GA101 - Super Mario World

From thecrankyhermit

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Following Nintendo's 1985 release of Super Mario Bros. for their own 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendo would become a household name, with over 30 million NES's sold in North America and 60 million sold worldwide. Over 500 NES titles had been developed by 1990, and the four best sellers after Super Mario Bros. itself were all developed at Nintendo EAD, under Shigeru Miyamoto's supervision. The Legend of Zelda, released in 1986, successfully fused adventure game design elements and exploration mechanics into an action game, and launched Nintendo's second most iconic franchise. A sequel released in 1987 intentionally deviated from the original's style, emphasizing platforming mechanics and featuring game elements inspired by RPGs. Later that year was the release of Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic, which was (now controversially) tweaked and released in the USA as Super Mario Bros. 2, in lieu of the original Japanese sequel which went unreleased in the USA for years. Although not originally designed as a Mario title, its cartoony art direction became the new aesthetic style of the series, and several elements became permanent features of the Mario universe. Finally, Super Mario Bros. 3, released in 1988, evolved the original's gameplay with more polish, more variety, and more depth in the form of a structured overworld.

Several other long running franchises made their debut on the NES. In 1986, Nintendo R&D 1's Metroid infused the platformer genre with an exploration aspect and shooting mechanics. Konami's Castlevania demonstrated a creepy atmosphere and introduced slow, methodological platforming gameplay while remaining challenging. In 1987, Square's Final Fantasy popularized and codified the JRPG, bringing RPG mechanics and visual storytelling to consoles. Capcom's sleeper hit Mega Man launched a series known for creative bosses, creative weaponry, and stylistic 8-bit artwork.

In 1990, Nintendo released a new console, the Super NES. It sported numerous advances over its predecessor - support for higher resolution, more colorful graphics, built-in parallax scrolling with up to four planes, faux-3D effects via "mode 7" technology, a new controller layout with four face buttons and two shoulder buttons, and a powerful sound processor and music synthesizer. To show off these features and push this new console, Nintendo needed a suitably advanced launch title. A new adventure for Mario, the new face of Nintendo, was an obvious approach. Nintendo EAD, led by Shigeru Miyamoto, spent three years creating Super Mario World parallel to the SNES's own development. It was released as a pack-in title for the SNES's 1990 launch, to incredible critical acclaim and commercial success, in spite of fierce competition from Sega's Genesis.

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As the SNES's flagship title, Super Mario World uses the new technology to excellent aesthetic effect. Backgrounds are colorful, detailed, and multi-planed, creating a sense of depth perception. Parallax scrolling and focus makes distant background objects appear more distant than close ones. Animations are slicker and more numerous than in any prior Mario game. Trampled Koopas slide out of their shells, and attempt to crawl back inside, or kick them back at Mario. Boos flicker in and out of reality, swarm in large groups, make faces, and come in giant varieties. Mode 7 technology allows objects to spin, and creates 3D effects of a sort as characters' sprites enlarge as they zoom towards the foreground, or shrink as they retreat to the background. The music, composed by series veteran Koji Kondo, shows off the SNES's powerful and versatile sound hardware, with a wide range of level soundtracks whose tone ranges from adventurous, exciting, creepy, menacing, and atmospheric, with what is essentially the same melody in every single level.

Gameplay is likewise enhanced by the technology. Levels are bigger than ever, filled with a greater variety of enemies, tricks, and traps. Enemies have more varied and more complex abilities, and often come in different strains adapted to their world's terrain or difficulty level. Mario gains more abilities as well, such as spin attacks, gliding, belly flops, climbing fences, and even punching. The most notable addition of all is Mario's theropod steed Yoshi, who can run and jump just as well as Mario, has greater stomping ability, can eat enemies and spit unpalatable Koopa shells out as projectiles, and can serve as a mobile platform from which Mario can launch himself to reach greater heights than usual.

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But the biggest gameplay advancement that Super Mario World brought to the table was its large scale structure, and how it enabled everything in the game to come together in a dynamic, interesting way. Super Mario Bros. consisted of 8 worlds, each of them consisting of four increasingly challenging levels. Super Mario Bros. 3 changed the structure by giving each world an overhead map from which one could navigate from level to level, and enjoy an increased degree of freedom and cohesion. Super Mario World expands on this even more, featuring a large, single overhead map, from which one can access every level in the game as they are gradually discovered, and replay previously completed levels to search them for secrets or powerups.

This mechanic, and its expert implementation, truly makes "World" an appropriate label. As you progress, the environment reacts, revealing branching routes to new areas with new levels. Discovering secret passages within the levels leads to secret pathways in the world, which lead to secret levels, shortcuts, and sometimes entirely new gameplay mechanics. Switch Palaces, for instance, are bonus levels whose completion creates numerous colorful "switch blocks" throughout the game, and some levels' architectures are drastically altered by this phenomenon. All of this contributes to the sense of an organic, deep, multi-layered world, more than just an orthogonal structure of self-contained levels, full of game-changing secrets waiting to be discovered. Such an expanded scale also came with the ability to save a game in progress - a feature new to the series which is taken for granted nowadays.

The world's branching routes are enabled largely through "secret exits" - special objectives that credit the player with stage completion. These objectives are never spelled out to the player, but can be deduced through careful exploration of the stage, a sound understanding of the platforming mechanics, logical thinking, and occasionally intuition. They include tasks such as finding a hidden area, solving a puzzle, using a special ability (such as launching Mario from Yoshi's back), or carrying a key across a large portion of the stage to open a locked door. Without finding many secret exits, the player can progress through the game in a fairly linear fashion, beating a path through all of the worlds up to the front door of Bowser's castle. But by replaying the levels and finding the secret exits, completely different paths will open and lead to shortcuts, secret levels, intertwined passages between worlds, and an entire hidden world or two, featuring extra-challenging stages for the players skilled enough to find them.

This world dynamic, though revolutionary, may have been too difficult to replicate to full effect. Nintendo would only attempt this again in Game Boy titles Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins and Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, and at a smaller, more modular scope. The pseudo-sequel Yoshi's Island had little more than a menu list of playable levels. The later 3D titles would use an entirely different approach to linking their worlds together. New Super Mario Bros. Wii's world map more resembled the rigid structure of Super Mario Bros. 3's. However, some elements of this structure have carried on. It is a common convention in action games, especially platformers, for levels to contain hidden secrets which further your progress when discovered. The ability to replay previously completed levels, in search of undiscovered secrets or simply for fun, is another common convention, and one that lends itself well to complex, non-linear levels.

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Secrets and shortcuts in platformers were hardly a new idea. Even Super Mario Bros. had warp pipes and hidden beanstalks for passage to hidden areas, and its famous warp zones provided rapid transit to advanced worlds. Other platformers continued to invent new and creative ways that players could discover hidden areas, and be rewarded with prizes such as extra lives, which could make the difference between ultimate success and failure. But Super Mario World's macro design made finding these secrets a goal in and of itself. To reach Bowser's castle and rescue the princess was no longer the game's conclusion - you could "beat" the game this way, but in order to truly complete it you must go back to previously finished levels, find every secret exit, traverse every path, and complete every optional stage.

This change in design philosophy stayed with Nintendo, and influenced contemporary and future developers. Stages trended towards forgiving design, and with the ability to save a game in progress, the concept of finite lives and a "game over" became rather anachronistic. Novice players could progress through a game, experience the majority of its content, and see its conclusion, while more invested players could truly delve into the game, conquer the most difficult challenges, collect everything there is to collect, and do everything there is to do. To this day, nearly all platformers follow this model to some extent - game design that encourages backtracking and replaying levels is ubiquitous, as is a measure of progress towards total game completion, driven by locating secrets and accomplishing difficult but optional tasks.

If the NES represented the dawn of video gaming for millions of gamers, then the SNES represented an evolution, and Super Mario World represented the first of several established series' transitions to the 16-bit platform. In the long term, it paved the way for completion-based gameplay design to become a standard concept, which has also manifested in the form of collectibles, and achievements. In the short term, graphical details, animations, special effects, and music that could not have existed before were made standard. Gameplay mechanics were both expanded and refined, and better defined level design reflected its creators' years of experience, as well as a trend towards more forgiving gameplay. Other series, including ones not made by Nintendo, would show similar traits with their 16-bit debuts, but no other SNES platforming title would truly reach the depth and scope that Nintendo EAD achieved with their very first effort.

An emulated SNES version of Super Mario World is available on the Wii's Virtual Console. I recommend playing this version over the Gameboy Advance version, thanks to the latter's lower screen resolution, inferior music, and unwelcome added voices.

Beginner tips:

  • Yoshi's Island 1 is an optional stage, but worth completing.
  • On the world map, red dots mark stages with secret exits, which usually lead to secret levels. Ghost houses usually have them too.
  • Donut Plains 2 is likely the first "red dot" stage you'll be able to find the secret exit of. To get it, enter the second green pipe as Super Mario or better, and figure out what to do with the blue shell you find there.
  • You can re-play castles and fortresses by pressing L+R.
  • With the Cape Feather, your spin attack can swat away certain projectiles, and a few enemies that are otherwise difficult.


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