Super Mario "Revived"? Not Even Close. . .
I actually had to shorten this review TWICE because it was too long. Go figure. So long smarmy opening paragraph. . .
Let's start with the graphics. Simple backgrounds, all taken from three places in Super Mario World: the plains levels, the cavern levels, and the fortress/castle levels. Mario and enemy sprites also come from said game. Now, some of them get a bit fuzzy for some odd reason, and the maces have some rotating issues, which really isn't that big of a deal. The Gameboy Advance gets away with it, afterall.
Now, style. . . THIS is where the game really starts to hurt. The game isn't even on par with the original Super Mario Bros. It's barely on par with Mario Bros., for that matter! There's nowhere near enough disversification in the game. Diversification is replaced by difficulty. Simply put, the game spits out a couple obstacles or enemies at you on one screen, then twice that on another, then quadrillion that on the last screen, or so. The difficulty factor is mostly evident in the Donut Plains stage where you're jumping over Fuzzys. The Fuzzys move in such a way that it makes it pretty damned hard to jump over them without dying. Jumping on the first one causes it to die, but if you jump on the second or third one, the first one comes back! What the Hell?
Tying in with that, the swinging maces in Bowser's Castle have some pretty lousy hit detection going on. When I played, there was at least a good dozen or possible TWO-DOZEN pixels between Mario and the mace, yet I died. Due to bad collision detection. Dandy.
Lastly to this section, what are we playing for? A crappy credits roll. No high score. No nifty ending. Just crappy text. . . But I digress. . . Let's move on.
The sounds and music are, as you may have guessed, typical Super Mario World sounds. Super Mario World Overworld music for the first two areas, then an absolutely awesome arrangement of the first and third kingdom themes from Super Mario Land. . . Which plays only ONCE then DIES. Additionally, the music used didn't really fit the areas, aside from the first area. Bowser's Castle has always been dark and foreboding. Using the chipper tune from Super Mario Land just doesn't do it justice. And why no underground theme for the cavern level?
Sound effects. . . The "Area Cleared" theme plays way too fast and uses far too many instruments, and the "Oops, You Died!" theme has a tendancy to drown out whatever might be playing in the background, if anything.(See note about Bowser's Castle above.) Otherwise, no complaints about that.
Violence. Cartoon violence. Mario gets hit and falls off the screen, just as he's been doing since his days as a plumber back in Mario Bros. That's about it.(Does not effect Overall Score.)
The controls of the game handle well enough. There's a noticable delay between jumps when you land which does indeed get you killed from time to time, particularly on the last level. . . There's also no real clever feel to the controls. You're forced to jump a certain height, you can't make Mario sprint, and walking and stopping is very static. No skidding to a halt. No slowing down. You just STOP. So yeah. . . I'm not very impressed. But at least it's a working control scheme.
Finally. . . This game just does not amuse me, but that's fine. It wasn't intended to be funny. I'm not altogether sure WHAT its intention was, but I know it was not intended to be funny.(Does not effect Overall Score.)
Sound and graphics save this otherwise poor excuse for front page material, and that's only because they were entirely pre-fab from the original Super Famicom game. What on Earth possessed you to upload this, outside of a spontanious thought of "Lookie what I can do!," I'll never know. But hey. . . Just because I don't like it doesn't mean that thousands of mindless sheep won't, either. You think about that for a while. . .