/vr/ - Retro Games

You sound gay. It's the contrast between the jubilance and that made the ghost levels, the bosses and all of Bowser stand out and hit harder. That's when Mario came into its own, and it's that contrast that would be perfected to make SM64 as perfect as it is tonally. The games before it have no tonal shifts at all, you can just enjoy a surface level of charm all throughout it while ignoring the general presentation because it's so primitive. SMW proves the SNES soundchip could evoke more from the player. And it took advantage to make you feel pure nintendo magic. Star Road isn't kiddy, it's fucking awesome, and being more charming doesn't make anything more kiddy.

I think SMW's level design is on par with SMB3's until around Chocolate Island. Every level is interesting, has novel elements, most of them have some epic, cinematic moments. Around Chocolate Island 3 or 4, the game starts to lose its appeal and levels start to recycle old ideas.

Then the last map, Valley of Bowser is just plain bad. The only exception is Valley Fortress, that was an epic level to backdoor. The rest are just meh.... they are not bad, but lack epicness, something SMB3 world 8 had. And they are more annoying than hard as well.

So overall, SMW had weaker level design than SMB3 despite the strong start and middle section.