One of the few launch titles of the SNES (and bundled with the system in North America and Europe), the fifth main game in the Super Mario series brings the Mario brothers into the mysterious Dinosaur Land. It marks the first appearance of Mario's dinosaur companions, known as Yoshi.
Hey paizanos, and welcome back to your oasis away from the triple threat of E3 briefings due to start earlier today. I'm still tinkering around with randomizers over here, having caught the non-indigenous procedural generation bug after playing through A Link to the Past with all its scrambled treasures. Be sure to check that out if you're still not copacetic on what a randomizer is or entails.
Today's experiment is none other than the greatest SNES game of all time: Super Mario World! My reason for its inclusion is twofold: I wanted to see how much of a difference a randomizer could make on a completely linear action game with no RPG mechanics whatsoever, and I was also curious if it could be as wild as any of the dozens of Super Mario World romhacks that already exist (including the official one released by Nintendo themselves, Super Mario Maker). I feel like I've seen this game skewed and distorted more times than any other game imaginable, so here's hoping the lunacy of this playthrough lives up to some lofty expectations.
Day 0: "Woo Lardier Rumps"
The Game: Nintendo's Super Mario World, originally released on the Super Famicom in 1990. This game will be thirty soon.
The Rules of the Randomizer: Well, as you can see from the link above, there's a lot of variables you can activate. The main one is shuffling the stages around, but I also took on shuffling enemies and bosses (Koopalings) too. I might've randomized the music too for giggles, but the randomizer creator seems to explicitly recommend against it, and it's not something that can be conveyed in screenshots regardless.
I am slightly rueful that I didn't randomize the stage color palettes though. I can only imagine the clashing horrors that may have ensued (I've since added a few demonstrative screenshots at the end of the playthrough).
The Playthrough:
Welcome to Super Mario World (Randomized). There's the seed code if you want to play along at home, though you'll probably want to generate your own.It always bothered me that they ended two sentences in a row with "Again!". I do that sort of thing a lot and never spot it while editing. Bothersome.The first level of the game is none other than Butter Bridge 2, which normally appears somewhere around the mid-point. It's a tough enough level already without all these Super Koopas flying around. However, while they might be native to this level, I'm pretty sure these Pokeys aren't. They put themselves in awkward spots to get around, but will eventually wander off their platforms to their deaths. Stupid cacti.Nothing of note at the Red Switch Palace except, I guess, the fact it's supposed to be the Yellow Switch Palace.Chocolate Island 4 is close to the end of the game, and it's really tough with no power-ups and a scarce number of lives. Hopping between these horizontal platforms is precarious as hell.Cookie Mountain, the only Super Mario World stage that is also a You Don't Know Jack host. It's another mid-game level, but not a tough one; the moles here are special cases, because of the way they break out of walls, so I guess the randomizer just left them as is.Soda Lake, another level from the same area as Cookie Mountain and Butter Bridge. It's been made exponentially more difficult because the slow-moving fish have been replaced with fast Bullet Bills. Couple that with the Torpedo Teds already here and it's a nightmare of bullet dodging.I finally get to the exit, though something seems a little off. Can't quite put my finger on it...Now this is unusual. Iggy's Castle is indeed the first castle you encounter. I guess it's the first stage to not get randomized?Well, the stage may not have been randomized (it's the fun one with the wire fence climbing) but the boss sure was. I'm fairly certain that isn't Iggy. He's a lot bulkier and Morton-ier. I'd object, but maybe Mario honestly can't tell the Koopalings apart. Might explain why he's so eager to stomp them. Hmm, the implications there aren't great, so let's move on.The first level of the Donut Plains area is one of the last of the game: Valley of Bowser 4 is literally the last normal stage before Larry's and Bowser's Castles. I don't recall the level well enough to know if these Parakoopas are supposed to be here, but going by how this one is flying through a platform I'm going to guess not.Sadly, I didn't have it in me to bring Yoshi to this key and see what's behind the secret exit. Another of the randomizer choices is to randomly switch the secret exit with the real one, but I honestly forget where all the branches go.Donut Plains 2 is, I believe, where it's supposed to be, making it the second stage that didn't get switched around. Neither did its enemies, it seems. An oasis of sanity in an otherwise chaotic Dinosaur Land.I was expecting one of the Star World levels to show up sooner or later, and I'm glad it's the easy first one. It's important to find both exits here, because...The Top Secret Area! Which I'm heartened to see didn't get booted elsewhere. This was such a lifesaver when I originally played this game: I came back here a lot to replenish my power-ups and Yoshis.Another Valley of Bowser stage. This is the one with the enormous "deal with it" moles blocking all the tunnels. However, it changed the Chargin' Chucks to the hopping kind, which sucks because you needed the charging ones to break down some walls. All right, I kinda see why the last underwater exit gate was there, because the rest of the level was a water level. It makes no sense here.Nor why this bonus stage is underwater. It didn't make it any easier to hit the right symbols.Big difficulty jump as we return to one of the earliest stages. Even though Yoshi's Island 4 is a water level (if you scroll up to where the Yoshi's Island map is visible, you can see one that looks like a pool), this particular map icon isn't. Doesn't stop Mario and Yoshi from melting into the floor, though.Choco-Ghost House (the penultimate Ghost House level) replaced its ghosts with Bullet Bills and Cheep Cheeps for the most part, but the Lakitu Boo (Lakiboo?) is still here.To exit this level, you need to be able to reach this exit. You can do so by spin-jumping on a chain of Boos moving through here or drag the Boos that turn into blocks from over to the left. Neither are around, so I'm SOL. I had to come back with a cape to fly up here. The suffocating Cheep Cheep put up a good fight, but to no avail.Alright, a Lakitu dropping Chargin' Chucks is where I'm going to draw the line. This playthrough is over!But first! A quick glimpse at the palette randomizer. This looks rad, but also looks like something that was in the game already. I guess what the randomizer does is shuffle the handful of pre-existing palettes around?Meanwhile, this forest is looking a little dour. It's Outrageous, one of the harder Star World levels, so I didn't get too far. At least this Lakitu is dropping more dead fish instead of Chargin' Chucks...
So that's the Super Mario World randomizer. Fairly basic stuff, nothing that can really approach the insanity of some of the wilder romhacks out there, but another that might trip up people who have played this game an awful lot. I wish I had more options than just shuffling the enemies, but we're looking at a limitation of what you can effectively randomize in a game as linear as this.
Still, any excuse to play more Super Mario World, huh? And I'll say this: without any RPG aspect tossing powerful equipment my way early, this is the hardest variant I've played so far this week. Some really nasty combinations above.
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