Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Super Mario World: the third attempt

I played Super Mario Advance 2, but never got that far - which is surprising.  I played the Wii VC version of the game for a bit, but stopped for some reason after passing Donut Plains.  Now I've upgraded that to the Wii U VC version, I'm going to try to complete a game which many hail as the best of all time, but I've only scratched the surface of.

Yes, I know.  I'm still halfway through NSMBW and NSMBU.  Shh.


Initial impressions aren't great.  The text is really hard to read - had Nintendo never heard of kerning? - and the controls feel a bit imprecise.  This may be because of the travel on the buttons on the Wii gamepad, and the use of the analogue stick.  In any case, after a while the controls weren't an issue.


In this screen, you can see Mario rescuing Yoshi.  Two things to note here: Mario seems to be able to float in mid air, and Yoshi is singularly useless, getting captured around 100 metres from his home.  It hardly seems worth the effort.


I completed the first set of levels pretty quickly, and then got stuck on the first level where you can collect the feather that turns into a cape.  That cost me three lives, because I kept expecting Yoshi to be able to swallow the baseballs lobbed at him.


I finished at the second level in Donut Plains, annoyed with the red dot indicating that there's a secret exit on the first level.  I know how to get to it - you need the green switch palace - but I hate leaving it blinking there.

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