Game of the week: Super Mario World for SNES

If you ever owned a Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), there's a pretty good chance you've played the game Super Mario World.

How so?

Super Mario World was the game that originally came packed with the SNES when you bought the console.

And what a game it was!

Though somewhat similar to earlier two-dimensional platform games of the day (early 1990s), Super Mario World was so much more. Which should be no surprise as this was the fourth video game in the Mario franchise (not include the Donkey Kong franchise games).

The plot is fairly simple. Brothers Mario and Luigi team up with a baby dinosaur named Yoshi to help save Princess Toadstool and the other dinosaurs from the evil King Koopa Bowser.

The player picks to play either Mario or Luigi, then leads his character through maps upon maps of various lands in search of the princess and to halt Bowser and his buddies. The running through levels and jumping around that can be found in earlier games is here, but from time to time there's also the potential to fly.

At first glance, Super Mario World appears little different than earlier games in its genre, but that's simply not true for two reason. First, the worlds here are quite in depth and go on and on and on. Second, the gameplay is awesome, featuring unique foes that are challenging but not unstoppable.

Super Mario World's popularity has remained strong throughout the years. Not only has this game earned constant high ratings among critics, but it has also been re-released in different versions and has been ported to modern gaming systems.

Great games like this are why the Mario franchise keeps on going and going.

Game of the Week: Super Off Road for SNES

If you like the idea of jumping into a pickup truck and racing against some good buddies around a bumpy dirt track while avoiding bales of hay and sharp turns, have I got a video game for you.

It's called Super Off Road. And it is a-w-e-s-o-m-e!!!

Or at least the Super Nintendo version is, and that's the one I'm most familiar with, though I have played the original arcade game some, it titled Ivan "Ironman" Stewart's Super Off Road.


This is a fairly basic game. You race around a dirt track in a truck. As long as you keep winning or coming in one of the top three spots, you keep playing. If you lose, you're done.

Though basic, it's not a simple game. It'll take a while, but you have to get used to the odd physics in the game. Your truck won't always do exactly what you expect it to, especially when it's being bounced around by bumps and hills. Extra fun can be had when you use the turbo boost to give your truck that little extra something to win a race.

The graphics here are quite solid, being darn near arcade quality. The sounds, too, are quite superb and appropriate with engines running and background crowd noise.

As a nice little extra bonus, between races you can take your winning earnings and use them to spruce up your truck.

Super Off Road was popular enough that it got ported to other video game consoles of the time, the early 1990s, such as the Sega Genesis.

Game of the week: Uncharted Waters: New Horizons for SNES

In 1994, Koei released the game "Uncharted Waters: New Horizons," the second game in the company's Rekoeition. The game was released for the Super Nintendo Home Entertainment Systems as well as for some computer systems. Immediately the game began to grow in popularity, but mostly in Japan; unfortunately, the English version of this game never caught on. Which is a shame. Uncharted Waters: New Horizons deserves to be placed among the top, best SNES games of all time.

The game takes place during the age of piracy, so what can the player do in Uncharted Waters: New Horizons? The player can build up their own pirate fleet, or a fleet that hunts pirates. Or the player can perform more safe tasks such as becoming a merchant and trading goods from one sea port to another, or by sailing around the world to discover secret treasures and ancient artifacts. And when I say "sailing around the world," I really mean it. In this game you can sail to every continent, country, islands, etc., throughout the entire globe. In fact, your character can even get paid for mapping the globe.

Exploration itself can be fun, as can the trading aspects of the game, but its truly in the combat where this game shines. The player character can sail the seas looking for ships to attack, or can take part in individual duels with ship captains. The winner of the sea battles and the duels goes away with tons of treasure. The loser often doesn't go away at all because he or she is dead. And you want to avoid being dead because it will end your game.

Another interesting factor with Uncharted Waters: new Horizons is that the player has six characters to pick from to play. Each character comes with his or her own background and skills, but with some training any character can go on to have a career in any number of venues. Each character does have a plot to follow, but mostly these plots are not restrictive and the player can go on to do whatever it is they want. But still, the plots can be fun to play out.

Despite the fact this game never took off big with the English-speaking gamers, it still has a loyal, niche following. To learn more about the game and its fan base, check out the UWNH fansite.

Game of the week: SimCity for SNES

Since its original release in 1989, SimCity has been one of the most popular video games of all time. It first was created for the Commodore 64 computer, but since it has been ported to other home computers, PCs, Macintoshes and all kinds of home and handheld video game systems. There also have been numerous sequels to the original SimCity game, as well as many other games similar to or based upon SimCity.

It's easy to see why the game is so popular and down-right infectious. You work as an architect of sorts, building a city from scratch. You put down the power plants, the roads, the parks, the residential districts, industrial areas, just about everything you can think of for a city.

Over the years I've played multiple versions of SimCity, but my favorite version always has been the one for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

I think it has to do with the control scheme and the ease of use of those controls. You don't have to jump all over a keyboard or click a billion times on a mouse like you have to do with computer versions of many games. It's just you and the SNES controller. Click a button or two, move around on the screen, and you can do everything you need to do.

And maybe I always just got lucky or maybe I always had a good television screen, but for some reason the SimCity colors seemed brighter and sharper to me when I played the SNES version hooked up to my TV than when I played computer versions.

Another great thing about SimCity was it could last seemingly forever. I know there were nights back in the day when I would turn off my TV but leave my SNES on, then I'd go to bed and wake up the next day with SimCity still playing away by itself (in truth the game didn't technically play by itself, but the turns within the game would continue while I collected money and my city would grow or decline). That way, I could play the same city within the game for days and days, sometimes week.

SimCity for the SNES. Truly a classic game.