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Dom Robinson reviews
Super Mario Advance 2 For
Distributed by
Nintendo
- Price: £34.99
- Players: 1-4
For the second Mario SNES installment, Super Mario Worldmakes its way to the GBA with exactly the same grace and poise the first onedid. Retro is not just “yesterday’s news”, but all the rage as Mario joins upwith Luigi, this time round, for further adventures as they visit Yoshi onhis island, but then Princess Peach goes missing and you have to rescue herfrom the Koopa King. Yes, the plot doesn’t really matter a massive deal, butwhat is important is that the action takes place over 9 worlds and 96 levels,some of which contain hidden areas.
Again, the original Mario Bros. game is included. It’s simple enough and takes place on one screen,albeit with some vertical shift as it won’t all fit on. Spiky enemies emergefrom pipes down in the sewers and you, as Mario, have to jump up and hit theplatforms when the baddies pass over you, rendering them unconscious. Run overthem next and score your points. Extra points can be collected with coins thatappear along the way.
Connected to another GBA with a link cable, you can play as both Mario and Luigiin either this classic mode, or the battle mode. Sadly, as I was just playingwith myself, the machine made a farting sound when I tried to select’multiplayer’ to see what would happen.
The main event here, though, is Super Mario World, which sees thescreen scrolling as you run from right to left, avoiding getting killed andcollecting cherries, other paraphenalia and to boost your strength with mushrooms,which act like the rings inSonic the Hedgehog.With them in your possession, getting hit by an enemy the first time won’tkill you, but the next touch may well do so you must be careful. They’ll alsoallow you to crush blocks or tougher enemies.
In this game, you can also climb aboard Yoshi and shoot his tongue out at yourenemies to swallow them whole, or press the right shoulder button to performmore powerful “spin” jumps.
As before, in addition to killing the enemy by jumping on top of them, you can eitherpick things out of the ground to chuck in their direction or snatch the shell ofone enemy and chuck at the rest. Sounds a bit unfair to them, but theydoubtlessly deserve it.
The graphics and sound on the GBA are much the same as you’d expect from theSNES original. In fact, as I understand it they’re exactly the same, which isa good thing. While playing this it made me realise I’d like to see quite afew of the Nintendo handhelds from the early 80s emulated for the GBA. Theycould be tarted up and distributed in both new and original modes with aselection of different games placed on each cartridge.
The gameplay is simple but effective here and I’ve dropped the “originality”factor, since it would mark as a zero here, but it’s the enjoyment that’s theimportant one.
SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC
PLAYABILITY
ENJOYMENT
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.