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|                           Yokiharo's Review One                          |

|                         Super Mario World ™                     |

|               Super Nintendo Entertainment System          |

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Once upon a time, there was a young boy. One day, that little kid went shopping with his dad, holding hands with him, with the most innocent look on his face. In a store, a big line of people were forming behind something. With a closer look, the kid saw what looked like a TV with lots of people around it. He wondered what it was about. Since his dad was already in a bit of a hurry, he asked politely to the people around if his son could check it out just for a bit, because they had to go home soon. Some of the people had a really mean look, most of them were grown-up bullies or just regular grown-ups, arguing with a tiny man on the TV. Nonetheless, they agreed with letting the kid play for a bit, if not just to laugh at his face for his incompetence at doing whatever they were trying to do. One of the guys passed what seemed like the controller for the TV to the tiny hand of the little kid. He grabbed it correctly and stared at the TV, checking which button did what. He heard some of the guys giggling in the background and background noise increasing as people started to doubt him. That didn't last long, though; Once he was sure of the function of which button, he totally PWNED everyone around him, picking up everything, discovering secrets, jumping on baddies, passing Super Mario World's first level (Yoshi's Island 2, not 1) in record time. Everyone was completely speechless as the level ending theme was rocking on the TV. His dad's hand took him back home with a smile on his face, as everyone else looked completely astonished with what happened.

That kid's name was Nuno, and that is one of the most distant memories of my life that I can remember. I didn't know if I was special or not, but I knew that, at that time, I felt something very special. I realized that games was what I was good at, and I wished, from very young, to pursue a career where I could make people feel the way I did that day.

The Christmas after that, my uncle came from Switzerland with a very special present for me. A brand new SNES with Super Mario World's cartridge on it. I don't know if I was ever more excited than at that time. My own Nintendo with Super Mario? I was sure that, from that moment on, I was about to feel what I felt when I first played it, over and over again, each time amplified twice as the one before. And that was exactly what happened.

Sure, I have had gaming experiences before that, messing around with the NES and stuff, but I consider this game to be my first one, since it was the first one that made me feel that special "something" about gaming.

But, I should be talking about the game itself and not just my personal experiences with it.

If you're familiar with the SNES controller, there are 4 buttons, besides the 4 from the D-Pad. If you hold one of those buttons while moving with the D-Pad, you'll run. If you press down two of the other buttons, you'll jump, with one button for simple jump and the other for "destructive" jump which makes Mario spin in the air. The other buttons you don't really use, not much at least. The goal of the game: Complete several levels as you get closer to beat the boss and find the princess, getting coins, entering pipes, picking up mushrooms, flowers, stars, and betting bad guys on the way. These days, we think about this type of gameplay as something too basic, too easy and too uninteresting, unfortunately. Jumping on bad guys in order to kill them? Entering pipes? Picking up mushrooms and flowers? Really? Yep. Even with these simple gameplay premises, I know that many people struggled with it in the beginning. Games were something kinda new, at least in my country. I remember my aunt shaking around the controller in an ineffective attempt to get Mario out of the water, in the first water level. Ironic as it would make so much sense now-a-days with a Wii. Myself, I loved the controls and all of the gameplay content. It was so innovative, so dreamy, so rewardingly challenging...

The graphics were the best I've ever seen in a videogame at the time. It really looked like a magic world, with everything looking really smooth and appellative. If I could choose, I wouldn't mind living in Mushroom Kingdom for some time with Super Mario World's graphics. I also vaguely remember everyone being hyped at the moment because of the quality of the graphics on this game.

Oh, the music. Who can honestly forget Super Mario's music after playing the game? It is one of the soundtracks with most epicness contained in it. What else can I say? Such a great quality allied with awesome music composition make for one of the most unforgettable music experiences to date.

Story. One of the aspects of a game I value the most. The story is a very simple premise: You are Mario. Princess was kidnapped. Rescue her from the bad guy. What makes this a good story? You will understand it is indeed a great story if you're able to see the beauty in simple things. Even Braid, with due respect to it, uses this same premise. Besides being such a simple idea, I can't find such a good story in most modern games. For being a story with so much going on without really specifying what is what, who is who or why is why, you get a lot of room to dream and be interpretative in an almost metaphorically way. I remember my mother dropping a tear when she saw his little son completing this epic tale of love for the first time.

Extras. Lots of them in this game. There are tons of secret levels and secret places to discover. The game is way deeper than you may think. It will take quite a while to figure everything out and completing the game "100%". You can also play as Luigi with his respective number of lives. The difference between Luigi and Mario in this version are just the colors of their clothes, green and red, respectively. I was quite surprised when I played the GBA version of this game, where they had some interesting gameplay differences. Believe me when I say that this game is a lot more than it meets the eye.

In the end, Super Mario World is much more than just an epic tale of love where a plumber parts on an adventure along with his brother and his pet dinossaur Yoshi to save his beloved princess. To me, this game makes me feel and remember things no other game can. As a game, it's also a masterpiece in every way, even more for its release on earlier times of gaming. I suggest this game to every gamer out there that has or hasn't played it, because this is a must play in every way for any true gamer. If you can dedicate to playing it, enjoying it and respecting it, even with all these modern games, you'll understand everything I said in this review and, in my opinion, feel something that no other gamer ever felt.