshi friend hold their breaths indefinitely, what mysterious force is causing the screen to push you along in some of the levels, and what’s with all the pipes? The pipe thing I’d really like to get into because the Mario Brothers storyline makes him out to be a plumber, and it would appear that he spent most of his life installing some sort of insane sewer system that stretches from the deep underground all the way up so that it rivals even the tallest skyscrapers. Also, many of the levels are named after foods; such as the Donut Plains and the Butter Bridge. Despite this, the only things even remotely close to food that you find in the levels are the power-ups and some strange-looking fruit growing on the trees. Speaking of power-ups, you get the typical mushroom to get big (which is almost certainly a metaphor for drug use), a smiley orange flower that lets you shoot fireballs, and a feather that places a cape on you that allows you to spin around like a top and grants you limited powers of flight. A nifty feature in this game is that now, you can grab an additional power-up and store it for when you get hit by one of the freaky bad guys. Then, you find the weird dinosaur creatures called Yoshi’s along the way. These things will eat anything living, basically, and consuming the different colored shells from one type of enemy lets them do things like fly and spit fire. The enemies, as stated in the dramatic introduction, are weird. You’ve got giant living bullets and carnivorous plants on one side, and things like football players and ghosts with Social Anxiety Disorder. Plus, the castle-dwelling children appear to be bizarre caricatures of things like a musician, a party animal, a tough guy, etc. Moving on, the sound effects are just the usual childish impact noises and jumping squeak used for just about every Mario Brothers game. The music is a blend of electronic and some kind of Caribbean steel drum music in some parts. It’s an ok game, but I would have liked to see an option to stir up a fight between Mario and his forgotten brother, Luigi, over who gets top billing in the next game. That I would pay to see.
Best Cheats: Get to the final boss easily – On occasion, you will find several secret levels that will take you to the “Star Roads.” If you find the secret exit for each level, you can use the pipe at the end of the road to warp directly to Bowser’s Castle, bypassing much of the game.
Game Play: 7
Graphics: 7
Music/Sound: 7
Originality: 7
Overall Rating: 7
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