Basically, when under development, Shigeru Miyamoto and his team instead decided to "port" Super Mario Bros. 3 to the Super Nintendo, and then work from there as a template from what I understand. Images for this were as early as 1989, and 1990, with the final product taking shape by 1991.

In 1991, the game was released and was a smash hit, I consider this the peak before the decline of Mario Mania (1988-1994) - this game and Super Mario Bros. 3 were the summit of the series, and then it all sort of declinded a bit and plateaued from there.

Super Mario World was a departure. Princess Peach/Toadstool was once again held captive by Bowser Koopa, and protected by his 7 Koopa Kids hiding in various fortresses around the place called "Dinosaur Land". So rather than the Mushroom Kingdom, we were in a new place. This was mostly to revovle around one of Shigeru's longtime goals as a dev - getting Mario to ride a dinosaur. This idea went all the way back to the first Super Mario Bros. game in 1985, but the tech was not there yet, until this game.

Going into this, Mario was everywhere, we had a new cartoon (Super Mario World), we had new march (like that wrist watch with a Mario game in it), business as usual. But unlike Mario 3, which was a huge thing, it sort of petered out early - because then came the bowl cuts, the flannel, the teenage angst, and the glorification of mental illness and substance abuse - yeppers, we were teenagers. I was studying Nirvana and learning to play the guitar. Now instead of spending my nights playing SUper Nintendo in lieu of homework, I was spending my nights playing GUITAR instead of homework. If you ever wondered why the "misc" section is so piecemeal, this is the best explaination, this is all the random s*** I got into right before I quit being a "gamer" and became a musician.

And part and parcel of that change is you don't find any of the "kid stuff" interesting anymore, instead, you find it creepy you're even looking at it. Video Games change from this all-time consuming thting that you are obsessed with, into a past-time - THAT is where gaming maturity comes from.

Anyway, back to the game. I first got to play this with two Israeli kids - Jeremy and Octaw (SP?) who lived near my friend in the townhouses next door to my sister's collegate neighborhood. We'd hang out and play this. Then Jonathan got one for Christmas. I liked it so I w anted one. So I went in halfsies on my 10th birthday for a Super Nintendo - which came with a rebate for Super Mario All-Stars for free as a second game. IIRC, I think I put in more than half, around $154 - the most money I'd ever had in my life up to that point, and then mom filled in the rest for my birthday.

I remember getting quite good at this one pretty fast, but of course I already had a head start at my friend's houses in Auburn. So I used to play this a lot. A ton actuually, so much that when I came back to it last year on my Wii, I was quite shocked how many "secrets" I still remembered from my 10 year old brain almost 30 years ago.