Headscratchers / Super Mario World

• Why are some of the levels that need to beaten to get to the Back Door of Bowser's Castle harder to beat than the Front Door?
  • Bowser realised that the back door needed more security?
    • Actually, if he was really smart, he wouldn't have put in a back door at all.
  • Because the front door has two rooms of challenge to get through to reach the final corridor, and the back door goes straight to the final corridor. Maybe Bowser realised the former already is guarded enough by the castle layout itself?
  • Because the back door is a secret, bonus entrance. Secret and bonus stuff in video games tend to be rewards for doing harder things. Ergo, harder levels.
• The coins with Yoshi's face on them are referred to as "Dragon Coins", even though Yoshi is a dinosaur, not a dragon. Was this a mistranslation, or just some odd screw-up?
  • That's hard to answer for several reasons. Yoshi is practically the poster child for Dinosaurs Are Dragons, his fire-breathing and flying abilities point a bit in that direction, and the Dragon Quest types in Fortune Street call him a dragon. He's somewhere in the middle, and is best referred to as a Yoshi.
• In a few levels (most notably the first one, but there are others), the background has these extremely tall blue structures that have spots on them. What exactly are they supposed to be? I always thought they resembled skyscrapers or apartment buildings, but what on earth are these kinds of buildings doing in Dinosaur Land?
  • Very abstract snowy mountains.
• So the opening cutscene in Super Mario Advance 2 established that the Cape Feather has the power to fly across the entire island. The map of the game shows that Chocolate Island (where the final main world in the game is located) is just a flight away from the first world, Yoshi's Island. Why didn't Mario just fly across the gap and save Peach in a much shorter time?
  • That's not going to save the captive Yoshis from the koopalings now is it? The first time you get Yoshi, he mentions trying to rescue his friends.
• This page claims that each level in the Special Zone is based on one of the worlds. It specifies that Groovy is based on Donut Plains, and I'm assuming that Outrageous is based on the Forest of Illusion, but which worlds are the other six based on?
  • The fuzzies and chainsaws sequence (and the fact that you could skip the sequence with Yoshi wings) in Way Cool resembles the Cheese Bridge Area, and Funky reminds me a bit of Cookie Mountain. Gnarly's verticality reminds me of Vanilla Secret, and Tubular is like Soda Lake in being That One Level. It seems that some other levels might have been based on previous Super Mario games; for example, Mondo's changing water level is reminiscent of some of the water levels from Super Mario 3 (plus Awesome's flying cheeps are also similar to some sequences from that game).
• How does the Item Reserve Box work from an in-game perspective? From the player's perspective, it seems like the box itself is part of the interface (showing which item is in reserve) but that item will then be dropped into the game world when released, blurring the lines between interface and game world. Are Mario/Luigi aware of the box itself or, from their perspective, if a power-up is dropped from the box would it seem to appear in thin air? Is the power-up "really" sitting in the box (sort of floating above them all the time, but not able to be touched because it's out of sync with their reality until released)? Or is the box more of a visual convenience for the player but the power-up is held elsewhere and only summoned to that spot on the screen when Mario/Luigi is injured/the player presses Select?
  • In any given Mario game the plumber and his other friendly protagonists are more than capable of breaking the fourth wall, giving player instructions, describing the interface etc. So it's probably easiest to assume here that they can see the interface/HUD just as well as the player can. Kinda like how we can only assume that in certain genres, like 2D platformers, the player character is somehow capable of seeing items hidden in walls in the environment or the like, thus enabling them to break through the obstacles and collect them.

---