Almost anyone can tell you who Mario is, whether they play video games or not. He's basically the video game equivalent of Mickey Mouse - colorful, designed for children, and its parent company doesn't always do the right thing. Super Mario World is one of the most recognizable games out of the entire franchise, though, and that's a major accomplishment for something as popular as Mario. Designed to show off the power of the Super Nintendo, it represented a huge leap forward in video game technology that some gamers consider to be the best era for gaming, although a lot of people would disagree. With success, though, comes imitators. Bootleg games are very common, and they come in many different forms. One of the most common forms a while ago was bootleg Famicom cartridges containing multiple games and cheaply done hacks of different games. There are numerous hacks that are just other games with a slightly altered title screen and Mario pasted in, but there are also other bootleggers that go above and beyond the call of duty and create new games from scratch. Okay, they're not really new - they're just imitations of other games - but they're as new as you'll get in most cases. That's where this comes in - a semi-faithful port of Super Mario World to the original Nintendo Entertainment System. How does the SNES's less super father handle this game? Let's see...

In terms of graphics, it's actually pretty impressive for the NES. They tried to take the original game's graphics and make them work with the NES's limited capabilities, and it worked surprisingly well. The animations are faithful to the original, the sprites look great, and the palette choices were made very well considering the limited number of colors there were to choose from. Flickering and slowdown are common, though, and some objects just weren't ported correctly, such as the giant Banzai Bills from the SNES original. Even with these flaws, though, the graphics continue to be impressive for their system.

While they were talented at taking SNES graphics and making them work on the NES, they weren't so talented with music and sound. The songs are all recognizable, but they all sound very off as well. Some of the themes are completely absent, too, and the music choices don't make very much sense. The third level of the game uses the title screen theme, which doesn't fit very well with a level at all, and collecting a Star makes the theme for the final World play instead of the familiar Star theme that most of us are used to. The sound effects have the exact same problem, too - everything sounds similar to its original counterpart, but they could've been ported a lot better.

In terms of gameplay, it's basically the same as the original game. All of the familiar powerups are here, including Yoshi, despite Miyamoto insisting that Yoshi would've been impossible to program on the NES...well, it's definitely not the first time he's been wrong about something. Although some parts of the game have been cut out for space constraints, it's a surprisingly faithful port...at least, at first glance. All of the worlds are here, although they've all been piled into one map instead of having certain worlds occupy an entire map to themselves.

As soon as you try to play it, you'll instantly know what the defining flaw of this game is - the controls and physics. It's clear that the programmers didn't even try to make the physics work properly, let alone make them similar to the original game. Running feels awkward because you go from walking to running the instant you push the button, and that speed alone feels way too fast for the levels that this game has. Jumping is even worse. No matter how much momentum you have, you slow to an absolute crawl whenever you jump, which makes many jumps much harder than they should be. It really feels like you're jumping on the Moon, with the extreme height and hang time, and it feels wrong, especially with the level design. Some of the levels have been re-designed with these physics in mind, and they only highlight how broken the physics are to begin with. If you're porting a game, and a level is impossible because you programmed your physics engine poorly, you should re-design your physics engine, right? Not according to these game designers.

The levels feel very similar, and many of them are exactly the same as they were in the original game. The parts that are edited, however, feel very out-of-place and generally only serve to highlight how broken the physics are. For example, the second level of the game had the very last part of the level edited, with an extra pit added in that's too wide to jump over. You're meant to hit a block and grab the P-Switch that's inside it, but the switch will fly right into the pit if you don't hit the block from the right side. Did anyone bother to playtest that level at all? Some levels were also edited just because they couldn't recreate them with NES hardware, such as the first castle. The last part of the level full of crushing ceiling spikes has been completely removed, being replaced with a hallway full of Thwomps instead. In general, the unedited levels are fine, but the edited sections of these levels are poorly designed.

Speaking of levels, this game does not have all of them, as I'm sure you expected. Not only have many levels been cut from the game entirely, but secret exits did not survive the translation to the NES, meaning that the path through the game is entirely linear. What's the point of having an overworld when there's no secrets and no alternative paths to take? This also means that two entire worlds, the Star World and the Special World, have been removed from the game entirely. Personally, I'm glad that they were removed - can you imagine just how badly these guys would screw up those levels, judging from their level design skills in every other level?

There was an honest effort made for this game to be decent, and it's sad that it ended up being as terrible as it was. It's impressive that so much of the game survived the port, but the many flaws shine through in almost every aspect of the game. Terrible physics, poor level design, badly-ported music, and everything else means that this is a game you probably shouldn't play. It's far from the worst bootleg game I've ever played, but it's definitely not one of the better ones.

Final Rating: 5 moon-jumps out of 10

Well, the moon-like physics really make it seem like it's another world, so is it actually that bad?

But really, as someone who made a review of this game long ago and beat it 4 times or something, I have more experience with this game than anyone should so I agree that it isn't a very good port   Many jumps, especially in castles, are unnecessarily difficult. Don't even get me started on the Bowser fight. It puts the "ow" in Bowser.

Wow, nicely detailed review for a semi-detailed game! Have you played the Momentum Fix version before? The momentum fix makes the game so much more bearable for me.

Pacman+Mariofan : Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, that's something that I pointed out - the bad physics make everything a lot harder than it needs to be. I have actually played the Momentum Fix version before, and it only takes a Game Genie code to do the same thing, and it honestly makes the game far more playable. There's only one question that I have to ask - if a simple Game Genie code makes your game ten times more fun to play, why couldn't you do it yourself? If you can program the entire game already, it can't be a massive change if a single Game Genie code can do it.