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This is a wonderful hack that starts out with a nice, sunny day, but has you questioning your own sanity by the end. In the very beginning, you're running through the Mushroom Kingdom with lovely orange rock beneath you; bold, blue skies up above; and a cheerful sendoff by numerous mushroom retainers. The underground soon thereafter is lovely, looking much darker than before, and sporting some of the most lovely dark greens that the NES has to offer. You'll encounter white and light blue pipes, lots of pretty vistas on bridges, and some great cloud platforms.

As you get deeper into the game, things start to get weird. You notice mushroom retainers just hanging out in the castles. Are they prisoners, staring at you with sad eyes? You'll find a pipe that warps you to night? Just little things here and there to make you do a double take, at first. By the time you reach World 7, everything is dark gray. Now, this already felt like playing Super Mario Bros. for the first time all over again, but once I got here, I'd thought that I'd blacked out and popped in Wrecking Crew or something; it really captures the spirit of the early NES. Not only that, but it creates a simultaneously oppressive atmosphere; there was a dark area with lots of gray in the base game, but the next 2 worlds are sunny; here, it just never gets light again. World 8 is just one big castle broken into 4 stages, which is a neat idea that reminds me a little of Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. This is where Bowsers attack you at almost every turn, and if you kill them with fireballs, you'll see that they're all real Bowsers. They attack with Hammer Bros. on top of it all, but the craziest part is World 8-4. You can walk right over to the end, or you can go down the pipe to a seemingly pointless area. The princess is down there, but she blinks out of existence, making you wonder if it was all real.

I love this; it gets weird, but it's a calculated weird; you can tell that this was deliberate. If you're a fan of Super Mario Bros., early NES games, or even just strange occurrences, definitely give this one a go!

Graphics - Many of the graphics are changed, while mostly still retaining that SMB1/SMB2J feel. Some SMB2J tiles are inserted in place of their less-polished SMB1 counterparts, while other tiles seem to be completely original. Particularly nice looking are the underground areas, which are reminiscent in appearance to SMW. Graphics that aren't changed tend to at least have palette modifications, and the soft colors look first rate. I must also mention that Toad - and later, Princess Toadstool - are used as textures here, and while it looks decent enough to have Toad standing in a castle doorway in the overworld, seeing Peach just hanging out in the late castles is quite strange looking.

Level Design - The level design is the star here. If you've ever played Super Mario Bros. Special (or its excellent NES recreation, available here), you'll likely find a lot of the elements in these levels reminiscent to that - especially in the fact that the hacker uses solid blocks and ground blocks extensively to shape the environment in a way that Nintendo barely did back in the day. 1-2 here is a great example of that, and certainly took a lot of effort to make. Captain Gastronomicon doesn't just use a ton of blocks for the sake of placing a ton of blocks - they all seem to serve an environment-building and aesthetic purpose. Look out for the trap in 1-2 for players who like to run on the top of underground segments - neat work.

Additionally, this hack makes great use of bridges and moving platforms of all kinds. Assets from the original game are used in new ways that make the game aesthetically prettier and more fresh. World 4 sees Mario jumping in the clouds, and other levels play on the fact that the brick texture can blend in with the castles. Very nice. Bonus coin-collecting areas accessed via pipe are longer and more involved here. Again, reminiscent of SMW.

Enemy placement is nice as well, and I especially liked the use of the "flying" Cheep Cheeps in an underwater level. This hack also has Piranha Plants that pop out of the ground on various levels, but it never feels unfair. The levels here aren't super hard, but aren't super easy.. you'll be happy the early levels are generous with 1Ups, but you probably won't be pulling out your hair over the difficulty either. Most of the hack is fair challenge, and on par with the original game's level of difficulty. There are a couple of trap blocks (hidden blocks that exist to knock the player into a hole) on 4-2 and 4-3 however, and I don't see how that sort of thing can appeal to anyone but the creator of the hack.

I'll also note that you can jump over the flagpole in many levels, including 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, 4-2, 6-1, and 6-3. This can be seen as a flaw, or an addition to the challenge - however you want to look at it, I suppose. Overall, the level design is mostly very competent and fair, nearly feeling like a licensed Nintendo product. Having been looking for a hack that matches this quality, I must say this is about as close as you can get.

Bugs - Unfortunately, this is indeed a problem here, and a glowing one at that. It can range from mistakes in enemy and platform placement (the amount of enemies on each level fluctuated on repeated plays), to graphical bugs, to slowdown, to complete freezes. These issues plagued the middle portion of the game for me, having been nonexistent toward the beginning, and smoothing out by the later levels. There was a 1Up on 4-2 that disappeared every single time, and on three different emulators (Nestopia, FCEUX, and Higan). The second digit in 3-3 and 3-4 (as well as 6-3 and 6-4) was corrupted on every play, and I experienced some odd moments in which the graphics completely garbled at the middle of a level, only for the problem to fix itself after I proceed a bit. The game also froze after 3-2 on my first play (w/FCEUX) but I only had this issue once.

Bowser appearances caused the game to slow down numerous times, and there is a specific moment in 3-2 where Bowser shows up randomly mid-level and I couldn't tell if he was supposed to be there or not because he disappeared all but one time.

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Overall, this hack is very nice in level design and aesthetic quality, but is riddled with bugs and glitches that need to be fixed.