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YMMV / Super Mario World

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For tropes related to the 1991 cartoon, go here.

  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • Does Mario callously let Yoshi fall into the pit just to make a higher jump? Or is Yoshi throwing Mario off him, providing a Heroic Sacrifice?
    • Discrepancies between in-game sprites and official artwork depicting Yoshi sticking his tongue out as Mario rides him have led to people either thinking that Mario punches Yoshi in the back of the head or he simply points to get Yoshi to follow his commands. Word of God technically gives credit to both; punching was the original intention, but the development team decided this was too mean and made it so that Mario points instead.
  • Awesome Boss: The final battle against Bowser is sufficiently epic and a big leap from the battles in previous entries. Unlike the previous encounters, Bowser can't be cheesed with a bridge axe or just letting him fall through the floor. Beating Bowser this time requires skill and timing.
  • Best Level Ever: The Sunken Ghost Ship is well-regarded by many as one of the best SMW levels and 2D Mario levels overall. Primarily because its fans believe that the sunken airship theme and the free fall section grabbing stars at the end make it unique. It's also confirmed to be a sunken airship from the similarly fan favorite levels from Super Mario Bros. 3.
  • Breather Level:
    • Chocolate Island 5 is much easier than the levels both preceding it and following it, being short, containing few enemies, and only a few, easy platforming sections.
    • The Star World itself is a friendly world compared to the regular worlds it's connected to, as all of the levels except for Star World 5 are reasonably easy, with secret exits that aren't too difficult to reach. This, of course, leads to the Special World.
    • The first Special World level, Gnarly, is much easier than the Nintendo Hard Star World 5 and That One Level Tubular that follows it. It's very short, with only five easy-to-handle enemies (the only ones that might be a little challenging don't get to stay on screen for very long).
    • The secret level Groovy is preceded by Tubular, Way Cool, and Awesome. Groovy itself is an easy grass land level which is even featured on the title screen with the only hazards being the baseball-throwing Chargin' Chucks and Pokeys, the latter of which which Yoshi can eat. This is the reason why the level was chosen to serve as the main title's demo — and as the Ground theme for Super Mario Maker.
    • Funky, the last level of the Special World, is a step down from Outrageous in terms of difficulty. The only real hazards are the tight time limit (which Yoshi can extend by eating green berries) and the Sumo Bros.
  • Broken Base: While the Super Mario Advance 2 Updated Re-release is widely agreed to hold up extremely well in terms of gameplay and graphics, the remixed soundtrack is pretty divisive, with opinions ranging all the way from considering it even better than the SNES original, to a complete butchery on par with the soundtrack to the Sega 32X version of Doom.
  • Come for the Game, Stay for the Mods: While SMW is often remembered, the game has literally over 20,000 ROM hacks made for it over the course of 25 years, over 15,000 custom songs and hundreds of custom bosses. This resulted in many Fanwork-Only Fans who haven't touched vanilla SMW but play the game's many, many ROM hacks.
  • Common Knowledge: There was a myth within the classic Mario fandom speculating that the Big Boo fought at the end of the secret ghost house is King Boo before his Mook Promotion, despite no official evidence confirming nor denying such accusations. This myth still persists to this day.
  • Contested Sequel: Asking other fans whether or not Super Mario World is an Even Better Sequel than Super Mario Bros. 3 will get you a variety of answers. Fans of 3 cite the more plentiful power ups, slightly smoother controls, higher number of levels (90 versus 73) and the addition of Airship levels (absent in World). World fans prefer its smoother level of difficulty, longer levels, availability of secret exits, item storage, and a fully featured World Map, addition of Ghost House levels, addition of a save system (at least until it was added to the Super Mario All-Stars version of 3), a preference of Cape Mario over Raccoon Mario, and the introduction of Yoshi. Most will admit to enjoying both, however.
  • Demonic Spiders:
    • Magikoopas — with their ability to cast aimed and very hard-to-avoid projectiles, appear in inconvenient spots, and respawn — are one of the most dangerous enemies in the game. This is especially evident in ROM Hacks where they are inserted in Auto-Scrolling Levels and block-oriented puzzles.
    • Fishin' Boo. His flame's animation is a bit sloppy meaning it sort of teleports across the screen, meaning it can easily hit you when you wouldn't expect it to. Thankfully, there's only one in the entire game. However, he tends to be used rather frequently in ROM hacks, especially Kaizo hacks.
    • The Chargin' Chucks. Even when you're on Yoshi (who can kill a lot of enemies in one hit) they take three hits. After every hit you're thrown right off of them and into their path as they try to charge you, giving very little time to recover. Oh, and they can use a wide variety of tactics against you as well, from kicking footballs, to throwing baseballs, to splitting into three Chucks. Have fun.
    • Fire Snakes make their return from 3, but whereas they were merely Goddamned Bats in that game, they're now the lead contributing factor as to why Outrageous is That One Level. While they still jump in a curved arc, there's two factors that make them frustratingly dangerous. One, they leave behind a small spark when they jump, which, unlike them, are unable to be destroyed before going away after 5 seconds. Two, they're obscured by trees in the foreground, which makes spotting them or their more dangerous sparks incredibly difficult. While like Fishin' Boo, they only appear for one level, unlike Fishin' Boo, they're littered all throughout Outrageous in tandem with other enemies.
  • Disappointing Last Level: Bowser's Castle is likely to be a letdown in difficulty after all the fortresses encountered earlier. There is a choice of eight different doors to take through the castle, each with its own unique challenges, but you only need to pick two of the eight gauntlets (A choice of doors 1-4 followed by 5-8), which greatly reduces how difficult things could be. Even if you pick the hardest paths, they are not as demanding as what you've already seen in the game. Becomes even more so if you complete the Valley Fortress and enter through the Back Door, skipping the gauntlet section altogether and starting on the relatively easy final stretch before Bowser's boss doors. Even Larry's Castle before the regular entrance is more likely to give players difficulty. The Final Boss is a different story however.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Chargin' Chucks, who only appeared in this game and Yoshi's Safari, but eventually proved popular enough to finally make a reappearance in Super Mario 3D World and become regular in the series from that point onwards, even making playable appearences in Mario Golf Super Rush and Mario Kart Tour.
  • Fan Nickname:
    • raocow has called Charging Chuck and Yoshi "Football Charlie" and "Stupid Horse", respectively.
    • TheRealNinjaBoy refers to Chargin' Chuck as any combination of the words "Mr. Charlie Man Jones."
    • GameFAQs' LUE board uses the very box image of the game as its god. They also refer to Yoshi as LUEshi instead. They even have their own mod, if you're wondering.
    • The flashing, berserking shell created when a yellow Koopa jumps into a Koopa shell is typically called a "disco shell" due to it flashing through several colors as it spins at you.
    • Until Super Mario 3D World named them "Galoombas", most people referred to this game's Goombas by their Japanese name, Kuribons.
    • Gray P-Switches are often called Silver P-Switches instead.
    • The act of performing a frame-perfect jump off of one of the large switches at the end of a Switch Palace is referred to as a "Yump" by the game's speedrunners and romhackers.
  • Fandom-Enraging Misconception:
    • This game is Super Mario Bros. 4, so don't ask Nintendo to make one. Got it? Game mods with that name can cause similar reactions, too, unless the mod in question is an intended Mythology Gag to the Japanese name.
    • When Yoshi sticks his tongue out, Mario is pointing, not punching him in the back of the head. It gets especially bad if you use this as "proof" of Mario being a sociopath.
  • First Installment Wins: The unique sprites used for Luigi in the All-Stars version (and not him being just a recolour of Mario as in the original release) are generally preferred and much more iconic and frequently used than the additional makeover his sprites got in Advance 2, being more fitting with the style of Mario's sprites as well as giving Luigi more personality. They're also preferred over his sprites in the World style of Super Mario Maker 2.
  • Game-Breaker:
    • Yoshi. While riding Yoshi, Mario can walk over or bounce off of a lot of hazards and enemies, and KO enemies that normally require a spin jump in one hit, Yoshi can grab power-ups or eat enemies with his tongue, he can take a hit from enemies in Mario's place, and by eating colored shells he can shoot fireballs, fly, or release dust clouds when he lands that damage enemies(and if he eats a flashing shell, he does all three). And, infamously, Mario can jump with Yoshi and then leap off of him in midair to do a Double Jump. Yoshi is an invaluable partner in many levels, and if you get a Blue Yoshi from the Star World, then any shell it swallows lets it fly.
    • The Cape. It lets Mario fly over many, many levels, gives him access to a spin attack that can kill or stun many enemies and flips rotating blocks, lets him slow his descent when falling, and he can do a dive bomb to damage enemies. The Spin Attack can also One-Hit Kill Chargin' Chucks. Mastery of the Cape trivializes a lot of the game's platforming.
    • The spin jump not only lets you destroy certain enemies that either require multiple jump attacks to kill or can only be incapacitated by jumping, but also allows you to safely bounce off of 90% of the ones that would hurt you if you hit them with a regular jump, with the only tradeoff being a reduced jump height. The move is so powerful that many ROMhacks that go into altering the mechanics of the game end up disabling it entirely.
    • If you quit a previously completed level, you are allowed to keep whichever items you currently have. This means players can return to the early levels, play through them until they acquire both Yoshi and a power-up, then leave through the pause screen, causing Mario to return to the world map with everything needed to progress through the game. Most subsequent Mario games would address this exploit by reverting everything back to the state it was in before you entered the level.
    • The same method can allow you to exit out a level moments before death, which is useful for going for some of the riskier secret exits. But also similar is that later games address this by disabling the quit feature if you weren't on steady ground.
    • If you found the secret exit from Donut Ghost House, congratulations - the Top Secret Area gives you free Fire Flower and Cape power-ups any time you need them, has a Yoshi egg, and the Donut Ghost House secret exit is accessed right from the start of the level and has four 1-ups at the end. You essentially now have infinite lives and power-ups as long as you're willing to make the walk back.
    • Forest of Illusion 1 is probably the best source of 1-Ups outside of the Top Secret Area. If you get a Star from the item block midway through, you can run through the densely packed enemies and rack up over a dozen extra lives per run. What's best, Wigglers always give two extra lives instead of one when defeated.
    • In Super Mario Advance 2, the powerup given for Yoshi eating ten berries depends on what color Yoshi is, and what color Yoshi is coming out of an egg depends on which powerup Mario currently has, as long as you've acquired that colored Yoshi in the Star World (though this aspect is possible in the original as well). Red Yoshi correlates to Fire Mario, Yellow Yoshi correlates to a Super Star and small Mario, respectively, and Blue Yoshi correlates to Cape Mario. This creates a self-renewing cycle of game breakage, as Cape Mario can get a Blue Yoshi from any block that contains a Yoshi egg, and Mario riding a Blue Yoshi can get a free Cape feather as long as the level has berries for Yoshi to eat.
    • Luigi in Super Mario Advance 2 is far more broken than in any other 2D Mario game. Combine the floatiness of his jumps from Super Mario Bros. 2 with the tighter control and higher jumps in general of this game, and platforming is completely trivialized even without the cape. Yoshi's exclusive ability with Luigi to spit out enemies rather than swallow them allows you kill things that Mario otherwise either can't harm or has great difficulty dealing with.
    • Just like in the Western version of Super Mario Bros. 3, getting hit as Fire or Cape Mario in Super Mario Advance 2 only causes Mario to regress one stage to Super Mario. This means that Mario (or Luigi) can sustain up to four hit points.
    • Starmen are much more broken than in the first three (or five) games. The length of their effect lasts for double the amount of time from previous installments, and they're often found in areas where there are groups of enemies, making farming for 1-Ups a piece of cake. It's for this reason that Starmen are much less plentiful in this game than they originally were, especially compared to Super Mario Bros. 3.
  • Goddamned Bats:
    • Rip Van Fishes aren't particularly hard to deal with, as they have a fixed acceleration speed and can be easily taken out by a Fire Flower, Cape Feather, Yoshi, Ice Block, or Starman, but place three or more in one area, and they're suddenly an obnoxious roadblock that can be dealt with, but are frustrating all the same. They're especially bad in Forest of Illusion 2, where a Chargin' Chuck can wake every Rip Van Fish up in its vicinity, and Star World 2, where they're horizontally aligned amidst a tight corridor.
    • Mega Moles are very easy to defeat, as a Cape Feather, Ice Block, or Yoshi can easily get them out of your way. Predicting when they'll pop up is another story altogether, as they have a frustrating combination of being found in tight corridors and running towards you at incredibly fast speeds, so unless you're holding an Ice Block, you'll end up losing the Cape Feather or Yoshi if you're not quick on the draw against Mega Moles.
  • Good Bad Bugs:
    • The Wiggler glitch in Forest of Illusion 1 makes Scoring Points ridiculously easy in the SNES version. Although the points cap is significantly lower, as there's one less digit allocated to the score display.
    • Big Boos, Big Bubbles, and Grinders are invincible to every attack you can throw at them... except for sliding on a slope.
    • If you use the screen adjustment controls (L and R buttons) it can cause some enemies and obstacles to appear earlier than normal and use direct attacks when you're not up to them yet. This allows the brown spikes in Vanilla Fortress and Roy's Castle to drop down and not be any issue well before you reach them, but on the other hand, it triggers Rip Van Fish to wake up and chase you even if you're nowhere near it.
    • The final level of the Special World has a gimmick in the form of Green Berries which increase your time by 20 when you eat them. The music speeds up whenever the time goes under 100. Combine these two things and you get music going outlandishly fast, sometimes dubbed the "Ludicrous Speed glitch". (Note that this doesn't work in Super Mario Advance 2.)
    • The fact that Mario can still die after crossing the goal posts, not to enemies, but to stage hazards, is a feature the game designers mercifully opted not to use, but readily exploited in customizable ROM Hacks. Until the Iris Out animation finishes, the victory doesn't count.
    • If you get to the secret exit of Chocolate Island 3 but cross the tape with Mario halfway off the top of the screen, then the Iris Out will scramble the color pallette. Presumably, the Mode-7 iris sprite being off screen bleeds into the CGRAM (which handles colors) which would cause the effect due to swapping values in the memory.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • Super Mario Western by Hyadain, a lyrical remix of World 1's theme featuring decidedly Gonk and skeevy depictions of Bowser and Marionote , is often used to depict love triangles — love quadrangles if one counts poor Luigi, who's depicted as being a more handsome man than his brother. A variant by Scott Falco turns everyone, including Bowser, into a Bishōnen, and Peach is even cuter.
    • Throughout the game, Mario performs various methods of destroying castles after defeating the resident Koopaling. This has led to the "Mario's Castle Calamity" meme, wherein Mario tries to demolish a Nigh-Invulnerable castle with methods that always blow up in his face.
    • Even if Luigi is the one that defeats one of the Koopalings and destroys a castle or saves Peach, Mario is still the one that gets credit for it in the text while his brother isn't mentioned at all, and Luigi only gets credited in the GBA remake. Unsurprisingly, this turns up in "Luigi gets no respect" memes.
    • Yoshi's Butt-Monkey status, usually involving dropping him into a Bottomless Pit as an improvised mid-air jump.
    • Jokes about Mickey Mouse being an enemy in the game due to the gloved hands that send out the Torpedo Teds resembling Mickey Mouse's. It sometimes gets to the point of speculating that Disney took notice and sabotaged the Super Mario Bros. (1993) movie in retaliation.
  • Memetic Psychopath: The Video Game Cruelty Potential involving Yoshi makes this game a popular target for giving Mario this status. Many jokes have been made about Mario dropping Yoshi into pits to get a boost (rarely if ever mandatory in game) or how the sprites make him look like he's punching Yoshi in the head to get him to stick out his tongue or shoot fire (while this was the original intention, it was changed in the final product to just Mario pointing as the crew decided that this would make him seem too cruel).
  • Most Wonderful Sound:
    • The wonderfully dramatic musical sting of the secret exits.
    • The iconic sound of mounting Yoshi.
    • The pronounced "bwao" sound of jumping on a Chargin' Chuck is so recognizable that it was brought back for their return in Super Mario 3D World.
    • The sound the springs and note blocks make. BREE-E-E-E-E-E!!
    • The "level complete" victory music.
    • The "skdoop" sound of Spin Jump bouncing off of things like Thwomps and Podoboos. When you chain enough stomps to get 1-Ups, this sound also gets added when you bounce off an enemy.
  • Nintendo Hard: While the early parts of the game are pretty easy, the last few worlds can get rough. The final stretch of levels in the Special Zone tend to take quite a long time, and a LOT of attempts. While it's not as outwardly malicious as Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, getting all 96 exits (and even getting all Dragon Coins as a Self-Imposed Challenge) is not an easy task.
  • Polished Port: While the GBA port — Super Mario Advance 2 — has the usual drawbacks that come with most SNES-to-GBA conversions (inferior audio, washed out colors, screen crunch, etc), it is still a very good port that improves upon the SNES original in a few ways. It adds in an intro cutscene that gives more context to the game's Excuse Plot, gives Luigi his unique physics and redesigns his sprites to be more distinctive like the All-Stars+World rerelease, while also allowing you to play as him in single player by swapping between him and Mario at anytime, fixes many of the glitches present in the original game, and adds in a few quality of life improvements that make the game more accessible, such as a modern quick save system that allows you to save anytime (as opposed to just castles and ghost houses), while also maintaining your extra lives, the ability to replay castles/fortresses at any time (something you can only do in the original game after beating Bowser), and a checklist that allows you to keep track of your progress (including the Dragon Coins you collected), amongst other improvements.
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • When you take damage with a power-up in reserve, said item is automatically dropped. This forces you to collect the power-up while potentially getting swarmed by enemies instead of allowing you to wait and drop it in a safe place, and can be unhelpful if you intend to save a power-up for a certain part of a level.
    • Mario's walking speed on the overworld map is pretty slow. It's not too noticeable if you're just moving from one level to the next, but if you're a distance away from the Top Secret Area and haven't unlocked the Star World... ooh boy, does it take a while to plod all the way there and back again.
    • The special graphics that replace the existing ones when you complete the Special World are entertaining to look at, but the replacement is permanent, which means if you want to keep the original graphics without making a new save file, you have to not complete the Special World. This got fixed in non-Virtual Console rereleases.
  • Sequel Difficulty Drop: The game is considerably easier than its predecessors, for several reasons:
    1. The ability to re-enter levels makes the supply of power-ups and extra lives unlimited. Furthermore, a previously-beaten level can be exited at any time, and the player is allowed to keep any powerups or lives they got.
    2. Both Yoshi and the cape are game-breakingly powerful compared to items in prior games.
    3. Spin-jumping allows Mario to safely bounce on many hazards, and can be performed at any time.
    4. The ability to store a reserve powerup means that the player is rarely stuck anywhere without a powerup.
    5. The Switch Palaces, when completed, neuter many of the hazards throughout the levels, turning the game into a de facto "easy mode". Furthermore, every single yellow and green Switch Palace block contains a mushroom and cape feather, respectively.
    6. Lastly, it's the first Mario game that allows the player to save their progress, making it easier to retry.
  • Signature Scene: The epic final showdown between Mario and Bowser at the end of the game.
  • Special Effect Failure: The Magikoopa's sprite in all SNES versions has incorrect shading; the parts that are supposed to be lighter are dark, and vice versa. This is fixed in the GBA port and the World style in Super Mario Maker.
  • Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • That One Level:
    • Butter Bridge 1 is incredibly hard. It's an Auto-Scrolling Level that starts at the pace of a turtle and gradually accelerates, and you have to jump around a lot more than in other levels because the mushroom platforms, which make up most of the surfaces you can stand on throughout the level, rise and sink like scales. This ratchets the difficulty so far up that it even renders the Blue Yoshi-Cape combo substantially less effective than it usually is.
    • Soda Lake easily takes the cake for being the most difficult underwater level in the game, being the only level with Torpedo Teds, which spawn endlessly, and can move much faster than Mario, at many times spawning 3 or 4 at a time. To make matters worse, while you can kill monsters like Cheep Cheeps, Rip Van Fishes and even the Urchins, the Torpedo Teds are completely invincible. Just getting to the level is no small feat either, requiring you to either be very good at cape flight or be willing to sacrifice your Yoshi in order to reach the secret exit in Cheese Bridge Area.
    • Forest of Illusion 2 is a slog to get through, as not only are the swimming physics slower than they are in the original game or Super Mario Bros. 3, but the entire level consists of tight corridors that require either stopping and starting to make room for the Urchins, making a mad dash to avoid the Rip Van Fishes, or getting caught between the two and having to tank the damage. It doesn't help that the level has to be played twice in order to unlock the Blue Switch Palace, and as if to add insult to injury, the final hurdle consists of an onslaught of Rip Van Fishes that are all simultaneously woken up by a Chargin' Chuck.
    • Castle #6, Wendy's Castle. Near its mid-level checkpoint you have to pass through three fast moving Skewers, and the room for mistakes here is small since mistiming your dodge basically means death as Skewers behave as walls in this game and thus can One-Hit Kill you if you get crushed by them. The worst part is that dying there means you'll have to re-do the level all over again since it's right before the checkpoint. What's more is that unused within the game is actually a version of this very level that's harder than the final version, meaning what the final game has is slightly easier, if still difficult.
    • Sunken Ghost Ship, the final level before the Valley of Bowser. The section with Boos randomly appearing out of nowhere is quite frustrating, even when you realize that if you stay in one place, they can't get you.
    • Valley of Bowser 1, much like Forest of Illusion 2, is subject to massive annoyance due to how many tight corridors there are. However, instead of stopping and starting, the player instead has to deal with barrages of Mega Moles and Chargin' Chucks that barrel their way towards you, and are even harder to avoid if the Switch Palaces haven't been found. Oftentimes, two Mega Moles or Chargin' Chucks will be overlaid atop one another in their effort to take down Mario, and they don't stop for anything.
    • Valley Ghost House contains a shortcut to Larry's Castle that you can access by using a Key. The problem is that you're expected to hit a question block that generates a trail of coins you control with the directional pad, form a "staircase", use a P-Switch to turn the coins into blocks, and then slide through a gap in a wall and onto the ledge where the Key is. The trail of coins is nigh-impossible to use correctly. You can't see exactly how and when to change the coin trail's direction, and you might need to dodge ghosts while also generating the coin trail, so your "staircase" might not even line up with the ledge. Since the coin trail only appears once, you only have one chance at making the stairway per attempt at the level. Fortunately, you can also fly while ducking, or landing right on the edge of the ledge, then squeeze through the gap and take the exit.
    • The Valley Fortress is a plumber's deathtrap. It's full of skewers, and can even put Wendy's Fortress to shame with the strict timings and lack of a checkpoint. The final section, where you need to hop over lava at the right moment to be able to avoid them is really hard to time, even with a cape. Jump too early, and Mario will run into one, fall and die; jump too late, and Mario will get crushed. And if that's not bad enough, it's the only Fortress in the game that doesn't have a mercy power-up outside Reznor's door. Again, there are no checkpoints, so you do it all in one go. The difficulty can easily rival the hardest of the Special Stages. It's potentially justified, since the Fortress guards Bowser's back door.
    • Castle #7, Larry's Castle, is extremely frustrating. The first section has Mario on a Snake Block, much like Roy's Castle... only this time, precision platforming is required to keep up with it, and you have to weave through spinning spike balls the entire time. The Snake Block also wastes a massive amount of time going around the first chamber, and you can't proceed without it unless you're very good with a Cape. That lost time is a huge problem in the next chamber, which is full of Magikoopas. If you don't have the Cape, you need to outlast them and their projectiles as you pray they hit the walls of blocks preventing you from progressing further, costing you even more time. There is a checkpoint between these two areas, but it's in a location you'd never think to look: at the bottom of the pit at the end of the Snake Block section. If you don't manage to find it, you have to do the entire thing in one go.
    • Special World is full of them.
      • Tubular (course 2) is a notorious example. The entire stage is basically making it across a giant pit with the Power Balloon Power-Up, except you need to actually stop and hit certain blocks to find more balloons, or else you're not gonna make it in time. On top of that, thanks to this, you're basically a One-Hit-Point Wonder, and you have to make it through fairly difficult attack patterns to hit said blocks. (Unless you can pull off the Power Balloon glitch (holding left and right at the same time, which is easy for ROMs but damn near impossible for an SNES D-Pad), which makes the level easy as cake.)
      • Way Cool (course 3). The first half has you riding a platform through a maze of rails with plenty of Fuzzies and on/off switch blocks, with a wrong choice potentially sending you plunging to your doom. The second half has you riding on a rope on a rail, while avoiding more Fuzzies. There's an Easy Level Trick to bypass the second half by having Yoshi collect the wings midway through the level, but good luck making it that far.
      • Awesome (course 4) is no slouch, either. A run across a slippery ice world with kicker Koopas sending shells at you every step of the way, followed by a platforming sequence over equally slippy narrow platforms with Banzai Bills, infinite flying fish, and finally a jump boost off a flying Koopa to another slippery platform to jump a decent distance to the exit pipe. It's worth noting that the official strategy guide outright called Awesome the hardest level in the game.
      • Outrageous (course 7) is a course that definitely lives up to its name, as Mario must run a relentless gauntlet of Wigglers, Amazing Flyin' Hammer Brothers, Jumping Piranha Plants, Bill Blasters, pipes that require springboards to jump over (said springboards needing to be carried across several screens) or strategically jumping off of Bullet Bills, and various other hazards.
  • Tough Act to Follow: As far as 2D Mario titles go, World is widely regarded to be the best by critics and fans, with many feeling that none of Mario's future 2D adventures — such as Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins and the New Super Mario Bros. series — have come close to living up to World's gameplay, mechanics, and level design (though the majority are generally well-regarded titles in their own right). Even the developers have acknowledged this in interviews, admitting that the reason why they shifted away from Mario to focus on Yoshi in the game's follow-up note  was that they had done all they wanted to do at the time with the 2D Mario gameplay with World and wanted to do something different instead.
  • Underused Game Mechanic:
    • Some of the Special World levels have unique mechanics that don't show up anywhere else in the game, such as the rising and falling tide in Mondo, or the berries that add to the time limit in Funky.
    • The Switch Palaces tend to be used to simply make the game easier which can be counter-intuitive considering the difficulty of finding three of them, and also to make some secret paths more accessible. However, the idea of using Switch Palaces to open up access to new paths (or even open up more challenging alternate routes within levels) wasn't used as much it could have been, while skillful use of the Cape can even bypass the need to find a Switch Palace in some cases. Fortunately, rom hacks are one means of playing with features like this.
    • Chocolate Island 2 has a quirk where depending on various factors (regular/dragon coins gathered, time remaining), the pipes will take you to separate areas, meaning that there are 8 different variations across 3 different areas of how the level can play out. Not only does this mechanic never show up again in this game, it never shows up again in any Mario game. While certainly unique, not that anybody really minds, and for good reason.
  • Unintentional Period Piece: The English names of the levels in the Special Zone make it pretty clear the game is a product of the late eighties and early nineties, as they go by Totally Radical names like "Gnarly", "Tubular", "Groovy", "Way Cool", and "Mondo", amongst others. This is particularly unusual, given that the Mario series usually avoids falling into this territory (and the rest of the game doesn't use such terminology).
  • Woolseyism:
    • The flavor text that appears after Mario defeats a Koopaling was originally uniform and didn't even list the specific Koopaling by name. Their names being mentioned as well as implied character traits (Wendy apparently liking to sing, Ludwig doing symphonies, and Iggy being demented) were added in by the NOA localizers.
    • In the original Japanese, the level names in the Special World were much different, with there being four names which were each used for two consecutive courses. Other languages give them more unique names, like the USA version's penchant for 80s slang and the German version's use of adjectives that start with the letter "E".

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