How Super Mario World opened up the Pandora's Box of emulation
Super Mario World (1992)
Super Mario World (1992)
I'm going to let you in on a dirty little secret today - I love emulating games, I simply love it. I can't get enough of the stuff. Configuring BIOS files, downloading GoodROM sets, jailbreaking modern consoles to get the bogey games up and running, I love it, I love it all.
Of course, I love collecting the actual physical games as well, legally acquired whenever possible. But would it be unreasonable of me to suggest that ROMs and emulators are the best invention since sliced bread and recordable television?
In the same way that boys and girls from the black-and-white days would never forget the magic of hearing their first radio broadcast, or seeing their first television transmission or even watching the first ever train snail on by, I doubt I'll ever forget loading up my first ROM.
I know that's a desperately sad anecdote, but look: some children are Macaulay Culkin, and have everyone gushing over them. And then some children are his cousin in Home Alone who constantly wets the bed. Well, that's who I was.
While browsing a Super Mario All-Stars message forum, fresh after my daily dose of blackjack and hookers of course, I saw many references to people playing the game on emulators. With great ignorance, I posted threads asking what this magic was and where I could get my hands on some. I now see how heroin junkies are born.
These law-shattering threads of mine were deleted immediately by that most efficient of police forces, internet moderators. But after spamming the board with 27 more posts, I finally got pointed in the right direction and off I went.
In those days downloading a 1-megabyte file took a few minutes, if you can actually believe that. But by God, was I willing to wait. Then, with my trusty keyboard serving as a makeshift controller, I loaded up Mario All-Stars and within minutes I was hitting up the ice world in Super Mario Bros. 3, right there on my PC.
I just couldn't believe it. To be honest, I still can't really believe it or wrap my big head around how emulation works, almost 20 years later. All I knew was that I now wielded the power. Games I had missed out on back in the day were now at my fingertips, and all available for nowt.
There were even fans out there translating Japanese-only games like Seiken Densetsu 3. A sequel to my favourite ever game, and I never knew a thing about it until I made the emulation breakthrough. Can you grasp how excited I was by that? There the game was, lying there in bed, spread-eagled and looking appealing, ready for all the action I wanted.
I used that PC keyboard to suffer through many a SNES game for years. Hell, I even tried branching out to what were then current N64 games. I distinctly remember attempting to download the recently released Majora's Mask, and my download manager telling me there was an estimated download time left of 2 weeks. Crikey, an entire fortnight. A tough ask when the internet cost a fortune before 6PM, and just one badly timed phone call would end it all.
It was a pretty big file, but I imagine this ridiculous time-frame was also due to the inevitable awfulness of whatever download site it was that I found. For this site to actually have hefty enough bandwidth for massive N64 games, they must have needed a billion ads and pop-ups, with more than one appearance from old BonziBuddy.
The internet was a bit of a Wild West back then. Even so, finding video game ROMs and getting the damn things onto your hard-drive was a terrible ordeal. Generally, you'd find some "Top 50 ROM site" after a Yahoo search, where you'd struggle to see the actual link under several hentai and ecchi ads.
Then you'd click a site and they would ask you to ‘vote’ for them, whatever that meant, and in many cases the hungry sods would want your vote three times. Even then it wasn't guaranteed that you were ever gonna get your EarthBound download started.
Amusingly, most of the ROM sites took great pains to remind you of the "law", telling you that were only allowed to download ROMs for games that you already owned, and if you didn't own them then you had to delete them after 24 hours, as if this was some sort of EU directive or universal law or something.
Needless to say, the police never came bursting through my door because I'd gotten myself a dubious copy of Tales of Phantasia. Although maybe I've hanged myself here, and given them all the evidence they need? Either way, it stands to reason that you probably shouldn't take legal counsel from a site trying to sell you naked figurines of anime lolicons.
But then came the next watershed moment for me - ROM hacks, fan-edited versions of your favourite classic games. You must understand that, as a perenially bored and dangerously misguided young child, I filled notepad after notepad with either new course layouts for F-Zero that I'd have loved to race on, or drawings of Mario levels that I'd have loved to be able to platform through.
So you can imagine that it wasn't only my jaw that dropped when I found out about Super Mario World ROM hacking, and the wonderful editing tool called Lunar Magic that made it all possible. Suddenly, my lifelong dreams became reality. Yes, yes, I know, we've already established how sad I am. But this was huge news for me. Probably the greatest Mario platformer ever, or at least on a par with Mario 3, and now I could finally mould it to my own desires.
Or at least, I could to an extent. Laziness dictated that I never actually finished a Mario hack. In fact, I barely even finished a whole world of levels. But that's OK, because there are probably thousands, if not tens of thousands of custom Mario levels out there across hundreds of hacks. And quite a few of them do sensational things to an already very fine game.
But where am I going? As always, I'm going on about tins of salmon and watchmakers when I should be giving you a lowdown on the game at hand. It probably goes without saying that kicking your new Nintendo console off with a mainline Mario title is probably half the battle for console generation supremacy won. And when the SNES released with this massive title bundled, Sega ran for cover.
Famously, there are 96 exits to find in this game - not 96 levels, as advertised on the box. A save-battery backup for the first time in Mario-dom makes completing this task all the more convenient. It could be said that some levels are samey, owing to limitations at the time and the sheer number of levels courses to complete over 7 worlds, plus two more hidden worlds.
But remember that there are multiple paths through the game, with many levels featuring two possible exits. You’ve also got the ability to control the ever-popular Yoshi for the first time, plus a load of classic powerups to find. All of that, plus the fact that it’s all presented in a 16-bit package with next generation sound and graphics makes Super Mario World a day one classic.
Mario controls beautifully, and any deaths you suffer are your own fault. Not that that matters too much, because the game is a trifle on the easy side – you can literally fly over the levels if you want to - but at least it means anyone can play. In fact, there's probably no better introduction to the world of platforming games and all the nuances and what-have-yous that come with that.
You can play through this sucker and come away with a beaming smile on your face, any day of the week. And if you're not too afraid of the dark side, you can pick up a highly illegal ROM of Super Mario World, get the level editor too, and let your imagination run wild.
15 December 2023