Super Mario Advance 2: Super Mario World Review

How is it that games like the Mario Advance series haven’t been reviewed yet? Even though I am a GCN reviewer, I feel the need to remedy this oversight. Super Mario World, the game this game is based off of, was originally the SNES pack-in game. It has gone down in history as one of the best Mario 2D games, surpassed by possibly only Super Mario Brothers 3. Note that I am operating under the presupposition that you have already played the SNES version.

The graphics in this game are the same as the graphics in the SNES version. The sound is the same as the sound in the SNES version, except that some simplified Mario 64 sayings have been added. They do nothing to either add to or detract from the game really, but hearing Mario saying, “that’s what I needed” in that high-pitched voice of his almost every time you get a power-up can get annoying over time.

The gameplay has been changed slightly. First of all, if you get hit with firepower or a cape in this game, you revert to Super Mario instead of becoming small and an item in reserve stays there if you have one. This potentially gives you two more hits than you would have and stupidly, if you have nothing in your reserve box and you get a cape/flower, a mushroom still gets put in your reserve. This makes the game significantly easier than it was originally.

Also, since the game is only one player, they gave Luigi his attributes from Super Mario Brothers 2 and give you the option of switching characters between levels. This makes some parts easier also, but if you do it differently, and play through once with each, it can add to the replay value, which otherwise depends on your wanting to play through again and again, which you will since that’s the nature of the older gameplay based games. If you have never played this game before, you owe it to yourself to pick up this version.