Super Mario World for Gameboy

I bought this game at what was then called Ed McKay’s, a used bookstore, after receiving a Nintendo DS for Christmas. This was during a period where I had broken my shoulder and had more free time, while recuperating from surgeries at my parents’ house. I never owned a Gameboy, but when I realized the DS could play Gameboy games,  I started looking for the Gameboy versions of older games that I had played on Super Nintendo in the late 80s and 90s, such as Super Mario Bros.

This week, I traveled back to Greensboro for work and found my old DS in a drawer in my bedroom, along with some of the games. I was looking forward to playing a game on a dedicated device with a control pad and buttons instead of using my computer keyboard. After charging the DS I put in the Cartridge and turned on the DS. Some of the workings to navigate to the game was still intuitive, using the A or start button for confirming the selecting, and using the B or select button to reveal options or back out of a selection.

In Super Mario World you can select to be either Mario or Luigi for each level. The navigation is similar to Super Mario Bros 3, in that you start on map, and enter levels by making selections there. As you beat levels, more of the map is revealed with additional levels. The first level is Yoshi’s house. Here you encounter a tree with red apples and special red and black circle. When you walk by it, it reveals a black message box that gives directions. As you walk off the screen, you return to the map and you can move to one of two levels on either side of Yoshi’s house level.

I had a tougher time playing the game than I thought I would. Although I remembered the correct buttons: B to run and A to jump, my timing on jumps tended to be off and I fell down several holes on levels. As I played the same levels more and more, I must have entered a flow state, because, more than once I surprisingly died  without knowing why. Apparently, I was having so much fun exploring, that I had run out of time. I was a little frustrated that the game was not as easy as I had remembered it to be, but I adjusted my playing style on these familiar levels to finally beat them.

Overall, I think the game did a good job of slowly increasing the difficulty level. Just as I started to adjust to the responsiveness of the DS controller playing with Mario, Yoshi was introduced, and riding on top of him posed another learning curve. For example, pressing B to run became my habit to make sure I didn’t run out of time, but the B button also causes Yoshi to stick his tongue out to eat an enemy or an apple. Another button confusion that happened while on Yoshi, involved the R button. While playing as Mario, I developed the habit of hitting the R button to do a more powerful spin jump. However, while riding Yoshi, the R button is used to dismount from him. So, I died many times when trying to spin jump on enemies but just climbing off of Yoshi. Once again, this was a little frustrating, but something about the fun of this game kept me trying until I changed my previously learned habits of button pressing.