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Wart's Invasion is an extremely unsatisfying and annoying experience. The hack is littered with tiles from a few Mario Bros games, but even those are strewn about the rooms randomly in an effort to mask the pervasive stench of terrible design shown throughout the hack.

One good thing is that this hack is pretty linear, and there is no need to bomb random spots in the floor to advance. The sprite work, while sometimes quite silly, is actually pretty nice. There is an error there even which I will get into later. But suffice it to say the hack at least has an interesting, if somewhat cluttered and unkempt look to it.

PROS

• Mairo tiles
• Interesting spritework
• Knowing you never have to play it again once it is over

CONS

• Awful design
• Repeating the same cramped and boring ideas
• Repeating the same cramped and boring ideas
• Repeating the same cramped and boring ideas
• See previous three lines

The major issue with this hack is simply just getting around the world. There are what seemed like an infinitude amount of bomb-jumps required to traverse your regular hallways and transition rooms. Literally every, single, one of them. The shootable/bombable blocks are such an annoyance and it was turned up to the extreme. You are constantly in rooms where you will be spending 5 minutes just making your way through convoluted passages filled with these blocks. That is not an exaggeration.

On top of that, the thing that might get you to play it again is messed up. After beating the game, instead of playing as Samus in her swimsuit, you play as Mario. I don't know for sure, but I am assuming that the item sprites were supposed to change to Mario things as well. (Mushrooms = Energy Tanks, Fireflowers = Missiles, and so on.) Unfortunately, this was done in reverse. Samus is picking up Fireflowers and Mushrooms, and Mario is picking up Missile Tanks and Energy Tanks. It is just another indictment of how little care seemed to go into this hack.

I cannot even begin to recommend this hack. The Mario stuff might have been fun to see, but it is much more of a chore to "play" that any enjoyment is nearly impossible to get out of it.

This is a Metroid 1 hack that places Samus in a world made up entirely of sprites from Super Mario Bros. 1, 2, and 3. As you progress through the levels the new areas will take on the characteristics of a different game. This is probably the hack's strongest feature.

Unlike the original game, this hack is almost completely linear (acknowledged by the creator in the readme) so you run almost no risk of getting lost. Any branching paths will lead to a dead-end with a power-up, at which point you'd turn around and continue on your way. Almost all of the items are in plain sight, found by simply shooting the [?] blocks you'll naturally encounter just by playing the game. The only major power-up you can truly miss is the Varia Suit (which I did, and made the final area quite a test) but you can backtrack to pick it up if you need it.

In addition to the expected platforming and shooting that takes place, you're going to be doing a lot of bomb-jumping. In fact, I'd say half of my time spent playing this game was dedicated to bomb-jumping. On the plus side, 95% of the jumps aren't all that difficult but it's the sheer number of them that wears and wears on you until you've just had enough. Only one jump made me want to pull my hair out.. Yes, I'm looking at you "Entrance to Tourian."

On the difficulty scale I'd say this is a pretty easy game. Unlike most hacks that err on the side of soul-crushing difficulty, this one just ends up becoming a bit boring. I played it on a real NES with no save-states and didn't die until the final area, which I could probably blame on the lack of Varia Suit to halve my damage. Total game time was about 3 hours with minimal health grinding until I reached Tourian.

Bottom Line: If you're a die-hard fan of Metroid 1 you may enjoy this short romp through the "Marios." Everyone else should probably pass.