#59: Super Mario World (Nintendo, SNES, 1990/1992)

In Super Mario World, when you finish a level, you can, if you like, immediately go back and play through that level again. Or you can go and play through a bunch of other levels and then go back to that original level and play it again. This mechanic, in and of itself, would hardly be a game-changer, but of course it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and what is important is not just the ability to replay levels, but the way that Super Mario World is designed to explore the possibilities that this mechanic generates. Because it’s not just that you can go back and replay levels, but that, in order to access the entirety of the game’s content, you must replay levels. And there are two different and equally inspired ways that Super Mario World achieves this necessity.

The first is through the variously coloured Switch Palaces scattered throughout the game; once accessed, each of these generate blocks of their particular colour in many levels of the game, where previously there had been only a dotted line to indicate that a block was missing. And this, of course, changes everything. Because things you do in one level can affect the layout of another level. In this way, each level becomes a small part of an interconnected fully realised world. And it’s elegantly introduced to the player through the Yellow Switch Palace, which is accessible very nearly from the start of the game, and is basically impossible to miss, meaning that when the notable absence of blocks of other colours start to appear throughout the game, you know that the other Switch Palaces must exist, though you may not know how to find them. Which leads us neatly on to the other half of the equation.

For its second trick, Super Mario World takes the ‘hidden exit’ aspect of the original Super Mario Bros.’ Warp Zones, which I noted back then as perhaps the most inspired design choice in a game bristling with genius, and fine-tunes them; instead of granting you easier access to later levels, the Warp Zone equivalents of World grant you access to entirely new levels that can’t be accessed any other way. Mario games have always contained hidden secrets to unlock, but in this way, they cease to be just fun little easter eggs for dedicated players, and become cemented as a fundamental part of what the series is all about.