Forums > Submission Feedback > overdrive's Super Mario World review

Super Mario Bros. Wonder borrows the most from this game, probably, and is better for it. But I've always preferred Super Mario Bros. 3 to this one. Sometimes, less is more. Anyway, this is a nice explanation of everything some people love about this (admittedly excellent) game that remains a benchmark for the genre.

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2

For me, it's a bit complex in picking them. Might like SMB 3 as a game a bit more, but the ability to save probably puts SMW in front by a hair or two. That annoyed me when I was younger and is a bit of a deal-breaker now that we live in an era where virtually everything can be saved and many games auto-save so you don't even have to do the "heavy lifting" yourself. Just don't have the same patience for those "do it all in one sitting" games unless they're either short (like a shooter) or the amount of nostalgia I have for it can outweigh that annoyance (Bionic Commando for one). But the only thing worse for me than no saves is the ungodly long passwords some of those old games had. Like Guardian Legend or Battle of Olympus...I still remember having to re-do sections of those games because I wasn't perfect in writing down a 24-32 character password that had upper-case and lower-case letters, as well as numbers. And maybe symbols, I don't remember.

Now, if we're talking about the Super Mario All-Stars version of SMB3, where you can at least save after each world, that's a different story. No complaints about that one and it might rate higher than World. A bit more creativity in the worlds with the one where everything is large and the one where you start on the ground and go up a tower into the sky.

But with a section of Mario games (2, 3, World, Yoshi's Island), it's hard to pick a favorite. Spent hours upon hours with all of them and only have minor complaints about any of them and tend to have to be in a nit-picky mood to voice them at the risk of looking like a chronic grump who hates all things fun.

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