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First off, serious props to Bandicoot for this awesome game! I was a kiddo when SMW came out and it's one of my all-time favorite games, I probably play it maybe once a year or two because even if I know all the secrets and strategies it's still a fun game. So when I realized there were hacks I was very, very interested.

I literally just finished this game. It took me about 2 1/2 weekends, but I have work, general responsibilities, and a kiddo of my own so cut me some slack :). (I think the guy who said he finished this is 90 minutes is full of it but that's just me.)

As another reviewer mentioned Bandicoot doesn't give himself enough credit for this hack. It's SMW with a serious upgrade on powers, enemies, and levels. It's hard, but not so hard that it's unenjoyable or controller-throwable. It's truly a sequel to the OG. Nintendo *wishes* they could have come up with some of this stuff!

The dialogue is funny, I loved the endings, I was frustrated as hell with finishing the Yoshi Island level until my lo-and-behold moment, lol, and the difficult but fun final race with the brambles was great.

All of the music from different games was fun, who doesn't love the Star/Super Sonic theme from Sonic 3/Sonic & Knuckles, the Touhou music was a lovely surprise and you can't go wrong with anything from DKC2! And the Pokemon theme, chef's kiss! There's other themes but these stuck out for me.

I know Bandicoot said save states may make the game unstable but as I got closer and closer to the end I admittedly went for it. Luckily this didn't hurt my game. I used several during the final battles. (And to see both endings.)

I can't gush enough about this game, I recommend it to all 90s kids like myself and to all of the retrogaming newcomers too.

It's not just here for Bowsette. This has the same amount of polish that you notice in hacks like Mario is Missing Done Right. And the variety is present even on the first world where you can run into an ambush stage that works not unlike a Beat 'em Up, where you need to defeat all the enemies on the screen for the game to scroll to the next area. The new jumps don't go to waste either, and are done in a way that's logical for anyone familiar with SMW. The secret areas are especially fun, in that they focus on underused mechanics in a puzzle-like way to get stuff as upposed to just giving you a bunch of coins.

Nothing much to say except that this work and all its details will surely feel like a dessert if you're up for some Mario time. Wonderful to see good material about Bowsette nowadays, BTW.

Been testing it for a day and only had an issue going thru the blue blocks in the blue shell zone on 1-3 and getting stuck. All good aside from that.

Give this a go and end your summer bummer now!

Cheers and kudos to the Author ✔

So I've been playing this hack during this week, and managed to finish it just today. And since I rather enjoyed myself, I wanted to do a review on it ^^

WORLD: A good map of locations is very important to a SMW game, and having varied environments and fun, running themes is important to feeling like it has its own identity rather than just a reshuffling of the main game. Each general world is pretty fun in its own way, though we got many of the staples such as the usual grass, desert, ice, sky, mountain, beach/water, pipe, and Bowser's land, though the last area is a bit of a spoiler and so I won't mention it. There is a Special world, but as Bandicoot said, you need to have 100% the game in order to get to it. The levels are designed very nicely, most of them making sense and being generally fun to play, and some of them introduce new mechanics such as needing to stay out of freezing water before Mario dies of hypothermia, having FLUDD to help with making jumps across VERY long pits, and others. My favorite, I think, was Castle 6: The Waterswitch Fort, since hitting the On/Off Blocks changed whether Mario was walking around in dry corridors or swimming through them since some passages were too high to reach. It was instantaneous switching and honestly, was both creative and kinda fun to do. All in all, the levels and the world is developed wonderfully and is fun to play, as any Mario game should be.

GAMEPLAY: Standard Mario fare, though Bandicoot has added a few tweaks here and there. There is the Wall Jump, Long Jump, and High Jump abilities added. You will NEED the Wall Jump, mostly to get secrets, but sometimes it can be useful to save yourself from falling into a pit. Long Jump is pretty easy to perform, though you need to get up to speed to use it, and it isn't used overly often. The High Jump, I really had issues getting to work, and honestly, I didn't really need it much. For the most part, these are alright, though the Wall Jump can be a little annoying to use sometimes, since once you bounce off a wall, you CANNOT do so again on that wall until your feet touch the floor or you bounce off the opposing side. As pointed out on the main page and above, you do need to 100% this game in order to get to the Special World, so that means finding EVERY secret exit and every Dragon Coin in the game. There are some levels that have the 3-Up Moons, but I don't think they're required at all, but they're tracked on the map alongside whether you've gotten the coins, secret exits, and if you've beaten the level or not. Regardless, despite the fact that attaining 100% here sounds like a monumental task, it really isn't as bad as it sounds. Most of the Dragon Coins are reasonably easy to find, as are the secret exits. Most are in fairly plain sight, many are hidden in small, out of the way corners, and only a very small handful are deviously hidden, but never are they in such an unfair way. Best hint? Pay very close attention to your surroundings and you should find them. There is a hint shortly into the game that gives a very helpful clue as to mechanics regarding how the Dragon Coins are found (either all before or all after the mid-point), so you'd do well to keep it in mind.

CHALLENGE: About average. For the most part, most of this game is just about as challenging as most Mario games out there are, though I will say that the difficulty starts to spike around World 8, when more enemies spit fireballs than usual, or leave trails of flame behind that will hurt you. Otherwise, I think most average gamers can get into this and do well. One helpful tweak that does make the game easier is that falling into pits doesn't immediately kill you, but rather cause you to take damage and then fling you out of it, HOPEFULLY to safety. You will die if you can't escape it, but it feels more like a damaging hazard than an instant-death thing. I will say though that despite what I mentioned above, one thing that I'm not overly fond of is that the castles also have coins required for the Special World, but beating the castle destroys it and thus, prevents you from replaying the level. As a result, you MUST acquire all the coins before you beat the castle, or you may lock yourself out of the Special World. Granted, I'm not sure if there's a failsafe for this, but it is something I noticed.

STORY: There actually is one! Though just to clarify: Do I think Bowsette memes are dumb? Yes. Do I even know where it came from? No, I'm just an ignorant gamer :P Does this game do a good job of incorporating it without making it sound too stupid? YES actually. This is actually the best part of the game. Basically, Bowser stole the Super Crown from Toadette, has turned into Bowsette, and Mario has to set out to stop him...er, her. Thing is, and what's actually funny about it, is that nobody has a CLUE what's going on, and their reactions to him....er, her, is actually pretty hilarious. I will say, it's a LITTLE...frustrating...trying to keep up sometimes since the grammer isn't very good, though I'm not sure if that's due to poor English on Bandicoot's part or if English isn't their first language at all. It's a minor nitpick, but you can still enjoy the story, I believe. And you should play this game for that in itself because it made me laugh quite a bit.

MY RATING: 8.75/10 Okay, so I got a few nitpicky things about this. 460 Dragon Coins to find is a LOT of work, though granted many are pretty easy to find, yet if you don't find them all in one go then you do have to start over. Possibly losing out on them in the castles can be frustrating as well. And the grammar is....just really bad in some places. Not everywhere, but some places. But for taking a dumb meme and making an actual FUN game out of it, I quite enjoy that. The levels are fun to play, most of the new mechanics work pretty well, and some level gimmicks are both creative and entertaining to work with, so I highly recommend giving this a go because I'm sure you'll enjoy it if you're looking for a new SMW experience.

EDIT - 1/21/20 Okay, so Bandicoot messaged me and told me that there actually IS a way to replay the castle levels, so there is a failsafe to prevent you losing out on the 5 Dragon Coins in those levels. Apparently it's by pressing L+R and B. Granted, the castle coins are some of the easier to find, but this is still helpful. He mentioned he may add a hint box in an update to explain this to those who don't know. Thanks for clarifying that, man!

I've only made it through the first world so far but I had to come back here and give props to the author. This is a great conversion and was obviously made with love and attention to detail. The levels are designed well and the game is very fun to play. This will surely land on "best SNES ROM hacks of all time" lists for years to come.