The Retro Gaming Blogging Challenge has come to an end for me. 14 posts has been written and published and still it's hard to let go. I was quite exited to find out that Marcoquin, who created the challenge, has a second part in the works. If I understood him correctly the second part of the challenge, which will include 14 new topics, will see us going a little more in depth.
The first post of the challenge had me talking about the SNES as the first video game console I ever owned. The subsequent post was about my first video game which was Super Mario World. I was so excited to delve back in time when talking about these two that I decided to play Super Mario World once more. For the first time in over 15 years actually!
Sadly my SNES has been boxed away long ago. Luckily, the Nintendo Switchs online subscription comes with a SNES Emulator! Since I was already subscribed it meant that Super Mario World was only a 200MB download away. Of course I had to go for it.
A blast of nostalgia
If writing 14 posts about my youth and early days of gaming wasn't enough it was something else to actually play one of those games. And I'm quite happy that was the case. Nostalgia is, sadly, often a trap. It's actually quite risky to play some of those old games or watch an old movie you loved as a kid. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was one of those movies. I loved it as a kid but when I watched it again 10 years later it ruined the whole movie for me. I realized while playing World of Warcraft: Classic, which I was really excited about, that it wasn't really the game I was missing and excited about. It was that feeling the game gave me when playing it as a kid.
Luckily, some games are timeless. Super Mario World is one of those games. Sure, it couldn't give me the feeling that it did when playing it for the first time but it was pretty close. It probably helps that it's been over 15 years since the last time I played it. The game looks great, plays great and sounds great. It's also propped full of secrets that I was never able to find as a kid.
A difficult surprise
There's a lot of things I had completely forgotten about this game. That made it all the more fun to experience it again. One of those things was the difficulty. I already mentioned this when I talked about the game in this post but at that point I had just touched the surface. The game got progressively harder after that.
I hit several road blocks throughout my playthrough that saw me stuck. Some levels really had to be grinded out if I were to complete them. Sometimes I even had to go back to easier levels and collect more lives if I wanted to stand a chance. Every life and every coin matters in this game.
What's rough is that if you die you're thrown back to your last save point, naturally. What's really rough is that these save points are few and often long in between. You only get to save your game after each boss castle or after finishing a ghost house. There's 7 boss castles which can't be replayed after you've beaten them so that's 7 save points that can only be used once. The ghost houses can be replayed and you actually get to save again if you beat them. I had to utilize this a couple of times. Having struggled to beat a couple of stages only to stand there at the next boss castle was rough. Saving the game to perhaps make the next piece og progress a bit easier was a relief.
I really dig the way they've done it with the saves. Yes, you can save when you want by visiting a ghost house but there's a risk involved. If you only have one life remaining do you push for further progress or do you risk it all to save your game? I had to make that choice a couple of times. I didn't always make the right choice.
Uncovering secrets 20 years later
If there's one thing I like in games, both old and new, it's side content and secrets. I love it when games gives you extra things to do besides the main plot. Even Super Mario World does that. A lot of the levels has secret exits which are really hard to find. I think I played some of the levels over and over again at least 20 times to find them.
It was actually quite mind blowing to me to see how many secret exits there actually was in this game. I found some of those as a kid but not nearly as many as I did this time around. I had to make it my goal to find them all and so I did. It took a lot of searching but in the end I found them all.
This basically uncovered a lot of shortcuts that I wasn't aware of. I had found the special star world as a kid but I never managed to find all the entrances and exits to and from it. What really surprised me was that when I got to the star world from World 3 (out of 7) it actually took me straight to Bowser's Castle if I managed to find some of the secret exits in the star world levels. That was entirely new and mind blowing to me. To find out that you could actually skip over half the game if all you wanted was to beat the last boss.
This also meant that I finally managed to find all of the switch palaces which was something I've never done before. These are simple levels with a giant switch at the end which makes extra blocks appear all across the game. The blocks often help you in terms of making the levels easier or giving you access to new places within the levels. It was quite satisfying.
A game of pure quality
This game is made out of pure quality. There isn't an inch of this game that isn't made with love. The worlds are colorful and great looking. They feel alive. The levels are challenging, well crafted and diverse. No two levels ever feel the same even though there's 72 of them. The game evolves from start to finish, introducing both new scenery and enemies as you progress towards the end.
Even though I've mentioned the soundtrack in my other post I just have to mention it again. What an absolutely fantastic and timeless soundtrack this game has. It has one of those soundtracks that will get stuck in your head for days. I was walking around at work humming Super Mario World tunes for days.
Not a single regret
I don't regret taking the time to replay this game at all. While it couldn't give me that same feeling it did when playing it for the first time I still had a blast. I discovered new things about the game and managed to complete even more of it than what I had as a kid. Secrets I didn't knew existed. Shortcuts I had never taken. If anything this new playthrough has actually made me like the game more than I already did. For a game to be able to do something like that more than 15 years later is just fantastic.
Replaying this made me really thirst for some of those old and gold games. After finishing this I went straight for the Super Mario 3D All-Stars bundle and I'm currently working my way through Super Mario 64. My goal is to collect all of the 120 stars for the first time in my life. That's gonna be a huge moment in my life if I manage to do it. I'll make sure to let you all know when and if it happens!
That's it for today. Until next time!
All images in this post are in-game screenshots taken by me, unless sourced otherwise.
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