Super Mario World
Super Mario World is a platform game developed and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It was released in Japan in 1990, in North America in 1991 and PAL territories in 1992. The player controls Mario on his quest to save Princess Peach and Dinosaur Land from the series' antagonist Bowser and the Koopalings. The gameplay is similar to that of earlier Super Mario games; players control Mario through a series of levels in which the goal is to reach the goalpost at the end. Super Mario World introduces Yoshi, a ridable dinosaur who can eat enemies and spit some of them out as projectiles.
Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development developed the game, led by director Takashi Tezuka and producer and series creator Shigeru Miyamoto. It is the first Mario game for the SNES and was designed to make the most of the console's technical features. The development team had more freedom compared to the series installments for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Yoshi was conceptualised during the development of the NES games but was not used until Super Mario World due to hardware limitations.
Super Mario World is often considered one of the best games in the series and is cited as one of the greatest video games ever made. It sold more than twenty million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling SNES game. It also led to an animated television series and a 1995 prequel, Yoshi's Island. The game has been re-released on multiple occasions: it was part of the 1994 compilation Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World for the SNES and was re-released for the Game Boy Advance as Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2 in 2001, on the Virtual Console for the Wii, Wii U, and New Nintendo 3DS consoles, and as part of the Super NES Classic Edition. Both the SNES and GBA versions were rereleased for Nintendo Switch as part of the Nintendo Classics service.
Gameplay
Super Mario World is a 2D side-scrolling platform game in which the player controls Mario or Luigi. The gameplay is similar to earlier games in the Super Mario but introduces new elements. As well as dashing and jumping, the player can also fly or float with the aid of the Cape Feather and P-Balloon and can execute the new Spin Jump move, which allows the player to crush enemies, bounce off normally-invulnerable ones safely or break certain blocks, with the latter only being possible if the player has a power-up active. There are 96 level exits in total.The player navigates via two screens: an overworld map and a side-scrolling course. The overworld map displays an overhead representation of the current world and has several paths leading from the world's entrance to a castle. Paths connect to action panels, fortresses, ghost houses, castles, and other map icons, allowing players to take different routes to reach the world's goal. Moving the on-screen character to an action panel or castle grants access to that course. The majority of the game takes place in 2D linear levels, populated with obstacles and enemies, which involves the player traversing the stage by dashing, jumping, and dodging or defeating enemies. The player is given a number of lives, which are lost if Mario comes into contact with an enemy while Small Mario, falls off the screen, gets crushed, touches lava, or runs out of time. The game ends when the player runs out of lives, although the player can continue from the most recent save point by selecting "Continue". Each world features a final stage with a boss to defeat; each of the seven worlds features fortresses controlled by one of the Koopalings, and the player also battles Bowser in his castle in the seventh and final world. Super Mario World includes a multiplayer option which allows two players to take turns at navigating the overworld map and accessing stage levels; the first player controls Mario, while the second player controls Luigi.
In addition to the power-ups from previous games, such as the Super Mushroom and Fire Flower, Super Mario World has a new power-up, the Cape Feather, which gives Mario a cape and the ability to fly, glide in the air, and use the cape as a sail. It also introduces the ability to "store" an extra power-up in a box at the top centre of the screen. For example, if the player obtains a Fire Flower or a Cape Feather, then a Super Mushroom will appear in the box. Collecting a star grants Mario temporary invincibility from minor dangers. However, it does not protect the player from falling into lava or off the screen, nor if the player runs out of time. If Mario gets hit by an enemy, the stored item in the box will automatically drop. Alternatively, the player can manually release the stored item at any time.
Super Mario World introduces Yoshi, a dinosaur companion Mario can ride who can eat most enemies. If Yoshi attempts to eat a Koopa or its shell, he can spit it out and fire it at enemies. If the player fails to spit the shell out within a certain amount of time, Yoshi will swallow it, rendering it useless. When holding any Koopa shell in his mouth, Yoshi gains the ability that corresponds to its color: a blue shell enables Yoshi to fly, a yellow shell causes him to emit dust clouds that defeat nearby enemies, and a red shell allows him to produce three fireballs that defeat enemies. Flashing Koopa shells produce all three abilities, while green shells produce none. The default Yoshi is green, but the game also has hidden blue, yellow, and red Yoshis; the player can obtain each colored Yoshi by finding its egg in the Star World areas and feeding it either five enemies, a Super Mushroom, a Fire Flower, a Cape Feather, or a Starman causing the baby Yoshi to mature.
Although the main objective is to navigate through seven worlds to reach the end of the game, the player can beat the game much faster by using secret Star Road routes. To access a hidden world, the player needs to find keys scattered throughout the levels. When a key is found, it must be brought to a keyhole to unlock either a new level or a Star Road. Exploring these secret stages can lead to other stages, such as the Special World. Completion of the Special Zone permanently changes some of the enemies' sprites and alters the overworld map's color scheme.
Plot
The plot of Super Mario World is detailed in the instruction booklet. After bringing peace to the Mushroom World in Super Mario Bros.3, the brothers Mario and Luigi decide to go on vacation with Princess Toadstool to a place called Dinosaur Land, a prehistoric-themed world swarming with dinosaurs and other enemies. While resting on the beach, the princess is captured by Bowser. When Mario and Luigi wake up, they try to find her and, after hours of searching, come across a giant egg in the forest. It suddenly hatches and out of it comes a young dinosaur named Yoshi, who tells them his dinosaur friends have also been imprisoned in eggs by Bowser's kids, the evil Koopalings. Mario and Luigi soon realise that Bowser's forces must have captured Toadstool as well. Mario, Luigi, and Yoshi set out to rescue the princess and Yoshi's dinosaur friends, traversing through Dinosaur Land for Bowser and his Koopalings. To aid him, Yoshi gives Mario a cape as they begin their journey.Bowser receives news of Mario and Luigi's approach and dispatches his Koopalings to dispose of them. After the brothers defeat the children and rescue Yoshi's friends, they eventually reach Bowser's Castle, where they fight him in a final battle. They send Bowser flying into the sky and save Princess Toadstool, restoring peace to Dinosaur Land.
Development
Super Mario World was directed by Takashi Tezuka, while Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of both Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda, served as producer. Shigefumi Hino took the role of graphics designer. Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development handled development with a team of fifteen people, including three main programmers and a character designer, most of whom had worked on past Super Mario games. In a retrospective interview, the core team said Miyamoto wielded the most authority during development.In an interview with TOUCH Magazine, then-Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi pointed out that sales of the Famicom were slowly dropping ever since its peak about two years earlier, and that if they continued supporting it, players would eventually "get bored" and move on in favor of better-quality games, which would be "a dangerous situation" for them. Super Mario World was the first Mario series game developed for the then-upcoming Super Nintendo Entertainment System. As such, the team anticipated some difficulty in working with new and more advanced hardware. According to Tezuka, the software tools were not yet fully developed, and the team had to "go along with starting something new". Miyamoto acknowledged the team no longer had restrictions on certain mechanics such as scrolling and the number of colours they could implement. As a hardware experiment, the team ported Super Mario Bros.3 to the SNES. However, it felt like the same game to them, despite the improved colours and sprites. After that, Miyamoto realised the team's goal would be to use the new hardware to create something "totally new". Seeing the potential of the new capabilities present on the SNES, development of a fourth Super Mario installment began in October 1988, shortly after the release of Super Mario Bros. 3. About a month later, the team began to implement and test ideas that were impossible for the third installment due to hardware limitations.
Miyamoto had wanted Mario to have a dinosaur companion since Super Mario Bros., but engineers could not add such a character due to the limitations of the Nintendo Entertainment System. The inspiration for Yoshi can be traced back even further; Miyamoto designed a green dragon for the 1984 game Devil World which shared many similarities with Yoshi. During the development of Super Mario Bros.3, Miyamoto had a number of sketches around his desk, including an image of Mario riding a horse. As development of Super Mario World progressed, the team opted to use a "dinosaur land" setting, so Tezuka asked designer Shigefumi Hino to draw a reptile-like creature based on Miyamoto's sketches. Hino originally produced a design that Tezuka deemed too reptilian, and "didn't really fit into the Mario world", so he encouraged the designer to create a "cuter" character. Tezuka speculated that Miyamoto's love of horse riding, as well as country and western themes, influenced Yoshi's creation.
Reflecting on how he had created different melodies for Super Mario Bros.3, composer Koji Kondo decided to reuse the same themes for Super Mario World, albeit in a rearranged form. By doing this, he assumed players would be able to recognise the same melodies, while exposing them to new variations of music as they progressed. As Super Mario World was the first game developed for the SNES, Kondo felt "overjoyed" at being able to compose music by using eight sounds at once. To express the technological novelty of the new console, he used several different instruments, implementing them all one after the other in the title song. As development progressed, Kondo grew concerned over how people would react to his unusual combinations of instruments as he noted the use of more traditional square waves and triangle waves had "gained acceptance" with consumers. For the sound effects, Kondo decided to use a variety of musical instruments, as opposed to square waves, to emphasise that the game used traditional technology with a hybrid of new materials. It took Kondo around a year and a half to write all the music.
Super Mario World was officially unveiled in the first Shoshinkai event on July 28, 1989, during a press release. While the technological advancements were found impressive, it was still too similar to previous Super Mario installments in terms of gameplay and graphics. Nintendo was forced to delay the release to late 1990 since the team struggled with the new console and its software tools – which were still under development at the time, refine their planned concepts so their controls would be more player-friendly, and the global chip shortage slowing down the Super Famicom's production schedule. Super Mario World was exhibited again in the second Shoshinkai event between August 28–29, 1990. The demonstration garnered positive results by the public in terms of gameplay.
Super Mario World was produced during the console warsa result of the rivalry between Nintendo's SNES and Sega's two-year-old Mega Drive systemwhich outsold the console and led to intense competition between the two, being the first time since December 1985 Nintendo did not lead the market though it eventually overtook Sega. Sega's mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog, was seen by many as a faster and "cooler" alternative to Mario.