Dom Robinson reviews

Price: £34.99 Players: 1-4 For the second Mario SNES installment, Super Mario World makes its way to the GBA with exactly the same grace and poise the first one did. Retro is not just "yesterday's news", but all the rage as Mario joins up with Luigi, this time round, for further adventures as they visit Yoshi on his island, but then Princess Peach goes missing and you have to rescue her from the Koopa King. Yes, the plot doesn't really matter a massive deal, but what is important is that the action takes place over 9 worlds and 96 levels, some of which contain hidden areas. Again, the original Mario Bros. game is included. It's simple enough and takes place on one screen, albeit with some vertical shift as it won't all fit on. Spiky enemies emerge from pipes down in the sewers and you, as Mario, have to jump up and hit the platforms when the baddies pass over you, rendering them unconscious. Run over them next and score your points. Extra points can be collected with coins that appear along the way. Connected to another GBA with a link cable, you can play as both Mario and Luigi in either this classic mode, or the battle mode. Sadly, as I was just playing with myself, the machine made a farting sound when I tried to select 'multiplayer' to see what would happen.

The main event here, though, is Super Mario World, which sees the screen scrolling as you run from right to left, avoiding getting killed and collecting cherries, other paraphenalia and to boost your strength with mushrooms, which act like the rings in Sonic the Hedgehog. With them in your possession, getting hit by an enemy the first time won't kill you, but the next touch may well do so you must be careful. They'll also allow you to crush blocks or tougher enemies. In this game, you can also climb aboard Yoshi and shoot his tongue out at your enemies to swallow them whole, or press the right shoulder button to perform more powerful "spin" jumps. As before, in addition to killing the enemy by jumping on top of them, you can either pick things out of the ground to chuck in their direction or snatch the shell of one enemy and chuck at the rest. Sounds a bit unfair to them, but they doubtlessly deserve it.

The graphics and sound on the GBA are much the same as you'd expect from the SNES original. In fact, as I understand it they're exactly the same, which is a good thing. While playing this it made me realise I'd like to see quite a few of the Nintendo handhelds from the early 80s emulated for the GBA. They could be tarted up and distributed in both new and original modes with a selection of different games placed on each cartridge. The gameplay is simple but effective here and I've dropped the "originality" factor, since it would mark as a zero here, but it's the enjoyment that's the important one.

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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2002.