Is there anything so satisfying to watch as a well-played Mario speedrun? What makes an expert run of Super Mario Bros. so eminently watchable, and how do the players master their moves so perfectly? It turns out that the answer to both questions could be “music.”
The homebrew scene is always coming out with ways to emulate old games on new hardware with as much fidelity to the originals as possible. Programmer Tom Murphy, otherwise known as Tom7, has been working on a slightly different project in his two most recent YouTube videos: figuring out a way to run SNES games on a…
Super Mario World has plenty of warps and tricks to help players finish the game faster than usual, but none are as extreme as the credits warp. This intense glitch was once thought to be nearly impossible for a human to perform, but one speedrunner recently used it to complete the game in less that one minute.
Jason Yang is a musician and composer who live streams on Twitch, taking song requests to play on his violin, keyboard, and nose. Pulling up a Super Mario World video, Yang nose-whistles the game’s overworld theme.
The SNES is old. As much as I love the first Mario Kart, going back and loading up the Mode 7 graphics of Bowser Castle 1 feels quaint. A series of interviews with Nintendo developers from that era though serves as a good reminder of just how advanced the technology was at the time.
Among Nintendo fans, there has been dispute as to whether Mario was telling Yoshi to get something or smacking the character in the head. According to Nintendo, Mario was originally punching Yoshi, causing the character’s tongue to shoot out in surprise.
Panga’s Super Dram World is a notoriously hard Super Mario World hack. Last week’s sequel, Super Dram World 2, seems no less tricky.
Streamer and speedrunner Sethbling has taken Super Mario World hacking to the next level. Using a save glitch discovered by Cooper Harasyn, he’s managed to create a “jailbroken” Super Mario World cartridge with a mod-enabling hex editor built right in.
Super Dram World is an exceptionally cruel Super Mario World hack. It’s an accomplishment to survive a simple playthrough. Last night, one speedrunner raced through it and secured two world records in a single attempt.
You can now get a lime green edition of the Nintendo New 3DS XL that comes pre-installed with Super Mario World. The old-style 3DS isn’t able to play ports of SNES games, like Earthbound. Nintendo is selling the system exclusively through Amazon.
There were some remarkable speedruns at Summer Games Done Quick 2016, but this might be the most impressive: Rezephos blazing through Super Mario World without getting a single mushroom, fire flower, cape, star, or Yoshi.
Using an exploit allowing him to write processor instructions to Super Nintendo system memory, speedrunner and Minecraft builder extraordinaire Sethbling injected the code for mobile hit Flappy Bird into Super Mario World in under an hour.
Good news, Virtual Console fans. Starting on March 3rd, a slew of Super Nintendo games will be hitting the new 3DS.
Custom-themed, limited edition consoles weren’t really a thing back in the day of the SNES and the Genesis, so it’s up to a dedicated few to set things right. Zoki64 picked Super Mario World, the most obvious choice for his custom SNES.
On November 21, 1990, Nintendo Japan released three amazing things—the first F-Zero, Super Mario World and a console to play them on. It was a very good day.
Super Mario World was great for a lot of reasons, but I think it might have been the music of composer Koji Kondo that sticks out in my mind more than anything else. It’s even better when played on real instruments, and the talented musicians from YouTube channel moonbowmusicmovie very much do it justice with this…
