{"id":2374,"date":"2013-02-18T19:01:53","date_gmt":"2013-02-18T19:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=2374"},"modified":"2013-02-18T19:01:53","modified_gmt":"2013-02-18T19:01:53","slug":"my-top-100-17-super-mario-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=2374","title":{"rendered":"My Top 100: #17 – Super Mario World"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"1991<\/a>

1991 – Nintendo (Super NES, Game Boy Advance, Virtual Console)<\/p><\/div>\n

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I wouldn’t\u00a0call the Super Mario Bros.<\/em> series stale, but the last few games haven’t exactly been the most revolutionary of the bunch.\u00a0 The first New<\/em> game was incredible,\u00a0mostly because it\u00a0went back to the basics of what made Mario<\/em> games awesome in the first place.\u00a0 There was no flying, just normal jumps and wall jumps.\u00a0 The Mega Mushroom and Blue Shell power-ups were fun because they were\u00a0quite different from the norm, and that was nice to see.<\/p>\n

These days, we have White Raccoon Mario, and Power Squirrel Mario.\u00a0 We’ve gone from\u00a0struggling to finish\u00a0the games to finishing\u00a0them quite easily, all while Nintendo adds all sorts of little things to make the journey just a bit different than it was the last time around.<\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong!\u00a0 New Super Mario Bros. 2<\/em> had so many coins in it that it made the concept of the 1-Up pretty much irrelevant, but it was still\u00a0pretty satisfying to go on coin-collecting rampages.\u00a0 New Super Mario Bros. U<\/em> takes the infuritating multiplayer from the Wii<\/em> edition, tones down the “co-opetition” a bit, and makes it much more fun for you to play through with a friend.\u00a0 It looks pretty damn great, as well.<\/p>\n

So, it’s not all bad, I guess.\u00a0 It’s safe to say that, when it comes to the majority of\u00a0games\u00a0released in\u00a0the last few\u00a0years,\u00a0there’s very little innovation to be seen.\u00a0 Games like Journey<\/em> or\u00a0Minecraft<\/em> come along and blow our minds, simply because we haven’t seen anything like them before.\u00a0 I guess that’s partly\u00a0why I’m a\u00a0retro gamer at heart,\u00a0and like to remember the days when almost\u00a0everything<\/em>\u00a0felt new and awesome.<\/p>\n

Having to follow Super Mario Bros. 3<\/em> must have been a daunting task, but Nintendo really pulled it off with Super Mario World<\/em>.\u00a0 Besides bringing back a lot of the elements from SMB3<\/em>, they also added a bit of SMB2<\/em> in the mix.\u00a0 There were lots of enemies for you to pick up, and\u00a0the old “carry the key across the level to unlock a door on the other end” makes a comeback…\u00a0 minus the threat of Phantos chasing you, though.<\/p>\n

The game also had a completely different setting this time around.\u00a0 Instead of the familiar-looking Mushroom Kingdom, players were introduced to the vastly different landscape of\u00a0Dinosaur Land.\u00a0 This change brought with it tons of new enemies, a colourful new look, as well as the introduction of haunted houses to the land map.\u00a0 Every Mario<\/em> game since has had a spooky Boo-infested level of some kind, and it was quite a treat to see what kind of secrets could be found.\u00a0 It was also the first Mario<\/em> game to have alternate exits\u00a0in\u00a0certain levels, which made exploration that much more fun.<\/p>\n

In the end, although I didn’t play it as thoroughly as I did other Mario<\/em> games (i.e. the ones yet to appear on my countdown), it was an incredible\u00a0game to help\u00a0to ring in\u00a0the era of the Super NES – my favourite console of all time.<\/p>\n

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