Super Mario World(Japanese!): First Impressions

So I guess I'm going to just start calling this feature "First Impressions," since I've accidentally titled it that more than once.  It's nice when a name for a thing comes about naturally like that.

My Retrobit Trio not only plays Nintendo, Super Nintendo, and Sega Genesis games, it also can play Super Famicom games as the region locking in that era just had to do with the shape of the game and not the actual hardware or whatever.  This is nice, because sometimes the Japanese version of a game is much cheaper than its American localization.  Super Mario World is a perfect example.  I picked it up from Warp Zone, my local vintage gaming store, for about $10-$15 less than I'd have paid for the American version.

It did take me a minute to figure out how to navigate the save menu, since it was all in Japanese, and the hint blocks also present blocks of Japanese text, but aside from that, most of the rest of the text in the game is already in English. 

For some reason, I always had an irrational dislike for Super Mario World growing up.  Super Mario 3 was the first video game I ever played, so it has always held a special place in my heart.  I suppose that may have something to do with it, but upon playing through the beginning of Super Mario World as an adult, it's clear why so many people rank this among the best platformers of all time.  The level design makes it feel like more of a puzzle game than a game about memorization and pixel-perfect jumping.  Also, just as Super Mario 3 built off of the mechanical foundation of Super Mario Bros,  Super Mario World takes things several steps further, adding among other things an additional jump mechanic and of course Yoshi.

I made it through the first world with little difficulty, but did start to hit some stumbling blocks in World 2.  Even when I hit a point I can't beat, however, the game feels more fair than previous Mario games.  As usual, we'll see how the game hold up over time, and whether I hit a wall that I just can't get through as usually happens in every 2d platformer I play.  Maybe I'll eventually write follow up blog entries after I complete or give up on some of these games.  Until then, thanks for reading, and again, please let me know if you actually read these things!