So, I had the random urge this morning to play Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo. I decided to go to sleep instead, but then I remembered later in the day, so I decided to play.
For some reason that I cannot recall, I have two cartridges of Super Mario World. (I think I borrowed one from a friend and never gave it back, but I don’t know.) Not only do I have two copies, but they do not look the same. One has the title centered on the top, while the other has it left aligned. The former also has a larger Mario + Yoshi image than the latter.
I did some brief investigating, with the knowledge that every part from Nintendo is numbered. (It’s actually quite interesting: the GameCube parts start with DOL [Dolphin] and the Wii parts start with RVL [Revolution], the code names for each respective system.) The numbering system gives you some insight into the production order of each part: 001 is always the system, 002 is the power adaptor, 006 is the game; the controller for SNES is 005, but 003 for the Wii—and the Wii remote cover is 023. Anyway, each game also gets an ID, but using letters instead of numbers (with a suffix such as USA, CAN, or JPN to indicate the market).
I tell you all this because there is another difference between the two cartridges. The first one I mentioned is SNS-MW-USA. The second one I mentioned is SNS-MW-USA-1, which means it’s likely the newer one (and it looks it, based on the cartridge and label designs).
For whatever reason, I chose to play the older one. So, I get into the first level (Yoshi’s Island 1 or whatever the level before the Yellow Switch is), and I’m going after the Yoshi coin above the slanted columns, and I kept missing. Meanwhile, there are the Rexes that I have to keep dealing with. I’d already squished one half-way, and then I started walking behind it towards the Yoshi coin, when all of a sudden, we both fall through the floor. And then some sort of boss music starts playing (possibly the Bowser music from the end battle). That goes on for a while, with a black screen. While I’m tweeting about (yeah, I know), there is some sort of ding sound (I don’t know how else to describe it) and the music stops. And then glitchy graphics appear at the top of the screen. (I recall some sort of star-shaped box mixed in with the mostly-unidentifiable colored glitch boxes.) I try pressing buttons, but nothing spectacular happens, except that the graphics start blinking. After a while, I want to go back to playing, so I reset the game.
Unfortunately, there might actually be something wrong with the cartridge, since (after I finally got the game working again—these cartridge systems are temperamental) it glitched at the title screen, too. So I switched to the newer cartridge and I didn’t have a problem.
Yeah, this long post for that small little glitch. Maybe I don’t have Tumblr understood as much as I’d hoped, because I don’t recall ever seeing a post this long on here before….
