Enough Crappin Around: Up Next: Super Mario World

Yes - I have been neglecting my backlog lately. I was about to start up a borrowed copy of Resident Evil 5 when I realized I hadn't put a dent in the old stuff in a while. Well it's time to do that with one of the best games in my collection: Super Mario World for the Super Nintendo.

Being a Genesis kid, I never had a chance to experience the fullness of Mario's first 16-bit outing. The few kids I knew who had a SNES were so bored with the game by the time I got to play it that I was only given a few minutes with the game until they got impatient and demanded we played Street Fighter or Bart's Nightmare.

My first ownership of this game wasn't until it was made available on the Wii's virtual console, and for some reason I never got the motivation to see it through to the end. Well now is the time. I'm ridiculously excited for this one - not only because it's one of the finest games in Nintendo's catalog, but it's focusing my efforts on the primary goal of this blog: to beat the original Super Mario Bros. This will serve as a major stepping stone to realizing that dream.

This was the pinnacle of graphics in 1991. It still holds up.

I've already made it through the first two worlds, and here's some observations:

• It's incredibly disturbing that Mario punches Yoshi's head to make him stick his tongue out. Anyone else bothered by this?
• 1-Ups are rampant and way too easy to acquire. This must have been the origin of Mario games giving you way more lives than you could ever need. 
• Sometimes those guys dressed in football gear throw baseballs. What's up with that? 

 Pumped for this one. Let's do it!