Super Mario World – one of the best platform games of all time

Originally released in 1990 on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), Super Mario World is one of the most popular games on the SNES (having sold over twenty million copies making it the best-selling SNES game), as well as being considered by many to be among the greatest games of all time. Some polls have even placed it as the very best game of all time, which is fascinating because Mario’s creator Shigeru Miyamoto once publicly admitted that he considered the game to be incomplete because its development was rushed in order to be competitive with the 1991 release of Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega Genesis. Super Mario World has been re-released several times on other Nintendo platforms such as the Wii, Wii U, 3DS, and Nintendo Switch.

Like its predecessors on the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), including Super Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros. 2, and Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World for SNES is a side-scrolling 2D platformer featuring one of the most widely recognized video game mascots worldwide, Mario. His brother Luigi is also playable, although the difference between Mario and Luigi in Super Mario World in terms of gameplay is essentially negligible. While in Super Mario Bros 2, Luigi could jump higher and Mario could jump farther, in Super Mario World, the brothers are basically the same in every way aside from the color of their clothes.

As in many of Mario’s games, particularly the older ones, the objective of the game is to guide Mario across a world-beating level after level, in order to reach the end and defeat the final boss, Bowser, to rescue Princess Peach (called Princess Toadstool in this game).

Super Mario World kept many of the features of the games that came before it but introduced some essential new elements, including the new spin jump move and the cape feather powerup. But one of the most significant new additions to the series introduced in Super Mario World is the friendly dinosaur Yoshi! Shigeru Miyamoto had always wanted for Mario to have a dinosaur companion since the first Super Mario Bros. Still, because of the hardware limitations of the NES, that was not possible.

Yoshi was such an immediately beloved character that he himself featured as the main hero in his own series of games, Yoshi Island, in which he had to protect Baby Mario while on a quest to rescue Baby Luigi. One of the most memorable elements of Yoshi’s gameplay is his ability to use his sticky chameleon-like tongue to catch and eat fruit, shells, powerups, and enemies. Eating shells would give him a temporary power depending upon the color of the shell. Red shells would allow him to spit out fire, yellow shells allow Yoshi to create an area-of-effect stomp, and blue shells gave him the ability to fly.

Despite the game being over 30 years old, the game is still remarkably popular. While when it was released, it was primarily played by gamers in the Generation X and Millenial age groups, Super Mario World continues to attract younger gamers. One notable aspect of this may be because of its assets inclusion in Super Mario Maker on the Wii U and Super Mario Maker 2 on the Nintendo Switch, which are custom level creators that are extremely popular online in the Twitch and YouTube communities.

For many gamers in the range of 30-40 years old, Super Mario World holds a special place in their heart as one of the first video games they ever played. It’s possible that there may be some rose-tinted glasses for many people, but generally speaking, Super Mario World is an excellent game that certainly stands the test of time.