Okay. I've gotten way too many comments saying, "You want Mario to be Sonic!" So I need to clarify. No. I did not try to play these games like Sonic games. I tried to play them in the way that I found to be most enjoyable. And due to the mechanics and design of the games, rushing through is what I thought was the most fun way to play. Believe it or not, different people can enjoy the same game in different ways. Crazy, I know. As I said at the beginning, I've tried to play Mario games more slowly in the past, looking for secrets and collecting star coins. And I never found them that fun. And I tried here in U and Wonder to collect all the star coins/10 purple coins. And I didn't like it. I also found all the secret exits in World. Which I enjoyed, but not as much as just playing through the levels. Had I played the way many people seem to want me to play, this entire video would be me talking about how I found every single game boring. I also don't understand this "You played the games wrong!" energy. At the end of the day, I still had a lot of fun with Mario 1, Lost Levels, 3, World, U and Wonder. I think those are all great games. So what's the problem? And btw, World did not feel slow because of the widescreen. It felt slow because Mario does in fact move slower compared to previous games.
I think they are saying it because you are literally playing it the way Yuji Naka played Mario 1, which is funny because that approach to Mario is what gave us Sonic's gameplay. Anyways, Mario is more methodical by platformer standards anyways, so enjoy at your own pace, man.
Where are your sources for Mario 2 US not being a doki doki re-skin and it actually being vicer versa. The correlation between the two is evididnce within itself and for the fact that there exists mario 2 US in japan on famicon. All i ask is one source
1. Mario is much more of a precision platformer than Sonic, but Mario still allows you to go fast. Going fast isn't special to Sonic, and neither is momentum. It's just Sonic games are inherently faster by design, and have much more emphasis on momentum. The way you play the two games are still very different. 2. Not having fun with special collectables is very understandable, especially for 2D games. It's another similarity to classic Sonic giant rings. I do respect you went to try to get the collectables before forming an opinion. 3. If you are able to play through a game, and see it to the end, then you aren't playing it wrong. That mentality is stupid to have if the person is still achieving progress and success. It's really disrespectful to say someone is playing a game wrong because they beat it differently than you. 4. Mario world is slow enough to where I can comfortably speedrun some levels on the GBA. Mario 3 rockets you off with P-speed.
I feel the exact same way about badges in Wonder. I’m not sure if you did already but if you Collect every Wonder Seed, Collect every 10-flower coin and Grab the top of every flagpole then you unlock what I consider to be the best level in the game.
I think something that set Nintendo apart is the fact they were initially a toy company. They employed people that understood "game design" far before they got into programming, so they really hit the ground running.
Yep, they always start with "how do we make this game fun while differentiating it from the other ones?" and then revolving everything around that one mechanic (the artstyle, the characters, the story, etc) in a natural way
It'd be funny if towards the end Pariah kept delaying talking about Mario Wonder and said something like, " but befooore I get to Mario Wonder, I'd like to talk about the entire Halo series."
The reason I think NSMB Wii has so many sidescroller levels is due to the Coop being a heavily advertised feature of the game, and it was probably more convenient to put more of those levels into it because it's easier to keep all the players in the same place on the screen. Still sucks though.
autoscrolls do have a place imo take w 1-3 in Super Mario Bros 3 as example, if that stage wasn't an autoscroll the moving platforms would be out of sync and make the stage impossible to complete without power-ups
@Doktario_Mystario I agree that auto scrollers do indeed have a place, don't get me wrong. But I still think NSMB may have a bit too many for my liking.
The level skipping thing is probably implemented BECAUSE of limited lives. So that when you do restart there's a faster way to get to where you were. Especially with how long 3 is, and how it originally had no save system.
Actually, fun fact, according to Miyamoto the level skipping, at least for the Warp Zones starting in Mario 1, was actually implemented because of...Excitebike of all things. Yeah, Excitebike. It was apparently an implementation of Excitebike's Level Select system or something, where if players thought they were skilled enough they could select and and jump straight to the harder levels if they wanted to without having to play the easier ones. Miyamoto wanted to implement that into Mario 1 as well, but I guess after the realization that simply doing that would kinda trivialize most of the game, he decided to implement them as secret areas inside the levels that you have to find while playing rather than just selecting them before even starting the game. So they basically exist so players can go right to trying the harder stages if they want and think they're skilled enough, as inspired by an Excitebike feature.
I appreciate world skipping in New games because of their terrible save system that saves only after castle or spending star coins, saving anytime in map unlocked after finishing the game. So the best approach is too finish the game while skipping as much as possible and then return to the rest of the game with better saving system.
@masherboy ok i agree that the punishment for a game over is too harsh in the retro 2D Mario games but if the lives weren't a thing you could just brute force your way through the game without actually improving, even if you get so many lives that it doesn't matter anymore, humans like big numbers and if you lower that number by punishment that makes it easier to want to improve + the lives also give you a reason to collect coins
As someone who doesn't really care for the 2D Mario games, I think the thing that makes Super Mario World good is, well, the world. The content and progression structure with so many things like hidden exits and secret worlds is wild and something that I wish was replicated more directly in other games
The level skipping thing is largely done with the idea of no saving in mind. Say you've played a few times in a day as a kid, then while you got closer to the end, you lost, but you find/know a way to skip the worlds you've been through enough times
I'm about halfway through the video, but I can't help but find it funny as hell that the way the you end up enjoying Mario is to approach it basically like a Sonic game. Not that that's a problem; I just find it funny and interesting.
I know lol. But there's a reason I like Sonic games. So of course the reason I like Mario is the things it has in common. It's almost like Sonic was built off of Mario's foundation or something. Maybe worth a video...
@@Pariah6950the same foundation in which to build 2 theme parks: one filled with rollercoasters and slides, and the other with mazes and haunted mansions. Both are of equal merit in my opinion
For that one tricky jump in lost levels, there’s actually a hidden block you have to hit below to make it to that top platform. I don’t blame ya for missing it since that’s pretty cryptic. Also, I’m glad to hear you give praise to lost levels. I feel it is a refreshing challenge. At least for the All stars version since you can at least save after every level so it makes the experience way more bearable
@@diydylana3151 Actually I'd say Lost Levels has a surprisingly high focus on puzzles, they're just...not the kind of puzzles typical of more modern platformers. Puzzles in Lost Levels are stuff like reaching a dead end with some higher ledge above you and trying to find the hidden blocks to get up there, having to slip through a long 1-block-high corridor and figuring out how to do that (either by becoming small or finessing it as Super Mario with well-timed crouch-slides), or coming across a seemingly blind jump and then having to stop, back up a bit, and then walk forward to scroll the camera farther to the right than it was when you first reached the ledge to reveal a Paratroopa you have to land on that's now visible when it wasn't before (seems a lot of people don't realize that's what you do and just yolo it thinking it's a blind jump when it's actually not if you do the above thing). Most puzzles in later games don't revolve around manipulating the scrolling camera lol.
Mario ones heavy handed momentum and straight forward level design make it my favorite for the reasons you stated. I love the later games for their art and charm but they are much more about slow paced exploration and interacting with these creative level gimmicks. It’s fun for a casual playthrough but they pale in comparison to 1’s infinitely replayable core gameplay and high skill ceiling.
Mario 1 is probably the 2D Mario game I've replayed the most for that very reason, despite not growing up with it at all and thus having no nostalgia for it (grew up with the Wii and Galaxy, only retro game I was exposed to was Mario 3 which my uncle had on Wii VC). Though nowadays I tend to prefer playing Lost Levels more (the FDS version, I'm not fond of the SNES version for various reasons), because I've gotten so good at Mario 1 from replaying it so much that it's getting too easy and samey for me and I've reached the skill level where Lost Levels becomes honestly really fun and refreshing now.
@@frumiousgaming "Famicom Disk System," it was an add-on system for the Famicom (Japanese equivalent of the NES) that played games from floppy disks instead of the standard cartridges. It's what Lost Levels was released for originally, there technically isn't an NES version of Lost Levels since it never released on cartridge or outside Japan, rather the "NES" version is actually the Famicom Disk System version (which was originally released on an FDS floppy disk).
@@BadBame962 Yeah, it's great. I don't quite get people who say "yeah this was good for the time, but it's definitely dated and shows its age now," unless they're just saying that by assumption that surely that must be the case since it's old, because no, the game is still great and holds up great, in some ways better than its sequels (though not in every way). Recently been playing SMB Deluxe as well since I just got a modded 3DS, didn't take long to get used to the screen crunch and that version has a really cool challenge mode that requires you to search out 5 Red Coins and a Yoshi egg while also beating the stage with a high enough score (which REQUIRES getting through the levels as fast as you can for the timer points while still trying to rack up as many points as you can in the level and get the top of the flagpole), it's a really fun twist on the game.
@@jceggbert5 No that's not it though. Mario is actually mathematically slower horizontally in World than he was in Mario 1 and 3. Do a side by side comparison, it's especially obvious when just walking (and even more when swimming). I noticed this very quickly and have known it for years, and have never ever seen Mario World in widescreen until watching this video (I didn't even know such a hack was possible), so it is absolutely not the widescreen (though that could worsen the feel even more, sure). Do a comparison of how far Mario can jump too for example, the distance Mario can jump while walking is like 1 or 2 whole blocks less in Mario World than in 1 or 3.
Actually in the All Stars version of Lost Levels, losing all your lives means restarting at the beginning of the level. So using save states the way you did wouldn't really do anything.
@@Pariah6950the original FDS game had a similar system where if you ran out of lives, it sent you back to the start of the world you were in so you didn’t have to trek through the whole game again. All Stars just made it even easier because they knew it was punishingly hard
I disagree with literally everything you said about World but you made me rethink of much of a problem in general is having a main new power up that's is just fucking flying
Even I who has World as his favorite game knows the Feather Cape breaks the level design at times (although I still think many levels are cramped enough to nerf it) - however it does capitalize the methodical exploration (finding coins and powerups in the sky is fun for me) that it still needs skill in a way.
It definitely sounds to me like you've played these games as close to how one would play a Sonic game as you could... Which is not really surprising given what you've enjoyed in the past. This preference would definitely play a big role as to why you liked and disliked the different things that you did. It's good that you found a few gems in the mix that you enjoyed.
If I remember correctly in Mario 2 when you collect about three cherries a heart comes from the bottom of the screen and when you get five a star comes up.
@@rrsidentfrickhoethe other ones are dull and bog down the game design w lame gimmicks and half-baked mechanics that dont do anything to improve the base game.
The option to skip levels is there so people have a chance to make a choice about which level to tackle. If you just can't beat a level for whatever reason, there is still an option to progress. It's a way to avoid accidently blocking player progress
Power ups are also there to give players more choice on how to get through the levels, only with the added challenge of not getting hit and losing the ability. Sure, power ups do help you in dealing with enemies and platforming challenges, but only if you're good enough to keep them and use them effectively.
An interesting tidbit to add on the "Doki Doki Panic" discussion is that it's a little bit of both. The Mario 2 prototype experimented with vertical levels and vertical scrolling and they ended up adding that into Doki Doki Panic. So it did start with concepts and ideas from a Mario 2 prototype, but it's not necessarily the reverse of what we believed. They DID however, add other Mario elements like the Super Stars, which you obtain by gathering 5 of the cherries you didn't understand, and it also introduced many enemies and elements that would be added into future Mario games, like Birdo, Bob-ombs, Pokeys, and Shy Guys.
It's so bizarre to think that we have Shy Guys and Phantos because Nintendo made a game to advertise a Japanese technology expo that had a carnival mask theme. The most enduring legacy of Yume Kojo '87 was Shy Guy and a pink trans dinosaur that shoots eggs out of her mouth-snout.
@@diydylana3151 Bob-ombs would have probably still been around because they were in Mario 3 (which was already being developed and all in Japan by the time Doki Doki was being turned into Mario 2 in the West), they weren't added into Mario 3 because of the US Mario 2, but were rather already in the game probably as a reference to Doki Doki Panic, as Mario 3 has a bunch of little references to other previous Nintendo titles, like the Warp Whistle coming from The Legend of Zelda. But shy guys yeah, who knows if they would have ever returned?
@@Doktario_Mystario Not really, Shy Guys are quite common in nearly everything EXCEPT the mainline platformers themselves, that's where they're rare, which is funny. It's funny how Shy Guys are basically the default Mario enemy alongside or even in place of Goombas in many of the spin-off series, like the Yoshi's Island series, the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series, the Paper Mario series (mainly the later ones), Captain Toad Treasure Tracker, and probably something I'm forgetting, and yet it's _just_ the mainline games that they're barely ever in. Part of that is due to Tanabe being involved in most of these spinoff franchises (to the horror of many Paper Mario fans lol), as he was one of the major people who worked on both Doki Doki Panic and turning DDP into Mario 2 USA, so he LOVES to put Mario 2 stuff into games he's involved in (even Donkey Kong Country Returns and Tropical Freeze have Mario 2 things in them because he was involved with those).
I think a thing worth mentioning for SMB1 and Lost Levels since you mentioned having to replay the entire game a few times if you were to Game Over is that on the NES versions when you run out of lives you can continue from the beginning of the world infinite times. In SMB1 (NES) you have to hold the A button down to continue from said world and Lost Levels simply lets you continue from a menu select on the Game Over screen. All-Stars is even more forgiving though as it saves all progress for both games while also letting you continue from that world. I'm mostly mentioning it since while it's not letting you restart from each individual level like you did with save states they clearly recognized some people such as yourself wouldn't want to replay the entire game and I don't know if that changes your opinion on how these first 2 games have lives in them.
@@Verge_TO I can't afford the expansion pack for switch online, and the Wii U eShop is down. Is there a rom hack I could use, or do I have to pay for the expansion pack?
I wonder how you feel about the Mega Man games. It would be interesting to compare and contrast them to Sonic given how they're kinda unofficially sister series for many reasons (all of them unrelated to gameplay)
@@SantaFeSuperChief1 "I just thought that having a shoot button and menu to swap what I shoot during the level really convoluted, so i just ran past all the enemies and downloaded a patch to get rid of the bosses"
In defense of Mario 3, house rules are a completely valid and intentional way to play the game. One of the things that was specifically intended by the devs of both 3 and World was the ability to set your own difficulty. So the Tanookis are a (in my opinion, very elegant) way to determine if you’d like to make the game a little easier or not. The benefits of 3, in my view, outweigh the cons when compared to the first two games. Autoscrollers aren’t fun though lol
Interestingly enough, it was actually PAC-LAND that inspired the first Super Mario Bros. game! Even then, what you said still stands that SMB1 is very undeluted with what it shows and how it plays!
I guess it's thanks to Pac-Land that the Nintendo team thought, "Alright, _obviously_ we have to put our working-class modern plumber guy into a fairytale world if it's going to be a scrolling platformer, even though he has nothing to do with fairytales in his original context." I wonder if in an alternate universe, it'd be eight worlds of New Donk City until you get to beat Donkey Kong for real. "SORRY MARIO BUT PAULINE IS IN ANOTHER SKYSCRAPER"
@@coreyander286 I mean, technically that does happen in the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series, so you're not far off with that alternate-universe description! Also with how you described Super Mario Bros. as "working-class guy in fantasy setting," that actually explains a lot of the parallels between PAC-LAND! As PAC-MAN is just a father who works for his family and junk, I just thought the genre of sidescroller was the end of the inspiration for Super Mario!
For Mario 1 and Mario 2 Lost Levels, you really should play the NES originals. The controls and physics in the All-Stars remasters of those two games are significantly different, and not necessarily for the better.
Nah, there's a patch for All-Stars that fixes that. The brick-breaking issue was a dumb bug where Mario's velocity after breaking one was reversed (I think it was as simple as a minus sign being removed or added) and the patch fixes that, other than that the physics aren't that different, maybe slightly but not much or in a bad way.
@@LeonardoRodrigues-uj1sm There are some slight differences in the physics, Mario bounces slightly higher off enemies, not much but slightly. But the differences are very very minor aside from the brick bug.
@@satan-kun8974 Oh that's a good point, I forgot about that. There might be a patch that changes the plant hitboxes back to what they were like on NES but if there is I don't know about it.
@@LeonardoRodrigues-uj1smLuigi definitely accelerates slightly faster in all stars' lost levels. Still accels slower than mario, but not as dramatic as in the nes (or technically fc) version
It's interesting about what you did and didn't enjoy about this series. I feel like what you really liked about this series is something that a lot of people don't look for so it was nice to get a different perspective
this video fundamentally changed the way i view mario's game design as a series. absolultely phenomenal work. only problem is you somehow ignored the fact that nsmb ds's level philosophy is the perfect balance of the speedrun emphasized design that smb1 had
the auto scrollers are the best levels in 3. In the footage you showed with the auto scrolling disabled, the traps and cannons don’t even have time to activate. The whole point of the airship levels are that you need to dodge a bunch of traps and enemies and it keeps you on your toes.
Who does bullshit? About platformer mechanics? Who's like, _I could be honest about momentum-based gameplay, but I know that THEY wouldn't like that, so I'm going to pretend momentum isn't important._ I'd categorize this as vagueposting.
@coreyander286 think by never bullshits he meant the fact that he's not afraid to admit things like enjoying NSMBU more than Super Mario World/Wonder, a take that is absolutely not the popular one like you were alluding to with your example lol
@@aeon5904 Is the take not a popular one because most people genuinely like _World_ and _Wonder_ more, or because everyone knows deep down inside that they like _U_ more than _World_ and _Wonder_ but are too afraid to admit it out loud? Because that's what "bullshit" implies. Unless we've redefined "bullshit" to just mean "things I disagree with".
Thank you for making this, I have immense nostalgia for all the 2D Mario games and I'm a Mario Maker 1 veteran. It's very interesting to hear your thoughts.
Okay, so note about Mario All-Stars: If you play that version you should REALLY play with a rom patch applied. Mario 1 and Lost Levels have a bug where breaking a brick block is completely scuffed because they accidentally reversed the direction Mario gets pushed in, so that instead of being pushed downwards like he should be he's pushed upwards, and it can completely destroy the flow in several parts, I believe it was as simple as accidentally removing a minus sign in the code or something. There's a patch that fixes this and it's so much better to play. Without it I'd say the NES versions of Mario 1 and Lost Levels are better, but with it yeah All-Stars basically becomes the definitive version...of Mario 1. I have some personal reservations about the SNES version of Lost Levels though, people like it for game overs not taking you back to the start of your current world like on NES but rather your current level, saying it makes the game easier, but it also makes several other changes that I think make the game MORE frustrating and difficult, especially when dealing with the bonus worlds A-D. Hammer Bros. are often more aggressive in certain parts, charging at you when they didn't on FDS, certain levels were made awful like 8-3, where on All-Stars it's full of those invisible trolly Kaizo blocks and is terrible, but on FDS those blocks are actually visible normal solid blocks you can not only see but can use to help get past the Hammer Bros., the only trick with them was they blend in with the walls a bit so you just have to pay more attention. But in All-Stars that level is completely butchered because of them being changed to invisible blocks. And then Worlds A-D get the worst deal: in the original, they are a bonus second campaign for the most skilled of players, only being accessible if you've proven yourself by beating the main game 8 times (though you can use warps and game over all 8 times, contrary to what misinformation some people spread), meaning they have the same properties as main game earlier worlds, but in All-Stars they're slapped on after World 8 of the main game, meaning they now inherit World 8 properties. What are World 8 properties? Well, in Mario 1 (and Lost Levels), World 8 removes midway checkpoints and stuff to make the game harder, for example. On FDS, worlds A-D don't have these properties because they're a separate campaign, but in All-Stars they DO inherit these properties. So on FDS, the levels in these worlds have midway checkpoints, but in All-Stars, those checkpoints are GONE. And it's so much worse to play without them, with them I have a pretty enjoyable time on FDS, but playing them in All-Stars was just not very fun for me, not to mention again some enemies are more aggressive in those worlds on SNES. The SNES version also strips Lost Levels of some of its visual uniqueness, sure the original looked very similar to Mario 1 but it had several new or updated graphics for things, and World 9 was this very unique looking fantasy-land type world inspired by the FDS version of Mario 1's minus world glitch, the result of what happens when an overworld level is loaded as an underwater stage, but all that is lost on SNES: it now looks identical to Mario 1, and World 9 looses all its visual identity, now looking like a bunch of nondescript water levels. On the other hand, parts of the SNES version do retain an autumn theme that's not really in Mario 1 so that's nice. So with Mario 1, play with the patch and it's the definitive version (I also like to add some other patches like swapping Mario's overall colors and restoring the unused Lakitu Spiny Throwing behavior that's similar to SMB3's), but with Lost Levels it's really more up to preference. I don't have time to watch this right now so I haven't really seen your opinions on the games yet, I'll be sure to comment more when I get the chance but I have a piano recital to go to lol. Just letting you know about this info about the version differences. Oh, and Mario 2 and 3 are completely fine on SNES, no patches needed there, just 1 and Lost Levels.
@@joltganda Yeah, I only had time for one or the other, I started watching and then started writing my comment about version differences once Pariah asked if there were any differences in All-Stars or if it was really the best way to play them (which was early in the video), and then that comment describing the differences started getting really long, and once I finished writing I didn't have time to resume the video anymore because I had to skadaddle to my piano recital. Also, these really long "essay" comments I sometimes write don't actually take me as long to write as you might think, I'm literally just spouting out the first words that go through my mind and typing them as I think.
@@legoboy7107yea what’d that take you like 3 minutes to type that up real quick, took me a whole minute to read it, no reason you couldn’t watch the 2 hour video instead, joking of course, I just wonder if they still write essays in school based on what commenters qualify as an essay in the comment section
Mario Land 1 gets some recognition here and there, it has a Mario Maker powerup for example, but the rest of the Land series gets virtually no acknowledgement. :(
I have unpopular opinions and thought id disagree with you, but i really see where you're coming from. You explained your thoughts really clearly and kept the pacing tight. Great work.
I find your opinions very fascinating, thank you for making this video. I enjoyed watching and listening to this a lot. I’m happy you actually made the effort to play through to the end of all of the games and not just playing an hour or 2 of each like some other people. All your opinions are valid and I appreciate the time you taken to make this video. 🎉
If you think 99% of autoscrollers are boring, you should probably try some good fast paced shmups. Recca, Zanac, Zanac Neo, Gunbird 2, DoDonPachi... you'd be surprised by how many good autoscrollers there are, it's just they're not as talked about as the ones in platformers. PS: Shmups are also great for people who prioritize fundamental mechanics over gimmicks, which seems to be your case. PS 2: Ironically, you would've probably loved the special worlds in the NSMB games, since their gimmick is being actually difficult challenges for the more skilled player.
You're probably the first person I've seen prefer Mario U to Luigi U lol. Really interesting video, though. It feels like 99% of people say that 3 and World are the best ones, so it's nice to see something different.
3:18 i do kinda wanna mention that, yes certainly there wasn’t a whole lot to take inspiration, but there was one game that was stated to be a source of inspiration, that being Pac Land. Mainly the whole left to right gameplay, and the way it handled secrets through environmental interactions (stuff like powerups and warps that take you to later levels) of course smb1 was a more poilshed approach. That isn’t to say SMB1 wasn’t somewhat a shot in the dark in many ways. As is it was the game too set the standard. But i do feel that the role Pac Land played in its devlopemnt is important
It was also inspired by...almost every NES game Miyamoto had made up to that point, he wanted Mario 1 to be like the ultimate culmination game of everything that came before, the best game one could fit onto the original tiny Famicom cartridges. The scrolling was also adapted from Excitebike (and so were the Warp Zones actually, interestingly enough), the springboard, tree platforms, vines and stuff came from Donkey Kong Jr., obviously there was Donkey Kong and a lot of Mario Bros. influence, the Underwater stages were sidescrolling adaptations of Balloon Fight which is why Mario's swimming controls nearly the same as that game, there were apparently scrapped flying and/or shooting levels (probably like the Mario Land ones) that were from some game I forgot, etc.
Ngl, this video is way too painful to watch lmao. The whole time I was like "Jesus dude, not every platformer has to be a hyper arcadey speed run friendly sorta shit, just chill and smell the roses for a moment". Either way, I supose it's interesting to see a different perspective on these games.
i agree but at least it shows what he likes and what he doesn't personally i'm not a fan off wanting a series to always the same thing but atleast it's honest and i can respect that
I'm so delighted by this video bc it perfectly mirrors my experience doing the same thing at the start of the year--the way the first few games really reward learning the physics and getting comfortable speeding through levels and keeping your flow up above all else makes them so satisfying and special, and I've watched a lot of retrospectives about classic Mario which all trash on TLL, which is my favorite game in the series due to the sheer creativity and fun you can feel them having with the challenges and the snappy level design of 1+TLL. 3 is probably just below those for me, and while I get the exploration focus in World it's just not for me by compare to the speed and momentum focus
You’re maybe the only person on earth who prefers The Lost Levels to Super Mario World (aka one of the most perfectly designed games of all time). This leads me to believe you posses what I can only describe as “mechanics brain” where every other artistic element that goes into a game is ignored in favor of rigid systems and the level of challenge. Like in that case you might as well skip out on the art direction all together and just play a game where stick figures jump over blocks, but you’ll feel good about overcoming their difficulty.
The core aspect of most video games is gameplay. Other aspects such as music, art style and story are secondary unless the game revolves around these aspects. Super Mario World wasn't created to be an "artistic experience" it was meant to be a fun game to play. So it's fair to just focus on gameplay when reviewing it.
37:34 THAT makes no sense. Being good enough at the game to over come those obstacles with the Tanooki suit, IS THE FUN! 40:10 Shall we take away Sonic's Spindash?
I'm about an hour in so IDK if you go into this with the later games, but I kinda want to address your critiques of especially SMB3 and World, but they kind of tie in to your experience with how you played 1 and 2 as well. I'm kinda surprised that you didn't even address one of the other main appeals of these games and I think it's due to HOW you played them, especially 1 and 2, using savestates. The thing about limited lives is that these games is that due to restarting the game so often, you are tempted to try and explore and find more lives, more powerups etc to make the game easier. The issue with using savestates is that there is no incentive to explore and find these secrets. The Super Mario Bros games are absolutely LOADED with hidden coin blocks and powerups, alternate routes, bonus rooms etc.. When you try and rush through all of the levels you basically skip through all of this, and for a lot of players, exploring and finding all the secrets is the main appeal. This is ESPECIALLY the case with Super Mario World, where so many levels have alternate exits that lead you to hidden levels, bonus rooms, and other secrets. For me personally, while running through a level at full speed is fun and all, taking my time exploring and finding everything a level has to offer is the primary appeal for the Mario Games for me. The reason Mario 3 and Mario World are the favourites for so many people is because of this. Sure, on one hand you can use the cape or leaf powerup to fly across the entire level and skip it all, but what they REALLY offer is a new sense of exploration, a way to find things that you couldn't find before in the previous games. Regarding the warps cause you were not sure about the point of them. On the NES mario games, if you turned the console off your data would reset. You could continue from where you left off if you got game over, but once you turned it off it was back to the beginning. So the warp pipes let you get back to where you left off, again as a reward for exploring and finding out things. Mario 3 is particularly tough with this due to how long the game is. A lot of players would simply leave the game on overnight or while they went to school. The game even gives you hints on how to find the warp whistles but they only give them to you well after you are actually able to get them, which I think makes the purpose of them pretty clear in that case. I think Mario Lost Levels and of course Super Mario All Stars allowed for saving, though Lost Levels had plenty of fake warp routes that actually took you back to previous worlds which is a bit trollish lol. Anyways good video so far it's just I really wanted to get this off my chest.
@@iwanttocomplain WTF are you talking about? You obviously didn't read my comment cause responding to a critique isn't automatically just rabid defense of a game... I think it's interesting to share alternate perspectives on why people might enjoy or prefer things, since he didn't bring it up in his video it's worth saying. I even said at the end of the comment his video is good lol.
If you think every game they ever made is a perfect ten then yes, you should jump up and give your opinion that any potentially identifies flaws are more likely the flaw of the reviewer.
it feels so weird how i haven't seen any videos on my recommended explaining how great of a game it was, it just felt like that back then, that game is still incredible, almost like the S3&K of the Super Mario Bros. series, at least in my humble opinion
I know I'm in the minority hewre, I think Super Mario World is a little to basic for me, my major problem is that the level themes world to world are so similar to each other, we have 3 "grass" type worlds and it makes the levels of World feel so same-y
Insane finding someone with my exact opinions on the entire 2D series, also really glad you included the fangame recommendation. I think these games are at their best when they work at both a high and low speed, and it's been feeling like nearly every entry is less and less interested in rewarding skilled players.
“mario sucks w all these skips and infinite hit points” *sonic sweats nervously* but seriously great review of the series, most are too attached to have this perspective. i will def have to check out ur faves here
God this video actually feels a bit painful to watch… Watching him explain what is considered a “good boss” gave me a aneurism when he called wonders bosses the best in the series, said the koopalings never got new moves or attacks in each game when he has footage literally showing new moves on them, and giving his explanations on how games should be enjoyable. As a boss designer geek it just makes me feel pain.
If you liked the running action platformer kinda games, I'd suggest that you play rayman origins and Legends, could be worth your time. I really enjoyed this video, it's very exhaustive and interesting.
Been watching since around the 06 video and I gotta say your editing has really improved over time, like it’s subtle but it really enhances these videos, keep it up
For the "New" series, I mostly feel similarly, but I like some of what they did in the DS one with the blue shell powerup and mini powerup that create a different sort of risk-reward and change up what sorts of puzzles they can give us. I also like the addition of the three big coins to search for within each level as an extra challenge. The game is easy, so anyone can play it, but these coins add challenge, so anyone who wants more challenge can collect all the big coins. I like the DS one better than the others in the set, but they're all games I wouldn't really return to.
While I usually disagree with your opinions, I usually understand where you're coming from, but your argument against the power ups powering you up is so terrible. It was just, "When I play the game in a way that I don't enjoy, I don't enjoy playing the game." If you hate it so much then just don't do it. As someone who played the games when I was the intended age, I wouldn't have been able to beat the game without the super leaf. Your argument against the power ups goes directly against your argument against lives.
I get your point. And I will probably try playing without power-ups in the future. But in this case, I was criticizing the game design itself. Not my experience with it. I could make the game more fun by ignoring that part of it. But that's not the game. And I wanted to play the game. Now I see the issues, and will try to play around them in future. With lives, I've already seen their problems in many other games, and done a whole video about it. So I always ignore them when playing games with bad lives systems. Otherwise, I would have spent a significant portion of the every review re-explaining my issues with lives in every game that has them.
the slow descent into madness upon encountering the boss design and autoscrollers in each game was delightful to witness A+ would watch 2 hours again Other comments already mentioned this but mario really switched towards being exploration-focused starting with world -- In a way it's good to see wonder actually embrace it fully, but I do like the run-at-max-speed way of plowing through the levels too... And they say sonic is the one with an identity crisis
what's wrong with being different? the Mario franchise often gets critisized for being stale/generic/etc.. yet when the Mario franchise actually improves on those fronts people still aren't happy because "change scary"
To be fair they did try to keep speed running (although not as a mission) with timed PvP...and I think a handful of Wonder levels can be done with speedrunning especially without Wonder Effects IMO.
I honestly recommend playing the NES versions of SMB1, Lost Levels, 2/USA, and 3. I swear the physics are much nicer in the original NES games than on all stars, so at least give the NES versions a shot. As for my thoughts on the video itself, getting a fresh perspective on these games is interesting. With the later games, especially World and NSMB U, I feel like you didn't give the exploration elements enough credit. Very few 2D platformers do something as interesting with the world map design as Super Mario World. The in-stage exploration is also more important in Mario games than I feel you give it credit for. I personally love the balance of speed, challenge, and exploration that comes with collecting the Star Coins or finding Secret Exits. I feel as though your opinions on the 2D Mario games reflects how they kept focusing more on exploration rather than linear, quick stages. These ain't no Sonic games, and I really implore you to try and get all exits in Mario World at least.
I did get all exits in Mario World, and beat all special world levels. It's fun. But not my preference for Mario gameplay. That kind of explorative 2D platforming has never grabbed me in any game, which is why I've never liked the Yoshi games.
It is kinda painful seeing that you used the widescreen hack for World for your first playthrough. It's the reason Mario's run speed feels slower, and because of the widened view you have more time to react to obstacles making an already easy game even easier. I want to say more about SMB1 to World, because I agree with some of the things, that weren't really commonly said. Some criticisms I felt were weird, it seems like you basically the games to be more of an auto-runner (or have a tight time limit to force you to take things quickly, though I haven't got to the Luigi U segment). Though you neglected to mention SMB3 and SMW's P-speed which rewards well - keeping momentum, so you run even faster (and therefore jump higher) and can take off with Raccoon Suit/Cape. I like to think of 2D Mario levels as more of playgrounds where you can do various stuff, either explore, or go through them as fast as you can. The variety helps to break up the pace. As you are someone who thinks Lost Levels is the difficulty Mario should aim - I don't think it's reasonable at all, except in some optional content. They became easier and easier to gain wider appeal, because you underestimate how much casual players can struggle even at simple platformers. So if you want higher difficulty - then yes - you have to implement house rules - and I like to think Nintendo thought of it, because of how many obvious ones you can implement, as so much of the stuff that makes the game easier is optional and well defined. You can refuse to use overworld items in SMB3. You can refuse to grab powerups (except in rare cases they are required to proceed). As a kid, finally beating SMB3, even with all the in-game tools at disposal, was one of most extreme, hardest challenges I have accomplished. Though on the other hand - I agree that the flying powerups aren't that well designed, but I would argue the Fire Flower in SMB1 also is a bit problematic. Having it makes some levels too easy, especially those reliant on the most common enemies (as only Buzzy Beetles, Bullet Bills and the fiery stuff in castles are immune). If an enemy is on flat ground, or just in front of you, then it's just dead. I like the flying powerups in that you actually have to gain P-Speed to fly, and they aid in exploration (which you don't like), though on the other hand the hovering mechanics trivialize some parts of the levels, let alone the flight. Then there is the fact that you don't like the fact that levels can be skipped. I mean if there are levels that you struggle with or find unfun then why not let the player skip them. They can play them (or they already played them) on another playthrough (in case of SMB3) or to later 100% complete the game (in case of newer games). Though there is not much of a reward in playing some of the optional levels - there doesn't need to be. In fact, that's why I think managing to find a secret level is one of the best rewards you can have - more fun content. But what about rewards for finishing the optional or secret levels? You could make even more hidden content, but then there would need be a reward for clearing that too (though these chains of secrets are fun too and that's what I liked about SMW). But ultimately you have to kind of have a dead end, though there tends to be a reward like contributing towards 100%ing the game, but even when the game doesn't acknowledge it, keep track of it - then it doesn't make it lesser. You could argue there should be a game design decision to encourage beating optional levels and SMB3 kinda already does that with those Toad Houses and minigames (though they suck) and also forcing to beat them anyway when an airship lands between not cleared level. Though I think about a related aspect to the "optional levels" complaint is at fault - namely that the game design in SMB3 outside of the levels themselves isn't really good (same as with lives), though has potential that the game didn't fully realize.
Given your approach to these games I get the feeling that you would really hate the Wario Land series. Since they're all about slow paced exploration and collecting stuff. Also way more gimmicks than the old 2D Marios combined.
I bet their favorite game if they tried the Wario Land series would be either VB Wario Land or Wario Land 4 because of the momentum and faster gameplay.
You have no idea how happy it made me to hear you talk abojr Doki Doki Panic being a Mario game originally do you have any idea how annoying it is to hear a "fact" that isn't even true EVERY SINGLE TIME A GAME IS MENTIONED? It's to the point where people are just talking about how often it's brought up, you're the first RUclipsr I've seen do an ounce of research beyond that Did You Know Gaming bullshit Something about the JP Mario 2: You said you played 8 worlds...The game has 13 worlds which I thought the All-Stars version removed the bullshit requirements of unlocking but if you didn't even know I guess not
Smb2 lost levels was made primarily because Japan tore super Mario bros apart. It was one of the biggest action adventures at the time. There was even strategy guides. So Nintendo made what was a challenge pack.
-The cherries in Mario 2 give you more chances to roll the slot machine at the end of each level. -The reason Mario 1 and 3 have the Warp Zone/Warp Whistles is probably to allow players to continue from where they left off, since you couldn’t save your progress back then. -I think the reason NSMB Wii has so many autoscrollers is because it’s a co-op game. Maybe they wanted it to be easier for players to keep up with each other. They really could’ve found a better way to go about it though. EDIT: I was wrong about the cherries lol
The cherries actually have nothing to do with the slot machine. Collecting 5 cherries will cause a Starman/Super Star to spawn in the level, which functions identically to how it does in every other Mario game. The existence of the Warp Zones was also inspired by Excitebike, oddly enough,
I watched the rest of the video, decided to do another comment cause some idiot started replying to my other one. Your perspective on the series is very refreshing. Most commentary of the Mario games tends to be intertwined with nostalgia for the games, where most people who aren't interested in Mario at all will usually just dismiss the games as a whole so you've got a pretty rare perspective of the series. I ESPECIALLY like your praise for Super Mario Bros, which even most mario fans tend to dismiss in some respects as having "outdated" movement physics but you really nailed one of the big reasons why I personally love SMB1 so much. I mentioned in the other comment though that I really value exploring the secrets that the mario games have to offer, so though I prefer the latter games because they do that aspect better, Super Mario Bros is truly the best of both worlds. I can see why you prefer it as the other games sacrifice that flow for the sake of providing more exploration and a lot of the times they do not pull that off well, for me only Super Mario 3, Super Mario World and Super Mario Wonder really do it, and most other mario games fail miserably at it. I gave up on the NSMB series after the Wii one for basically the exact reason you stated.
This was one of the most interesting videos I’ve EVER seen about the 2D Mario games. Like, if you watched a few videos on Mario 3 & World, you’ve seen all of them and get the general opinion on these games pretty quickly. But here? I’ve never seen a single Human being on this planet say that the 2D Mario Series kinda Got worse and worse over time with a few exceptions. Which is pretty refreshing, even more so when this comes from a person Who didn’t grow up with these games and played them all the time as a kid, unlike myself who did actually play Them a lot. I Will say, the reason why I (and other people in general) perfer stuff like Mario 3 & World over 1 is the controls. The controls of Mario 1 are so… awkward to me. it’s kinda hard to describe, but the Way Mario controls feels, really iffy, not bad, but off to me. There’s a Lack of smoothness when I jump from one platform to the next, when Mario makes a High jump and lands back to the ground feels really clunky. I still have a good time when I play Mario 1, but the Way the game feels to controls makes it less fun to play honestly. But, you might dissagre with that, which is fine.
I wouldn’t say the controls in mario one are bad, but it takes a lot of skill to control as precisely as you want like you’re instantly able to in 3 and world. But this is what makes the game fun and replayable to me, it has this massive skill ceiling which makes it very rewarding to keep coming back to.
I find it funny how you considered SMB2 to be horrible, while I find it to be the best Mario in the franchise. The grab mechanic is pretty fun, and slapping one enemy with another is great. You made good points about the design though, the potion+mushroom mechanic especially.
Sounds like you just wanna play a Sonic game, which is fine I get that. I do prefer Sonic over Mario myself, but they both have very different design philosophies, even if they do borrow some elements from eachother. You gotta play Mario like, well, a Mario or typical platformer game and not like a Sonic or Sonic-adjacent game. You'd have a whole different appreciation for these games if you play them for what they are and not "can I go fast and use momentum or no". I will say, Mario bosses are infinitely worser than Sonic bosses. Sonic bosses will at least give you some challenge and they last longer, even if you were to speedrun them, but Mario bosses are usually just the same predicable Boom Boom or Bowser Jr. fight you can defeat in 3 hits. Kinda disappointed Wonder didn't improve on the bosses at all till the final boss. As for the powerups/ badges, you can just skip them and you even said that you could in the video. They're just there to help you throughout the game and not be an integral part of the game that you must use or the game can no longer function.
As I said at the beginning of the video, I've tried to play many 2D Marios before. And when I did, I couldn't get into them. I'm not playing these like Sonic games. I'm playing them in a way that makes them enjoyable to me.
so happy to see someone giving 2/Lost Levels a chance. i’ve always loved the game since i first played it, and am upset at how overlooked it is ‘cause people can’t put up with the difficulty.
It's in my opinion really good and very misunderstood but only if you're a master Mario 1 player...which is exactly what the game was designed to be for. It's not made for anyone who hasn't fully mastered everything about Mario 1, it assumes you already know everything there is to know and then tests that, and in that regard I'd say it's mostly great (the All-Stars version does unfortunately butcher some aspects of that design here and there though, 8-3 is a kaizo block trollfest on SNES for example when it's not in the original version). Miyamoto himself said in an interview I read that Lost Levels came to be because the dev team for Mario 1 was just having fun designing levels for themselves to play to match their higher skill level as the people who made Mario 1, unlike Mario 1's release levels that were designed for new players, and they found the challenging levels they made for themselves fun enough that they decided "why not release these for other Mario masters to play?" and so they did. It's made for a specific target audience that no other Mario game is designed for, and if Mario 1 were a modern game I bet Lost Levels would have just been a DLC expansion to Mario 1, but obviously because of the time it was released as a separate game instead (though I've heard it was priced cheaper almost as if it were an expansion but don't quote me on that).
@@diydylana3151 Yeah, that is mostly true. Lost Levels is a game not only designed differently from many modern games, but it's designed very differently from most Mario games. People seem to hop on expecting it to be designed like other Mario games but harder, and then get mad when the first mushroom they get is a Poison mushroom and they die and blame the game. When the reality is the game is designed very differently, it's designed for people who have mastered Mario 1 and thus it assumes the player already knows everything, all the mechanics, obstacles, and all that, it doesn't try to teach the player the basics because the player should already know that from Mario 1. And in that regard the Poison mushroom is great, it's not only a good twist where now the player can't just blindly trust every ? block anymore, but it's introduced in the best way it could be, at the very start of the game when the player has made zero progress and is even shown off in the title screen demo. And yet people just call it bad because it hurts you and other Mario games wouldn't have something like that (except actually 3D Land's post-game which is kinda like Lost Levels brought it back for a reason so...). However, you are a bit mistaken when talking about the game conditioning you to expect hidden Kaizo blocks and full jump blind leaps of faith. In the original FDS version, I can only think of 2 of those kinds of hidden blocks, one in 8-1 and one in 8-4, and neither are in particularly trolly spots. Everything else is just a normal visible solid block that just sometimes blends in with a brick wall so you just have to look more closely, like in 8-3. There are hidden blocks you need to hit for progression in some spots but those are different and are almost always obvious (except maybe in 3-4 which tripped Pariah up here) and aren't in remotely trolly spots. All-Stars however screws this up a bit and has a lot of straight up hidden Kaizo blocks, 8-3 is atrocious in that regard on SNES for example. As for leaps of faith, a lot of people claim Lost Levels has those but actually, Lost Levels doesn't really EVER ask you to make such a blind jump. Every spot people complain about where there's like an offscreen Paratroopa they can't see that they have to land on is only blind because they make it that way themselves. For EVERY SINGLE ONE of those jumps, all the player has to do is stop, walk back a bit, and then walk forward again and scroll the camera more (a mechanic of Mario 1, the camera is a bit more complex than it might seem), and for every one of those jumps doing that makes the Parakoopa you have to land on COMPLETELY visible and the jump isn't remotely a blind leap of faith at all. It's a puzzle, a puzzle that requires you to slow down, stop, and think for a sec, and yet a puzzle no one seems to try to solve. And that's true of most of Lost Levels' seemingly "unfair" challenges, they're just puzzles no one tries to solve because they seem to think they can just keep dashing like a maniac right through and then get mad when they die and blame the game, when it's just their own skill issue for not slowing down and solving the puzzle the game wants them to solve. A skilled Mario player can't just dash through Lost Levels any more than a new player can just dash through Mario 1, the whole point of Lost Levels is that it's supposed to be to a skilled Mario player who knows everything what Mario 1 would be to a new player. And that's taken even further in Worlds A-D, which are to a person who's mastered Lost Levels' main game what the main game is to a person who's mastered Mario 1. And sorry I rambled for so long lol.
@@diydylana3151 Yeah exactly. Wow, nice to finally find someone who actually shares almost exactly my opinion on Lost Levels! It's pretty great, it just...has a very different design philosophy and target audience from nearly every other Mario game (not surprising since it was literally just the second "Super Mario Bros." game, there was no standard other than Mario 1 itself), and in my opinion is just _very_ misunderstood (and also there's some people who spread outright false information about the game too).
@@legoboy7107 well that kinda did happen with New Super Mario Bros U the game is easy to medium in difficulty but the New Super Luigi U DLC is basically a harder version of it
1:03:35 I’ve played all of them and the last 3 nsmb games look dull, the first 2 look like they have art direction but the Wii one and beyond all look the same, then they borrowed level gimmicks and music, but not assets so it just feels like each game has more generic renditions of a generic idea ruleset.
I also really liked the badge challenges in Wonder. The Wonder Flower was great and all but it was nice to have these levels that actively have obstacles built around these upgrades. And I also wish there was more of it because the badges are cool but some of them are very situational outside of their challenge. You could not imagine my disappointment when the grappling vine had basically no use outside of challenges. I don't know, maybe in the next 2D Mario we can work with these moveset enhancement to make them more feasible for level design so they aren't either too broken or situational.
It actually hurt my heart to see you didn't like SMB3. Before meeting Sonic, SMB3 on GBA had a style that I liked, but I do understand your opinion. If that's how you feel, then that's how you feel.
I've come to appreciate both the slow and fast aspects of 2D Mario. I had never hunted for star coins in the NSMB games as a kid, in fact I was more interested in completing the levels as fast as possible like in a Sonic game, but going back to it now I actively try to 100% each of these 2D mario games because there really is an emphasis on exploring the levels, and it adds so much more to the experience than I had expected. The post-game levels are the reward for me, because they tend to always pose a bit of challenge. The NES Mario games (not counting 2 USA, a game I refuse to touch) are also fun in their regard for the reasons you stated, mastering the momentum is a treat, and I had found myself preferring Lost Levels over 1 for its level design too. SMB3 could of been my ideal Mario game, but it lacks the replayability like Star coins to fully explore these levels, since you're usually just rewarded with more coins or lives. SMW, for this reason, is what I consider a good baseplate for 2D Mario, which Wonder is almost taking the same direction as, minus the open-ended levels and cryptic secrets (this is lacking in Wonder personally, but the overworld is the closest to being as perfect as World's.) Considering that I've stuck with Mario since childhood, I guess there was a lot more I appreciated about them all than I realised. But it's really nice and interesting to hear others takes, really liked listening to this!
I agree with your limited lives rant about starting over but the All Stars version of Lost Levels saves your progress for each level when you Game Over
Glad you enjoyed playing through these. I also agree that SMB1 and 2 are probably the purest in the series. SMB being the bedrock of modern game design and SMB2 being an excercise of player expectations. Insanely good games. I'd recommend looking into different Mario Maker 2 super worlds, if there's one game I think might outshine SMB1 & 2 it would be Maker 2. Super worlds essentially allow for infinite new Mario games to be unearthed and while the quality may vary, to a Mario maniac like me it's a treasure trove of fun and outshines even mods like Kaizo thanks to how accesible it is to make stuff.
Hey Pariah very interesting video and judging a bit from what you said this video, I think you would really like the F-zero series. All the games are very precise, fast paced, and relatively difficult with also a very high skill ceiling. I would especially recommend the 3d games (X and GX) but I wouldn't sleep on the 2d games either. I would be very interested to see your opinion on them. The only thing I would say is maybe check a guide or the manuals for the games because the games tend to not always explain a few important mechanics in game (like drifting and side attacking in X ).
My only problems with Wonder is the multiple playable characters not having special abilities and Yoshi not being able to collect power-ups or get hurt is absolutely ridiculous. And the bosses suck ass.
Your criticism of some levels and worlds being skippable reminds me of that DOOM Eternal tweet when a guy asked if you could turn off freeze grenades because he thought they'd be OP- "You control the buttons you press" It's optional because the game is supposed to be accessible, but if you want to do it, go on ahead, have fun man. These transparently simple skips like being able to choose to take the long path or the short path and skip two levels in World 1 of Mario 3, probably have to do with difficulty balancing and letting the player choose how they want to play. For less skilled players, it would be a choice of, "do I want to take this long route and risk either dying or getting better power ups and take the chance of earning more lives, or do I want to just cruise right through to a later stage?" In that way they can sort of be thought of like bonus levels. Mario 64 expanded on this by making every star a potential bonus objective, depending on how many stars you already have, and that's a fantastic design choice because it means every playthrough can be very different, and those who want the easier stars can go after them and vice-versa. In 2D Mario, it's that same thing, just simplified because it's a course-clear game and not a collectathon game. Additionally you could think of it this way- a LOT of RPGs produced after the 90s have an "optimize" option in the equipment menu, to automatically give your party members the gear with the highest possible numbers. But there are two very good reasons to not do this. 1 is the challenge, for me part of the game of an RPG is to figure out which equipment is the best to use when, and to switch accordingly. 2 is because "optimize" doesn't know where your party is and what you're about to be up against. Gear with high numbers but no elemental defenses won't be as good as gear with slightly lower numbers but fantastic elemental defense, if you're going up against a boss that uses elemental attacks. So TL;DR, it's both a risk and reward thing as well as a skilled player thing. Kinda like the W Spin Attack/Insta-shield in 2D Sonic.
As I was watching through the video, I've started to realize more and more that the SNES Donkey Kong Country games addresses a lot of the criticisms you've laid down on the earlier entries. Rare themselves wanted to make something faster and snappier and I can say through personal experience that they are a blast to just run through and dodge around the obstacles like you did in SMB1, although I will warn you that the levels rely more on gimmicky situations as the trilogy goes on.
Okay. I've gotten way too many comments saying, "You want Mario to be Sonic!" So I need to clarify. No. I did not try to play these games like Sonic games. I tried to play them in the way that I found to be most enjoyable. And due to the mechanics and design of the games, rushing through is what I thought was the most fun way to play. Believe it or not, different people can enjoy the same game in different ways. Crazy, I know.
As I said at the beginning, I've tried to play Mario games more slowly in the past, looking for secrets and collecting star coins. And I never found them that fun. And I tried here in U and Wonder to collect all the star coins/10 purple coins. And I didn't like it. I also found all the secret exits in World. Which I enjoyed, but not as much as just playing through the levels. Had I played the way many people seem to want me to play, this entire video would be me talking about how I found every single game boring.
I also don't understand this "You played the games wrong!" energy. At the end of the day, I still had a lot of fun with Mario 1, Lost Levels, 3, World, U and Wonder. I think those are all great games. So what's the problem?
And btw, World did not feel slow because of the widescreen. It felt slow because Mario does in fact move slower compared to previous games.
Nothing. Glad you were able to appreciate Mario in a new way!
I think they are saying it because you are literally playing it the way Yuji Naka played Mario 1, which is funny because that approach to Mario is what gave us Sonic's gameplay.
Anyways, Mario is more methodical by platformer standards anyways, so enjoy at your own pace, man.
Where are your sources for Mario 2 US not being a doki doki re-skin and it actually being vicer versa. The correlation between the two is evididnce within itself and for the fact that there exists mario 2 US in japan on famicon. All i ask is one source
1. Mario is much more of a precision platformer than Sonic, but Mario still allows you to go fast. Going fast isn't special to Sonic, and neither is momentum. It's just Sonic games are inherently faster by design, and have much more emphasis on momentum. The way you play the two games are still very different.
2. Not having fun with special collectables is very understandable, especially for 2D games. It's another similarity to classic Sonic giant rings. I do respect you went to try to get the collectables before forming an opinion.
3. If you are able to play through a game, and see it to the end, then you aren't playing it wrong. That mentality is stupid to have if the person is still achieving progress and success. It's really disrespectful to say someone is playing a game wrong because they beat it differently than you.
4. Mario world is slow enough to where I can comfortably speedrun some levels on the GBA. Mario 3 rockets you off with P-speed.
I feel the exact same way about badges in Wonder. I’m not sure if you did already but if you Collect every Wonder Seed, Collect every 10-flower coin and Grab the top of every flagpole then you unlock what I consider to be the best level in the game.
I think something that set Nintendo apart is the fact they were initially a toy company. They employed people that understood "game design" far before they got into programming, so they really hit the ground running.
this!!
Yep, they always start with "how do we make this game fun while differentiating it from the other ones?" and then revolving everything around that one mechanic (the artstyle, the characters, the story, etc) in a natural way
It'd be funny if towards the end Pariah kept delaying talking about Mario Wonder and said something like, " but befooore I get to Mario Wonder, I'd like to talk about the entire Halo series."
that’s nefarious
1:39:47 like here lol
I know I'm 6 months late but
I would love to see him make an entire Halo series video
@@smhsophiemischievous
The reason I think NSMB Wii has so many sidescroller levels is due to the Coop being a heavily advertised feature of the game, and it was probably more convenient to put more of those levels into it because it's easier to keep all the players in the same place on the screen. Still sucks though.
autoscrolls do have a place imo
take w 1-3 in Super Mario Bros 3 as example, if that stage wasn't an autoscroll the moving platforms would be out of sync and make the stage impossible to complete without power-ups
@Doktario_Mystario I agree that auto scrollers do indeed have a place, don't get me wrong. But I still think NSMB may have a bit too many for my liking.
"I have a bone to pick with this game. I like it."
Never change Pariah
The level skipping thing is probably implemented BECAUSE of limited lives. So that when you do restart there's a faster way to get to where you were. Especially with how long 3 is, and how it originally had no save system.
I agree, but it makes the cannons in the NSMB games look a lot sillier.
Another reason why the life system is God awful
Actually, fun fact, according to Miyamoto the level skipping, at least for the Warp Zones starting in Mario 1, was actually implemented because of...Excitebike of all things. Yeah, Excitebike. It was apparently an implementation of Excitebike's Level Select system or something, where if players thought they were skilled enough they could select and and jump straight to the harder levels if they wanted to without having to play the easier ones. Miyamoto wanted to implement that into Mario 1 as well, but I guess after the realization that simply doing that would kinda trivialize most of the game, he decided to implement them as secret areas inside the levels that you have to find while playing rather than just selecting them before even starting the game. So they basically exist so players can go right to trying the harder stages if they want and think they're skilled enough, as inspired by an Excitebike feature.
I appreciate world skipping in New games because of their terrible save system that saves only after castle or spending star coins, saving anytime in map unlocked after finishing the game. So the best approach is too finish the game while skipping as much as possible and then return to the rest of the game with better saving system.
@masherboy ok i agree that the punishment for a game over is too harsh in the retro 2D Mario games
but if the lives weren't a thing you could just brute force your way through the game without actually improving, even if you get so many lives that it doesn't matter anymore, humans like big numbers and if you lower that number by punishment that makes it easier to want to improve
+ the lives also give you a reason to collect coins
As someone who doesn't really care for the 2D Mario games, I think the thing that makes Super Mario World good is, well, the world. The content and progression structure with so many things like hidden exits and secret worlds is wild and something that I wish was replicated more directly in other games
New Super Mario Bros U also has an intire interconnected structure
Super Mario Bros 3 is good for stuff like it too, maybe not on the same scale but still so much to do.
Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze did it.
And Mario 3 actually does so as well, with a lot of alternative paths through levels.
The level skipping thing is largely done with the idea of no saving in mind. Say you've played a few times in a day as a kid, then while you got closer to the end, you lost, but you find/know a way to skip the worlds you've been through enough times
*Who would’ve thought the Sonic fan’s favorite 2D Mario games were the momentum-based ones?*
I mean that's what inspired yuji naka and naoto oshima to make sonic
@@Howardpower679 the joke of my comment was that it was sarcasm
@@Random_User666Well it didn't ruin your quip so what's the problem?
@@RakoonCD I have no problem with what person said. I felt like I needed to clarify on things.
really, this person doesn't understand what makes mario games special, he just wants more sonic in places where he shouldn't look
I'm about halfway through the video, but I can't help but find it funny as hell that the way the you end up enjoying Mario is to approach it basically like a Sonic game. Not that that's a problem; I just find it funny and interesting.
I know lol. But there's a reason I like Sonic games. So of course the reason I like Mario is the things it has in common. It's almost like Sonic was built off of Mario's foundation or something. Maybe worth a video...
@@Pariah6950the same foundation in which to build 2 theme parks: one filled with rollercoasters and slides, and the other with mazes and haunted mansions. Both are of equal merit in my opinion
@@Pariah6950i wonder if youd like a lot of the smb1 romhacks, I imagine quite alot of them have the speed focused levels
For that one tricky jump in lost levels, there’s actually a hidden block you have to hit below to make it to that top platform. I don’t blame ya for missing it since that’s pretty cryptic. Also, I’m glad to hear you give praise to lost levels. I feel it is a refreshing challenge. At least for the All stars version since you can at least save after every level so it makes the experience way more bearable
@@diydylana3151 Actually I'd say Lost Levels has a surprisingly high focus on puzzles, they're just...not the kind of puzzles typical of more modern platformers. Puzzles in Lost Levels are stuff like reaching a dead end with some higher ledge above you and trying to find the hidden blocks to get up there, having to slip through a long 1-block-high corridor and figuring out how to do that (either by becoming small or finessing it as Super Mario with well-timed crouch-slides), or coming across a seemingly blind jump and then having to stop, back up a bit, and then walk forward to scroll the camera farther to the right than it was when you first reached the ledge to reveal a Paratroopa you have to land on that's now visible when it wasn't before (seems a lot of people don't realize that's what you do and just yolo it thinking it's a blind jump when it's actually not if you do the above thing). Most puzzles in later games don't revolve around manipulating the scrolling camera lol.
Mario ones heavy handed momentum and straight forward level design make it my favorite for the reasons you stated. I love the later games for their art and charm but they are much more about slow paced exploration and interacting with these creative level gimmicks. It’s fun for a casual playthrough but they pale in comparison to 1’s infinitely replayable core gameplay and high skill ceiling.
Mario 1 is probably the 2D Mario game I've replayed the most for that very reason, despite not growing up with it at all and thus having no nostalgia for it (grew up with the Wii and Galaxy, only retro game I was exposed to was Mario 3 which my uncle had on Wii VC). Though nowadays I tend to prefer playing Lost Levels more (the FDS version, I'm not fond of the SNES version for various reasons), because I've gotten so good at Mario 1 from replaying it so much that it's getting too easy and samey for me and I've reached the skill level where Lost Levels becomes honestly really fun and refreshing now.
@@legoboy7107what’s fds
@@frumiousgaming "Famicom Disk System," it was an add-on system for the Famicom (Japanese equivalent of the NES) that played games from floppy disks instead of the standard cartridges. It's what Lost Levels was released for originally, there technically isn't an NES version of Lost Levels since it never released on cartridge or outside Japan, rather the "NES" version is actually the Famicom Disk System version (which was originally released on an FDS floppy disk).
@@legoboy7107 I once fully competed SMB1 twice in a day and I’m still not bored of it after many, many more playthroughs
@@BadBame962 Yeah, it's great. I don't quite get people who say "yeah this was good for the time, but it's definitely dated and shows its age now," unless they're just saying that by assumption that surely that must be the case since it's old, because no, the game is still great and holds up great, in some ways better than its sequels (though not in every way).
Recently been playing SMB Deluxe as well since I just got a modded 3DS, didn't take long to get used to the screen crunch and that version has a really cool challenge mode that requires you to search out 5 Red Coins and a Yoshi egg while also beating the stage with a high enough score (which REQUIRES getting through the levels as fast as you can for the timer points while still trying to rack up as many points as you can in the level and get the top of the flagpole), it's a really fun twist on the game.
Was anyone else hoping he'd call the coins "rings" through this video? :D Love your stuff Pariah, keep it up!
Dang, what a wasted opportunity
I honestly think the widescreen hack made Mario World accidentally feel way slower, at least looking at it
Agreed. It's basically zooming it out, so it feels slower.
@@jceggbert5 No that's not it though. Mario is actually mathematically slower horizontally in World than he was in Mario 1 and 3. Do a side by side comparison, it's especially obvious when just walking (and even more when swimming). I noticed this very quickly and have known it for years, and have never ever seen Mario World in widescreen until watching this video (I didn't even know such a hack was possible), so it is absolutely not the widescreen (though that could worsen the feel even more, sure). Do a comparison of how far Mario can jump too for example, the distance Mario can jump while walking is like 1 or 2 whole blocks less in Mario World than in 1 or 3.
Yeah this dude has a major obsession with modifying games. His perceptions are very warped at times.
@@kingstarscream320 That's such a weird way to say that lmao
>”I don’t like how power-ups make the game easier to play.”
>Makes the screen wider so it’s easier to play.
Actually in the All Stars version of Lost Levels, losing all your lives means restarting at the beginning of the level. So using save states the way you did wouldn't really do anything.
Wait, really? Why even have lives in that case? lol
@@Pariah6950the original FDS game had a similar system where if you ran out of lives, it sent you back to the start of the world you were in so you didn’t have to trek through the whole game again. All Stars just made it even easier because they knew it was punishingly hard
@@Pariah6950It’s for the checkpoints in the levels
@@chopper8209^^^^^^^
@@chopper8209 I don't think mario 1 and 2 have checkpoints from what i remember, but i could be wrong.
*The 2d Mario games are suffering from power creep*
is a line I never taught I would hear in my life. Yet, it is very accurate.
I disagree with literally everything you said about World but you made me rethink of much of a problem in general is having a main new power up that's is just fucking flying
thankfully wonder fixed that
Even I who has World as his favorite game knows the Feather Cape breaks the level design at times (although I still think many levels are cramped enough to nerf it) - however it does capitalize the methodical exploration (finding coins and powerups in the sky is fun for me) that it still needs skill in a way.
It definitely sounds to me like you've played these games as close to how one would play a Sonic game as you could... Which is not really surprising given what you've enjoyed in the past. This preference would definitely play a big role as to why you liked and disliked the different things that you did. It's good that you found a few gems in the mix that you enjoyed.
The Wonder review sounds like you'll love Rayman Origins and Legends, Pariah.
I've played them. Excellent games.
@@Pariah6950
Rayman legends is kinda boringly easy, but the problem is the level design isnt great. Rayman origins is greeat though.
If I remember correctly in Mario 2 when you collect about three cherries a heart comes from the bottom of the screen and when you get five a star comes up.
You're close. Collecting five cherries gets you a star, but you have to defeat eight enemies to earn a heart.
@@LeafRazorStorm thank you it’s been a long time since I’ve played Mario 2
@@LeafRazorStormI didn't even know about the heart thing, does it float up from the bottom of the screen the same way the star does?
@@igirjei3717 Yes.
Finally, someone who *understands* why SMB1 is actually incredible.
And doesn't understand why any of the other ones are incredible.
@@rrsidentfrickhoe realest comment ever bro
@@rrsidentfrickhoethe other ones are dull and bog down the game design w lame gimmicks and half-baked mechanics that dont do anything to improve the base game.
I still think NSMB on DS is one of the best ones. The blue shell deserved more time in the spotlight, man.
REALEST SHIT EVER SPOKEN
Ong that’s one of my favorite Mario games
The option to skip levels is there so people have a chance to make a choice about which level to tackle. If you just can't beat a level for whatever reason, there is still an option to progress. It's a way to avoid accidently blocking player progress
Power ups are also there to give players more choice on how to get through the levels, only with the added challenge of not getting hit and losing the ability. Sure, power ups do help you in dealing with enemies and platforming challenges, but only if you're good enough to keep them and use them effectively.
An interesting tidbit to add on the "Doki Doki Panic" discussion is that it's a little bit of both. The Mario 2 prototype experimented with vertical levels and vertical scrolling and they ended up adding that into Doki Doki Panic. So it did start with concepts and ideas from a Mario 2 prototype, but it's not necessarily the reverse of what we believed. They DID however, add other Mario elements like the Super Stars, which you obtain by gathering 5 of the cherries you didn't understand, and it also introduced many enemies and elements that would be added into future Mario games, like Birdo, Bob-ombs, Pokeys, and Shy Guys.
It's so bizarre to think that we have Shy Guys and Phantos because Nintendo made a game to advertise a Japanese technology expo that had a carnival mask theme. The most enduring legacy of Yume Kojo '87 was Shy Guy and a pink trans dinosaur that shoots eggs out of her mouth-snout.
@@coreyander286 We live in one heck of a world.
@@diydylana3151 Bob-ombs would have probably still been around because they were in Mario 3 (which was already being developed and all in Japan by the time Doki Doki was being turned into Mario 2 in the West), they weren't added into Mario 3 because of the US Mario 2, but were rather already in the game probably as a reference to Doki Doki Panic, as Mario 3 has a bunch of little references to other previous Nintendo titles, like the Warp Whistle coming from The Legend of Zelda. But shy guys yeah, who knows if they would have ever returned?
@@diydylana3151 Shy Guys are actually really uncommen enemies/characters in the Mario franchise (especially compared to Bob-Ombs)
@@Doktario_Mystario Not really, Shy Guys are quite common in nearly everything EXCEPT the mainline platformers themselves, that's where they're rare, which is funny. It's funny how Shy Guys are basically the default Mario enemy alongside or even in place of Goombas in many of the spin-off series, like the Yoshi's Island series, the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series, the Paper Mario series (mainly the later ones), Captain Toad Treasure Tracker, and probably something I'm forgetting, and yet it's _just_ the mainline games that they're barely ever in. Part of that is due to Tanabe being involved in most of these spinoff franchises (to the horror of many Paper Mario fans lol), as he was one of the major people who worked on both Doki Doki Panic and turning DDP into Mario 2 USA, so he LOVES to put Mario 2 stuff into games he's involved in (even Donkey Kong Country Returns and Tropical Freeze have Mario 2 things in them because he was involved with those).
Retro mario fans when the newer game's levels have detailed design instead of flat lines that can be cleared in about 30 seconds
I think a thing worth mentioning for SMB1 and Lost Levels since you mentioned having to replay the entire game a few times if you were to Game Over is that on the NES versions when you run out of lives you can continue from the beginning of the world infinite times. In SMB1 (NES) you have to hold the A button down to continue from said world and Lost Levels simply lets you continue from a menu select on the Game Over screen. All-Stars is even more forgiving though as it saves all progress for both games while also letting you continue from that world. I'm mostly mentioning it since while it's not letting you restart from each individual level like you did with save states they clearly recognized some people such as yourself wouldn't want to replay the entire game and I don't know if that changes your opinion on how these first 2 games have lives in them.
I've never disagreed on so much in one video essay, holy moly
Still, that's why you're still entertaining to me! Keep up the good work!
You should also play the Super Mario Advance 4 e-reader levels. It is like a new game on its own.
How can I play these without an e-reader?
@@floatyghost633 Wii U Virtual Console and Switch Online GBA has Mario Advance 4 with e-reader levels included.
@@Verge_TO I can't afford the expansion pack for switch online, and the Wii U eShop is down. Is there a rom hack I could use, or do I have to pay for the expansion pack?
@@floatyghost633 just download the roms. It should be widely available by now
@@floatyghost633 pretty sure there's a rom hack with those levels somewhere
Friendship with sonic has ended!
He tastes so good 😋
@@moosesues8887????????
@@lordpeeps1 he ate sonic
Just like Cybershell
@@moosesues8887Does he taste like chili dogs?
I wonder how you feel about the Mega Man games. It would be interesting to compare and contrast them to Sonic given how they're kinda unofficially sister series for many reasons (all of them unrelated to gameplay)
There's no momentum in MegaMan so he would hate them
@@SantaFeSuperChief1 "I just thought that having a shoot button and menu to swap what I shoot during the level really convoluted, so i just ran past all the enemies and downloaded a patch to get rid of the bosses"
@@CurlyChop “they should really remove all that stuff it’s terrible game design.”
how tho?
not even the same developer
@@CurlyChoplol so true
In defense of Mario 3, house rules are a completely valid and intentional way to play the game. One of the things that was specifically intended by the devs of both 3 and World was the ability to set your own difficulty. So the Tanookis are a (in my opinion, very elegant) way to determine if you’d like to make the game a little easier or not.
The benefits of 3, in my view, outweigh the cons when compared to the first two games. Autoscrollers aren’t fun though lol
Interestingly enough, it was actually PAC-LAND that inspired the first Super Mario Bros. game!
Even then, what you said still stands that SMB1 is very undeluted with what it shows and how it plays!
I guess it's thanks to Pac-Land that the Nintendo team thought, "Alright, _obviously_ we have to put our working-class modern plumber guy into a fairytale world if it's going to be a scrolling platformer, even though he has nothing to do with fairytales in his original context."
I wonder if in an alternate universe, it'd be eight worlds of New Donk City until you get to beat Donkey Kong for real. "SORRY MARIO BUT PAULINE IS IN ANOTHER SKYSCRAPER"
@@coreyander286 I mean, technically that does happen in the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series, so you're not far off with that alternate-universe description!
Also with how you described Super Mario Bros. as "working-class guy in fantasy setting," that actually explains a lot of the parallels between PAC-LAND! As PAC-MAN is just a father who works for his family and junk, I just thought the genre of sidescroller was the end of the inspiration for Super Mario!
@@4zumarill The sidescroller part was also inspired by Excitebike, not just Pac-land.
For Mario 1 and Mario 2 Lost Levels, you really should play the NES originals. The controls and physics in the All-Stars remasters of those two games are significantly different, and not necessarily for the better.
Nah, there's a patch for All-Stars that fixes that. The brick-breaking issue was a dumb bug where Mario's velocity after breaking one was reversed (I think it was as simple as a minus sign being removed or added) and the patch fixes that, other than that the physics aren't that different, maybe slightly but not much or in a bad way.
Famous misconception, physics and controls are the same, the only difference are enemies hitboxes and how bricks work when you break them.
@@LeonardoRodrigues-uj1sm There are some slight differences in the physics, Mario bounces slightly higher off enemies, not much but slightly. But the differences are very very minor aside from the brick bug.
@@satan-kun8974 Oh that's a good point, I forgot about that. There might be a patch that changes the plant hitboxes back to what they were like on NES but if there is I don't know about it.
@@LeonardoRodrigues-uj1smLuigi definitely accelerates slightly faster in all stars' lost levels. Still accels slower than mario, but not as dramatic as in the nes (or technically fc) version
Mario world in widescreen is cursed af
Pariah have a good take on literally anything challenge. (Impossible)
It's interesting about what you did and didn't enjoy about this series. I feel like what you really liked about this series is something that a lot of people don't look for so it was nice to get a different perspective
This guy has opinions of his own, what an absolute madman!
this video fundamentally changed the way i view mario's game design as a series. absolultely phenomenal work.
only problem is you somehow ignored the fact that nsmb ds's level philosophy is the perfect balance of the speedrun emphasized design that smb1 had
the auto scrollers are the best levels in 3. In the footage you showed with the auto scrolling disabled, the traps and cannons don’t even have time to activate. The whole point of the airship levels are that you need to dodge a bunch of traps and enemies and it keeps you on your toes.
The Penguin Suit is actually basically just the Blue Shell
except with levels designed around it
on top of having the Ice Flower abilety
We need more genuinely honest and unafraid game critics like this. This man never bullshits, and he never misses. Mad respect.
Who does bullshit? About platformer mechanics? Who's like, _I could be honest about momentum-based gameplay, but I know that THEY wouldn't like that, so I'm going to pretend momentum isn't important._ I'd categorize this as vagueposting.
@coreyander286 think by never bullshits he meant the fact that he's not afraid to admit things like enjoying NSMBU more than Super Mario World/Wonder, a take that is absolutely not the popular one like you were alluding to with your example lol
@@aeon5904 Is the take not a popular one because most people genuinely like _World_ and _Wonder_ more, or because everyone knows deep down inside that they like _U_ more than _World_ and _Wonder_ but are too afraid to admit it out loud? Because that's what "bullshit" implies.
Unless we've redefined "bullshit" to just mean "things I disagree with".
@@coreyander286 thats assuming people actually prefer U over World & Wonder
personally i like U but i get why people don't like it
@@coreyander286what the hell are you yapping about
Thank you for making this, I have immense nostalgia for all the 2D Mario games and I'm a Mario Maker 1 veteran. It's very interesting to hear your thoughts.
Okay, so note about Mario All-Stars: If you play that version you should REALLY play with a rom patch applied. Mario 1 and Lost Levels have a bug where breaking a brick block is completely scuffed because they accidentally reversed the direction Mario gets pushed in, so that instead of being pushed downwards like he should be he's pushed upwards, and it can completely destroy the flow in several parts, I believe it was as simple as accidentally removing a minus sign in the code or something. There's a patch that fixes this and it's so much better to play. Without it I'd say the NES versions of Mario 1 and Lost Levels are better, but with it yeah All-Stars basically becomes the definitive version...of Mario 1.
I have some personal reservations about the SNES version of Lost Levels though, people like it for game overs not taking you back to the start of your current world like on NES but rather your current level, saying it makes the game easier, but it also makes several other changes that I think make the game MORE frustrating and difficult, especially when dealing with the bonus worlds A-D. Hammer Bros. are often more aggressive in certain parts, charging at you when they didn't on FDS, certain levels were made awful like 8-3, where on All-Stars it's full of those invisible trolly Kaizo blocks and is terrible, but on FDS those blocks are actually visible normal solid blocks you can not only see but can use to help get past the Hammer Bros., the only trick with them was they blend in with the walls a bit so you just have to pay more attention. But in All-Stars that level is completely butchered because of them being changed to invisible blocks.
And then Worlds A-D get the worst deal: in the original, they are a bonus second campaign for the most skilled of players, only being accessible if you've proven yourself by beating the main game 8 times (though you can use warps and game over all 8 times, contrary to what misinformation some people spread), meaning they have the same properties as main game earlier worlds, but in All-Stars they're slapped on after World 8 of the main game, meaning they now inherit World 8 properties. What are World 8 properties? Well, in Mario 1 (and Lost Levels), World 8 removes midway checkpoints and stuff to make the game harder, for example. On FDS, worlds A-D don't have these properties because they're a separate campaign, but in All-Stars they DO inherit these properties. So on FDS, the levels in these worlds have midway checkpoints, but in All-Stars, those checkpoints are GONE. And it's so much worse to play without them, with them I have a pretty enjoyable time on FDS, but playing them in All-Stars was just not very fun for me, not to mention again some enemies are more aggressive in those worlds on SNES.
The SNES version also strips Lost Levels of some of its visual uniqueness, sure the original looked very similar to Mario 1 but it had several new or updated graphics for things, and World 9 was this very unique looking fantasy-land type world inspired by the FDS version of Mario 1's minus world glitch, the result of what happens when an overworld level is loaded as an underwater stage, but all that is lost on SNES: it now looks identical to Mario 1, and World 9 looses all its visual identity, now looking like a bunch of nondescript water levels. On the other hand, parts of the SNES version do retain an autumn theme that's not really in Mario 1 so that's nice.
So with Mario 1, play with the patch and it's the definitive version (I also like to add some other patches like swapping Mario's overall colors and restoring the unused Lakitu Spiny Throwing behavior that's similar to SMB3's), but with Lost Levels it's really more up to preference.
I don't have time to watch this right now so I haven't really seen your opinions on the games yet, I'll be sure to comment more when I get the chance but I have a piano recital to go to lol. Just letting you know about this info about the version differences. Oh, and Mario 2 and 3 are completely fine on SNES, no patches needed there, just 1 and Lost Levels.
what is the patch in particular called?
You didn’t have time to watch any of the video, even a little, and yet you had time to write an essay?
@@joltganda Yeah, I only had time for one or the other, I started watching and then started writing my comment about version differences once Pariah asked if there were any differences in All-Stars or if it was really the best way to play them (which was early in the video), and then that comment describing the differences started getting really long, and once I finished writing I didn't have time to resume the video anymore because I had to skadaddle to my piano recital. Also, these really long "essay" comments I sometimes write don't actually take me as long to write as you might think, I'm literally just spouting out the first words that go through my mind and typing them as I think.
I agree, this is like if I were to review every 2D Sonic so I played the easy modes in Jam
@@legoboy7107yea what’d that take you like 3 minutes to type that up real quick, took me a whole minute to read it, no reason you couldn’t watch the 2 hour video instead, joking of course, I just wonder if they still write essays in school based on what commenters qualify as an essay in the comment section
You have got to be one of the only people on the internet with a sizable reach who wholeheartedly appreciates Lost Levels
Playing World in widescreen is a detriment. It felt slower because you weren't in 4x3. You can see the enemies coming earlier.
He actually remembered the Land series, that's more than Nintendo does for them.
Mario Land 1 gets some recognition here and there, it has a Mario Maker powerup for example, but the rest of the Land series gets virtually no acknowledgement. :(
I have unpopular opinions and thought id disagree with you, but i really see where you're coming from. You explained your thoughts really clearly and kept the pacing tight. Great work.
I find your opinions very fascinating, thank you for making this video. I enjoyed watching and listening to this a lot. I’m happy you actually made the effort to play through to the end of all of the games and not just playing an hour or 2 of each like some other people. All your opinions are valid and I appreciate the time you taken to make this video. 🎉
@@JaxCoolKartunes you have no idea how hilarious this reply is to me.
If you think 99% of autoscrollers are boring, you should probably try some good fast paced shmups. Recca, Zanac, Zanac Neo, Gunbird 2, DoDonPachi... you'd be surprised by how many good autoscrollers there are, it's just they're not as talked about as the ones in platformers.
PS: Shmups are also great for people who prioritize fundamental mechanics over gimmicks, which seems to be your case.
PS 2: Ironically, you would've probably loved the special worlds in the NSMB games, since their gimmick is being actually difficult challenges for the more skilled player.
You're probably the first person I've seen prefer Mario U to Luigi U lol. Really interesting video, though. It feels like 99% of people say that 3 and World are the best ones, so it's nice to see something different.
Tbh, you should talk about 3D mario
3:18 i do kinda wanna mention that, yes certainly there wasn’t a whole lot to take inspiration, but there was one game that was stated to be a source of inspiration, that being Pac Land. Mainly the whole left to right gameplay, and the way it handled secrets through environmental interactions (stuff like powerups and warps that take you to later levels) of course smb1 was a more poilshed approach.
That isn’t to say SMB1 wasn’t somewhat a shot in the dark in many ways. As is it was the game too set the standard. But i do feel that the role Pac Land played in its devlopemnt is important
It was also inspired by...almost every NES game Miyamoto had made up to that point, he wanted Mario 1 to be like the ultimate culmination game of everything that came before, the best game one could fit onto the original tiny Famicom cartridges. The scrolling was also adapted from Excitebike (and so were the Warp Zones actually, interestingly enough), the springboard, tree platforms, vines and stuff came from Donkey Kong Jr., obviously there was Donkey Kong and a lot of Mario Bros. influence, the Underwater stages were sidescrolling adaptations of Balloon Fight which is why Mario's swimming controls nearly the same as that game, there were apparently scrapped flying and/or shooting levels (probably like the Mario Land ones) that were from some game I forgot, etc.
Ngl, this video is way too painful to watch lmao. The whole time I was like "Jesus dude, not every platformer has to be a hyper arcadey speed run friendly sorta shit, just chill and smell the roses for a moment". Either way, I supose it's interesting to see a different perspective on these games.
i agree but at least it shows what he likes and what he doesn't
personally i'm not a fan off wanting a series to always the same thing but atleast it's honest and i can respect that
Ah yes, smelling the roses. That's definitely what I buy platformers for.
Ikr, im a Sonic Fan but I was so annoyed with this
But…. Theres a time limit
@@WalnutOW Clearly that was a Metaphor.
I'm so delighted by this video bc it perfectly mirrors my experience doing the same thing at the start of the year--the way the first few games really reward learning the physics and getting comfortable speeding through levels and keeping your flow up above all else makes them so satisfying and special, and I've watched a lot of retrospectives about classic Mario which all trash on TLL, which is my favorite game in the series due to the sheer creativity and fun you can feel them having with the challenges and the snappy level design of 1+TLL. 3 is probably just below those for me, and while I get the exploration focus in World it's just not for me by compare to the speed and momentum focus
You’re maybe the only person on earth who prefers The Lost Levels to Super Mario World (aka one of the most perfectly designed games of all time). This leads me to believe you posses what I can only describe as “mechanics brain” where every other artistic element that goes into a game is ignored in favor of rigid systems and the level of challenge. Like in that case you might as well skip out on the art direction all together and just play a game where stick figures jump over blocks, but you’ll feel good about overcoming their difficulty.
The core aspect of most video games is gameplay. Other aspects such as music, art style and story are secondary unless the game revolves around these aspects.
Super Mario World wasn't created to be an "artistic experience" it was meant to be a fun game to play. So it's fair to just focus on gameplay when reviewing it.
@@andarilho_31 I think you’re missing my point but just reducing what I’m talking about to “gameplay”.
lmfao “mario world is great bc it looks and sounds good” what a pleb u are
I disagree with nearly everything you have said in this video. Great video. :)
37:34 THAT makes no sense. Being good enough at the game to over come those obstacles with the Tanooki suit, IS THE FUN! 40:10 Shall we take away Sonic's Spindash?
I'm about an hour in so IDK if you go into this with the later games, but I kinda want to address your critiques of especially SMB3 and World, but they kind of tie in to your experience with how you played 1 and 2 as well. I'm kinda surprised that you didn't even address one of the other main appeals of these games and I think it's due to HOW you played them, especially 1 and 2, using savestates.
The thing about limited lives is that these games is that due to restarting the game so often, you are tempted to try and explore and find more lives, more powerups etc to make the game easier. The issue with using savestates is that there is no incentive to explore and find these secrets. The Super Mario Bros games are absolutely LOADED with hidden coin blocks and powerups, alternate routes, bonus rooms etc.. When you try and rush through all of the levels you basically skip through all of this, and for a lot of players, exploring and finding all the secrets is the main appeal. This is ESPECIALLY the case with Super Mario World, where so many levels have alternate exits that lead you to hidden levels, bonus rooms, and other secrets.
For me personally, while running through a level at full speed is fun and all, taking my time exploring and finding everything a level has to offer is the primary appeal for the Mario Games for me. The reason Mario 3 and Mario World are the favourites for so many people is because of this. Sure, on one hand you can use the cape or leaf powerup to fly across the entire level and skip it all, but what they REALLY offer is a new sense of exploration, a way to find things that you couldn't find before in the previous games.
Regarding the warps cause you were not sure about the point of them. On the NES mario games, if you turned the console off your data would reset. You could continue from where you left off if you got game over, but once you turned it off it was back to the beginning. So the warp pipes let you get back to where you left off, again as a reward for exploring and finding out things. Mario 3 is particularly tough with this due to how long the game is. A lot of players would simply leave the game on overnight or while they went to school. The game even gives you hints on how to find the warp whistles but they only give them to you well after you are actually able to get them, which I think makes the purpose of them pretty clear in that case. I think Mario Lost Levels and of course Super Mario All Stars allowed for saving, though Lost Levels had plenty of fake warp routes that actually took you back to previous worlds which is a bit trollish lol.
Anyways good video so far it's just I really wanted to get this off my chest.
It's ok. You're just emotionally conditioned to become enraged whenever a Nintendo product is either criticised or not praised enough.
@@iwanttocomplain WTF are you talking about? You obviously didn't read my comment cause responding to a critique isn't automatically just rabid defense of a game... I think it's interesting to share alternate perspectives on why people might enjoy or prefer things, since he didn't bring it up in his video it's worth saying. I even said at the end of the comment his video is good lol.
@FishyAshB you’re right. Mario needs defending. Otherwise people might apply their own critical opinion. I never heard anyone praise Mario before.
@FishyAshB you realise this video is the only one to contain criticism of a Nintendo game that I’ve yet seen.
If you think every game they ever made is a perfect ten then yes, you should jump up and give your opinion that any potentially identifies flaws are more likely the flaw of the reviewer.
What's great about your reviews is that even if I disagree with your opinion, I can still see the validity in your points.
Super Mario World is GOATed, nothing has come close to matching it. Peak Mario, now its mostly gimmicks
it feels so weird how i haven't seen any videos on my recommended explaining how great of a game it was, it just felt like that back then, that game is still incredible, almost like the S3&K of the Super Mario Bros. series, at least in my humble opinion
I know I'm in the minority hewre, I think Super Mario World is a little to basic for me, my major problem is that the level themes world to world are so similar to each other, we have 3 "grass" type worlds and it makes the levels of World feel so same-y
Insane finding someone with my exact opinions on the entire 2D series, also really glad you included the fangame recommendation.
I think these games are at their best when they work at both a high and low speed, and it's been feeling like nearly every entry is less and less interested in rewarding skilled players.
“mario sucks w all these skips and infinite hit points” *sonic sweats nervously*
but seriously great review of the series, most are too attached to have this perspective. i will def have to check out ur faves here
God this video actually feels a bit painful to watch…
Watching him explain what is considered a “good boss” gave me a aneurism when he called wonders bosses the best in the series, said the koopalings never got new moves or attacks in each game when he has footage literally showing new moves on them, and giving his explanations on how games should be enjoyable. As a boss designer geek it just makes me feel pain.
40:00 you are putting everything I felt into words. Thank you I never knew how to explain this!
You know, it's kinda funny how I always felt that way on World, but not Mario 3, but yeah, the same thing applies here
@@esdrasImayInotguy3481yeah I mostly felt that in Mario world compared to 3, but 3 still had the problem.
If you liked the running action platformer kinda games, I'd suggest that you play rayman origins and Legends, could be worth your time. I really enjoyed this video, it's very exhaustive and interesting.
Been watching since around the 06 video and I gotta say your editing has really improved over time, like it’s subtle but it really enhances these videos, keep it up
For the "New" series, I mostly feel similarly, but I like some of what they did in the DS one with the blue shell powerup and mini powerup that create a different sort of risk-reward and change up what sorts of puzzles they can give us.
I also like the addition of the three big coins to search for within each level as an extra challenge. The game is easy, so anyone can play it, but these coins add challenge, so anyone who wants more challenge can collect all the big coins.
I like the DS one better than the others in the set, but they're all games I wouldn't really return to.
While I usually disagree with your opinions, I usually understand where you're coming from, but your argument against the power ups powering you up is so terrible. It was just, "When I play the game in a way that I don't enjoy, I don't enjoy playing the game." If you hate it so much then just don't do it. As someone who played the games when I was the intended age, I wouldn't have been able to beat the game without the super leaf. Your argument against the power ups goes directly against your argument against lives.
I get your point. And I will probably try playing without power-ups in the future. But in this case, I was criticizing the game design itself. Not my experience with it. I could make the game more fun by ignoring that part of it. But that's not the game. And I wanted to play the game. Now I see the issues, and will try to play around them in future.
With lives, I've already seen their problems in many other games, and done a whole video about it. So I always ignore them when playing games with bad lives systems. Otherwise, I would have spent a significant portion of the every review re-explaining my issues with lives in every game that has them.
the slow descent into madness upon encountering the boss design and autoscrollers in each game was delightful to witness A+ would watch 2 hours again
Other comments already mentioned this but mario really switched towards being exploration-focused starting with world -- In a way it's good to see wonder actually embrace it fully, but I do like the run-at-max-speed way of plowing through the levels too... And they say sonic is the one with an identity crisis
what's wrong with being different?
the Mario franchise often gets critisized for being stale/generic/etc..
yet when the Mario franchise actually improves on those fronts people still aren't happy because "change scary"
To be fair they did try to keep speed running (although not as a mission) with timed PvP...and I think a handful of Wonder levels can be done with speedrunning especially without Wonder Effects IMO.
Pariah-Sama has returned
I honestly recommend playing the NES versions of SMB1, Lost Levels, 2/USA, and 3. I swear the physics are much nicer in the original NES games than on all stars, so at least give the NES versions a shot.
As for my thoughts on the video itself, getting a fresh perspective on these games is interesting. With the later games, especially World and NSMB U, I feel like you didn't give the exploration elements enough credit. Very few 2D platformers do something as interesting with the world map design as Super Mario World. The in-stage exploration is also more important in Mario games than I feel you give it credit for. I personally love the balance of speed, challenge, and exploration that comes with collecting the Star Coins or finding Secret Exits. I feel as though your opinions on the 2D Mario games reflects how they kept focusing more on exploration rather than linear, quick stages. These ain't no Sonic games, and I really implore you to try and get all exits in Mario World at least.
I did get all exits in Mario World, and beat all special world levels. It's fun. But not my preference for Mario gameplay. That kind of explorative 2D platforming has never grabbed me in any game, which is why I've never liked the Yoshi games.
Fair. I do really wish the 2D Mario games had a time attack mode or speedrun timer at the very least.
Honestly your look into mario 1 and 2 is INCREDIBLY interesting to me
And I'm over here playing Sonic games like Mario games
It is kinda painful seeing that you used the widescreen hack for World for your first playthrough. It's the reason Mario's run speed feels slower, and because of the widened view you have more time to react to obstacles making an already easy game even easier. I want to say more about SMB1 to World, because I agree with some of the things, that weren't really commonly said. Some criticisms I felt were weird, it seems like you basically the games to be more of an auto-runner (or have a tight time limit to force you to take things quickly, though I haven't got to the Luigi U segment). Though you neglected to mention SMB3 and SMW's P-speed which rewards well - keeping momentum, so you run even faster (and therefore jump higher) and can take off with Raccoon Suit/Cape. I like to think of 2D Mario levels as more of playgrounds where you can do various stuff, either explore, or go through them as fast as you can. The variety helps to break up the pace. As you are someone who thinks Lost Levels is the difficulty Mario should aim - I don't think it's reasonable at all, except in some optional content. They became easier and easier to gain wider appeal, because you underestimate how much casual players can struggle even at simple platformers. So if you want higher difficulty - then yes - you have to implement house rules - and I like to think Nintendo thought of it, because of how many obvious ones you can implement, as so much of the stuff that makes the game easier is optional and well defined. You can refuse to use overworld items in SMB3. You can refuse to grab powerups (except in rare cases they are required to proceed). As a kid, finally beating SMB3, even with all the in-game tools at disposal, was one of most extreme, hardest challenges I have accomplished. Though on the other hand - I agree that the flying powerups aren't that well designed, but I would argue the Fire Flower in SMB1 also is a bit problematic. Having it makes some levels too easy, especially those reliant on the most common enemies (as only Buzzy Beetles, Bullet Bills and the fiery stuff in castles are immune). If an enemy is on flat ground, or just in front of you, then it's just dead. I like the flying powerups in that you actually have to gain P-Speed to fly, and they aid in exploration (which you don't like), though on the other hand the hovering mechanics trivialize some parts of the levels, let alone the flight.
Then there is the fact that you don't like the fact that levels can be skipped. I mean if there are levels that you struggle with or find unfun then why not let the player skip them. They can play them (or they already played them) on another playthrough (in case of SMB3) or to later 100% complete the game (in case of newer games). Though there is not much of a reward in playing some of the optional levels - there doesn't need to be. In fact, that's why I think managing to find a secret level is one of the best rewards you can have - more fun content. But what about rewards for finishing the optional or secret levels? You could make even more hidden content, but then there would need be a reward for clearing that too (though these chains of secrets are fun too and that's what I liked about SMW). But ultimately you have to kind of have a dead end, though there tends to be a reward like contributing towards 100%ing the game, but even when the game doesn't acknowledge it, keep track of it - then it doesn't make it lesser. You could argue there should be a game design decision to encourage beating optional levels and SMB3 kinda already does that with those Toad Houses and minigames (though they suck) and also forcing to beat them anyway when an airship lands between not cleared level. Though I think about a related aspect to the "optional levels" complaint is at fault - namely that the game design in SMB3 outside of the levels themselves isn't really good (same as with lives), though has potential that the game didn't fully realize.
This guy modifies everything on his first playthrough. He has no appreciation for authenticity or trust in the devs.
but no guys its just they made it slower trust me haha
Given your approach to these games I get the feeling that you would really hate the Wario Land series. Since they're all about slow paced exploration and collecting stuff. Also way more gimmicks than the old 2D Marios combined.
I bet their favorite game if they tried the Wario Land series would be either VB Wario Land or Wario Land 4 because of the momentum and faster gameplay.
Man sat there for 40 hours like "but when do I get to go fast"
You have no idea how happy it made me to hear you talk abojr Doki Doki Panic being a Mario game originally do you have any idea how annoying it is to hear a "fact" that isn't even true EVERY SINGLE TIME A GAME IS MENTIONED? It's to the point where people are just talking about how often it's brought up, you're the first RUclipsr I've seen do an ounce of research beyond that Did You Know Gaming bullshit
Something about the JP Mario 2: You said you played 8 worlds...The game has 13 worlds which I thought the All-Stars version removed the bullshit requirements of unlocking but if you didn't even know I guess not
Smb2 lost levels was made primarily because Japan tore super Mario bros apart. It was one of the biggest action adventures at the time. There was even strategy guides. So Nintendo made what was a challenge pack.
-The cherries in Mario 2 give you more chances to roll the slot machine at the end of each level.
-The reason Mario 1 and 3 have the Warp Zone/Warp Whistles is probably to allow players to continue from where they left off, since you couldn’t save your progress back then.
-I think the reason NSMB Wii has so many autoscrollers is because it’s a co-op game. Maybe they wanted it to be easier for players to keep up with each other. They really could’ve found a better way to go about it though.
EDIT: I was wrong about the cherries lol
The cherries actually have nothing to do with the slot machine. Collecting 5 cherries will cause a Starman/Super Star to spawn in the level, which functions identically to how it does in every other Mario game. The existence of the Warp Zones was also inspired by Excitebike, oddly enough,
you need to pluck gras from the dark world to use the slot machine (they always give coins)
I watched the rest of the video, decided to do another comment cause some idiot started replying to my other one. Your perspective on the series is very refreshing. Most commentary of the Mario games tends to be intertwined with nostalgia for the games, where most people who aren't interested in Mario at all will usually just dismiss the games as a whole so you've got a pretty rare perspective of the series. I ESPECIALLY like your praise for Super Mario Bros, which even most mario fans tend to dismiss in some respects as having "outdated" movement physics but you really nailed one of the big reasons why I personally love SMB1 so much. I mentioned in the other comment though that I really value exploring the secrets that the mario games have to offer, so though I prefer the latter games because they do that aspect better, Super Mario Bros is truly the best of both worlds. I can see why you prefer it as the other games sacrifice that flow for the sake of providing more exploration and a lot of the times they do not pull that off well, for me only Super Mario 3, Super Mario World and Super Mario Wonder really do it, and most other mario games fail miserably at it. I gave up on the NSMB series after the Wii one for basically the exact reason you stated.
I love how brutally honest he is
This was one of the most interesting videos I’ve EVER seen about the 2D Mario games.
Like, if you watched a few videos on Mario 3 & World, you’ve seen all of them and get the general opinion on these games pretty quickly.
But here? I’ve never seen a single Human being on this planet say that the 2D Mario Series kinda Got worse and worse over time with a few exceptions.
Which is pretty refreshing, even more so when this comes from a person Who didn’t grow up with these games and played them all the time as a kid, unlike myself who did actually play Them a lot.
I Will say, the reason why I (and other people in general) perfer stuff like Mario 3 & World over 1 is the controls. The controls of Mario 1 are so… awkward to me. it’s kinda hard to describe, but the Way Mario controls feels, really iffy, not bad, but off to me. There’s a Lack of smoothness when I jump from one platform to the next, when Mario makes a High jump and lands back to the ground feels really clunky.
I still have a good time when I play Mario 1, but the Way the game feels to controls makes it less fun to play honestly.
But, you might dissagre with that, which is fine.
I wouldn’t say the controls in mario one are bad, but it takes a lot of skill to control as precisely as you want like you’re instantly able to in 3 and world. But this is what makes the game fun and replayable to me, it has this massive skill ceiling which makes it very rewarding to keep coming back to.
19:35 Funnily enough, the Snes version of Lost Levels ha infinite continues counts at every level you beat
I find it funny how you considered SMB2 to be horrible, while I find it to be the best Mario in the franchise. The grab mechanic is pretty fun, and slapping one enemy with another is great.
You made good points about the design though, the potion+mushroom mechanic especially.
someone FINALLY gets the SMB2 story correct instead of just saying what someone else told them, THANK YOU!!!
Sounds like you just wanna play a Sonic game, which is fine I get that. I do prefer Sonic over Mario myself, but they both have very different design philosophies, even if they do borrow some elements from eachother. You gotta play Mario like, well, a Mario or typical platformer game and not like a Sonic or Sonic-adjacent game. You'd have a whole different appreciation for these games if you play them for what they are and not "can I go fast and use momentum or no".
I will say, Mario bosses are infinitely worser than Sonic bosses. Sonic bosses will at least give you some challenge and they last longer, even if you were to speedrun them, but Mario bosses are usually just the same predicable Boom Boom or Bowser Jr. fight you can defeat in 3 hits. Kinda disappointed Wonder didn't improve on the bosses at all till the final boss.
As for the powerups/ badges, you can just skip them and you even said that you could in the video. They're just there to help you throughout the game and not be an integral part of the game that you must use or the game can no longer function.
As I said at the beginning of the video, I've tried to play many 2D Marios before. And when I did, I couldn't get into them. I'm not playing these like Sonic games. I'm playing them in a way that makes them enjoyable to me.
@Pariah6950 if that's the case then you wouldn't be using the word "momentum" a lot
he wants these games to be more like literally THE ORIGINAL MARIO GAME, sonic has nothing to do w it.
so happy to see someone giving 2/Lost Levels a chance. i’ve always loved the game since i first played it, and am upset at how overlooked it is ‘cause people can’t put up with the difficulty.
It's in my opinion really good and very misunderstood but only if you're a master Mario 1 player...which is exactly what the game was designed to be for. It's not made for anyone who hasn't fully mastered everything about Mario 1, it assumes you already know everything there is to know and then tests that, and in that regard I'd say it's mostly great (the All-Stars version does unfortunately butcher some aspects of that design here and there though, 8-3 is a kaizo block trollfest on SNES for example when it's not in the original version).
Miyamoto himself said in an interview I read that Lost Levels came to be because the dev team for Mario 1 was just having fun designing levels for themselves to play to match their higher skill level as the people who made Mario 1, unlike Mario 1's release levels that were designed for new players, and they found the challenging levels they made for themselves fun enough that they decided "why not release these for other Mario masters to play?" and so they did.
It's made for a specific target audience that no other Mario game is designed for, and if Mario 1 were a modern game I bet Lost Levels would have just been a DLC expansion to Mario 1, but obviously because of the time it was released as a separate game instead (though I've heard it was priced cheaper almost as if it were an expansion but don't quote me on that).
@@diydylana3151 Yeah, that is mostly true. Lost Levels is a game not only designed differently from many modern games, but it's designed very differently from most Mario games. People seem to hop on expecting it to be designed like other Mario games but harder, and then get mad when the first mushroom they get is a Poison mushroom and they die and blame the game. When the reality is the game is designed very differently, it's designed for people who have mastered Mario 1 and thus it assumes the player already knows everything, all the mechanics, obstacles, and all that, it doesn't try to teach the player the basics because the player should already know that from Mario 1. And in that regard the Poison mushroom is great, it's not only a good twist where now the player can't just blindly trust every ? block anymore, but it's introduced in the best way it could be, at the very start of the game when the player has made zero progress and is even shown off in the title screen demo. And yet people just call it bad because it hurts you and other Mario games wouldn't have something like that (except actually 3D Land's post-game which is kinda like Lost Levels brought it back for a reason so...).
However, you are a bit mistaken when talking about the game conditioning you to expect hidden Kaizo blocks and full jump blind leaps of faith. In the original FDS version, I can only think of 2 of those kinds of hidden blocks, one in 8-1 and one in 8-4, and neither are in particularly trolly spots. Everything else is just a normal visible solid block that just sometimes blends in with a brick wall so you just have to look more closely, like in 8-3. There are hidden blocks you need to hit for progression in some spots but those are different and are almost always obvious (except maybe in 3-4 which tripped Pariah up here) and aren't in remotely trolly spots. All-Stars however screws this up a bit and has a lot of straight up hidden Kaizo blocks, 8-3 is atrocious in that regard on SNES for example.
As for leaps of faith, a lot of people claim Lost Levels has those but actually, Lost Levels doesn't really EVER ask you to make such a blind jump. Every spot people complain about where there's like an offscreen Paratroopa they can't see that they have to land on is only blind because they make it that way themselves. For EVERY SINGLE ONE of those jumps, all the player has to do is stop, walk back a bit, and then walk forward again and scroll the camera more (a mechanic of Mario 1, the camera is a bit more complex than it might seem), and for every one of those jumps doing that makes the Parakoopa you have to land on COMPLETELY visible and the jump isn't remotely a blind leap of faith at all.
It's a puzzle, a puzzle that requires you to slow down, stop, and think for a sec, and yet a puzzle no one seems to try to solve. And that's true of most of Lost Levels' seemingly "unfair" challenges, they're just puzzles no one tries to solve because they seem to think they can just keep dashing like a maniac right through and then get mad when they die and blame the game, when it's just their own skill issue for not slowing down and solving the puzzle the game wants them to solve. A skilled Mario player can't just dash through Lost Levels any more than a new player can just dash through Mario 1, the whole point of Lost Levels is that it's supposed to be to a skilled Mario player who knows everything what Mario 1 would be to a new player. And that's taken even further in Worlds A-D, which are to a person who's mastered Lost Levels' main game what the main game is to a person who's mastered Mario 1. And sorry I rambled for so long lol.
@@diydylana3151 Yeah exactly. Wow, nice to finally find someone who actually shares almost exactly my opinion on Lost Levels! It's pretty great, it just...has a very different design philosophy and target audience from nearly every other Mario game (not surprising since it was literally just the second "Super Mario Bros." game, there was no standard other than Mario 1 itself), and in my opinion is just _very_ misunderstood (and also there's some people who spread outright false information about the game too).
@@legoboy7107 well that kinda did happen with New Super Mario Bros U
the game is easy to medium in difficulty but the New Super Luigi U DLC is basically a harder version of it
1:03:35 I’ve played all of them and the last 3 nsmb games look dull, the first 2 look like they have art direction but the Wii one and beyond all look the same, then they borrowed level gimmicks and music, but not assets so it just feels like each game has more generic renditions of a generic idea ruleset.
This is a very interesting take on reviewing Mario games... And i love it :D
I also really liked the badge challenges in Wonder. The Wonder Flower was great and all but it was nice to have these levels that actively have obstacles built around these upgrades. And I also wish there was more of it because the badges are cool but some of them are very situational outside of their challenge. You could not imagine my disappointment when the grappling vine had basically no use outside of challenges. I don't know, maybe in the next 2D Mario we can work with these moveset enhancement to make them more feasible for level design so they aren't either too broken or situational.
It actually hurt my heart to see you didn't like SMB3. Before meeting Sonic, SMB3 on GBA had a style that I liked, but I do understand your opinion. If that's how you feel, then that's how you feel.
Mario Was Never Bad.
I've come to appreciate both the slow and fast aspects of 2D Mario. I had never hunted for star coins in the NSMB games as a kid, in fact I was more interested in completing the levels as fast as possible like in a Sonic game, but going back to it now I actively try to 100% each of these 2D mario games because there really is an emphasis on exploring the levels, and it adds so much more to the experience than I had expected. The post-game levels are the reward for me, because they tend to always pose a bit of challenge. The NES Mario games (not counting 2 USA, a game I refuse to touch) are also fun in their regard for the reasons you stated, mastering the momentum is a treat, and I had found myself preferring Lost Levels over 1 for its level design too. SMB3 could of been my ideal Mario game, but it lacks the replayability like Star coins to fully explore these levels, since you're usually just rewarded with more coins or lives. SMW, for this reason, is what I consider a good baseplate for 2D Mario, which Wonder is almost taking the same direction as, minus the open-ended levels and cryptic secrets (this is lacking in Wonder personally, but the overworld is the closest to being as perfect as World's.) Considering that I've stuck with Mario since childhood, I guess there was a lot more I appreciated about them all than I realised. But it's really nice and interesting to hear others takes, really liked listening to this!
I agree with your limited lives rant about starting over but the All Stars version of Lost Levels saves your progress for each level when you Game Over
Glad you enjoyed playing through these. I also agree that SMB1 and 2 are probably the purest in the series. SMB being the bedrock of modern game design and SMB2 being an excercise of player expectations. Insanely good games.
I'd recommend looking into different Mario Maker 2 super worlds, if there's one game I think might outshine SMB1 & 2 it would be Maker 2. Super worlds essentially allow for infinite new Mario games to be unearthed and while the quality may vary, to a Mario maniac like me it's a treasure trove of fun and outshines even mods like Kaizo thanks to how accesible it is to make stuff.
You should rank every Megaman game next
Your channel is a hidden gem
Hey Pariah very interesting video and judging a bit from what you said this video, I think you would really like the F-zero series. All the games are very precise, fast paced, and relatively difficult with also a very high skill ceiling. I would especially recommend the 3d games (X and GX) but I wouldn't sleep on the 2d games either. I would be very interested to see your opinion on them. The only thing I would say is maybe check a guide or the manuals for the games because the games tend to not always explain a few important mechanics in game (like drifting and side attacking in X ).
My only problems with Wonder is the multiple playable characters not having special abilities and Yoshi not being able to collect power-ups or get hurt is absolutely ridiculous.
And the bosses suck ass.
Your criticism of some levels and worlds being skippable reminds me of that DOOM Eternal tweet when a guy asked if you could turn off freeze grenades because he thought they'd be OP- "You control the buttons you press"
It's optional because the game is supposed to be accessible, but if you want to do it, go on ahead, have fun man. These transparently simple skips like being able to choose to take the long path or the short path and skip two levels in World 1 of Mario 3, probably have to do with difficulty balancing and letting the player choose how they want to play. For less skilled players, it would be a choice of, "do I want to take this long route and risk either dying or getting better power ups and take the chance of earning more lives, or do I want to just cruise right through to a later stage?" In that way they can sort of be thought of like bonus levels.
Mario 64 expanded on this by making every star a potential bonus objective, depending on how many stars you already have, and that's a fantastic design choice because it means every playthrough can be very different, and those who want the easier stars can go after them and vice-versa. In 2D Mario, it's that same thing, just simplified because it's a course-clear game and not a collectathon game.
Additionally you could think of it this way- a LOT of RPGs produced after the 90s have an "optimize" option in the equipment menu, to automatically give your party members the gear with the highest possible numbers. But there are two very good reasons to not do this. 1 is the challenge, for me part of the game of an RPG is to figure out which equipment is the best to use when, and to switch accordingly. 2 is because "optimize" doesn't know where your party is and what you're about to be up against. Gear with high numbers but no elemental defenses won't be as good as gear with slightly lower numbers but fantastic elemental defense, if you're going up against a boss that uses elemental attacks.
So TL;DR, it's both a risk and reward thing as well as a skilled player thing. Kinda like the W Spin Attack/Insta-shield in 2D Sonic.
As I was watching through the video, I've started to realize more and more that the SNES Donkey Kong Country games addresses a lot of the criticisms you've laid down on the earlier entries. Rare themselves wanted to make something faster and snappier and I can say through personal experience that they are a blast to just run through and dodge around the obstacles like you did in SMB1, although I will warn you that the levels rely more on gimmicky situations as the trilogy goes on.