It’s really, really hard to decide with certitude which Mario game is the best one of all-time. My number one pick changes about as often as the socks I am wearing, but I can at the very least affirm that Super Mario World will always end up in my top three. After all, it is the game which introduced us to the bottomless appetite of Yoshi, a character which would become so important that it now has its own spin-off series. More than that, Super Mario World was a game which bridged the gap between casual and serious players. Because the game was bundled with the Super NES, it had to be made with a more forgiving learning curve. However, once you have mastered the basics, the game is filled with secret exits and hidden worlds which to this day can still prove challenging to experienced players.

As a launch game for Nintendo’s 16-bit generation, Super Mario World has been living under a microscope since its release. Its code has been taken apart, its level design has been used and reused as a template for countless games that followed it. So with a product which has been dissected to this level, is there anything left to learn about Super Mario World?

Surprisingly, we think so! So why don’t you stick around as we take a look at fifteen shocking things you (probably) didn’t know about this all-time classic?

15 Despite All My Rage…

via tcrf.net

Super Mario World is already firmly planted on the bizarre side, with football players that throw baseballs and dinosaurs that shrink if you stomp on them. However, a bunch of early screenshots and unused sprites found in the game’s code make a clear case for the fact that SMW was supposed to be even stranger than what it ended up being. One type of level which went completely unused has Mario caught in a cage which is held airborne thanks to four birds that carry it across the landscape. The actual level was never completed, but the code shows that it was to be an auto-scroll type. As for everything else, we can only speculate as to what the developers’ intentions for these levels were.

14 Save The Dolphins

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If you are a North American Super Mario World player, you are aware of the dolphins that appear in some worlds as those friendly goggle-wearing platforms that move across the stage to keep Mario afloat and which Yoshi cannot eat under any circumstance. However, did you know that the Japanese version treats those dolphins slightly differently?

In Japan, Yoshi is actually able to eat the dolphins as he would any other enemy. Why? As always, it has to do with added difficulty. If Yoshi accidentally eats a dolphin while trying to hit the run button, the friendly transport disappears, and thus it makes completing the level much trickier. The fact that unedible dolphins cater to North American sensibilities is an added bonus, as it prevents Yoshi from treating the cetaceans like a black-market tuna fisherman.

13 The Winner, By Far

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Sure, Super Mario World was a launch game, and it was included with the first SNES bundle to be sold. It might give it a little bit of an advantage in the charts, but the truth is, even once more technologically advanced games such as Donkey Kong Country and Star Fox came out, it kept selling well all the way until the end of the SNES’s life. The results, if you combine sales on the SNES and Super Famicom, is a total of 20 million copies of Super Mario World being sold over the years. That might not sound like that much, but just think about this little statistic: SMW’s 20 million cartridges accounts for 5% of every SNES/Super Famicom games sold EVER. And that’s why the game isn’t worth that much on the second-hand market even as retro gaming is booming.

12 The Origin Story

via youtube.com (TheYoshiNetwork)

The introduction of Yoshi in Super Mario World was a first for the Mario universe. The plumber finally had a rideable sidekick (Luigi beat Yoshi to the punch in the sidekick department, but unfortunately could not be used as a steed), and the new gameplay mechanic was enough to distinguish the game from its competitors. Yoshi are now officially recognized as their own species, but before that, they were originally identified as dinosaurs. And even earlier than that, when Super Mario World was still in development, Yoshi was supposed to be a member of the Koopa family who somehow turned good. The only remnant of this original design is the saddle on his back, as unfortunately this plot thread was dropped before it could be explored further.

11 The Prequel

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While Yoshi marked the start of a new generation for Mario and friends, he had been floating around Nintendo’s headquarters as an incomplete idea for quite a long time. Mario’s father Shigeru Miyamoto admitted in Nintendo Power that the idea for Yoshi dates all the way back to the original Super Mario Bros. on NES. Miyamoto has even kept a sketch of the original Yoshi around his office all this time, and was even kind enough to share it with the rest of the world. Nintendo has said that the limited hardware of the time is to blame for the lack of 8-bit Yoshi, but late-era NES games have shown that rideable sidekicks could have been possible. However, it’s entirely possible that Nintendo wanted to keep Yoshi up their sleeve for a more momentous occasion than a simple numbered sequel.

10 The Super Mario Bros 3 Connection

via nintendo.wikia.com

While the Japanese version does bear the Super Mario Bros. 4 subtitle, there isn’t a whole lot that would place Super Mario World as a direct sequel to Super Mario Bros. 3. After all, the setting is different, and the change of scenery allows for the introduction of new characters and enemies. However, one particular level does a good job of linking the NES masterpiece to the SNES original.

On the way to Bowser’s Castle, players will encounter the Sunken Ghost Ship, a level that plays kinda like an underwater Ghost House. According to the instruction manual, the Sunken Ghost Ship is nothing more than one of SMB3’s Airships which eventually crashed into the sea, and is now, *gasp*, haunted. The clues were there all along in the level design, but this makes me wish I had paid more attention to the instructions.

9 The Other Super Mario Bros. 3 Connection

via beyx.deviantart.com

The Sunken Ghost Ship was not the only connection between Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World. Well, it did end up being the only one in the final product, but the prototype had a lot more going on to link the two games. Some of it ended up surviving through early screenshots and, more surprisingly, SNES test cartridges. Those carts were used to diagnose issues in consoles and test controllers, and they contained sprites of a returning Raccoon Mario as well as the associated Raccoon Leaf. While none of it made it to the retail version, development of this power-up was far along enough for the sprites to be made available to the public through the code-inspecting community. Please note that the banner picture is not from the actual prototype, as the pictures were too ugly to be shown at that size. The smoking gun, however, can be found right here.

8 Messing With The Localization

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It is a well-known fact at this point that the Koopalings, Bowser’s on-again-off-again kids, were renamed in North America, with each of them sporting the name of a musical celebrity (except for Morton Koopa, who’s named after Roddy Piper victim Morton Downey Jr). Seeing that they could get away with it, the Nintendo of America localization team decided to do it again in Super Mario World. This time, their pop culture assault was twofold. First, they renamed the mini-bosses known as Bui Bui in Japan to Reznors. Those fire-breathing rhinos are obviously named after Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor. Finally, Bullet Bill’s aquatic brother, introduced in SMW, was renamed “Torpedo Ted,” thus giving us the duo of Bill and Ted, as in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Good tastes, Nintendo.

7 The Legend Of Zelda Connection

via mariowiki.com

While we are not saying that Link and Mario share the same universe, Nintendo does like to trade assets between series, often leaving a trail of Easter eggs for passionate gamers to find. One of those hidden connection between Mario and The Legend of Zelda is Super Mario World’s “Forest of Illusion.” The name, which was thought up by Nintendo of America, is nowhere close to the signification of the Japanese name. In Japan, it is called “Mayoi No Mori”, which means “The Lost Woods”. Nintendo seemed to have liked the ring of it, as the area we most closely associate with the name debuted in A Link to the Past the next year. What does it all mean? Probably not much, except that naming things is hard.

6 The Extended Goomba Family

via tanookidude64.deviantart.com

Anyone with a sense of observation and a passing knowledge of the Super Mario series will have noticed that the Goombas from Super Mario World are much different from their predecessors, and even from the versions that followed. They have a round shape instead of the familiar mushroom design, and they hop around instead of marching forward in a straight line, no matter if what’s ahead is Mario or a bottomless pit. That is because in Japan, they were originally treated as a distinct species. The original Goombas were known as “Kuribo” in Japan, while the SMW version was known as “Kuribon.” What a difference a letter makes. The English version eventually corrected that oversight when the “Kuribon” were reintroduced in Super Mario 3D World, giving them the name of Galoomba. Doesn’t exactly sound menacing, but at least it’s different.

5 Luigi’s Jump

via ign.com

Super Mario World was so popular that it was eventually re-released multiple times, at first as part of a compilation with Super Mario All-Stars and then as part of the Super Mario Advance series. The Game Boy Advance version included several changes, the most noticeable of which was Luigi’s newfound abilities. While Super Mario Bros. 2 showcased Luigi’s superior jumping ability, it was never acknowledged elsewhere in the main platformer series, usually reserving it to games like Super Smash Bros. Mario and Luigi jump the same height in the SNES version, but the GBA remake gives Luigi his jumping advantage, thus making some tough platforming sections that much easier. It comes in handy a number of time, especially in the Special World, which loses a bit of its challenge when you have Luigi clearing every difficult leap like it was nothing.

4 It Marked The End Of An Era

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Super Mario World marked the beginning of Nintendo’s 16-bit era, and it was so successful that Nintendo did not feel the need to go back to that well for a while. There was indeed a Super Mario World 2, but it was more of an introduction to the Yoshi series than it was a main Mario game. After that… nothing.

Super Mario 64 was next and introduced the world to the joy that was 3D Mario, but it took fifteen years before Nintendo made another 2D Mario platformer. Fifteen years! The Nintendo 64, the Gamecube, and the Game Boy Advance came and went without an original 2D Mario. It wasn’t until New Super Mario Bros. for DS in 2006 that the plumber went back to his first love. Super Mario World might have been a new beginning, but in a way, it was also the end of an era.

3 Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

via redbull.com / nintendo.wikia.com

Since Yoshi had been conceptualized all the way at the beginning of the NES’ life, one could assume that everything that concerns the lean green machine is entirely original content. Not so fast!

The design might have been floating around for a long time, but there is one thing that is definitely borrowed. The sound that Yoshi makes when he hatches from his egg is identical to the noise that Tamagon makes when he hatches in the never-released-in-North-America Devil World. You might think that it’s the end of it, but NO! While Nintendo never confirmed the connection, I would make the argument that if you squint just a little bit, Tamagon kinda looks like Yoshi’s nose detached from his person and became sentient. You are welcome for that bit of investigation.

2 Yoshi’s Farmer Tan

via warosu.org

Here’s something that has been right there under everyone’s nose for as far as he has existed, but which most people won’t have noticed. It concerns Yoshi’s arms: In every game of the series, Yoshi can appear in different colors, but the pattern remains the same on every model: A saddle and some boots, then a white belly and the rest is whatever other color the player picked. Except in Super Mario World, of course.

SMW’s Yoshi has orange arms, no matter which color you are riding. This cannot be because of palette limitation, as it actually would be easier to just make the whole sprite the same color. So why, then? Nintendo has never commented on that peculiar design choice, so our best guess is either a spray tan accident or Jax-like bionic arms.

1 There’s Basically Only One Song In The Whole Game

via legendsoflocalization.com

Koji Kondo, the main composer for most Mario and Legend of Zelda games, is nothing less than a musical genius. One of the biggest pieces of evidence is how much he has always been able to do with very little, and Super Mario World stands as a great example: With the exception of the title screen, the credits, the maps and Bowser’s theme, every other song in the game is a variation on the overworld theme the player hears in the very first level of the game. Sure, some songs vary the tempo while others add effects such as echo, but the melody always remains the same. You can be in a cave, or trying to avoid Cheep Cheeps underwater, but it is still the same notes being played. This is the kind of detail which brings a new appreciation of Koji Kondo’s work.