Having fond memories of perfecting my skill at Super Mario Bros. in the 80’s, I was more than a little intrigued when I stumbled upon Mario W-256. The buzz about this hack was that there are 256 separate, four level worlds to beat. By pressing start the eager gamer begins at world 1-1 in either a 1 or 2 player game unless he happens to read the Vizzed description, where he would learn that the hack enables world selection at title screen. It took me a while to discover this because I was just so amped to see what was past world 8-4. It was nostalgic to try to re-perfect my old school skills to beat the original 8 worlds, but honestly (just like in the old days) I began to get frustrated with 8-3 and that’s when I discovered the bit about world selection. I mention all of this because I believe any hack that boasts 256 new worlds should be a continuation of the original 8 and follow the same world outline structure. To my great disappointment, Mario W-256 is filled with dead ends and glitches. 

The graphics are Super Mario Bros. so I can’t be too hard on them. I really liked the color differences of some of the worlds, but I must confess that I did not try all of them. My reasoning for not playing through them all will become apparent later in the review and had absolutely nothing to do with the graphics. I’m rating the appearance of the game an 8 and it would have been a 10 but I deducted a point because there was a few instances where levels had a black sky that had been changed from a blue sky. In these instances, when there were coins to collect there was a blue box around them, indicating to me that the coin sprite was developed for levels with blue skies and I thought it looked tacky or unprofessional. Another point was deducted because with the advertisement of new worlds, I was expecting new enemies and level construction.

Again, the sound is Super Mario Bros., enough said, right? There was no new music or sounds but I wasn’t really expecting any. The original game is basically the same music and sounds anyway, so I was ok with recycling them. However, since the game is a hack, there was the opportunity to introduce something new and I deduct a point for failing to seize that opportunity. I’m rating the sound a 9. 

The 1985 platform receives a 10 rating for addiction. In ‘85 I played it until my thumbs were bruised. To me, addiction means to irrationally pursue something that has the potential to make a person feel something exciting or new. With that in mind, this hack loses a point because many of the worlds are just levels that we already know from the first 8 but rearranged in someway. An example is world 3-3, back to back 4 times, which isn’t really new or exciting. Another point is deducted because the princess isn’t really in the last level. I’m not sure where she is but I wouldn’t be surprised if she were in 8-4. A point gets removed because many of the worlds I found were just dead ends. Using T-1 for an example, 40 seconds into it and Mario is at a dead end. Who wants to struggle against a game that has a dead end? In world select, after world Z, the world designations start becoming squiggles or parts of larger sprites. I could never remember where I had just been or where I was, so I’ll remove another point. A majority of the question mark blocks don’t work and also Mario starts off with only 3 lives. How could a gamer ever beat 256, four part worlds, with this disadvantage even if they didn’t dead end or glitch? Two more points subtracted. Some levels have no enemies. Why would I want to just run pointlessly through a level? One more gone. The last point that I will deduct is for my disappointment in the utter pointlessness of this hack. That leaves a rating of 2. A score of 1, to me, means that the game merely exists. The final point that I can actually take away, I won’t, because there is something mildly addictive about seeing what kind of random pointlessness can be generated by the ROM. 

The story for original Super Mario Brothers was always Toad saying “THANK YOU MARIO! BUT OUR PRINCESS IS IN ANOTHER CASTLE!” until 8-4 where Mario finds the actual princess. If that is a 10, then this is a 1 because she is definitely not in harp string-1 world, black box-1 world or Zero-1 world. This game needs to follow the original princess in the last level design to be a valid story from beginning to end. 

The Vizzed definition of depth is “How big the game is and how much it offers; if it’s a game that takes a while to beat or has a lot to do, rate it high.” I cannot consider this a game because it is not continuous and the story is broken. Because there is no way to win, I have to rate Super Mario Bros. W-256 a 1 for merely existing. 

Finally, the only difficulty to this hack is remembering what stage was previously selected. Was it ‘bottom left corner of cloud stage’ or ‘slightly slanted line stage‘? Because I have yet to find one world that actually connects to the next, this level remembering problem bumps the points up to a 2. 

Overall, this hack equals out to 3.8. I honestly did not think I was rating it that high. If not for the brand name and the nostalgia this creation would probably rarely be played and could very quickly fade into oblivion. There are probably many fanatics out there who would say they like this hack. To that, I would reply that I liked the idea of this game but it was poorly executed. 

thephantombrain : Looks like I stumbled upon one of your nice, in-depth reviews again   Good review of a not-so-good hack!  Keep up the great work with your reviews!

Whoa! This review makes my review of the game look like crap! I found this game very intriguing at first but then all of the levels started to repeat (for example underwater 3-4 was used way too much and a few worlds were two levels repeating themselves a lot). I haven't even beaten this game yet and at the rate I'm going I might never will because I keep putting it off.

Anyway, nice review. Keep making more!