Videogames of my life - Super Mario World + All Stars

 

If there's even been a constant in my life, that would be videogames. To this day they're still my main hobby that I want to keep exploring, discover appreciation for new genres and creators, whether they'll be designers, musicians or artists.

This is why I decided to create this little column where I go on a walk through the memory lane of my videogame experience, talking about the games that have been the most impactful for me. And despite the fact that I don’t want this column to follow any sort of chronological order, I thought it was important for me to start from the beginning.

DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR FIRST VIDEOGAME?

I’m not really that sure, according to my parents my first ever approach with a videogame was with the Commodore Vic-20, but I haven’t retained any memory about it. What I distinctly remember though was when my father came back home with a box, holding a Super Nintendo, two controllers and a pack-in copy of Super Mario World.

Super Mario is a character that needs no introduction, since forever he’s been the mascot of Nintendo and even to this day he manages to leave an impact on every generation of players. Super Mario World was the launch title for the Super Nintendo and the first introduction of Yoshi, the dinosaur who will accompany Mario throughout this adventure. While Mario, as always, is busy trying to save Princess Peach, Yoshi is instead trying to save his other Yoishi friends who’ve been taken prisoner by Bowser.

Exploring this strange worlds, encountering the new monsters, overcoming the traps of the various castles using all of Mario’s powers just made something click within me, and since that day has kept me entertained and fascinated by the concept of platform games: I was always curious to go further and see what levels were waiting next for me, or even just go back and replay old levels that I liked the most, as if the world was my giant playground.

Yoshi was my favourite part of the game when I was a child, not only I found him adorable, but it was also fun running around making the level easier by eating up all the enemies. I also loved discovering all of the other color variations since they all had different powers! The moment we discovered that the blue Yoshi would allow you to just fly after eating any turtle shell, he was basically the one we would always backtrack to get just to make the next level a lot easier to beat. 

Why am I talking plural? Because this game, like many others during my childhood, was a family experience rather than a personal one. It was the period where both my sisters and my dad were into videogames and finishing games on the Super Nintendo was an experience that we shared, helping each other in the hardest levels, trying to find all the secret exits. My father even went out buying those big strategy guide books with all cheat codes and secrets just to make sure we hadn’t skipped anything!

These family experiences weren’t relegated to Super Mario World of course but to most of our Super Nintendo library, and they lasted for quite a big portion of my childhood until I remained pretty much the only one that kept the interest. Looking back on it now I think all of these experiences helped a lot turning what was a simple pastime, into a passion.

To this day Super Mario World is one of my absolute favourite games and I still find it unbeaten in terms of 2D Mario games.

Nostalgia absolutely plays a part in it sure but I feel there are little genius touches in the design that haven’t been replicated ever in the games after.

First thing, it's world design. Super Mario World for the first time tries to create a completely interconnected world that gives you a complete continent with a lot of secondary routes that you can experiment in finding a route to reach Bowser’s castle. There aren't any collectibles that block your progress, the only limit is your ability to explore and this is something that completely vanished from modern Mario games.

I still remember the surprise that was beating the special world for the first time. The entire world map color scheme changes to an autumn palette and all the koopas are now wearing Mario masks instead of their shells. It’s one of the funniest things they ever did with their enemies and has never been done again since. It’s all those little things that give this game its own charm compared to the rest of the series and still allows it to emerge from the crowd despite being over 30 years old by this point.

Super Mario World wasn’t my only introduction to the world of Mario, because not long after that, Super Mario All Stars came into my house.

Nowadays remasters and remakes are extremely common, some might even say they’re overdone. In an industry that feels more and more focused on getting the biggest gain with the minimal effort, you can’t go a month without hearing about a game being re-proposed for you to buy with the specific purpose of making us wallow in our nostalgia for an affordable price.

This approach wasn’t entirely absent back in the day but there were definitely fewer cases. Super Mario All Stars to me is one of the best approaches to this kind of re-propositions, I dare to say that in a perfect world this would be the gold standard on how to approach this kind of project.

Super Mario All Stars is a collection of all the NES Super Mario games, completely rebuilt from the ground up, from the visuals to the improved controles to the ability to save your game, which wasn’t available in the original versions. One of the games included Super Mario The Lost Levels was even a new release for the western market, being a sequel to the first game that was considered too hard to be brought here.

If Super Mario World created the foundation for my passion, games like Super Mario All Stars ended up solidifying  this sentiment. I played this game so much that to this day I still cannot play with the original 8-bit versions.

If I have to point out my favourite game in this collection, that would definitely be Super Mario Bros 3, a game so iconic that we can still see the influence of it in the skeleton of games like Super Mario Wonder. Not only was it visually gorgeous reaching a level of detail that wasn’t possible with Super Mario World, but it simply felt like a massive game!

Instead of exploring one single continent you travel between different regions, each with their own aesthetic theme: from deserts, islands, ice, fire, and most famous of them all a level where all the enemies are giants! One of my biggest surprises was within the fifth world where in a level you start climbing a huge tower and once you complete it the next level is up in the clouds! Looking at it today it’s nothing special, but you have to keep in mind that I played it as a child and unexpected surprises like these are something that would inevitably leave their mark.

Another thing that I liked and still appreciate to this day is the sheer quantity of different power ups, Mario World only had the fire flower and the cape feather but in Mario Bros 3 there were costumes of a: frog, Tanuki and Hammer Bros that not only would change Mario’s appearance but they were also really fun to use, especially the Frog costume which made the underwater levels a piece of cake.

Super Mario Bros 3 is definitely the silver medal for me in the 2D Mario games, but there’s another game in this collection that has always been a ton of fun but I feel that today it kinda doesn’t get the respect it deserves, and that game is Super Mario Bros 2.

Super Mario Bros 2 is an extremely unique case for Super Mario, it was the only game where Bowser wasn’t the main bad guy, it was the first to have four playable characters with even Princess Peach being one of them, for the first time not being there to be kidnapped. The flow was also very different from the usual linear levels, some of these were more broad in scope and exploration, you fight enemies by picking items from the ground, and there weren’t the usual mushrooms to use as power ups. The entire world also had a very oniric feeling to it with enemies that never appeared in the other games.

The reason for all of this is because this game originally was a completely different original IP called Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic, the Super Mario coat of paint was only applied later when the game was brought to the west. And as much as it’s right to underline this fact on an historical level, sometimes I feel it gets mentioned in kind of a derogatory sense, like this fact doesn’t make Mario Bros 2 a “real” Super Mario game. Honestly I feel that this couldn’t be further from the truth, since there are a lot of characters in modern Mario games that got their start in Doki Doki Panic, I would actually like to see Nintendo celebrate the legacy of this game a lot more.

The weirdness of it all was the aspect that stuck with me the most, and this game was also one of the very first examples of a game where I ended up playing with a female character, because Peach in this game was awesome to use thanks to her gliding ability. Yes, that made the game incredibly easy, but it didn’t matter: at the end of the day what was important is that I was having fun.

Super Mario turns 40 this year and it’s honestly incredible to see him not only still being around, but also remaining the flag bearer for Nintendo. Especially since other platforming mascots that followed suit in his track, are now almost entirely vanished.

Personally I will always be a fan of this series because it’s thanks to it that I took my first step in a world that to this day is still introducing me to a ton of fantastic experiences in a wide variety of video game genres. To this day Mario is still the first reason that drives me to buy a new Nintendo console. I don’t know if there’s ever gonna be another game in the series that would match the same level of awe from when I was a kid, but one thing’s for sure, Mario will always be able to give me a very fun time.

LONG LIVE KING MARIO!