Is this game supposed to be this hard

So I got a SNES recently and got Mario World with it. I thought that it was going to be a nice ride in the park. Then after I died 5 times in a row on the first level I thought to myself, "Is this old school Dark Souls or something?". Granted I haven't even played an old school mario game before but I thought that shit was for kids. This game certainly isn't either. My little brother gave it a whirl and did no better. So is this game really that stupidly difficult or am I just that bad at platorming games? For clarity I'm playing this game on a SNES, on an HDTV, and am in great shape, I have great natural reflexes.

I wouldn't call it a dark souls just because it's hard. Calling a game a similar to dark souls means ambiguous as hell and letting you scratch your head until something clicks.

I tried playing it with a keyboard for the first time a few months ago and couldn't get past the part with the ghost mansion or whatever

You're joking, right? This is a joke post? Like some sort of meta-critique of millennials?

Yes. Mario games used to be hard. These games were from a time when you were lucky to get a game a year so being hard was welcomed because it would last longer.

You should play 1 or 3, those were super tough.

Mario World always felt just right to me.

It's not hard, you just... I mean... you're not very good at this game.

I can beat that game with my eyes closed, but I've played it hundreds of times. I've never found it difficult, though, even my first time playing back in 1990.

Dark Souls has nothing to do with Mario games- odd correlation. It makes me think either you're a youngin' (13) or you're trolling hard.

Ya, I can't tell if it's trolling either. We'll never know, because usually OPs like this never post again. I always imagine it's a little kid, and super sincere, because in my mind the poster seems less sinister that way.

Your first mistake is playing on an HDTV, son

HDTV introduces a lot of latency that did not exist when this game was created. I went back to it on the Virtual Console and was similarly frustrated.

@dt9k: I really wish I wasn't joking. I'm actually having kind of a hard time.

I have a friend who plays a lot of games but whenever I try to get him to play a 2d platformer he just doesn't get it.

If you think Mario World is hard try playing the actual first Super Mario Bros

@cornbredx: You're right about me being sincere, wrong about me being a kid. 21 years old.

@laxbro19: Sorry if that offended you, but ... I mean I don't know you so I have to make something up in my head =P I prefer to assume people are legit, but I can never really tell what their motive is. So I assume they just don't know stuff, may be young, may not. Who knows. I know I'm not the only person that does it haha

Anyway, I suppose it is possible latency is the issue- as others are saying. I don't know, I still have a SD CRT I play older game consoles on and I've never had trouble with this game. I also have a retron 5 I can play on the HD TV if I want and I've never noticed latency there either (although it doesn't look or sound as good, bleh). I have hooked up my Genesis to a modern HD TV before and I didn't personally notice latency so much as it just looks horrible.

With Mario games it often just comes down to timing (1-1 in this game is really all showing you timing and with mechanics telling you to start getting used to that) kind of like a rhythm game in some ways. Timing and patterns. Is there something in particular you're struggling with? I know some people are just not great at pattern recognition and timing. It's not really a huge thing in games like it used to be, so it may be something you have to learn over time- I don't really know.

I don't say this to put you down, but it could also be just the kinds of games you normally play. If you never played older platformers you may just not have that skillset yet. Like if you think this is hard in my opinion Mario Brothers (the original NES and the other arcade one both) is way harder. I always felt like this one had a much better difficulty curve out of all of those.

Well, okay. You're having difficulty with the game. People have mentioned latency as an issue, and that might be a contributing factor, but it seems you haven't played enough games of this type to have a solid grasp on the expectations common to the genre or the skills required.

So, to answer your original question, no, this game is not supposed to be hard. Compared to platformers of the era it's difficulty curve is expertly tuned. It GETS hard-ish late game and slightly non-linear with secret exits and hidden areas, but all the core mechanics are very carefully illustrated over the course of the game. Dark Souls is sort of the exact opposite.

Stick with it if time allows. It's dope as fuck.

Maybe I've played Super Mario World enough to have muscle memory for it, (it's my favorite game of all time) but I would be incredibly surprised if latency was the real issue. Unless you have a really bad TV, I would just recommend practice. Once you get a hang of how the mechanics/movement works, Super Mario World is a breeze.

I don't think this is a terribly difficult game, didn't think so when it came out either. I can still mostly run through it on a high latency lcd tv too. Maybe your controller is broken, are you able to run?

I've always thought Mario games are pretty hard in general. There is something about the momentum and floatiness of the controls that just gets me into trouble. I'm not even that bad at platforming games, I've done ok in some hard ones. A+ on most of light world super meat boy, and I beat the dark worlds. I'm a big fan of Dustforce as well. But Mario specifically always comes off as disproportionally difficult for its reputation to me. XD

If you're on an HDTV you're experience serious delay that is making it harder. But the game is okay. not horribly hard but definitely hard.

I miss Super Mario World. Probably the best 2d platformer ever. As for hard, I mean, yeah it probably is by today's standards. If you didn't grow up playing these things, it would seem pretty rough. Try and stick with it meng.

When someone makes a post in 2015 talking about how hard Super Mario World is and says stuff like "I thought this shit was for kids," I have a hard time taking it seriously. Like I'm still wondering if this is a joke

I've had the game for nearly 25 years and I've yet to beat it, but sometimes it feels like I'm alone in this case. Something might be wrong if you're dying that much only on the first level. Are you running? Hold Y always.

Just be thankful this level isn't in the real game:

I'm not used to the physics of Mario World at all either, so I had some problems playing it on Virtual Console some time ago.

I also had trouble playing SMB3, which I HAD played a lot of and used to be quite good at. In that case, I missed a bunch of jumps I used to get, or would run off of platforms when trying to jump gaps. I'd chalk up those problems to latency. I've heard playing it directly on the gamepad in that case aleviated it some? I forget. No solution for you either way.

This is one of the weirdest posts...

Well, I played it as a kid and didn't think it was at all challenging at the time, until you got to the forest of illusion. I play a little bit of it here and there every year on an emulator with a PS3 controller hooked up to my PC, and still don't find it at all hard until you at least hit that point in the game. Even then, it's fairly easy compared to other platformers of the day. Really not sure how you can be having issues. Btw, "old school Dark Souls," is Castlevania.

Nintendo games are for babies.

Nearly all the core Mario games get really tough.

@laxbro19: The problem here isn't latency, unless you have a really shitty tv, and I mean REALLY shitty, the problem is muscle memory/skillset of older platformers. I'm 23 but I was always in contact with older games since I have older siblings, because of this I think many games nowadays are too simple, and treat players as if they are stupid. SMW is where Nintendo found the sweet spot for platforming difficulty. It starts easy so anyone can pick it up, and ramps up late game, especially the secret levels, for the people who mastered all of the platformers of yesteryear. If you've never played any old games with similar concepts, I get where you'd think this game is hard, but you'll get better by just playing it and finding out how the momentum and timing works for you.

Yeah, it can be tough. Having said that, I beat it when I was 6 or 7, so you can probably get through it.

If you find it hard, don't try the original NES Ninja Gaiden games. They'll crush your soul.

Just look at this part

Truth be said, they are the hardest and most unforgiving plataformers I've played.

If you want you can play it on the SNES, with the remaster Ninja Gaiden Trilogy.

Ahhh I still need to finish Ninja Gaiden 2!!!!

Well good thing you're in great shape. That just seems like the right thing to be, physically. The game gets harder when you have great reflexes, though. That's something they did in the 90's so that only kids could play shit that was for kids. It was a weird time that baffles you.

Oh wait, are your reflexes natural? That might be throwing it into full dark souls mode, which also had pretty crazy platforming.

pro tip: when you see the little critter walk towards you, jump on his head. youll be blown away!

Pro tip: When Yoshi is in play, use his tongue to uncover the secret.

Today's games are made for soft folks and it created mostly less than stellar gamers. Don't mean it as an insult it's just a lot of the target audience for today's games needs a certain difficulty which typically is just very easy.

I was able to wreck SMW at 8 years old and when I first started playing the Souls games I didn't think it was hard. Beat ninja gaiden black on Xbox on max difficulty for fun and to prove it wasn't impossible to a co worker who was younger than me.

Arcades that forced you to feed quarters and needing to not die to continue playing made getting good at games a necessity in the 90's. Plus playing a lot of bad games with bad controls means that once you get your hands on a good controlling game you're magically amazing. Also bad tv connections where my brother and I literally played Contra on a tv where the picture kept scrolling up and the knob to fix that was broken. Playing nes on channel 3.5 because the rf adapter was broken and just channel 3 or 4 would not show it so we had this weird ghost like image of the system. XD

Just different times I guess but yeah SMW is not hard at all in any way shape or form it's just you. :(

I thought it was significantly easier than Mario 3 and especially 1. Probably easier than 2 as well, altough I generally knew the warp routes to make that one simple. I think I beat World on my third try when I first played it, which for NES/SNE era was pretty easy. Mega Man/Ninja Gaiden this is not.

Now I haven't played it on an HDTv so I don't know how much an issue the latency is, but Super Mario World never had a rep for being difficult to my recollection.

I will say it definitely had NES/SNES era sensibilities with checkpointing and such, so if you are used to not being penalized for falling to death in a platformer, this will feel a lot harder than what you are accustomed to.

@laxbro19: It was just as hard the first time we all played it, you learn the feel for it like riding a bike. The first Tony Hawk game I played like Skate3, doing a few basic kick-flips and getting 800 points in a round. A year later I was glitching into the invisible geometry of the sky to pull off infinite combos floating in air.

I mean, it's probably the easiest Mario game to be honest (or maybe that's Mario 64 actually)

Seems very odd to me, the first level of Super Mario World is basically a tutorial so I find it hard to believe you died over and over.

Have you never played any platformer before? As a 21 year old? No Mario, metroid, Rayman, mega man, countless licensed games...

Pro tip: In world 5, spin the controller clockwise, gingerly. Never stop spining the controller, no matter how much Mario asks you not to.

Pro tip: are you in world 6? Are you still spinning it? Good, good. You have accended.

You die a lot in Mario games. People forget that.

This. Latency is only a factor for reaction-based games which this is NOT...everything is telegraphed so playing well just means getting a good grasp on how Mario moves. I'm baffled at how the first level could be a problem though (I mean, sure I've run into the first Goomba in Super Mario Bros 1-1, but not repeatedly). The only thing I can come up with is that OP is overthinking things? Like, trying to speedrun-before-he-can-walk or something like that.

Dude. What a fascinating comment.

As other's have said, Super Mario World is about the easiest of the pre-64 Mario games. I would say that only Super Mario Brothers 2 USA is easier, and that's mostly because of the warps.

I would say that you simply aren't used to the way games used to be. It's not exaggerating to say that video games used to be an entirely different hobby. The point was different. I frequently relate them to drugs. Vide games today are "downers". It's not uncommon to hear people say "When I come home after a long day of work, I want to shut off my brain, pick up a videogame and not think for a few hours.". That's 100% not what games were about in the NES and SNES era. Those games were "uppers". They frequently advertised 'challenge" right on the box. In fact the NES was called the "Challenge Set". The point of games was to get you to overcome a challenge. Verbs used to sell games were, "insane", "crazy", impossible", etc.

When video games became about "story" (movie clips showing you plot), difficult became a hindrance to the next plot point. So, games got easier and easier. In The Legend of Zelda, there was no hurry to get to the next dungeon because all there was, was more dungeon. What this means, though, is that "carrot on a stick" gameplay doesn't exist. You're not merely pounding out the same receptive task only to see "what happens next". NES and SNES gameplay is all "in the moment" because that's all there is.

They were INCREDIBLY fun.

:

IT's frustrating. Instead of Dark Souls becoming known for bringing back deliberate gameplay that forces you to pay attention, it's known for a VERY SPECIFIC set of concepts, one of which being "not telling you what you are supposed to do or where you are going". Then people say "that's the way games used to be."

No, Dark Souls is it's own thing. Very little of it has anything to do with the games used to be, aside from the fact that the gameplay is deliberate and not button-mashy. Button Mashy gameplay in action games is what developers settled on in order to get past not being able to figure out 3d cameras. (If the player thrashes around in 360 degrees and always snaps to the enemy... we don't have to give the player enough control to know what they are doing! Fixed!)

There are parts of SMW that were hard then (Tubular) and remain so now. Don't get me wrong, I 96'd the game probably ten times over, but there was always a challenge to the completion of it. The secret exits/secret levels kinda represent what green stars and epilogues are in the recent games.

Huh. Well, I can confirm that I don't think Super Mario World is especially hard outside of maybe the last two worlds and the Special world stuff. Maybe it's just a matter of getting used to how it's designed? Or maybe making sure your SNES controllers work properly? I don't want to sound condescending, but between Mario Bros 1, 3 and World, World is the easiest by a decent margin.

Thanks to everybody who wrote in. The issue is that I'm just dying on bullshit enemies and not making jumps with enough speed. I probably shouldn't have made the Dark Souls comparison but it certainly asks way more of you in terms of exacting pretty complex timing compared to newer Mario games. those are actually for babies in terms of difficulty. Getting through those is trivial if you every played a game. I guess Super Mario World just asks way more of you then Mario does now and I wasn't prepared for that. FYI I got that game in the mail yesterday and maybe sat down with it for an hour and a half, so maybe it gets more fun.

Hrm.. are you holding Y to run? Are you hitting '?' blocks to pick up mushrooms and stuff? It reeeeaally shouldn't be as hard as you're making it out to be.

@laxbro19: Are you holding Y to run? Literally never take your finger off the Y button, even when jumping.

If you are playing with a keyboard that game is close to impossible IMO, this is coming from a 33 year old who has beaten that game dozens of times. If you are playing with a SNES controller the platforming is all about muscle memory, you'll get used to it. The puzzle solving if you try to 96 the game is the hardest part. It's super fascinating to see kids/younger adults having trouble with games like this. It gives good perspective for how much games have changed through the years. I mean I would make fun of you but I'm sure you could kick my ass in just about any shooter (a genre that has taken me a decade just to feel not-completely-incompetent with)

I thought Super Mario World was actually easier than the games that came before it. Super Mario 3 was tough but fun. For people that never played them before they can be difficult at first. I remember playing the original Super Mario Bros for the first time. I was moving my arms when he jumped and the first goomba killed me many times.

ive played the game fairly consistantly for 20 years so I coudlnt tell you if its hard or not anymore.

Id say its easier than mario 3.

the last world has some challenge to it though.

@jeust: Those games are so good though!

The only thing that might be making SMW harder is playing it on a HDTV, but even then I don't think the lag introduced is significant enough to make it difficult. It's not a very difficult game. It's not a cake walk either, but it's certainly not a hard game or regarded as a particularly difficult game.