Game Discussion of the Week: Super Mario World

A very disappointing and visually underwhelming entry in the Super Mario Bros franchise. I have a large number of complaints with Super Mario World but let me just boil it down to two of the most glaring problems I have with it:

-The spritework and animations are mediocre at best, even for an SNES launch title. Whenever I look at footage of it now, I can't help but get a "bargain bin edutainment" feel from it. I've noticed that the sprite animation is extremely limited and the backgrounds haven't got much detail put into them. Compare this to Sonic the Hedgehog on Genesis/Mega Drive, which came out the same year yet featured significantly more animations in the foregrounds AND the backgrounds, as well as giving the titular character extra visual work like idle animations, etc.. It seems almost like Nintendo took a minimalistic approach to the visual design of the game, which I don't understand or respect. It's especially jarring considering that the SNES was more powerful than the Mega Drive in almost ever regard from what I understand. There's just no excuse for the lack of visual ambition here.

-The music & audio in general sounds extremely muffled. I've never understood why this is, but the audio in World always sounds quiet and very subdued to me, like someone is covering up my speakers with a cloth or something. Additionally, all the tracks (or at least most of them) are just remixes of the main theme. Very lame.

-All the cool content that was removed from Super Mario Bros 3, such as the tanooki suit, the frog suit, the hammer bros powerup, etc. I still can't forgive their omission and having only a fraction of power ups really reduces the replay value for me.

Overall, Super Mario World is a very disappointing entry and the visual setbacks as well as the removal of many collectibles leads me to denounce it as a rushed title. For these reasons, I never have the urge to play it nowadays and in fact I haven't played the game for many years now. It might not be anywhere near as visually repetitive as the first Super Mario Bros on NES, but it's still a completely underwhelming Mario title in my books. Hell, even the hack himself Shigeru Miyamoto has gone on record as saying that World was supposed to be much better, and considers the ultimately released product disappointing.

I'm not sure what to rate SMW, but for now I'll just slap it a 3/5 "average" rating and call it a night, because the less I think about it the more time I can spend playing other far more interesting 16-bit platformers, like Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Dynamite Headdy, and even SM World's sequel/prequel, SMW 2 Yoshi's Island. Talk about a breath of fresh air!

Oddly enough this makes sense. Although it's one of my favourite Mario games, i do agree that the visuals were bland in comparison to the detail and effort that went into Mario 3 and does have a bargain bin game quality to the visuals. The audio is muffled and the power ups were a downgrade from Mario 3.

Didn't notice any of these faults at all. It's funny how one can't see things until some one else points them out. But saying that i would still have to say this is one of the best platformers ever made. i've always been a Sonic guy and my favourite 2D Mario game is the New Mario Bros on the Wii, but Super Mario World has always been a great game that one can pick up and play anytime.

i actually like Mario World a lot more than Mario 3 but i do now see the comparisons MeleeMaestro is making between the two.

Mario 3 for me is one of those games that I have to be in the mood for and prepare my self to play through, where as Mario World is one of those games where I could just jump right in any time and play half of the game on one sitting without even realising it.