I’m starting a new thing. Every Monday I want to talk about a classic video game.

Mind you, the definition of “classic” is arguable, but as far as I’m concerned, if it a.) came out more than a couple of years ago, and b.) makes me feel all nostalgic when I think about it, it’s fair game.

Seeing as I’ve been gaming most of my life, and seeing as friends have actually made fun of me before for my propensity to wax nostalgic about old games rather than play new ones nine times out of ten, I’m sure I won’t run out of games for this feature for a loooong time.

For my inaugural edition I figured I’d go with a tried and true classic that I’m sure most of us can agree on. It’s not my favorite Mario game (Super Mario RPG & Mario Bros. 3 are probably my two faves in that category), but there is no denying… Super Mario World was amazing.

When I first got this game it came with the Super Nintendo we got for Christmas, and pretty much everyone was hooked. See, basically what this game did was take the tried and true Mario formula… and make it HUGE.

If my memory serves me correctly, when you count secret areas there are close to 100 levels packed in here. And secret levels there were galore. Secret passageways, secret bridges, secret underwater areas, and entire secret “worlds” such as Star Road or “Special”. Special included the one level that I could never beat. When I actually saw it easily done on YouTube years later, I was quite shocked. I mean, my inability to pass that level had been haunting me for years.

Now let’s change gears from secret worlds to secrets within the normal levels. In order to unlock a good number of the secret levels, you had to discover… secondary finishlines, so to speak, in the normal levels. These often came in the form of finding a key in a level and having to drag it to a keyhole. Other times it would be a second goalpost hidden away behind the first. Beating the level this way would invariably open up secret paths and more secret levels.

There were secret techniques to beat certain levels, too. The Ghost Houses were set up to be nothing but a houseful of secrets and puzzles, forcing you to think outside of the box to beat the level the normal way, much less the “secret” way. Oh, and who can forget the easy way to surpass all the angry saws in the Cheese Bridge area?

…though, I sort of think that your ability to use this technique wasn’t intentional, because you couldn’t do this anymore in the Game Boy Advance version. Poo.

You didn’t have to find all the secrets to beat Bowser, though. You could do it in under fifteen minutes from start to finish if you knew the correct path. I always loved Bowser’s castle in this game, by the way. You had a choice of “rooms” to go in and each room had some sort of different “mini-castle” in it. I thought it was a really neat and original idea (I’d certainly never seen something like that before.)

I could ramble on and on about this game forever but ultimately I think the best compliment I can give it is this: when I bought my Game Boy Advance years later and I had enough money for one game, I looked around at all the shiny new GBA games…

…and bought the port of Super Mario World.