Donkey Kong Country 3 is considered the weak point o’ the original trilogy, & that’s not entirely unwarranted: coming @ the very end o’ the SNES’s lifetime — to the point that this game was released after Super Mario 64 — Rare was shifting development toward the N64, with much o’ the core DKC staff, including the main game designer, Gregg Mayles, & 1 o’ the main composers, David Wise ( tho he did compose a few songs, & this was balanced out by the other main composer, Eveline Novakovic, not composing anything for DKC2 ). While I’d argue that Novakovic did a great job with this game’s soundtrack, which I only appreciate mo’ & mo’ with each listen, the loss o’ Mayles lost this game many level design touches that made the other DKC levels, specially those in DKC2, great, most notably the careful positioning o’ elements, such as Zingers, to always allow players a way to get thru obstacles without stopping & waiting, & the the lack o’ variety & balance in levels, with levels in this game focusing too monotonously on their gimmicks.

Read the full article @ LevelRankings.com →

7. Toxic Tower

It only struck me now that this level is, to a large extent, “Animal Antics” done right: the 3 most interesting animal buddies in this game ( & also the new animal buddies 1st introduced in this game ) challenged in a race upward gainst the rising toxic green lava, or whate’er it’s s’posed to be. This is also a much better version o’ “Slime Climb”, as the toxic lava is consistently rising @ the same pace so that gains you make @ certain setpieces give you mo’ time in later setpieces, rather than having the water jump to near where you are @ e’ery so event point, like in “Slime Climb”.

Read the full article @ LevelRankings.com →

15. Kannon’s Klaim

Thanks to its focus on platforming & barrel cannons, this level is much funner than it is to write ’bout. Howe’er, unlike levels like “Hot-Head Hop”, this level’s platforming is a bit mo’ intricate — as well as harder. You have subtle touches like the transition from the upward-shooting barrels under the K to the small platform with the Klomps, where you want to land on 1 o’ the Klomps & bounce onto the head o’ the other 1, but are @ a high risk o’ landing ’tween them & getting hit.

Read the full article @ LevelRankings.com →

23. Topsail Trouble

“Topsail Trouble” feels like 2 different levels joined @ the midpoint, with the 1st half acting essentially an introduction to the animal buddy Rattly & the 2nd half basically being a harder version o’ “Mainbrace Mayhem”, with its nets & ropes littered with far mo’ enemies — & with a greater focus on the mo’ dangerous Zingers, whom you can’t jump on, than Klingers — in much tighter clumps, leaving much less room to maneuver thru them. This 2nd half would’ve probably worked better if it didn’t come only 3 levels afterward — both in terms o’ providing a better reason for this leap in difficulty & for better variety. Then ’gain, maybe a slight rise in difficulty is a good way to end a world, e’en the 1st. I don’t think as a kid I e’er found this level that challenging for where it is — not on the same level as, say, “Red-Hot Ride” or e’en the end o’ DKC1’s 1st world, “Barrel Cannon Canyon”. Jumping & weaving ’tween tightly-packed, fast-moving Zingers is certainly funner than waiting for the slow-moving Klingers to get out o’ your way. Part o’ me feels like this level would’ve worked better if they a’least mixed the disparate elements, but I can see how it would’ve been awkward to keep getting & losing Rattly. Such a stark split would’ve worked better as a rare contrast if it weren’t done on a few other levels, such as “Rambi Rumble” — & e’en that was mo’ memorable. Then ’gain, this level is still somehow mo’ coherent than “Mainbrace Mayhem”.

Read the full article @ LevelRankings.com →

31. Pirate Panic

In terms o’ 1st levels, “Pirate Panic” is stronger than DKC3’s “Lakeside Limbo”, but weaker than DKC1’s “Jungle Hijinx”. It does its job o’ introducing mechanics such as throwing your partner up to reach greater heights, holding A to use Rambi’s super charge, & the existence o’ the per-level hero coin, in plain sight for the only time in this level, but it doesn’t do so in particular interesting ways — they just sort o’ put these things in a sequence from left to right, banana formations giving information. One might suspect that the designers wanted to keep this level simple & basic to not o’erwhelm new players, but it comes @ the cost o’ being interesting or memorable; & if you compare to DKC1’s “Jungle Hijinx”, that level had multiple layers, with far mo’ cool collectibles you can grab.

Read the full article @ LevelRankings.com →

There are generally 2 popular opinions regarding Donkey Kong Country: those who only really know the 1st game ( which seems to have included Retro Studios when they made the 1st Donkey Kong Country Returns, as it only e’er referenced that game, but includes many other people as well ) & those who recognize Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest as the magnum opus o’ the trilogy ( there are, ’course, a minority who vouch for the other games, & I myself am a minority in preferring the contentious 3 o’er 1 ). While the 1st Donkey Kong Country had visuals so good it killed 64-bit consoles & began to build the general level design principles for the series, with its strange gimmick levels & fast-paced precisely-timed challenges, in many ways it felt like a warmup, being mostly traditional platforming in traditional video game settings like forests & caves. With Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest the developers clearly took advantage o’ the time not spent creating the whole engine wholly this time by perfecting these elements: graphics became e’en mo’ detailed & mo’ colorful; music became mo’ varied & mo’ memorable; traditional settings were replaced with pirate ships, rollercoaster rides, &, most iconically, bramble nests; & mo’ surreal gimmicks were implemented, such as seals that can turn lava into water by hitting them or honey that makes you stick to it. Mechanics that returned were developed with further gameplay twists: mine carts were turned into rollercoaster cars & you weren’t just avoiding obstacles, but also hitting switches to open doors or winning races. Fewer levels were linear left-to-right, with mo’ vertical levels & levels that go in mo’ complex paths.

Read the full article @ LevelRankings.com →

Foreword

During the 1st few years I’ve been writing this blog I’d make brief mentions, usually in footnotes, as a running gag, to some article comparing the levels in Donkey Kong Country games that I was s’posedly working on. I’m not quite sure if I was actually working on such @ the time o’ making these jokes, tho I do remember @ 1 point starting to work on an analysis o’ the Donkey Kong Country games, with level-by-level analyses o’ Jeremy Parish’s Anatomy of Games¹ as a kind o’ rebuke gainst Parish’s slanderous claim that Donkey Kong Country was all style & no substance; but that fell off before I e’en finished the 1st world.

Howe’er, I’ve been ( very slowly ) working on worst-to-best articles for levels in platformers recently, which coincidentally includes Donkey Kong Country. Thus, I proudly present to you the punchline to a decade-long running joke — ¿& what could be a better 10-year anniversary on the internet?²

Intro

Donkey Kong Country is a commonly misunderstood game. While hyped for its visuals, which were so amazing for its time that it practically killed 2 3D consoles, in later years it has been attacked by many as o’errated, usually by people who look @ it shallowly. While there are millions o’ articles where game critics cream themselves ’cause the 1st level o’ Super Mario Bros. repeated a setpiece but with a hole in the center this time, a search for “Donkey Kong Country level design” found 1 good-for-usual-game-critics article ’bout “Jungle Hijinxs” on Medium & a bunch o’ videos ’bout Tropical Freeze o’ all things — the game that thinks “time button presses on enemies’s heads” is the apex o’ level design. Unsurprisingly, these videos sound like they’re written by someone who just discovered basic level design & think any game that employs the same trite tropes as e’ery other platformer, like “make things harder later in the level”, is great level design. Clearly we are still in the dark ages o’ level design, with illiterate peasants still blindly chanting their personal god’s rituals. ¿Can we bring fire to these lost souls?

Like probably its closest cousin, Super Mario World, which was itself not invulnerable to criticism, specially compared to its close sibling, Super Mario Bros. 3 or main rival, the 1st Sonic the Hedgehog, Donkey Kong Country’s strengths & inspirations on other games are subtle: Donkey Kong Country isn’t as much a revolution on platformers as Super Mario Bros. 3 as a refinement, which are, unfortunately, harder to discern for people who, quite frankly, don’t e’en bother to look closely @ level design or mechanics.

Within this broad view o’ games, Donkey Kong Country can look bad. In regards to its o’erworld system, for instance, it could be seen as going backward from both Super Mario World with its multiple exits & less strict borders ’tween worlds & Super Mario Bros. 3 with its many minigames, battles, & simple item mechanics for creating alternate paths. While the 3rd DKC game would arguably make up for this deficiency by implementing fetch quests & secret banana bird locations, the 1st game mainly just has you go from level to level. The only innovation Donkey Kong Country could be said to have is 1 that is generally hated: the seemingly arbitrary placement o’ Candy’s save point & Funky’s warp point in each world, leading to a weird difficulty imbalance wherein the 1st half o’ a world is dangerous if you’re low on lives, as you have no way to save, but the 2nd half is as safe as a modern game without lives thanks to a save point you can go back to @ any point & use. ( & yet it’s still an upgrade to Super Mario World, which made you rebeat a designated save level whene’er you want to save. )

The DKC games do have 1 subtle but major influence, which is arguably inspiring the collectathon genre. While Mario games have been encouraging players to explore levels for secret money & power-ups since Super Mario Bros., only the then-recent Super Mario World acknowledged anything beyond beating the game, & e’en that only counted beating extra levels & goals, rather than collecting things. Donkey Kong Country, with its prominent ( albeit mathematically questionable ) percentage & challenging players to find secret bonuses, & then later games challenging players to collect special hero coins, as well, seemed to truly solidify the idea o’ collecting trinkets as an end in itself, rather than a means for some other end.

Granted, to some end, these games still fell short. For instance, just like Super Mario World’s “dragon coins”, this game has 4 KONG letters in e’ery level; & just like in Super Mario World, collecting all these only gives you a 1-up, rather than any form o’ completion, which makes no sense in either o’ these games as the effort to get so many collectibles is not e’en close to worth a single 1-up in games that throw lives @ you for doing much less. Later GBA remakes would actually challenge you to collect these mini-collectables for 100% completion, & those are, coincidentally, the only versions in which I’ve e’er seen anyone go out o’ their way to collect these.

But in terms o’ level design, the bread & butter o’ a platformer, e’en the 1st Donkey Kong Country is in many ways stronger than Super Mario Bros. 3 & Super Mario World. While Super Mario Bros. 3 had many interesting enemies & mechanics, levels were oft just as bare-bones & repetitive as the 1st Super Mario Bros., seeming to be just areas round which the mechanics existed, rather than integrating them. While many fans fondly remember Kuribo’s Shoe, ¿how many remember the actual level layout in which you find it? On the other hand, while Super Mario World has mo’ developed levels with mo’ intricate puzzles than just going left to right, it can feel mo’ conservative in terms o’ enemies & mechanics, mainly relying on various types o’ moving platforms, & it can oft feel e’en mo’ repetitive & bloated, with many seemingly pointless sections that have nothing to do with their levels. & both games have way too many slow, autoscroll levels that do nothing but waste the player’s time. Donkey Kong Country — & specially its sequels — takes the strengths o’ both, integrating weird, memorable gimmicks with the kind o’ fast-paced action not seen since the original Super Mario Bros.

Granted, this applies less so to the original Donkey Kong Country, whose gimmicks are not quite as exciting or well-implemented as many o’ the weird things in Super Mario Bros. 3 & which sometimes falls into sluggish autoscrollers & unfairness, than its successors, specially DKC2. This is perhaps the main reason for the belief that Donkey Kong Country is o’errated: it is in some sense — compared to its sequels. Despite the vast majority o’ fans agreeing that the 2nd game is superior to the 1st in almost e’ery way & e’en many believing the 3rd game to be better than the 1st, the sequels get far less attention than the 1st game, e’en by the official Returns games, the 1st o’ which only referenced the 1st game. But before we look @ those games it’ll be useful to look @ the original.

34. Trick Track Trek

“Trick Track Trek” is nothing mo’ than a horizontal elevator section. For the 1st half you’re doing nothing but dodging Neckies moving up & down or left & right in simple patterns, & then for the 2nd half you’re just dodging 1 or 2 o’ various other enemy types that try to walk onto you from higher-up platforms. For most o’ them you can just stand on the side & wait as they just walk off the edge o’ the platform without offering any kind o’ threat. That’s the entire level. It’s as monotonous as it sounds. I’m not exaggerating when I say this level could’ve been designed in less than a half hour. Definitely the laziest level layout o’ the entire trilogy.

This level also isn’t paced too well. Its length is on the long-side by itself, but when you factor in the fact that you’re riding a slow platform that oft takes inefficient detours going up & down, the level feels e’en longer than normal levels o’ the same length. Obstacles are also ridiculously spaced out, leaving many intervals where you’re doing nothing but waiting for the platform to slowly move to the next real setpiece. This is a perfect example o’ the downside to Nintendo’s famous style o’ starting levels with easy warm-up sections: you have to tediously redo them when you die @ the actually challenging parts later. Tightening the sparsely-populated parts would’ve made the level feel far mo’ exciting & yet less frustrating from less wasted time, a win-win in e’ery way.

The fact that this level uses this sparse walkway background weakens this level e’en further. While I kinda like the look o’ the walkways, you don’t see much o’ them on this moving platform. ’Stead we get nothing but 70% blackness & the same tiny photo o’ a cave wall with a li’l light copy-pasted repeatedly. If I’m standing on this slow platform waiting for the next obstacle, the least they could’ve given me was 1 o’ their nicer-looking backgrounds like the mountain in the snow levels or the trees in forest — or, hey, since this level’s in “Kremkroc Industries”, maybe the factory background. This game only has 2 levels with the factory tileset & music, which is a waste o’ 1 o’ the best songs in the game & a much better tileset than the walkway or cave tilesets used so much.

Surprisingly ’nough, the bonus locations are quite strong. The 1st is placed in a way so that you have to roll off the edge & jump to reach it. Before this you only had to do that to get KONG letters, which are only necessary in the GBA version. They were nice ’nough to put it right before the midway barrel to accommodate players who haven’t quite mastered the art o’ air-roll jumping, which probably wasn’t necessary this late in the game. Since the Game Boy Color version gimped DK & Diddy’s roll jumps, it’s much harder on that version & requires you to jump off the moving platform ’fore it falls off, which is particularly unfair on that version, as its smaller camera makes it e’en harder to see the bonus before you jump off the platform. But we need not talk ’bout that abomination anymo’.

The 2nd bonus is up next to 1 o’ the top platforms where the enemies fall onto you, 1 you can jump on yourself, which is clever. I almost want to be annoyed @ the fact that you don’t know there’s a bonus there till it’s too late to go up there, but part o’ me feels that if a level lets you get up there, there’s no reason not to explore.

Finally, the 3rd bonus is hidden past a Manky Kong in a subtle path under the main path.

The KONG letters are also in all-right places. The autoscroll nature o’ this level does mean that this level can’t make you do some tedious extra area just for a letter. Granted, while I like the K under the Perched Necky, forcing the player to take a risk to get it, I don’t like how they repeat this same idea for the N.

I like how the G looks dangerous to get, but you have to jump o’er that Zinger, anyway, so you’re probably going to get it while avoiding the Zinger. Plus, it acts as a hint that the Zinger’s going to be @ the bottom when you reach there & you need to jump o’er it.

But the biggest problem with this level is that it feels redundant compared to “Tanked Up Trouble”, ’nother autoscroller, but 1 with a far mo’ interesting layout. Replace that level’s stupid bonus & lame KONG letter locations with this level’s & remove the rest o’ this level & I think you’d get something stronger than these 2 levels by themselves.

33. Blackout Basement

“Blackout Basement” has 1 o’ the trilogy’s worst gimmicks & the absolute worst in this game: lights that flicker on & off so that half the time you can’t see the level, making you either memorize the level layout ( which you obviously can’t do the 1st time thru ) or stop & go, which is slow & boring — & may still leave you vulnerable to getting hit. Not letting the player see is 1 o’ the laziest & cheapest way to create fake difficulty & its inclusion in this game, albeit only once, is perhaps the best example that the level designers hadn’t quite hit the quality standard they’d establish with the sequel. If you had control o’er the lights, like in “Loopy Lights”, it’d be far mo’ tolerable, as the darkness ( & stopping & waiting ) is something you could avoid if you’re fast ’nough; but the erratic way the lights go on & off constantly here gives you nothing to work with, with the only palliative being that a’least the lights go on & off @ consistent intervals, so @ best you can predict them ( tho this is not much o’ a benefit, as you’d want to stop before e’ery obstacle & go immediately when the lights go back on, regardless ).

To accommodate this unfair gimmick, the developers made the level layout basic, with just a bunch o’ platforms with different types o’ enemies & moving or falling platforms & swinging ropes, — nothing you haven’t dealt with in the 1st 3 worlds — which doesn’t make the gimmick mo’ enjoyable, it just makes the level mo’ boring while also having no sense o’ cohesion.

That this is 1 o’ the only 2 factory levels makes this feel like an e’en bigger waste, as the factory levels look great & have what many fans agree to be 1 o’ the best level themes in this game; but nobody’s going to want to replay this level just to hear “Fear Factory”. E’en better, since the lights keep flickering off & on, you can’t e’en get a good, long look @ the graphics in this level. You’d think this would be the level where they use bland graphics & not the level with the long pauses where all you can do is stare @ the graphics. Nor does this level utilize this theme well, as its enemies & moving & falling platforms are so generic they could all be found in any other theme. Some don’t e’en belong. I’ll defend Manky Kong’s inclusion if we consider it a callback to the arcade Donkey Kong, ¿but why are there swinging ropes in a factory? ¿Couldn’t they just repaint them into chains a’least? Surely there were mo’ interesting obstacles & setpieces to create for a factory.

The bonus locations aren’t very good, either. The 1st requires you to stand on a falling platform & let it fall down onto the conspicuous banana near the bottom o’ the screen, below which is a bonus barrel. This would be fair ’nough by itself, albeit the “banana means bonus” trick already gets ol’ by this point; but then they put a falling platform before this sequence o’ falling platforms with a banana bunch, but falling down here doesn’t get you a bonus, but kills you, breaking the very rules they set up & rely on to make the 1st bonus work.

The 2nd bonus requires you to bring a steel barrel o’er to the left wall @ the end, which is helpfully pointed out with a yellow arrow pointing @ it. They obviously intend you to throw the steel barrel @ the wall just after where you find it & jump on & ride it past all the obstacles to the end, which does make this last part less cheap, I guess, but also nullifies it, making the level end with a pip rather than a bang.

The bonus itself is much harder in a cheap way, as the lights blink off when you’re s’posed to see where the 1-up is; but since you get the bonus whether you win or lose, it doesn’t matter much.

As you might imagine for such a basic level, the KONG letters aren’t in interesting places, either: the K & G are in plain sight; I feel like you have to go out o’ your way to miss revealing the O, as all you have to do is land on the black item cache that takes up half its platform after a tire jump you have to make to get there; & the N is in the center o’ the 1st bonus.

Oddly, the otherwise unplayably bad Game Boy Color port made this level much better by making the level only darken slightly when the lights go out, killing the gimmick completely… which also sort o’ kills the level, as it’s still just basic jumps.

32. Necky Nutmare

If you’re confused & have ne’er heard o’ this level before, it’s ’cause it’s only in the dreadful Game Boy Color port. I wouldn’t rush out to go try this level, tho: not only would you have to play thru nearly the entire Game Boy Color port, which is unplayably bad, like I did, since this is the 3rd-to-last level in that game, but the level itself isn’t e’en close to worth playing. This level goes the full extent o’ that absurd pattern o’ putting vultures in caves by putting all the different types o’ Neckies in this cave, while throwing in a few Army-spawning oil drums &, o’ all things, a preview o’ the gray Krusha, who normally only appears in “Platform Perils”. I think their inclusion here just dilutes their introduction in “Platform Perils”, specially since, unlike that level, this level doesn’t bother to do anything with them, as you can easily jump o’er them & most o’ them have convenient barrels in front o’ them. The only connection I can find for all these other elements is that they’re difficult, & this level seemed to go out o’ its way to be difficult: e’en if this level were in the SNES version with its superior controls, camera, & e’erything else, this level would probably be the hardest in the game — but not for a good reason.

If this level has a gimmick beyond having e’ery type o’ Necky, it’d be Mini-Neckies in small crawlspaces, which would be a clever mix o’ 2 common elements if it produced compelling gameplay, but ’stead it creates obstacles that are both infuriatingly cheap & tedious. When a Mini-Necky spits a nut out while you’re in the crawlspace, you have no choice but to go back out so you can jump o’er the nut & try ’gain. You have to keep going back & forth till you see the Mini-Necky not spit a nut for some reason — why they don’t sometimes, I have no idea, as that’s not how they seem to work anywhere else; but this illogical quirk is necessary to get thru without being hit. You can wait by the very edge o’ walls & that apparently makes you close ’nough that the nuts will spawn ( I only know this ’cause I saw it in a video — it’s not intuitive in the slightest ), but arguably this is harder, as you have to be keen to how long the Mini-Necky usually takes to spit a nut & start moving the instant you realize it isn’t spitting a nut this time to make it all the way thru the crawlspace before it spits its next nut. These sections feel like rom-hack sections rather than the kind o’ fair-but-hard challenges DKC games usually have & is a perfect representation o’ the lack o’ fairness present thruout the GBC version. These are the only times I’ve e’er seen setpieces in the original Donkey Kong Country where I e’er questioned whether or not an obstacle was e’en possible to get thru without tanking a hit.

This level’s only bonus is in a pretty good spot, up on the cliff with an Army-spawning oil drum you’d normally not go up.

I like the li’l nook the K is in, guarded by a Mini-Necky in a fair place this time, a nook which you have to go back after falling down a cliff to find, something rare for DKC. That said, I feel like they should’ve put a bonus here, since this level has only 1 bonus & the KONG letters don’t need to be that well hidden.

I don’t like that there’s a similar nook after that with nothing in it but a Mini-Necky, wasting your time.

The O’s in plain sight, while the N is stupidly obscure & the G is partly obscure. The N requires you to stop on a falling platform & let it fall so you can get the N hidden ’neath & just have faith that the game will have you fall into a barrel cannon offscreen. If you’re lucky, you might see the N as you’re going from the rising platform to the platform that falls, but there’s no indication that there’s a barrel ’neath & it seems a player would be mo’ likely to make a last-ditch jump after getting the N in the hopes that there’s a platform offscreen to the right than just guess that there’s a barrel cannon down there.

The G is down a pit. But if you go the middle route — the bottom route o’ the top route — you can clearly see a letter below, & if you’re near the pit @ the right time, specially on the right side, you might see a gray Krusha walking round below. Other than the O, the KONG letters feel like they’re hidden as if they were bonuses. Luckily, the GBC version doesn’t care whether or not you have all the KONG letters, — & nobody should care whether or not they 101% the GBC version ’cause they should ne’er play it — so they’re useless, anyway, making this whole section talking ’bout them a waste o’ time.

To add salt to the wound, this new level is yet ’nother cave level, e’en tho the cave theme was already the most o’erused. ’Course they couldn’t add a 2nd ice cave level or a 3rd factory or temple level — that’d be too interesting. They also added this level to what many people consider to be the weakest world, “Chimp Caverns” — I’m guessing since this world normally only has 5 levels when worlds 3-5 all have 6 levels. Other than the difficulty, tho, this level doesn’t feel like it fits in with the other levels, despite being in a cave, since all the other levels have somewhat o’ a mo’ industrial theme to them, which this level lacks, save for 1 aberrant oil drum right @ the end. Adding a new level here seems to have the bad-for-e’eryone effect o’ forcing most players to play thru e’en more o’ their least favorite world & forcing me to play thru almost the entirety o’ this awful port just to try this awful level.

All in all, “Necky Nutmare” was an unnecessary level. But a’least it’s not an autoscroller & doesn’t turn the lights on & off all the time.

31. Clam City

The most basic o’ water levels, wherein you just swim thru a straightforward path & dodge enemies — enemies who are not remarkable: the Bitesizes, Chomps, & Chomps Jrs. are generic fish & sharks who just swim forward or back & forth, the Clambos just shoot projectiles, & the Croctopuses just spin in circles & act as faster clones o’ Urchines from Super Mario World. The basic Bitesizes & Chomps are actually the harder enemies to dodge, as they move rather quickly & can come @ you from offscreen & they’re particularly packed together in this level, & the Croctopuses @ the end have unpredictable patterns when you 1st see them: I oft hit the middle 1 expecting it to go right only for it to go left & smack into me. Ironically, they’re not a threat in the level that focuses on them mo’. Meanwhile the Clambos can basically be ignored as you can zoom past their shots before they have a chance to reach you. The 1 exception is on the shoddy GBC version, where their pearls spawn halfway off the level & seem to come @ you from nowhere.

There is 1 area just before the midway point crowded with Chomps Jrs., which is interesting in that it genuinely takes some paying attention to find a safe route ( squeezing ’long the ground ) thru them in the very li’l space they offer.

I’m kind o’ mixed on how easy this level is compared to its placement in the 3rd world, coming so soon after difficulty spikes like “Tree Top Town” & marathons like “Orang-utan Gang” while not being much mo’ difficult than the 1st world’s water level — & being easier than most world-1 levels. I guess it could act as a breather level, but breather levels are s’posed to be fun, while water levels are not fun, — not in this game a’least — specially with these water levels’ wonky camera, hit detection, & o’erall physics. In truth, while the level design is simple, this level still turns out a bit harder than it appears due to wonky controls & physics, which is ne’er a good outcome — you usually want the opposite. The camera is so slow & your character takes up so much o’ it that it’s easy for enemies to pop in & sneak attack you before you have a chance to see them. This is worsened by the slowness o’ your character, making e’en reacting when you do see them a pain.

I think the biggest problem with water levels in Donkey Kong Country is that they don’t play up its strengths, but only emphasize its weaknesses. Compared to, say, Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country’s levels are superior in terms o’ fast-paced challenges ( Super Mario World levels tending to be plodding & easy ), but inferior in terms o’ puzzle design. I bring up Super Mario World ’cause this level makes me think o’ “Forest of Illusions 2”, but that level was mo’ intricate & had puzzles to make its slow pace bearable — & that level felt harder than this, despite the levels round it being easier than the 2nd level o’ this game.

It’s too bad, ’cause the 1 positive to the water levels in this game is that, other than “Slipslide Ride”, they’re the only levels in this game that aren’t just left to right, usually twisting right, then left, then right as you go upward. It’s still a straight path without any real branching, but it’s better than nothing but left to right. & yet e’en then e’ery water level has you go from the bottom left corner to the top right. Seems like an easy opportunity for cheap variety passed up for no reason. & despite the opportunities mo’ intricate layouts offer for hiding secrets & the way the slower pace might encourage exploration, none o’ the water levels in this game have any bonuses, which is bewildering beyond belief. “Croctopus Chase” clearly shows that they were capable o’ programming barrel cannons underwater, so I can’t imagine bonus barrels would’ve been any harder to program in. I guess I should consider this a plus, since it means I ne’er have to play thru a water level mo’ than once in a playthru, but it doesn’t make them feel any mo’ interesting.

I should add that despite being 2 worlds after “Coral Capers”, “Clam City” has a much simpler layout, tho it does have mo’ enemies that are a bit harder to dodge. There’s certainly less o’ a focus on finding collectibles than just getting thru obstacles. They were so short on interesting places to put the KONG letters that the G is in plain sight & the N is in some random corner.

& yet, the K — ’long with a secret Enguarde — is hidden ’hind magical move-thru wall, which is always a terrible way to hide things. They could’ve made the top o’ that wall have a thin hole like they do in “Coral Capers” & it would’ve eluded many ’nough players while actually rewarding observant players rather than forcing them to rub up gainst e’ery wall — specially since the camera is specifically set so that it doesn’t move left o’ the wall to reveal any space on the other side till you’re right in the wall, e’en if you pass the normal left threshold o’ the camera, making it feel like that’s the edge o’ the screen.

30. Coral Capers

It’s amazing how similar “Clam City” & “Coral Capers” are. E’en their respective gimmicks aren’t all that unique: you could say “Coral Capers” focuses more on the circling Croctopuses & that “Clam City” focuses on the pearl-spitting Clambos, but both levels have either, just with the other enemy not in focus saved once or a few times @ the end. In terms o’ difficulty, they’re not much different, which is striking, as they’re 2 worlds apart.

This level does have 2 Enguards that are easy to find, while “Clam City”’s is hidden. Howe’er, I would argue that the Clambos are easier to dodge than the Croctopuses, as they are slower & you can rush past the Clambos, while you have the wait ’hind the Croctopuses — which actually should be a point in “Clam City”’s favor.

Then ’gain, this level has a mo’ complex design, with mo’ goodies to find & better KONG letter placement — tho the K & N are both rather lazily placed in an incredibly short dead end in 2 “branches”, I guess you could call them. Granted, it’s not as if you’ll particularly want most o’ the “goodies”, specially in the SNES version, which doesn’t count KONG letters for 100%, as this level, like all water levels, doesn’t have any bonuses for some inexplicable reason.

Yeah, 1 o’ these levels is redundant. Like with “Trick Track Trek” & “Tanked Up Trouble”, I feel like it’d have been better to combine their best elements into 1 level.

29. Winky’s Walkway

The shortest level in the game, & probably the easiest to forget from the 1st half o’ the game. As “Coral Capers” made itself simple to give you a chance to adjust to swimming, “Winky’s Walkway” simplicity can be ’splained as a way to help players adjust to Winky’s bouncier controls. The level is certainly full o’ goodies placed high-up to encourage you to use Winky to get them, including the O & G & this level’s only bonus ( which holds the N ) — tho if the player loses Winky before then, the developers were nice ’nough to put a Necky there to act as a backup stepping stone.

I also like how the K, which is before Winky’s introduction, keeps up the bouncing focus by being ’bove a Necky, forcing the player to take a risk ( for extreme novices, a’least ) & jump on it to get it.

This level does introduce oil drums that infinitely spawn enemies, tho it doesn’t do much beyond just having them there in this level. You could say the ne’er-ending onslaught o’ enemies provides a bit o’ extra difficulty otherwise lacking in this level, which comes after the notorious difficulty spike, “Barrel Cannon Canyon”.

’Course, artistically, this level makes no sense. Why a frog would own a walkway is a question nobody @ Rare has e’er answered, nor have they answered why these walkways are so oft populated by vultures. Still, e’en for a game that has bees & orangutans chilling out on a snowy mountain, this level’s bizarre. Those levels still had elements that fit with their themes, e’en if those elements were alimented with the common Zinger. While other walkway levels focus on elements that relate to walkways, like moving platforms, the closes this has are those oil drums. I’m not one to say that this game needed mo’ cave levels, but if any level would’ve fit well with the cave theme, this would’ve, whereas there are cave levels ( like “Elevator Antics” ) that would’ve fit this theme better. I mean, this is s’posed to be the cave world, anyway.

Whate’er complaints I could have ’bout this level’s lack o’ interesting elements, a’least it gets itself o’er with before it could get boring, which is mo’ than can be said ’bout half o’ the walkway levels.

28. Ropey Rampage

This level introduces swinging ropes, which are a good mechanic for such an early level, as they are basically just things that automatically move you round. Thankfully they offer a short, quick trip, so they don’t end up feeling like autoscrollers. Howe’er, this level doesn’t do much with the ropes: for the 1st half o’ the level, they offer no challenge, while the final half challenges you to time your jump off the end round moving Zingers. It’s cool that you can jump the 1st time swinging, e’en with the Zingers, making this part feel fast-paced.

This level also introduces Armies, which are quite challenging for the 2nd level o’ the game. I’m embarrassed to admit that I was killed far too many times by 1 o’ the 2 Armies @ the beginning o’ the stage when I was a kid. Granted, they’re easier with DK, & the 1st area gives you a TNT barrel if you’re stuck with Diddy. This level also introduces a common trick Rare does in this game o’ putting an enemy o’ note right near the end as a way to try & trip you up. In this case it is 1 last Army, who can be tricky to kill on its downward-sloping steps if you’re Diddy. Howe’er, this is just appearances, as you can just jump o’er it & hurry into the cave hole, where the Army can’t hurt you.

This level has the 1 o’ the few o’ this game’s notorious “fall into pit & hope there’s a bonus” bonuses & probably played a big part in feeding that notoriety, being such an early-game level that probably discouraged players from trying to find all the bonuses in the rest o’ the levels: it’s a barrel under a small hole ’tween 2 tree platforms with no indication or hint — no bananas going down there — to show it off.

E’en the hard-to-find bonus barrel after this shows the top lip o’ the barrel @ the bottom o’ the screen, making it a’least fair, e’en if challenging for such an early level.

Other than that bit o’ bullshit, this level is unremarkable. Being “that other jungle level” after “Jungle Hijinx” doesn’t help, nor does the fact that the other jungle level is the very memorable “Orang-utan Gang”. While the KONG letters are all in plain sight, ’cept for the G, which is up on a palm tree round the end — a pretty good place for a letter — 1 interesting quirk is that there are 2 Ns, 1 in a bonus & 1 in the area skipped by the bonus, something the game rarely does.

I do like the rainy, dark cast o’er the level, a continuation o’ how “Jungle Hijinx” goes dark @ the end, whereas this level goes in reverse, back to clear, morn @ the end.

27. Reptile Rumble

“Reptile Rumble” is a deceptively simple level, thanks to its focus on the obvious mechanic o’ hopping Kritters — basically hopping Paratroopas that go all the way back to the 1st Super Mario Bros. Howe’er, this level uses them with a subtle challenge evolution, starting you with fighting them going down-steps, with a height advantage, while forcing you to go thru them while going up-steps, where they have the height advantage, @ the end. This mechanic, too simple to deserve its own level, is broken up with simple Zinger dodging, as well as the introduction o’ Slippa, who is basically just an e’en faster, smaller Gnawty.

Still, this level is basically just jumping on or o’er enemies & is possibly the most generic level in the game & probably the easiest to forget. E’en “Winky’s Walkway”, tho mo’ basic & less inspired in its level structure, has the twist o’ introducing Winky ( ne’er mind that it’s not a good twist ). Still, the subtle strengths o’ this level’s layout, while by no means top-tier, did make this level beat some o’ the sloppier levels — e’en much better-looking levels like “Ropey Rampage”.

This level is also full o’ bonuses that challenge you to keep safe barrels from enemies so you can bring them to a wall to break them, which requires some testing out to find which walls are breakable. They also, for some reason, have a bonus barrel right next to the 2nd DK barrel, out in the open & obvious. Maybe they meant for this to introduce to players who haven’t found any yet the existence o’ bonus barrels.

To add to the meh level o’ this level, the KONG letters are all in plain sight.

This level does lose a lot o’ points in terms o’ aesthetics & specially theming. In a game that already has too many cave levels, there are far mo’ interesting cave levels later on to make this feel lost in the pile; & whereas many later cave levels fall into their cave-themed worlds, this 1 just takes up space in this game’s only jungle world, depriving this game o’ surprisingly scarce jungle levels & loosening the cohesion o’ that 1st world, making it harder to tell this world from other worlds with cave levels, water levels, & outside areas. The water levels being spread out feels nice since there is no water world ( considering the kind o’ water worlds that would appear in later DKC games, this is a blessing ) & water levels would get tiresome all together, cave levels which play like normal levels & which already have their own worlds just feel o’ersaturated for spilling out into other worlds.

& while the variety o’ enemies works well in terms o’ challenge, it would’ve been nice if they could’ve fit the cavernous theme in any way, rather than just being a random assortment o’ enemies from all level themes, none o’ whom truly belong in caves.

26. Misty Mine

Howe’er, “Misty Mines” makes a close competitor to “Reptile Rumble” in terms o’ genericism & forgettability. Coming in the middle o’ the very unmemorable, samey final world, “Chimp Caverns”, which was so bland it couldn’t e’en bother to have true alliteration in its name, can’t have done this level any favors. Based on much o’ the commentary I read ’bout “Chimp Caverns”, I get the inkling that by this point many players had already checked out.

Also not helping is this level’s main gimmick, Mini-Drums that constantly spew enemies o’ different types. Not only have players already seen this gimmick well ’nough in earlier levels, like “Winky’s Walkway” & “Elevator Antics”, but ’twas arguably used to better effect in those levels, as ’twas mixed in with other elements to a’least give better variety. While one could argue that this level provides a greater variety o’ enemies produced & increases the danger, producing Klaptraps & Armies in the latter half, it still doesn’t feel strong ’nough a gimmick to hold an entire level, but ’stead just feels like the level lazily bombarding you with enemies ’stead o’ providing tricky layouts. They don’t e’en bother to provide much variety in enemies: the aforementioned Klaptraps & Armies are the only new enemies this level pumps out o’ these things in addition to the basic Gnawties & Slippas the previous levels already introduced. ¿You can’t have Mini-Drums producing Zingers, Neckies, Klumps, or Krushas — or hell, e’en an enemy as weird as Manky Kong? Yeah, it’d be silly for these bigger enemies to pop out o’ these small drums; but we’re talking ’bout a game starring a gorilla wearing a tie. Taking this gimmick to a hilariously ludicrous level could only have improved it.

Add to this a pointless addition o’ the worst animal buddy, Espresso, who, like in many levels, almost makes the level worse to traverse thru, not the least o’ which ’cause this level requires very li’l air movement, & also since right after you get them you have to pick up a barrel & use it to enter a bonus.

& yet, this level does have some strong bonus locations. The 1st is in cave entrance hidden below a high cliff just after a long rope. If you were expected to just jump down or e’en ride a falling platform or such to find it, it’d be cheap & unfair, but you can safely slide down the rope before it to see it, & players truly should be curious ’bout that rope being far longer than needed for the main trip from the left high cliff to the right cliff. The 2nd bonus is just a wall you need to break with a TNT barrel, but they actually do something interesting with the Mini-Drum by putting it, as well as 2 Klaptraps spawned from the get-go, in your way.

I’m mixed on the decision to put all the KONG letters in the 1st bonus room. On 1 hand, it’s a unique twist on the general pattern o’ strewing the letters thruout the level; on the other, it’s lazier than integrating the letters into the level itself, specially since they don’t implement any kind o’ tricky way to get them in the bonus. I guess the novelty is fine ’nough, & if there were any level to not bother spreading KONG letters out in, it’d perhaps be this 1.

I do quite like the mine tileset this level has — & e’en the music, actually, if you could call it that, which was surprisingly done by David Wise, despite being known as the guy who did the mo’ sing-songy songs. I guess you could say this was his “Hey, Jude”. Tho this game has a bit too much brown & it would’ve been nice if they could’ve had mo’ variety for the mine levels, like maybe a gray palette. I guess the eponymous mist looks nice.

25. Tanked Up Trouble

This is “Trick Track Trek”, but with collectibles you have to collect to avoid your platform running out o’ fuel & dropping you into the abyss, making this level feel a bit mo’ fast-paced & requiring you to make trickier jumps to weave ’tween elements. In fact, unlike that level’s uninspired layout, this level surprisingly has quite a few interesting setpieces.

I specially like the Zinger-dodging near the end, where you’re struggling to keep your platform ’live, collecting single-dot fuel barrel after single-dot fuel barrel while dodging Zingers in complex formations @ the same time, only to finally get a 5-dot fuel barrel in the middle o’ a spinning Zinger.

There’s also a cool puzzle wherein you have to roll a tire past an unending onslaught o’ Gnawties so you can bounce on it @ the end to reach a high-up fuel drum. Granted, savvy players will realize you can just skip the tire & do a roll jump off the edge to reach the fuel drum. It’s not free, as the player will need to wait a bit so they can land on the moving platform, but rolling the tire isn’t free, either.

That said, a lot o’ this level feels like a slog wherein you just wait there & just maybe here or there, specially when you redo sections after dying @ the actually challenging parts. This level could’ve benefited a lot by being cut shorter, as, like “Trick Track Trek”, it’s as long as a normal level, but much slower, with detours going up & down, making it feel 4 times as long with the same amount o’ content.

This level has possibly the worst bonus in the game, without e’en the exoticism o’, say, “Oil Drum Alley”’s infamous bonus: it’s hidden in the bottomless pit below a seemingly random place where the platform 1st goes upward. I actually researched this & found out that it is set up in a way so that if you miss the 1st fuel barrel, you’ll naturally fall into the barrel. So the only way to find this bonus is to somehow be such an idiot savant that you can beat “Snow Barrel Blast” but not be able to collect a giant oil can without anything in its way & while riding a slow-moving platform or intentionally avoid it, e’en tho e’ery sign is telling you to touch it.

The KONG letters aren’t so great, but I don’t think there are many opportunities for good placements. The K has you jump on a Necky ( which was already done for the K in “Winky’s Walkway” ). I kind o’ like how the O is done by doing what you need to do for a fuel barrel just afterward.

The N & G, howe’er, are put in dickish places. The N is under a walkway. Once you see it’s there, it’s too late to go down & get it, & you’re liable to go up on the walkway, as the game generally recommends you go up on any walkways you can ( specially since standing on the moving platform wastes mo’ fuel than being off it ).

The G is ’bove the last Zinger, which you can easily skip if you decide to take a shortcut barrel cannon in plain sight. ¿Why wouldn’t you want to? This is 1 o’ the very rare times this game punishes players for seeking out bonus content by making them lose out on bonus content.

Being a walkway, this level has the same dreary background as “Trick Track Trek”.

24. Poison Pond

“Poison Pond”, the game’s only challenging underwater level, is a good counterpoint to the easy “Coral Capers” & “Clam City”, which, combined, show why the underwater levels in this game don’t work. While those levels were boring in their simplicity, this level, while mo’ complex & interesting, is also frustrating due to this game’s terrible underwater controls, physics, camera, & hit detection. While enemies moving as fast as they do in this level is thrilling, it’s mo’ a cheat on the game’s part when your own character is so slow & the camera shows so li’l ’head o’ you, making it impossible to react to many o’ the elements that just fly onto screen. E’en when you see an enemy coming, such as the upward-moving Squidges, your characters falls so slowly that they’ll hit you before you can e’en move ’way. Thus there’s 2 ways to play this level: memorize the level layout & go by memory ( which is obviously only possible after going thru it the other way 1st ) or go slowly, starting & stopping, to make sure no Mincer’s going to suddenly fly into you, which goes gainst the level design principle in most levels o’ allowing players to rush thru if their timing is good. Then ’gain, one could argue that forcing players to go slow & be careful in 1 level is fair ’nough & adds variety — that a water level should be played completely different; & as redundant as the 2 previous water levels seem compared to each other, 3 water levels is still mercifully rare. This level would probably be a lot less enjoyable if there were mo’ water levels to make it feel e’en less fresh.

It doesn’t help that the developers would sometimes create deadends the player could easily mistake for legitimate branching paths or places for KONG letters or bonuses ( if the player still hasn’t gotten the clue that water levels lack bonuses in this game ). While in some cases if you squeeze gainst the end the Mincer moving back toward you won’t hit you, there are some dead ends where that isn’t the case.

Contrariwise, some obstacles are rendered moot by wonky hit boxes that allow you to hug the ceiling while your bottom half goes thru the Mincers.

Still, I’d rather tolerate cheap bullshit ’long with some thrills than deal with the boring pointlessness o’ “Coral Capers” & “Clam City”.

Plus, this level stands out aesthetically with its green, foggy pollution & rusty spike mincers, whose menacing look fits perfectly the final, most-difficult water level, as well as fitting well the world it’s in, in a game that all too oft doesn’t bother to make its levels fit their world’s theme — specially “Kremkroc Industries”, which has 2 factory levels & a bunch o’ cave & mine levels. This level certainly feels mo’ coherent & focused on its Mincer theme than “Clam City” did to clams or “Coral Capers” to Croctopuses. Perhaps too much, actually, as there isn’t much else in this level ’cept the same Squidges, Bitesizes, & Chomps Jrs. you see in all the other water levels.

That’s not to say that this level offers many thrills to compare with most non-water levels. The Mincers themselves — rare in this game, but not unique to this level — aren’t that different from Croctopuses, when you think ’bout it, tho, I s’pose you could say the same ’bout any moving enemy. Such are the limitations o’ water levels wherein all you can do is dodge things. Still, as to be expected from the hardest variation o’ this theme, this level is busier than the other water levels, & the level designers did seem to make an attempt @ creating greater variation in Mincer arrangements than the other water levels have: I particularly like the parts where you have to weave ’tween holes in a circle o’ 3 Mincers ( granted, without the extra complication o’ gravity, it’s not as interesting as in Manic Mincers ) or weave round a central Mincer after a satellite Mincer passes before it passed back round or places where Mincers meet & depart, back & forth, like a gate.

While the K is pretty cleverly placed ’bove the start o’ the level in a niche that’s easy to miss if you’re not exploring, but not outright obscure like the K in “Clam City” ( the 1st Enguarde is still ’hind move-thru solid wall, tho ), the other KONG letters are just right in your path. This level does have plenty o’ niches, many blocked by Mincers, but they all have banana bunches, or nothing @ all. I would complain ’bout this being terrible level design, but part o’ me does find it pretty funny, actually.

23. Temple Tempest

Honestly, this level feels underwhelming coming a world after “Millstone Mayhem”. While on paper it may seem that being chased by a Millstone Gnawty would ramp up the challenge, it moves so slowly that save for maybe the very end, there’s no challenge to keeping ’head. To ensure that, the developers made the layout o’ enemies much simpler & sparser than “Millstone Mayhem”’s. This goes to the extreme during the stretch after the 2nd-to-last Millstone Gnawty, which has exactly 1 Zinger that’s positioned so that it’s way out o’ your way when you reach it & a bunch o’ tires ( 1 o’ which is pointless, ’less you’re dead set on those floating bananas high ’bove it ). If the 2nd half o’ this level were as exciting as the 1st half, this level would probably be ranked higher.

This level also has far less enemy variety. This would work if they wanted to focus purely on Gnawties, which would make sense & what they seem to do for the 1st half o’ the level; but then they flake out & introduce hopping Kritters & Zingers thruout the 2nd half. I understand that they ran out o’ new things to do with Gnawties; ¿but why not implement Krushas, Slippas, & maybe e’en a Perched Necky, as they had in “Millstone Mayhem”, while they’re @ it? “Millstone Mayhem” was already far from the hardest level in “Monkey Mines”; this level comes just 1 level after “Tree Top Town”, a level that makes this look like a Sunday stroll.

There is 1 section right near the end that is easy, but kind o’ cool: there’s Kritters coming @ you downhill while you’re being chased by a Gnawty, which should be difficult; but you can just run under them safely.

Also, replacing poor neglected Winky with Espresso, the worst animal buddy in the series ( yes, e’en worse than Ellie ), is ne’er a smart trade, specially when their gliding skills are so subpar that it can actually be harder to get items like Os or e’en make it onto the next platform o’er wide gaps with rope ( since Espresso can’t use the ropes ) while riding on them & they’re a greater liability gainst the hopping Kritters.

The most interesting challenge in this level is getting the bonus @ the beginning, which requires you to pick up a barrel & take it a ways while fleeing the chasing Gnawty & avoiding the regular Gnawties coming @ you from the other direction. It’s actually a repeat o’ a bonus-uncovering challenge near the middle o’ “Millstone Mayhem”, but this opening bonus acts as a nice callback, & a subtle 1, as they force you to use an inconspicuous DK barrel you’d be urged to throw immediately rather than the conspicuous, rare TNT barrel. This is 1 o’ the few times DK is useful, as the downside to Diddy holding the barrel in front o’ him is that it makes it easier to break it on a Gnawty — tho DK still has to worry ’bout avoiding bopping on a Gnawty, as that makes either o’ them drop the barrel.

The 2nd bonus is a bit on the nose with its giant arrow o’ bananas pointing down the rope it’s ’hind — probably the most eye-catching version o’ the DKC trilogy’s classic “bananas to indicate secret”; but it arguably works better in this circumstance, as you’re rushing ’head o’ a chasing Gnawty, rather than being able to take your time, so it’s mo’ likely you’ll o’erlook this secret or have to stop & think ’bout it.

It’s certainly better than how they hid the G, which is @ the bottom right o’ the final pit before the end, which also has a rope, tho this 1 moving. Unlike the 2nd bonus, there’s no indication there’s something down there, so the player has to take a chance o’ death right before the end.

Weirdly, the K & O are just in plain sight, with only the K requiring the player to deviate from their path. The N is also hidden, but in a mo’ fair way, under a breakable floor that’s so fair they e’en made the cliff that you jump off to break it just short ’nough that you can jump back up.

1 o’ the very rare improvements the otherwise terrible GBC port o’ this game had was that it had a cool nighttime palette to this level, which helped set it apart from “Millstone Mayhem” a bit mo’.

22. Millstone Mayhem

This level is a notch ’bove the group o’ normie, gimmickless levels where you just jump on enemies & platforms & dodge moving dangers & pits, like “Reptile Rumble”, by giving it a bizarre paintjob, something that Tropical Freeze would do for many more o’ its levels. Whereas Tropical Freeze’s paintjobs are far mo’ extravagant, this Gnawty trapped in a flying giant stone wheel is probably far weirder than any that game had, & probably made e’en weirder by its starker, less-cartoony graphics. That said, this paintjob loses points in that they repeat it in a later temple level. In a series that would oft have no qualms with having quite exotic gimmicks be 1-level wonders, it’s odd that they insist on repeating this far less impressive “gimmick”, e’en if they slightly change how the millstone Gnawties behave in the next level.

For what it’s worth, this level also provides a greater variety o’ dangers mixed with the simple moving millstone Gnawties, — far mo’ than the later temple level, “Temple Tempest” — tho the only ones that complement the millstone Gnawties in any meaningful way are the Slippas that ambush you near the end under the millstone, forcing you to roll into them ’stead o’ jump. & while most o’ the platforming is just basic enemies in a row & dodging obstacles moving back & forth, there are a few interesting setpieces, like the branch the the high platforms leading up to a secret upper area with a Winky crate & a moving platform below with a millstone Gnawty in the middle, threatening to hit you no matter what path you can take. You can actually abuse the millstone Gnawty to get a 2nd jump & get up to the top section without going thru the intended puzzle, which is how I always did it as a kid ’cause I mistook the intended solution. Till this most recent playthru I always tried to roll the tire onto the moving platform, which is very tricky to do without making it roll too far & roll into the pit, only to this time realize that you can just roll the tire up to the edge o’ the cliff before the branch & jump from there.

I also like the jump with the penultimate millstone Gnawty where you have to jump under it while it’s @ the top o’ its path in the li’l space it leaves — made e’en smaller by the fact that you have to jump up to a higher platform without jumping so high that you bonk your head on the millstone.

The bonus locations aren’t bad, either. The 1st requires the player to jump up to the top left cliff ’stead o’ the top right cliff from the starting tire, which is a trick the developers would repeat a few times in DKC2. The 2nd is ’bove a millstone Gnawty, requiring the player to either hop on a hopping Kremling or just damage-boost thru… or just jump toward it as DK, ’cause for once his larger hitbox is an advantage here & allows you to reach it from a normal jump where Diddy’s mousy size can’t.

The 3rd bonus challenges the player to bring a TNT barrel past 2 Krushas without wasting it on them so you can use it on the next wall. While the level encourages you to use TNT barrels on Krushas @ the beginning o’ the level, this secret challenges you to remember the insight the game should have drilled into the player since a’least “Reptile Rumble” to not waste barrels on enemies when walls might need them. Part o’ me thinks this bonus would work better in terms o’ intuitiveness & the level not sending mixed messages by having a bombable wall after the 1st row o’ Krushas that gives you 2 TNT barrels & having that row turn into 1 Krusha so the player naturally bombs the Krusha & brings the other TNT barrel to a breakable wall, only to have to remember this & protect the only TNT barrel later from Krushas, but ’nother part o’ me thinks that might have been too much hand-holding. On the other hand, the fact that they give you 2 TNT barrels @ the beginning e’en tho there are 2 Krushas feels arbitrary, albeit harmless.

None o’ the KONG letters are placed in great places, tho. Most are in plain sight & just require basic jumps to get. E’en the O, which I think you’re meant to get by hopping off a Kremling, can be grabbed with a roll jump off the edge o’ the cliff before it. The K has the other problem in that you don’t see its location in the 1st bonus till you’ve already shot yourself, & after that it’s a crapshoot whether you’ll land back into the barrel & be able to shoot ’gain. Luckily, you can just go back & re-enter the bonus, so it’s mo’ an annoyance & waste o’ time than a serious inconvenience.

21. Oil Drum Alley

I can’t tell whether I like or dislike this level. It certainly gets points for introducing the factory tileset & music, both o’ which are great & criminally underutilized, & this level is the only 1 where you can enjoy the visuals unencumbered by e’erything going black e’ery few seconds like this level’s idiot brother, “Blackout Basement”, does.

“Oil Drum Alley” starts & ends with intricate platforming challenges round the eponymous oil drums, which @ 1st act as glorified munchers. High points include the staircases going up & down with Gnawties you can bop up & down, with the downward path forcing you to weave ’tween lit oil drums, & the weird staircase o’ tires & oil drums ’tween them.

Halfway thru the level, oil drums have their flames go up & down in a consistent alternating pattern, helpfully demonstrated by an optional oil drum on a ledge that’s only useful for revealing a DK barrel if needed. Later on the level challenges you to use them as platforms, timing your jumps when their flames are down, & in the last gauntlet they introduce a twist to their pattern wherein their flames go up & down in quick successions — to quick to land on & jump off in time — till finally lighting up for a long period & going cool for a long period, which is when it’s safe to jump on & off them. These are not helpfully demonstrated in a safe way, making it easy to get tripped up in an unfair way by this sudden twist. While I like the always-lit oil drums fine ’nough, — they’re an interesting paint job on munchers — I feel the on-&-off oil drums have that mix o’ neither feeling original, nor feeling interesting, mo’ an exercise in just waiting till it’s safe than a true challenge. Technically, thanks to the jankiness o’ their hitboxes, you can do weird jump rolls off their edges as Diddy whether their flames are up or not, but the aiming is very iffy & this is clearly a glitch, not how the levels were actually designed.

They introduce ’nother twist in that they give you a hidden Rambi down what seems like a pit, indicated by a banana & maybe the crate-breaking noise a barrel thrown by a Manky Kong up ’head makes when it falls down & hits it. Unlike all the previous levels, where Rambi was an unambiguous powerup that instantly made those levels twice as easy, Rambi here, due to his larger hit box & slippery movement ( specially on the GBA version, wherein he for some reason always feels like he’s moving on ice ), Rambi adds a bit o’ extra challenge when hopping ’cross the tiny oil drums, whose flames can hurt Rambi. Rambi’s only useful for breaking a wall just ’head o’ where you get him, howe’er, so there’s no threat in losing him. 1 last level to give you Rambi after this will truly challenge your ability to keep Rambi.

While the start & end are rather strong, this level’s middle feels like a bit o’ a slog, specially that long path littered with lit oil drums just sitting there on flat ground with what feels like dozens o’ Kritters all hopping forward in the same formations. It’s e’en mo’ tedious if you make the mistake o’ trying to roll the tire that’s revealed @ the start o’ the section all the way to the end only to discover it’s useless. I think maybe it’s s’posed to help you get the O; but you can just bounce off a Kritter, which may not be free, but is much less o’ an ordeal than dragging the tire so long.

’Course, I can’t talk ’bout this level without discussing its infamously obscure bonus: the bonus within the bonus. The thing is, I think hiding a bonus within a bonus is a brilliant idea that is 100% fair. Nowhere does the game so much as imply that bonuses themselves are off-limits for finding bonuses, so it’s reasonable to expect players truly thinking outside the box to consider the idea. DKC2 does this to greater results with a hero coin hidden in 1 o’ its bonuses. That the bonus is found by breaking a wall in ’nother bonus is perfectly intuitive — certainly mo’ intuitive than the bonus found in “Tanked Up Trouble” or that bonus in “Ropey Rampage”. The problem with this bonus is that you break the wall with a barrel that only spawns when you hit all 3 roulette barrels while showing a single banana. This is where the bonus goes completely gainst any intuition or logic. Any reasonable player would assume that 3 single bananas would give you, well, a single banana, as all the other roulette entries give you what they show when you collect all 3 o’ them. So this is a case wherein the developers do break the rules & outright lie to you.

What’s worse is that the developers missed the perfect opportunity for a clever puzzle: ’stead o’ having it be 3 single bananas in a row, they should’ve made 1 o’ the roulette entries show nothing — that is, it shows only the barrel itself. That would’ve been a clever trick that sort o’ makes sense when you think ’bout it, unlike the single bananas, which have nothing to do with barrels — or a’least nothing mo’ than any o’ the other roulette entries — & is just arbitary.

While the bonus game you get for this super-secret bonus feels big, having 3 o’ those “hit the letters” games, which spell out the 3 words “Donkey”, “Kong”, & “Country”, e’en the 6 lives they give you isn’t worth how long it takes to do them all.

But other than that, the bonuses are rather strong. Breaking open the 1st oil drum with a TNT barrel revealed from the clearly-marked breakable floor after falling down to it from a rope is, if not hard, a’least interesting for something you only e’er have to do once. The 4th bonus gives you 2 optional challenges: bring Rambi there without losing Rambi or dodge 1 o’ Manky Kong’s barrels & follow it to the door it opens. Ironically, the least interesting bonus is the 2nd bonus, where the secret 3rd bonus is found, as it’s just a wall right ’hind where you reveal the TNT that breaks it. I guess the fact that you have to think to go backward to open it is the “puzzle”; or maybe it’s intentionally innocuous to make the bonus hidden in it e’en mo’ hidden.

The KONG letters are mostly lame. The K is just right there, gotten by a basic jump. The N is in the 4th bonus, which thankfully you can just mash the jump button to complete. The G is kind o’ interesting, tho: hidden in breakable ground after the last oil drum, challenging the player 1 last time to jump on the oil drum when it’s safe & then jump off to get that extra height necessary to break the floor.

“Oil Drum Alley” perhaps could’ve benefited from being shortened a bit — a’least removing that pointless long section with the hopping Kritters e’erywhere. They also probably didn’t need 4 bonuses in this level — but then maybe they did that on purpose to better hide the 3rd bonus till the player notices that after completing 3 bonuses they’re still missing that “!”.

20. Elevator Antics

¿Why is this a cave level? I couldn’t see any reason why level, whose main focus seems to be be steel kitchen sinks that rise & fall down metal poles, couldn’t use the underutilized factory tileset, in which case this level would fit snuggly in “Kremkroc Industries Inc.” ’stead o’ making me wonder why it’s here & not the “Chimp Caverns” just after. The ropes could be turned into chains. & as for the Zingers, Neckies, & Slippas that inhabit this cave, Neckies & Zingers appear in caves & snowy mountains, where they don’t belong, all the time & there’s apparently not problem with Manky Kong appearing in both the factory levels. Zingers & Neckies are the dominant species in “Tanked-Up Trouble”, which feels mo’ like it belongs in “Kremkroc Industries” ( it’s in “Chimp Caverns” ) than this level.

Anyway, the fact that they decided to make this level the 4th out o’ 5 cave levels doesn’t help this level stand out — specially when it uses the same putrid brown & yellow palette used in 3 out o’ 5 o’ these levels.

That’s not to say this level doesn’t have its subtle touches. Contrasted gainst the dull “Oil Drum Alley”, “Trick Track Trek”, & “Poison Pond” & the challenge-by-cheap-tricks “Blackout Basement”, “Elevator Antics” feels like we’ve gone back to the subtly intricate challenges o’ “Gorilla Glacier” — tho not necessarily as fair. I remember hating this level as a kid ’cause o’ how hard ’twas, which is odd, since it’s definitely easier than some o’ the levels in “Gorilla Glacier”. E’en the fact that this level comes before the save point isn’t a big deal, since by this point I should have had to survive thru 4 other levels after “Snow Barrel Blast”.

1 difference is that I don’t think there were any cheap tricks in any o’ those levels, save the relatively moderate “Croctopus Chase”, while this level is full o’ cheap hits hidden by that giant conspirator, the camera: Zingers that crash into you as you’re slowly moving up & down or jumping from 1 rope to the other from offscreen, giving you no time to react in such stilted movement; Slippas placed so that right after you jump down from a rope they’ll hit you, with no way to know they’re there till you land ( or worse, you might, in the urge to go as fast as possible, you may lean right up gainst the wall as you jump from the rope, only for that to make you go into the small alcove under that wall immediately ’pon landing, where you can’t defend yourself from a Slippa, as you can neither roll nor jump there ). To a lesser extent, e’en the 1st Mini-Necky is rather dickishly placed, right round where you lose the roll you’ve likely used gainst the 2 Slippas before it, leaving you vulnerable to 1 o’ its nuts as your character slowly recovers from their roll.

Not helping is the uncharacteristically finnicky hitboxes on the “elevators”, which, in contrast to how most good hitboxes work in this game, are smaller than they appear & don’t allow you to stand on their edges, which can lead to unexpected deaths in the thick o’ action. Elevators also don’t seem to be physically there when they’re @ the bottom o’ the screen, as players may learn if they happen to try landing on 1 right @ the bottom & see, to their confusion, their character phase right thru it.

Then there are a few places with illogical design, such as 1 o’ the many cliffs with Klumps on it, but this time going the other direction you’re going, so you can just slowly follow them till they fall off the cliff themselves or the drop from 1 cliff down to ’nother with just a row o’ bananas there ( presumably to show you you can go down there safely ), & nothing else.

The eponymous elevators don’t appear till just after the midpoint, which is understandable, as there’s not much to do with it. They’re basically just the elevator platforms in Super Mario Bros.. They do come up with a few interesting ideas, like jumping from 1 to the other with Zingers both ’bove & below, neither o’ which feel as cheap as the rope jumps with Zingers, & the penultimate section with the low ceilings that give you e’en less room to jump from platform to platform. The 1st 2 sections, howe’er, are the exact same, just that the 2nd has an N near the bottom o’ the elevators. Considering the cliff with the Mini-Necky & the steel barrel that kills it before you reach it is pointless, this section & the 1st elevator section could’ve been cut out with no loss. As a kid I always thought these platforms were s’posed to be kitchen sinks, but I think they’re actually s’posed to be buckets. I think kitchen sinks are cooler, tho, so I’m still going to interpret them as kitchen sinks.

I do like that the other gimmick they use for most o’ the 1st half o’ this level, the ropes, a’least still fit this level’s concept o’ elevating up & down, & it does offer this level some variety that mo’ gimmick-heavy levels lack. It perhaps would’ve been better if they mixed these 2 gimmicks together, as by the time you go thru the 4th pair o’ fighting Klumps & riding elevators in a row, I’ve gotten my fill.

If this level’s shining point is anything, it’s some o’ the Mini-Necky sections, specially the parts where the Mini-Necky goes up & down throwing nuts, creating particularly fun dodge & hit situations, & the final challenge with the Mini-Necky throwing nuts ’bove a tire, forcing the player to time their bounce round the constantly volley o’ nuts.

I have mixed views on the bonuses in this level. The final bonus, in particular, is a bit rude. Yes, it makes sense for the player to be suspicious o’ an elevator going downward that seems to have to use other than, perhaps, as a jump that feels very short & easy @ the climax o’ the level ( tho they do move much mo’ quickly than any other elevator in this level ). But you’re still expecting the player to take a risk going down there when there was just as likely a chance there was nothing down there & they have no way to get back up — right @ the end o’ a relatively hard level. As you can imagine, as a kid I rarely took the elevator up on its 1st offer & oft played thru the level ’gain to get it, now that I didn’t care whether I beat the level or not anymo’. This could’ve worked fine if they a’least spaced the platforms close ’nough that you could jump back up them, so the player wouldn’t feel like they were rolling the dice on a level that hasn’t exactly inspired confidence with some o’ its earlier dick moves. E’en better might have been to make the bonus up high, which fits better with elevators which are mainly for, you know, elevating, which has the bonus o’ not seeming suicidal, since there are no “sky pits” in this game to screw you o’er & you’d be able to just jump down back to the rest o’ the level.

Then there’s the middle bonus, which is just invisible & requires the player to randomly guess there’s something o’er a wall that seems to reach all the way to the top o’ the screen, round a hectic rope section full o’ Zingers where you’re as unlikely to try such a Hail Mary as, well, the end o’ the level. It doesn’t help that, due to how slow your character moves on the ropes, you have to unintuitively jump toward the 3rd rope while the Zinger is right in your way to land on the other side safely & get ’nough time to jump ’gain to reach o’er the wall. What’s specially annoying is that, if you look @ the DK Atlas map, it seems like a great bonus placement, since the DK Atlas map doesn’t indicate that that top few blocks are blocked by the camera ( also, it’s questionable accurate, as you can’t climb up past the camera, so those ropes are mo’ likely floating without a top, ending right where the camera ends, rather than extending past it as the map implies ). A perfect example o’ the developers going too far with obscuring a bonus when they had 1 hidden well ’nough without the camera cheat.

I do like the 1st, right in front o’ your face, but still surprisingly easy to miss; & if you do miss it, it’s right @ the start.

Other than the G, the KONG letters feel well-hidden, specially the K @ the end o’ the ropes @ the start & the N @ the bottom o’ an elevator section ( showing ’nother case where the bonus @ the bottom o’ the elevator could’ve been made mo’ fair: put an upward-moving elevator next to the downward-moving elevator ). I don’t like having to keep getting the O in the bonus with the slowly rotating barrel cannons e’ery time I die, howe’er.

19. Vulture Culture

This level has just the right mix o’ a general mechanic to cohere round & other general mechanics to keep the level from getting too repetitive or generic, something the sequel would master. While shooting yourself @ birds from floating barrel cannons is far from the most exot — actually, now that I think ’bout it, that is a very weird gimmick. Such is the staying power o’ DKC that it has managed to make the bizarre seem normal, just as how Super Mario Bros. normalized floating blocks & jumping 7 times your height. Anyway, after our 1st taste o’ the barrel cannons, “Barrel Cannon Canyon”, insisted we avoid the invulnerable Zingers with our cannon shots, it’s refreshing to be able to intentionally aim @ & destroy enemies this time ­— tho it does sneak back to forcing you to dodge Zingers in the latter 3rd or so.

This level does offer some interesting Necky arrangements & paths gainst which to aim your shots, from stationary Neckies to Neckies moving left & right, up & down, & then circling, to a staircase o’ stationary Neckies whom you bounce up. When this level reintroduces Zingers, it does so by forcing you to bounce gainst a Necky to jump o’er the Zinger. I particularly like the tutorial that is the 2nd Necky, who moves left & right with a half parabola o’ bananas showing precisely where they expect you to shoot — only it’s actually safe to hit the Necky when it’s in the wrong place, which is a much mo’ interesting safety wheels than the ol’ “safety ground that lets you climb back up & try ’gain”.

Ne’ertheless, this level’s layout is nowhere close to as interesting as the intricate web o’ cannons in “Barrel Cannon Canyon”, & is thus oddly easier, despite taking place 2 worlds later. I guess this level was meant to be more o’ a warm-up, being the 1st level o’ the world ( as opposed to “Barrel Cannon Canyon”, which is the last level o’ world 1 ) & being before the player reaches the safety o’ the save point. This level comes right before “Tree Top Town”, which is, contrariwise, quite a difficulty spike ( & which also comes before either a save point or a Funky warp that lets you go to an earlier save point, so if “Vulture Culture” is trying to be merciful, “Tree Top Town” makes that mercy fall in vain ). Some set pieces are repeated a bit too oft, such as the aforementioned staircases o’ Neckies, o’ which there are 3 & specially the Mini-Neckies just standing there spitting nuts. While the 2nd iteration where you can throw a barrel down a set o’ steps to plow the Mini-Necky down is interesting, they repeat this idea many other times, including a plainer version 1st & a few times afterward. There are 2 instances o’ just the Mini-Neckies without a barrel, offering something o’ an actual challenge, but by that point they feel diluted with all the other Mini-Neckies. Cutting some o’ these parts probably would’ve strengthened this level.

The bonus locations aren’t that interesting, either. The 3rd bonus does tie itself to the sort o’ micro gimmick o’ this level, the Neckies perched up high dropping nuts, making the 2nd iteration something beyond just falling dangers to be avoided, challenging the player to climb up & bop them while avoiding their nuts so they can jump down &, with that extra weight, break open the floor to produce a barrel to open a cave wall. That said, I don’t like how quick the cave wall rebuilds itself after breaking it just by making it go just the tiniest bit offscreen ( the barrel needed to break it, sadly, does not respawn ). They hide the N in the bonus section itself & I like the way you can just mash the A button to go thru all the barrel blasts.

Howe’er, the 2nd bonus is, ’less you’re unlucky ’nough to precisely move so that you don’t land on either the cave wall or the floor with the barrel or the Necky & then 1 o’ these other 2, which seems like something you have to try to do, just given to you, & otherwise feels like it cheaply robs you o’ a bonus.

The 1st bonus, the least weak o’ them, relies on a trail o’ bananas to indicate its presence, & expects the player to roll the tire under it, which is a repeat o’ a similar bonus in “Stop & Go Station”, but not as cleverly hidden or arranged, despite coming in a later level.

None o’ the KONG letter placements are interesting. Most are in plain sight, with the N in plain sight in a bonus. Only the 1st is hidden in a new place under breakable floor.

18. Croctopus Chase

Definitely the best water level in this game, since this level has a gimmick beyond dangers that slowly move side to side or in circles: the eponymous Croctopuses this time don’t just spin in simple circles but start chasing you after you pass certain points, starting with small, simple paths, & then building into longer, a bit mo’ serpentine paths & starting with breaks ’tween chases, but then ending with chases following right after the other. Granted, I think they could’ve had much mo’ twisty paths than they had here, which doesn’t go beyond zigzagging left, right, left right.

Since this level involves races gainst dangers, this level actually pushes you to go fast, while the other levels usually encourage you to go slowly to avoid running into the enemies that just fly into you from offscreen with li’l warning, including the later “Poison Pond”, which is arguably easier than this level. This level accommodates this by having fewer enemies strewn thru the race paths, tho it still has stealth Chomps that just fly into you from offscreen & obnoxious Squidges that blend in with the scenery. Unfortunately, the developers decided to put 1 Squidge in the path o’ the race, forcing you to stop & wait for it to get out o’ your way. It seems the developers realized there were a few too many cheap hits, as this level has a whopping 5 DK barrels strewn thruout — & I can’t help but notice that they usually placed them after cheap hits, like after the 1st Chomps Jr.

This is not to say this level doesn’t have any interesting arrangements o’ enemies. I do like the 2 Chomps round the middle, 1 on top & 1 on the bottom, forcing you to weave ’tween them, which is tricky when you essentially only move in diagonals.

That said, this level does have an odd difficulty curve. After quite a ramp up in difficult near the end o’ the 1st half, with Squidges & Chomps thrown into your races ’head o’ the Croctopuses, most o’ the 2nd half returns to focusing on just races ’head o’ Croctopuses, with the few cases where they do mix in Chomps being near the start o’ the 2nd half, only to finally culminate @ the end with a whole colony o’ Squidges, which would be hard to get thru if you couldn’t just stop & wait for them to swim by ( or just plow thru them if you found Enguarde ).

Thanks to the races’ somewhat twisty paths, this level has the most intricate shape, e’en mo’ so than the mo’ difficult “Poison Pond” in a later world, which is nice. Unlike the sequels, water levels are the only levels that go beyond straight left to right, so a mo’ intricate layout is refreshing here. I’m still disappointed that — yes — being a water level, this has no bonuses in it, despite being mo’ fit for hiding secrets than most o’ the linear levels.

While I like that the secret Enguarde — which is near the end, so you can’t coast on it thruout the whole level like in other water levels — is hidden using a thin hole @ the top o’ the wall like I recommended for “Clam City” & not magical move-thru wall, I don’t like the way the N is hidden ’hind a hidden wall, in a particularly stupid way. It’s in a space ’tween 2 barrel cannons, 1 o’ which shoots you straight into the other & then onward, skipping o’er the hole. You might expect that you’re s’posed to go back into the 2nd barrel cannon, but that just shoots you back ’way from the middle gap, nor can you squeeze thru the barrel cannons. No, you’re s’posed to just press gainst the right wall to move thru it. A’least this level outright shows you that something’s in the middle there, that doesn’t make magic move-thru walls any less stupid, & a reasonable player would use that as a hint that they can later reach that part from a different point, not that the wall next to you is an illusion. Luckily this is only a problem for GBA players, since the SNES version doesn’t count KONG letters toward 101%.

@ the other end o’ the spectrum, despite this level being full o’ crevices in which to hide goodies, all the other KONG letters are straight in your path. I guess the idea is that needing to hurry by is challenge ’nough; but these letters are all in such narrow spots that you’d have to try avoiding them. Mo’ importantly, this only applies to the K, as the N & G — the latter o’ which I don’t e’en think is possible to avoid if you tried — aren’t e’en on paths where you’re being followed by Croctopuses.

While this level doesn’t look as nice as the toxic green “Poison Pond”, the icy-blue palette ( since this level is in “Gorilla Glacier” ) makes it stand out better than the 1st 2 water levels, which both have the same palette.

17. Bouncy Bonanza

Tho not the most memorable o’ levels, thanks to its focus on basic jumping mechanics, “Bouncy Bonanza” does a better job o’ balancing fast-paced action & slower, mo’ deliberate puzzle-solving than most. For 1, it’s nice ’nough to offer faster solutions to its puzzles, allowing you, for instance, a way to skip e’ery instance o’ rolling tires with way too much momentum for their own good onto small platforms & hopping they don’t fall into a pit, either by using the hidden Winky or just jumping with Diddy.

This level also does a good job o’ creating a cohesive theme for a level without any particular gimmick: it’s just a bunch o’ hopping Kritters & tire jumps. They e’en integrated the midway point into it by forcing you to roll a tire to bounce up & reach it.

Howe’er, near the end o’ the level they seemed to run out o’ ideas, as they repeat the “jump on tires while doddging Zingers” thing 3 times with not much variance to differentiate them. 2 o’ them are literally only differentiated by a single extra Zinger. Challenging you to roll a tire while dodging a moving Zinger @ the end was a nice touch, tho — specially since you can skip it if you were good ’nough to keep Winky to this point.

This level also benefits by breaking the straight left-to-right path by introducing a branch near the middle. I think the top branch is s’posed to be easier, but that’s debatable, thanks to the cheap Kritters that jump @ you from offscreen. Howe’er, this branch does lead you to a cave with Winky ( who can be traded in for Rambi on the 1st North American release, thanks to a great glitch ). My only problem with this branching — other than the cheap Kritters @ the top — is that they have a magical move-thru wall @ the top. I don’t think I was e’er tricked by it, ¿since why would you have a platform moving up if I wasn’t s’posed to go up there?, but that just makes it pointless.

The bonuses are all great. In addition to the aforementioned tire-rolling challenge for the bonus @ the end, there’s a bonus near the middle that challenges the player to weave round Zingers moving up & down to hit a wall with a barrel.

They also did a good job o’ placing the KONG letters in tricky places round enemies without making you do tedious busywork not worth doing to get them. The only 1 I don’t like is the N, which you pretty much have to get while going down the secret path, but you can only get on the secret path. Granted, unlike other levels, the secret path is mo’ a nontrivial alternate path than just a way to skip a part o’ the level.

While “Bouncy Bonanza” uses the o’erused & uninteresting cave tileset, it a’least uses a unique dark pink palette that looks nicer than that gaudy yellow-brown palette most cave levels use.

16. Mine Cart Carnage

“Mine Cart Carnage” is probably the most famous level in this game, e’en mo’ well-known than the 1st level. Despite mine cart levels being far from the rarest, most exotic level gimmick in a game, much less a platformer, this level single-handedly elevated DKC to the top o’ people’s minds when it comes to mine cart levels. Mine cart levels play such a big part o’ the general consciousness o’ what is DKC that Returns dedicated half a world to mine cart levels.

“Mine Cart Carnage” is also a perfect example o’ the great difficulty curve the classic DKC trilogy has, with its general upward trajectory pocked with minor difficulty spikes that also increase in difficulty thruout the game. For many kids “Mine Cart Carnage” was the 1st difficulty wall ( if not “Barrel Cannon Canyon” from the 1st world ), only to be superceded later on by far harder levels like “Tree Top Town” & “Snow Barrel Blast”. By having both the average upward difficulty trajectory & the minor spikes here & there, DKC is able to have its Twinkie & eat it, too: you get the enjoyment o’ feeling the game gradually become harder as your skills gradually increase while also getting the excitement, surprise, & memorability o’ the minor spikes.

This notoriety ’mong people’s childhood memories is amusing in hindsight as an adult with better skills, ’cause if you try the level now, it’s not that hard — far from the hardest level. It’s far easier than the mine cart levels Returns unleashes on you. Whereas that game would oft change the level & add gotchas right as you’re playing it to trip you up, this level operates purely on “What You See Is What You Get”: you see an abandoned cart in the track, a hole in the track, or a Kremling in a cart charging toward you & you need to time your jump to just before you collide. If you jump too early, you’ll risk landing on the danger & get hit; if you jump too late, you’ll bump into the danger as you jump. With this greater simplicity comes a greater fairness, something the original trilogy did a lot better than the Returns games.

The only true trouble comes from the Kremlings riding toward you @ a faster speed, as you have to time your press with 2 moving objects ’stead o’ just 1 & a 1 that’s static. This can actually make remembering the level a bit worse, as you can become paranoid that you know a Kremling’s coming & get twitchy fingers, only to jump too soon & land just before a Kremling charges into you. This is particularly the case for the last section, where you have suspicious empty track for quite a long time for the end’s ramped-up pace, e’en tho you know a Kremling’s coming, you know he’s coming…

The layout o’ obstacles is also tamer than one might remember, with the 1st half relying entirely on small gaps ’tween tracks, only to gradually introduce lying carts & Kremlings with large plots o’ safe track ’tween them, till it finally starts putting them closer & closer together, with the rails pointed @ sharper angles for added difficulty. This can make the earlier parts a bit boring on repeat playthrus when you’re only having trouble with the early parts ( a common problem with levels slowly going from safe & easy to hard that many critics who lavishly praise Nintendo for doing this kind o’ level design of neglect to address ), but your cart moves just quick ’nough that you can rush thru these parts without making the cart go so quickly that a normal player can’t react to obstacles in time. While “Mine Cart Carnage” is the longest level in the game, you move so quickly that it feels shorter than the average level. The rush o’ this level also probably makes its simplicity a positive rather than a negative, as it’d be hard to appreciate too much complexity while blasting past e’erything.

Aligned with this, the KONG letters are in plain sight, tho they all but maybe the G require a jump to get them, & it’s easy to accidentally jump o’er the N just after a fallen mine cart.

’Course, if this level’s still not easy ’nough, the devs offer what we would now call a “dev path” ( but back then was known as “the way to get you to subscribe to Nintendo Power” ) that allows you to skip the entire level but the last Kremling by jumping o’er the 1st barrel cannon & pressing gainst the leftmost wall to enter an invisible barrel. While obscure, this is just an extra not required to get so much as 100% — tho I will add with amusement that, since this level has no bonuses in the level proper, using this warp to skip the entire level not only allows you to beat the game without playing this level, but allows you to 100% the game, as well. In essence, it’s not different from a cheat code.

15. Torchlight Trouble

If anything gives this level an advantage, it’s that it knows when to end when other levels with just-as-1-note gimmicks are mo’ likely to stretch their gimmicks out. This level’s gimmick is not the eponymous torchlight, which is mo’ a visual distraction ( specially the screen flashes that happen whene’er you turn, which were removed from the Virtual Console for obvious reasons ). Honestly, I would’ve prefered a fresher palette, specially a blue, white, or purple palette that might have made this level feels like it belongs in “Gorilla Glacier”. In contrast, I do like the flaming oil drums, which makes this level feel like warm shelter ’way from all the other cold levels.

This level’s gimmick, gameplay-wise, are precarious jumps made e’en mo’ precarious if you’re playing the better jumper, Diddy, by the Klumps & Krushas who cause Diddy to bounce back if he lands on them. This forces players into a dilemma: ¿use DK, with his weak jumps that can, for example, barely clear the Mincer & reach the rising & falling small platform @ the end o’ the level, or use Diddy & take extra pains to avoid the Klumps & Krushas?

This level has some great challenges near the end with the Klumps on thin platforms made e’en thinner for players by the harmful torchlit oil drums & round the end with the Krushas & Mincers, but feels like a lulls round the middle. E’en this short, this level runs out o’ ideas rather quickly & could’ve benefited from a bit mo’ variety. They could’ve a’least given a sneak peak o’ moving Mincers ( the lightly gyrating Mincer @ the end doesn’t count, which is 1 o’ the easiest jumps in this level ), who won’t appear till “Manic Mincers” 2 worlds later, in simple arrangements.

I like the bonuses in this level. The 1st bonus is so obvious, & yet still easy to miss if you’re rushing: the barrel is right on top o’ the breakable wall with a Krusha coming right @ you when you reach it, daring you to waste that barrel on his stupid face rather than on the breakable wall just ’hind you.

I would’ve made the 2nd bonus harder, tho, by having its barrel earlier, so there is a mo’ extended challenge o’ bringing it past several Krushas. As it stands, you only need to jump o’er a single Mincer, which isn’t e’en a threat to your barrel. I guess the bonus wall itself isn’t in plain sight, but neither are most o’ them; by this point, ¿what player is going to break a barrel for no reason & not notice the obvious wall just after that Mincer?

The KONG letters are all great, being tricky but fast to get. The K requires you to roll off the left edge & jump back while possibly dealing with a Klump if you haven’t killed him 1st; the O requires you to make a chancy extra jump in the middle o’ a tiny moving platform’s path & land back on that tiny platform; the N requires you to roll jump off a tiny platform moving up & down; & the G is hidden in the final bonus, requiring you to jump off the Klaptrap to reach it & making this otherwise too-tedious-&-too-low-scoring-to-be-worth-playing bonus interesting for once.

14. Barrel Cannon Canyon

While not the most obscure level in DKC, “Barrel Cannon Canyon” is still less renowned than you’d expect coming from the level that introduces that long-lasting staple o’ the series, the barrel cannon. & as an introduction, it’s no slouch. While the level starts with basic barrel cannons that just shoot you straight upward, 1st stationary & then moving left & right, the level quickly expands into mo’ complex arrangements o’ barrel cannons going up & down, left, & right, & spinning, culminating in a long stream o’ barrel cannons @ the end strewn with Zingers also moving in e’ery direction, an arrangement that’s far closer to the complexity & challenge found in the kind o’ apex this game reaches in “Snow Barrel Blast” in the 4th world, what many consider to be the hardest level in the game, than you’d expect in the 1st world. Granted, the trick that the developers pull to make this level easier than “Snow Barrel Blast” is to make the barrel cannons move much slower, giving you much mo’ time to react.

Which is to say, “Barrel Cannon Canyon” is quite a difficulty spike with which to end the 1st world, a spike which wouldn’t be met ’gain till a’least the 3rd world’s “Tree Top Town” ( yes, I’d definitely stand by “Mine Cart Carnage” & “Stop & Go Station” being easier than this level — a’least without shortcuts ). Not only do we have these tricky barrel shooting section, but also plenty o’ sections full o’ hopping Kremlings, making for a rather long level, too — a full 4th longer than the 2nd longest level in the 1st world. Granted, I don’t think I’d consider these sections to be e’en harder than some o’ the arrangements in the 2nd level, “Ropey Rampage” ( itself a minor difficulty spike ).

The developers, ’course, knew what they were doing, as they filled the level with shortcuts that let you skip the hardest parts, including the whole final gauntlet. & unlike the shortcuts in “Mine Cart Carnage” & “Stop & Go Station”, these are not obscure shortcuts, but whose access points, the top palm tree sections, are in plain sight; & players having just played “Jungle Hijinxs” should be well aware o’ the importance o’ the tree tops areas. I think they squander this point, howe’er, by putting a barrel cannon that starts the skip on top o’ the cave entrance @ the beginning. They already do a trick like this in “Millstone Mayhem” ( but with a bonus barrel ), & the 1st normal barrel cannon already shoots you up so high that you can clearly see the tree tops & the next warp barrel cannon, & allows you to reach them without the 1st barrel cannon.

On the other hand, unlike “Mine Cart Carnage”, this doesn’t make the bonuses any freer. The 1st bonus, unforunately, is obscure & requires the player to take a gamble & guess that deliberately missing a barrel cannon going up & down & shooting yourself directly into a wall will make you enter a bonus stage. While it makes sense, given that the game established that there are bonuses in breakable walls, the game also establishes that most walls aren’t breakable, & I’d suspect that most players would assume this’d be mo’ likely the case for a wall with a barrel cannon clearly meant for you to shoot to, with the clear message that failure to do so would end in death like all other misses. I distinctly remember that I had to look this 1 up, as I’d probably try falling into e’ery bottomless pit ( & this is a large level with many pits ) before trying something so unintuitive, specially when the 2nd level, unfortunately, seeded the idea o’ bonus barrels beind down bottomless pits.

The 2nd bonus is tricky, but a fair challenge where you have to knock out Kremlings so you can bring a TNT barrel to a cave wall. It’d be annoying to try ramming this TNT barrel into e’ery 1 o’ the many walls here, but thankfully 1 o’ the earliest walls you’d be likely to try has the bonus. The only problem is if you make the mistake o’ bringing the TNT barrel in the bottom right area & can’t get back up; but it’s obvious you can’t go back up from there, so any player paying attention & thinking shouldn’t be foolish ’nough to bring the TNT down there till they exhausted all options up ’bove. I ne’er remember making such a mistake, tho I certainly recall accidentally breaking the TNT barrel on a Kremling or despawning the TNT barrel while going off to get rid o’ a Kremling in my way.

The KONG letter placement is rather strong in this level, tho. While half o’ the KONG letters are virtually impossible to miss, since they’re right in your path, I like how the developers placed them so you can get them whether you take bonus paths or not: the K is in the path o’ both the secret skip barrel cannon & the main barrel cannon, while there are 2 Os, 1 in the secret shortcut path & the regular path. The only exception is the N, for which you have to take a detour to an out-o’-the-way barrel cannon to break it out o’ the ground in which it hides. Finally, the G is hidden up in the treetops @ the end.

To be honest, this level perhaps has too much content for its own good & can feel kind o’ bloated, specially the Kremling sections, which can feel a bit repetitive. Granted, if you’re not going for the 2nd bonus, hopping from Kremling to Kremling in that middle section is very fun, as can rolling thru the column o’ hopping Kremlings earlier on. But other parts just have regular walking Kremlings that don’t add much.

This level has much less variety after “Ropey Rampage” gave us the mo’ complex Army enemy. E’en “Reptile Rumble” gave us Slippa, e’en if it’s just a shorter Gnawty with a different appearance. I’d say this level feels less memorable than “Ropey Rampage” — tho the fact that I would skip o’er large sections in some runs may have contributed to this. & part o’ the problem with the barrel cannon sections, specially the most memorable last part, is that they’re so similar to the sections in “Snow Barrel Blast” — just slower so that timing is easier to time — that it’s easy to forget ’bout them compared to the versions in this level’s mo’ notorious brother. Which is to say, we have our answer as to why “Barrel Cannon Canyon” doesn’t get all that much attention.

13. Tree Top Town

After “Mine Cart Carnage”, “Tree Top Town” is the next major difficulty spike, & hosts the return o’ the barrel cannons introduced in the 1st difficulty spike o’ the game, “Barrel Cannon Canyon”. ’Twas hard to rate this level vs. “Barrel Cannon Canyon”. The barrel cannon sections in “Barrel Cannon Canyon” seem to have mo’ variety than in this level, with both moving & rotating barrels. On the other hand, “Barrel Cannon Canyon”’s arrangements don’t feel like a repeat o’ those found in “Snow Barrel Blast”, while “Tree Top Town” introduces an interesting twist, seen nowhere else in this game: sections where you need to time your shot not when the next barrel is lined up with yours ( both your barrel & the next are stationary ), like all the other barrel-timing puzzles, but when the next barrel, which shoots immediately ’pon entering, lines up with a 3rd barrel, which is moving. This means the player can’t just time their shot right when 2 barrels are aligned, but have to leave a li’l space to account for how much the 3rd barrel will move during the delay o’ shooting into the next barrel & waiting for it to shoot just after. That said, this level doesn’t do much mo’ with this gimmick than 1 twist wherein you have to stop & wait to time your 1st jump into an autobarrel from the ground level, which feels mo’ like a gotcha trap — specially since the camera seems to lag @ that point, delaying the appearance o’ the 3rd barrel that reveals it’s not in position when you 1st enter till you’re right next to the 1st barrel & probably already jumping in — than an interesting challenge in a game that usually kept ’way from gotcha traps. While maybe the player should be suspicious o’ autobarrels in a level with the aforementioned gimmick, there are plenty o’ arrangements before this that start with an autobarrel that don’t play this trick.

I might also complain ’bout how this “puzzle”, if you solve it, amounts to nothing mo’ than waiting for the 3rd barrel to get in place & then jumping in… but then, ¿isn’t that what all barrel cannon sections are? ¿Waiting for barrels to align themselves?

The enemy arrangements that act as breaks ’tween barrel cannon sections feel e’en mo’ repetitive in this level: they’re all just enemies that drop onto you. The final arrangement with the 5 Kritters is particularly annoying ’cause it puts a barrel where you’re likely to pick it up, & if you’re using Diddy ( ¿& why would anyone not prefer to use Diddy? ) you make it roll, nor roll yourself with this thing in your hands, & the 1st & 2nd Kritters are so close that you have no time to roll into the 2nd Kritter after breaking the barrel on the 1st Kritter. The DK barrel just after the midway point is also annoyingly placed, as they placed the Kritter to fall in just the right delay so that they land on you & dodge the barrel in your hands; howe’er in this case you can just jump to hit them without slowing down, so that part’s actually kind o’ cool. But, hey, a’least these arrangements have some subtle twists to them & are, mo’ importantly, much shorter, making this level feel, despite how repetitive it can get, like a short jaunt compared to “Barrel Cannon Canyon”, which feels quite bloated. ( Tho, I just looked it up & was surprised to find that “Tree Top Town” is only a screen or 2 shorter than “Barrel Cannon Canyon” ).

This level does end much mo’ strongly, with a subtly interesting twist wherein you have to time a moving barrel cannon with a moving Necky, tying this level back to “Vulture Culture” without straying from this level’s gimmick, but adding an extra difficult complication, as “Vulture Culture” lacked moving barrel cannons. This final barrel cannon challenge is followed by precarious cliffs with a hole in the center & a tire, forcing the player to continue being careful e’en after bopping off the Necky. I love how this difficulty apex, for this point o’ the game, comes after the lull o’ just timing a few basic moving barrel cannons moving up & down.

I would say it begins strong, too, with a bonus barrel in plain sight that the player can’t reach. The player needs to follow the Necky that appears later back & use that Necky as a springboard to reach it. I specially like how they add the extra twist o’ that same Necky being useful as a springboard where it 1st appears to reach a tire just visible @ the top o’ the screen to bounce high ’nough to reach a warp barrel that allows the player to skip this level. While “Barrel Cannon Canyon” constantly throws its many skips in front o’ the player, the player needs to work far harder to get this level’s skip. There’s also a bookends element to the Neckies, which only appear @ the very beginning & very end o’ the level. My only problem is the Gnawty that comes before the Necky. It’s easy to think you can use that Gnawty to reach the bonus barrel, only to fall short & fall into the pit, which feels cheap. The least they could’ve done was put the Gnawty after the Necky.

The 2nd bonus is far less interesting, being just a banana floating into the air that you’re obviously s’posed to shoot @. I guess an obvious secret is better than a secret that requires telepathy ( or rather, a subscription to Nintendo Power ), like the wall you need to shoot @ in “Barrel Cannon Canyon”.

I’m mixed on the KONG letters: their placement seems mo’ interesting to the level designer than the player — well, ’cept for the K, which is right in the player’s path. The O requires the player to do a vertical barrel cannon puzzle where failure is safe, which is interesting in theory, but just feels like a delay for just a letter. The N is @ the top o’ the 2nd bonus, which requires timing a rotating & moving barrel when it’s straight in the middle. The G, which is in the best position, is ’bove the final Necky, challenging players to aim their jump to grab it in addition to the aiming they have to do to stay ’live on their fall back to ground. Placing KONG letters requires a delicate balance ’tween not making their placements right on the main path, & thereby feeling superfluous, & not requiring too much effort for what amounts to very li’l advantage ( specially in the original SNES version, where getting all the KONG letters only grants you a single 1-up in a game that just throws 1-ups @ you ). For an otherwise fast-paced level like this where you’re liable to get plenty o’ deaths, forcing the player to stop & make detours to do simple challenges e’ery time they die feels mo’ like an annoying chore than a fun challenge & I could not imagine anyone bothering on the majority o’ versions that don’t care ’bout the KONG letters for 100%.

But the final tiebreaker is this level’s far superior aesthetics to “Barrel Cannon Canyon”’s: its unfortunately-rare treetops visuals, ’long with its jazzy music, which stand out e’en in “Vine Valley”, which already has the most beautiful levels in the game & the amazing “Forest Frenzy” song.

12. Forest Frenzy

This level’s main gimmick, holding onto a rope while dodging Zingers or Neckies, has the distinction o’ having 1 o’ the few autoscroll sections in the original trilogy ( the only other I can recall is “Stampede Sprint” from DKC3 ) that goes fast ’nough that I don’t mind the autoscroll, since there’s no boring wait period, like in “Trick Track Trek” or “Tanked Up Trouble”. The developers change up the gimmick in its different pieces, getting gradually harder, as expected, starting with stationary Zingers, then Zingers moving up & down, then Zingers going in circles, & then finally Neckies charging toward you, giving you much less time to react.

While the last iteration is the hardest & is iconic in its own right, I find the iteration before it with the Zingers spinning in circles & going up & down mo’ interesting, as it can be very tricky to measure where the Zinger will be when you reach it. In a few cases when a Zinger starts where you are you’re better off staying where you are, as the Zinger will move to the opposite side by the time you reach it.

This level also finds a good balance ’mong keeping a dominant theme ( dodging obstacles on ropes ), but having breaks from that theme so that the level doesn’t feel 1-note ( the Kritter sections ), but without making the level feel like it goes on too long with too much padding. They probably could’ve found a mo’ interesting mechanic for these breaks than hopping Kritters — or tried using other enemies, like Army. I like the 1st setpiece with Kritters, where they both hop up to the higher cliff, which can confuse players not paying attention ready to attack them or e’en get them hit if they try to jump on them as they jump up out o’ the player’s way just as they reach them, but is convenient for players who just want to run right thru. Howe’er, they don’t do anything else with this idea o’ Kritters mixed with walkthru ledges, but just have the rest o’ the Kritter sections be normal ground, albeit sometimes sloping up & down in various ways.

Surprisingly, the bonuses in this level aren’t spread out relatively evenly o’er the stage, but are both near the end, which makes the 1st bonus e’en harder to find, since most players, knowing they’re missing a bonus, would probably aim their search near the 1st half, suspicious o’ the lack o’ bonuses. It’s certainly less predictable. The 1st bonus location is yet ’nother case where the lip just appears ’bove the bottom o’ the screen; but while most levels have this in a calm area where you can just stay & look closely, this bonus is located in the Necky onslaught, where you’re being constantly propelled forward & would likely be too busy dodging Neckies to be looking down there. The 2nd bonus is the last wall on an up & down mountain o’ walls with Kritters on e’ery clifftop & the barrel on the other side, forcing the player to get the barrel past the Kritters without breaking it. I like how there’s a slow, safe way to do this, but repeatedly dropping the barrel & bonking the enemies, or the fast, harder method o’ jumping under the Kritters as they’re jumping. Granted, I’m not so keen on the way the barrel disappears if you let it go offscreen.

I like the KONG letter placements, being somewhat risky to get, but not too much o’ an inconvenience. The O is ’hind a Zinger while riding a rope, forcing the player to try tighter timing & getting right up close to the Zinger. The N is below a circling Zinger, while the G is in the middle o’ a circling Zinger — but 1 that’s ne’er going to hit you if you stay aligned with the G, thanks to how the rope & Zingers are perfectly synchronized. The weakest is the K, which requires rolling off the edge & jumping @ the end, like in many other levels — tho in many o’ those other levels this kind o’ setup is the strongest placement. I think they should’ve made this mo’ interesting & integrated the rope mechanic better by making the gap longer so that you have to time your jump so that you can grab the rope afterward. As it is now the rope is pointless as you can easily reach the other side thru the roll jump by itself.

11. Loopy Lights

Here we see a much better variant o’ the darkness gimmick than the travesty that was “Blackout Basement”’s, for 2 reasons: 1. the darkness isn’t complete black, so there’s a chance you can maybe see things, specially on brighter monitors ( in fact, the GBA version, a casualty o’ the brightness war that the GBA unleashed on all its games thanks to its developers not realizing portable devices might benefit by being actually visible, e’erything is perfectly visible in darkness ); 2. you have control o’er the light by clicking it on yourself whene’er you touch 1 o’ the bizarre switch barrels ( how a barrel being a light switch makes any sense is beyond me ). Unlike “Blackout Basement”, which challenges you to either memorize the level or stop & go ( & still risk getting hit by an enemy coming @ you that you can’t see ), this level challenges you to hurry from light switch to light switch. Since you have control o’er the light switches, you could argue that it’s the player’s fault when the level’s lights go out this time & that they deserve e’en worse than having to roll the dice on getting to continue living for not reaching the next switch fast ’nough.

This level also introduces an interesting enemy that I sorta wish they used in mo’ levels, the purple Klaptrap ( which, oft looks red when in the shadows — which does give them a mo’ menacing look, specially in the dark ), which, rather than just going straight, jumps when the player jumps, forcing the player to make curved jump maneuvers to jump onto them.

“Loopy Lights” finds a good balance ’tween keeping the purple Klaptraps dominant in the level but not letting them o’ertake the level so much that it feels monotonous & repetitive, with moving platforms going left & right & up & down & other enemies thrown in 1 or 2 times, like the 2 Kritters hopping back & forth near the middle, the 2nd on a higher cliff, hopping from edge to edge, requiring dexterious timing & aiming to avoid being hit; a perched Necky guarding a light switch; & the Manky Kong near the end. A particular highlight is the section before the Manky Kong with the swarm o’ Zingers, some stationary, some moving in various patterns, who look particularly menacing with only their bug eyes standing out much in the darkness. This section is only hurt by some o’ the cheap Zinger paths, such as the orange Zingers that move left & right & can come & smack you from offscreen after you’ve already committed to a jump o’er the Zingers below them if you linger; but luckily, like many DKC setpieces, they’re positioned so that the Zinger is on the right side when you reach it & you can rush thru them without stopping.

While a relatively long level, since you’re pushed into going forward, it feels just the right length & feels like it does all that it needs to do without feeling too repetitive. Granted are a few repeated pieces, like the 4 tire platforms in a row, but with the light switch gimmick, these add both urgency — you need to hurry past them all to reach the next light switch — & fairness — since they’re so similar, the player can blindly estimate where they are if the lights go out.

The bonus locations are neither terrible nor great. The 1st is yet ’nother banana in a pit, which feels specially tired this late in the game. The 2nd bonus challenges you to not use the barrel under the Perched Necky to destroy said Perched Necky but to carry it onward, past the next Klaptrap, & then break it on the next wall, which is made particularly difficult on darker screens ’cause you can’t rid yourself o’ the Perched Necky & safely hit the light switch under them in this scenario. As for the bonuses themselves: I like how you can just mash the jump button to plow thru the barrel cannons in the 1st bonus. The 2nd bonus has an interesting upward staircase section, which is ruined by them putting that dumbass Espresso token in the way. I’m just glad that the N is before it, as having to play that bloody Espresso bonus e’ery 3 failures to get all the KONG letters in the GBA version would be intolerable. For some reason they have a banana bunch next to a tire you can roll, which heavily hints that there’s a bonus up there, but there isn’t — it’s just a useless banana bunch & the tire is just as useless, only for hitting the light switch you can easily reach from the cliff just before it.

Speaking o’ the KONG letters, their placements are OK. Having both the K & N in bonuses is kinda tedious, tho. The G is in a quick but precarious place in the Zinger swarm & the O is just off the edge o’ a platform, forcing the player to do an edge roll jump. I feel like there are many better places they could’ve put letters, like round that useless tire surrounded by Kritters.

A strange, subtle quirk to this level is that it has the sparse walkway background with all the li’l yellow lanterns, rather than the usual wooden supports. I’m not sure if this was done to make the background stand out mo’ from the foreground in the darkness or just a mistake.

10. Manic Mincers

“Manic Mincers” gives us the ultimate challenge for Rambi in his final appearance in the 1st DKC. Unlike most enemies, who Rambi can plow thru effortlessly, the eponymous Mincers plow thru Rambi ’stead. Add to that Rambi’s mo’ slippery movement ( specially on the GBA version, where he feels like he’s ice-skating all the time ) & his large hitbox, & we have an animal buddy who’s not worth keeping round all that much, specially thru those sections with the small moving platform that Rambi can’t e’en fit completely on & the tight jumps round the giant Mincers.

Tho there are 2 bonus caves you can open with Rambi, 1 near the start & 1 right @ the end, you don’t need him for either, as the game gives you plenty o’ barrels. I’m not sure why: as a final-world level, it would’ve been perfectly fair to force the player to bring Rambi all the way to the end. The cave that leads to the TNT barrel that can be used for the final wall is particular: the cave room is a sorta bonus, sorta not a bonus: it doesn’t count toward your percentage, but if you get hit by a Mincer, it just kicks you out. The only thing @ the end is a G, so ’less you’re playing the GBA version, getting hit by the 1st Mincer just speeds things up.

Tho this level focuses on its gimmick to such an extent you wouldn’t see till DKC3, this level doesn’t feel repetitive or that it goes on too long. The developers were able to create plenty o’ interesting arrangements to dodge. In addition to the aforementioned moving small platform sections, I like the tire before the wall o’ 2 Mincers & the rotating Mincers where you have to weave ’tween them. This is like an actually good version o’ the Boo carousels from Super Mario World. Boo carousels are painfully slow & have holes ’tween almost all the Boos so tiny it’s a virtual crapshoot whether you can make it thru them without being hit & 1 large hole where there’s no challenge getting thru, forcing the player to choose ’tween waiting & getting guaranteed success or making a mad gamble, neither o’ which feel fun, & the latter was clearly not intended. DKC’s Mincer carousels, howe’er, are clearly designed for weaving ’tween the holes, which are large ’nough that it’s not a gamble getting thru, but are small ’nough that it still takes skill to weave ’tween them: there’s not nearly as long a wait for the carousel to line up correctly & still the fun challenge o’ timing your movement thru, a win-win in all cases.

That said, thanks to how big & fast the Mincers are, & how small the camera feels, there are a few cheap hits if you’re rushing thru: in particular, during the section with the Mincers & Gnawties on the ground. You have 3 Mincers with gaps ’tween them, only for the gap after them to have a Mincer that zooms in from offscreen. If you don’t wait, you’re guaranteed to get hit by it, which you won’t realize till you already commit to a jump. There’s also that weird rotating Mincer with a wide radius near the end that can just pop in & slam down on you without warning.

The KONG letters is half & half. The K is right in you path & I don’t e’en know if it’s possible to avoid the O without taking damage, as it’s in the only spot ’tween 2 Mincers. I do like how the N requires an extra jump on the already precarious small moving platform section. I’m glad it’s the G @ the end o’ all those Mincers moving up & down in that weird cave, so you ne’er have to do it ’gain, e’en if you die ( well, ’less you missed the other letters ).

This level’s green palette is refreshing after all the brownish palettes in all the other cave levels.

9. Platform Perils

As a final level, “Platform Perils” is rather underrated. A part o’ the problem is the underwhelming nature o’ this game’s general final world, “Chimp Caverns”. Caverns are ne’er the most exciting level theme, which is why games rarely have them as the final world theme, but usually have them early in the game, but in this game this isn’t e’en the 1st cavern world — the 2nd world, “Monkey Mines”, is basically a cave world, too — & cave levels are the most common level theme in this game. The aesthetics — which are, after all, what most people talk ’bout when discussing this game — doesn’t help. “Platform Perils” uses the particularly common & particularly bland walkway theme. While many level themes are full o’ lush scenery, this theme’s background is mostly black, with the same li’l cave wall with a light copy-pasted many times; & with the foreground being thin platforms, full o’ holes ( this is the last level o’ the game, after all ), there’s a lot o’ background to see. Add to that that same droning “Life in the Mines” music, & you have a level that feels like just ’nother level, rather than the grand finale. Contrast that with the sequel’s final level, which was a particularly challenging bramble level with a rotting autumnal palette.

But the familiarity o’ this level hides the subtle way it ramps up difficulty. E’en this level’s main gimmick is subtle: this level introduces a unique new enemy, Gray Krushas, which can’t be defeated thru rolls or jumping on them by either Diddy or Donkey, but can only be defeated by a barrel. In an interesting twist to how gimmicks are handled in most DKC levels, Gray Krusha is introduced in his simplest form, on a flat platform with a barrel right there to try out on him, & then he goes ’way for the 1st half o’ the level while the level ’stead inflicts moderately tricky jumps on thin platforms with Armies, & e’en easier jumps on platforms that move in the direction o’ the arrows painted on them, some surrounded by a Zinger to add a li’l difficulty.

This 1st half has nothing beyond what players had experienced yet, but feels like just a warm up for the 2nd half. Granted, the Armies, Zingers, & Klumps, common in so many other levels, are made mo’ precarious here with such short platforms pocked by so many holes, but hardly much mo’ precarious than in the icy world 2 worlds ago.

The 3rd quarter ramps up the difficulty o’ the moving platforms, with the N token requiring a particularly tricky jump to get it without hitting the Zinger. While almost all levels before this, like “Forest Frenzy”, positioned circling Zingers round their treasure in a way that you’d be able to grab it without much threat o’ hitting this Zinger spinning too quickly to go all the way thru while it’s still on the top or bottom sides, this N is an exception, requiring a precise jump to the side to maneuver round the Zinger timed just as the Zinger is going on the other side. ’Less you’re playing the GBA version, which requires getting all the letters for 100%, it’s not e’en worth going after just for an extra life.

Then, when the 4th quarter arrives, Gray Krusha reappears, but this time on the moving platforms you saw all thruout the level, & we get to the true challenge o’ the level. These moving platforms don’t have nearly ’nough room to fit both your Kong & him, & as established, you need to throw a barrel @ the Krusha to defeat them. Adding to this challenge, you’re also likely riding a moving platform that has a short lifespan, which usually ends right as you near the Krusha. So this part’s challenge is timing a barrel throw @ just the right moment & then jumping off your platform just before it falls to jump onto the next platform newly freed from the Gray Krusha. This is played with a few mo’ times, making you go backward @ 1 point, & @ ’nother making you go downward & forcing you to time a barrel throw as your platform sinks, right as the Krusha appears, as if you wait too long, you won’t have time to jump onto the next platform.

This then culminates into 1 last barrel & 1 last moving platform with 1 last… Gnawty. When I saw this I thought ’twas an intentional joke — & I’m still not entirely convinced it’s not. Honestly, I think the ruin this by having 1 mo’ Klump in a tricky place @ the left edge — not nearly as hard as the Krushas before, but not free — before the end. Ending the game with the same basic Goomba-like enemy with which it started would’ve been a great troll to end this goofy game.

For the most part, “Platform Perils” is the original DKC @ its best. It’s far from having the most exotic gimmicks in the world, nor does it have what anyone would call an intricate or creative map, being just a straight series o’ platforms. But damn is it fun to seamlessly jump from platform to platform, bopping down a staircase o’ Gnawties, weaving thru spinning Zingers on falling platforms, expertly positioned so that you don’t have to stop & wait for them to get out o’ your way. In a way, it’s like the temple levels from the modern Returns games, but with the expert timing o’ the classic trilogy. In a way it’s fitting that the most straightforward DKC — some would say 1 o’ the most straightforward platformers — ends with a level that focuses on, ¿what else?, platforms in their purest form.

Unfortunately, the bonus locations are a less savory kind o’ challenge. I guess since this was the last level they truly wanted to ramp up the meanness, &, sadly, obtuseness was their main trick. While the 1st barrel’s existence is obvious, since it is right in plain sight under the starting platform, getting to it requires one to take a guess &, after jumping on a moving platform going right just after the 1st platform jump back to the spot the moving platform started to land on a platform just off the bottom o’ the screen which goes left. What kind o’ person would assume such a thing, I don’t know. My 1st instinct is always to try doing a roll jump off the visible top platform, only to quickly learn that there’s no way e’en the best-timed jump could make it there. I think on my most recent attempt & failure the secret under platform managed to unlodge itself from my subconscious; but if I had to guess, I probably had to look it up when I 1st tried to 100% this level nearly a decade ago.

Then we have the 2nd bonus, right @ the end, which is quite the perverse place to put it, right below the final platform. I guess this has a bookends quality to it, tho that’s quite a logical leap to make, ’less one has searched e’erywhere else & tried that out o’ desperation. Unlike the 1st bonus barrel, the 2nd bonus barrel is nowhere in sight from ’bove the final platform. I think the idea is that you’re s’posed to find the falling platform with the Gnawty so high up suspicious & guess that riding it down must lead somewhere. The previous falling platform expected you to ride it down, after all. But that was the last platform in sight, so you didn’t have any other choice, while all other falling platforms near other platforms lead only to a bottomless pit. Most would expect this final platform to do the same.

In summary: o’ all the DKC levels, “Platform Peril” is the DKCiest — for better & for worse.

8. Mine Cart Madness

If any place deserves a breather level, it’s right after the sequence o’ slogs, “Trick Track Trek”, “Elevator Antics”, & “Poison Pond” & before the dreariness o’ “Blackout Basement”. In fact, this is such a breather level that it’s arguably easier than infamous difficulty spike, “Mine Cart Carnage”, way back in world 2, due to being shorter ( & feeling e’en shorter, thanks to your faster speed ) & having mostly stationary obstacles: while “Mine Cart Carnage” had Krashes charging right @ you @ high speed, “Mine Cart Madness” has only Krushas who just sit in 1 place, letting you bop them & steal their carts. Tho do have Neckies flying toward you, but most o’ the time they’re flying so slow, they may as well be stationary. Also, while you going faster does make things a bit harder to react to, it also makes jumps easier to make, as you get mo’ distance. Strangely, while the level “Mine Cart Carnage” itself is better known that this level, the name “Mine Cart Madness” is mo’ well-known than “Mine Cart Carnage” ( probably ’cause it sounds better ), which lead me to mix their names up for a large part o’ my youth.

Despite this level being easier than “Mine Cart Carnage”, it’s much mo’ interesting. In addition to the greater speed @ which you move making this level mo’ thrilling & makes the controls feel less stiff, there’s a greater variety o’ obstacles, tho without feeling like distracting from the level’s focus or o’ercomplicating it. Since you now jump out o’ your cart ’stead o’ keeping your cart with you as you jump, there are breaks where you jump out o’ your cart to jump on tires. Granted, there’s not much intricacy to them: e’en the Zingers that circle some o’ them are mostly cosmetic, since they’re perfectly placed so that you’ll avoid them your 1st time thru, ’less you somehow flub a tire jump.

Also, since you’re jumping out o’ the cart, jumping holes means you need to aim & land in the next cart after holes, making these parts a li’l harder than “Mine Cart Carnage”.

While Zingers are arguably o’erused in this game, I think I still prefer their 20th use in this game o’er the turned o’er minecarts in “Mine Cart Carnage”: since Zingers can fly, the map designers were able to place them @ different places, allowing for mo’ interesting placements that just always on the ground, creating places where you have to weave ’tween Zingers, jumping o’er 1 but keeping under ’nother. The Zingers e’en beat the toppled mine carts @ providing on-track obstacles on the uphill track with a sequence o’ 3 Zingers close together, which can be somewhat tricky to jump o’er @ such a steep angle & somewhat tricky to land ’tween them in rapid succession.

I can’t vouch for the bonuses, howe’er. The 1st is hidden off the top o’ the screen & indicated by a lack o’ bananas ’mong a row o’ bananas, a reverse o’ the normal pattern. The 2nd bonus is just a tire floating in the air with a bonus barrel next to it, which can be tricky to reach due to the wonkiness o’ jumping out o’ the mine cart.

The 3rd bonus is the strongest, challenging you to go back from the beginning o’ the walkway where the mine cart leaves you & jump up a staircase o’ tires, with all o’ this foreshadowed as you go up the final crest o’ the mine cart’s path. My only qualm with this bonus is that it’s easy to think you have to jump down from where you 1st see the bonus, only for the mine cart to mess with your momentum on the SNES version ( you continue moving forward with the mine cart e’en after you jump, which is actually mo’ realistic than how most games handle jumping off moving objects ) & cause you to either fall right back into the mine cart as you’re going up or fall right into a pit with no way to go backward onto a tire if you jump while the mine cart starts going down. None o’ the bonus rooms themselves are worth participating in. The GBA strengthens this momentum so you can jump straight into the bonus barrel. Howe’er, this is balanced gainst by the fact that the final jump shoots you so far forward that you’re liable to smack into the Gnawty @ the end, making what was originally an easy jump into a cheap hit.

The KONG letters are much stronger, with the K in a tricky place ’tween 2 Neckies, forcing quick tight jumps to get it without jumping on the 1st Necky & bouncing past it or smacking into the 2nd Necky after getting the K, & the O is atop a staircase o’ Neckies. The N requires the player to delay their jump from 1 cart to ’nother till after the cart has already left its track, which feels trickier with the urgency o’ the constant movement o’ the cart than the usual safe, stationary platform in other levels. The weakest placement, tho still stronger than the placement o’ most letters in most levels, is the G, which is @ the top o’ a tire jump with a Zinger, which you’d likely get without trying as you bounce from the tire to the next cart. For some reason, the GBA version lowers the G to right ’bove the tire — ¿maybe for fear o’ the G being hidden by the top o’ the smaller screen?

1 thing this level does have that’s worse than “Mine Cart Carnage” is its aesthetics: it’s the return o’ the sparse, repetitive cave backgrounds found in most walkway levels ’stead o’ “Mine Cart Carnage”’s marginally better, multicolored mine background.

7. Jungle Hijinxs

’Mong the panetheon o’ 1st levels for platformers, Donkey Kong Country games don’t get much attention. For how many game critics out there writing the 50th article ’bout Super Mario Bros.’s 1st level while creaming themselves @ the developers repeating a setpiece with a hole in the center now, I haven’t read any that talk much ’bout the 1st levels o’ Donkey Kong Country. This is too bad, as the DKC series definitely has stronger 1st levels than Mario’s games ( there’s a reason Super Mario Bros. is the only Mario game whose 1st level anyone e’er talks ’bout — good luck making “Yoshi’s Island 1” look good ), & I think “Jungle Hijinxs” is probably the strongest.

It starts with arguably 4 paths, 2 o’ which are dead ends & exist mainly for immersion: you can enter DK’s treehouse to find a 1up inside, which is a nice way to mix the immersion with actual gameplay importance, while the bottom shows an optional cutscene. It always amazes me how much better the original DKC is @ storytelling in video games that most modern games trying to tell a story. Not only is it an optional cutscene, which is the only kind o’ cutscene that has any right to exist, but it also shows, rather than tells: all you see is DK looking on @ a cave empty save for a sign that says “KONG’s BANANA HOARD”, & then looking down with his hand on his forehead while sad music plays. Without having to write a single word, the game tells you the plot: “Enemies stole DK’s bananas, go get them back”. It’s not Chekov, but neither is the average RPG ’bout knights & mages fighting evil warlocks, & yet the latter still requires reams o’ yapping text to say nothing o’ any mo’ substance.

The level proper is sort o’ like a Sonic level, with a top route that’s easy to fall off, dropping you into the lower route, but which offers safety from enemies & better rewards. Tho people oft praise these kinds o’ levels, in my view they can be flawed in many ways, specially in Sonic games. Ignoring that Sonic’s fast acceleration makes stopping to explore unpleasant & the way many o’ the classic games didn’t let you go back to ol’ levels without restarting the game, having many different paths, which, ultimately, lead to the same exit leads the developer into a dillemma wherein they have to either come up with multiple great layouts where the average player while only experience 1, which is a waste o’ creativity, which can be very scarce ( hence why very few games are consistently @ their high point, level-design-wise ), or be lazy & repetitive with different branches. Sonic games, indeed, have very repetitive level design, & the urge to have huge levels with many paths is probably the cause for the developers running out o’ ideas.

DKC, thankfully, uses this multi-path element scarcely, & to good effect here, where the paths are simple, which works well this easy in the game. The treetops act mo’ as a prettier warp thru half the level & a place to get a boost o’ lives for mo’ experienced players. I say “mo’ experienced”, ’cause 1st-time players will unlikely catch on to the treetop path, which is the least obvious path ’mong the 4, but if one actually explores it’s not hard to find & is not hard to use. Thus, it’s a bonus reward for players who come back to it, but isn’t useless for players so good that they don’t need it.

Unsurprisingly, e’en if the player doesn’t take the whole treetop route, most o’ the bottom route is still easy, with basic enemies, many o’ which are on higher cliffs where they can’t get you. This is specially thanks to Rambi round the middle, who can just plow thru e’erything invincibly. This is similar to the Starman found in the 1st Super Mario Bros., used to the same good effect: starts the player feeling powerful. The tricky thing ’bout designing early-game stages, specially the 1st stage, is you want it to be both easy, exciting, & fast @ the same time, so neither absolute beginners get frustrated ’way nor experts bored. This is 1 o’ the many ways the Returns games’ level design fails: Returns starts by having background elements fall onto you & gotcha traps, such as the 3 Awks who it looks like you can roll thru, but can’t, thanks to the Returns games also botching the rolling mechanic, which makes it feel mo’ like DKC Lost Levels — & there’s a reason absolutely nobody writes articles singing praise for Lost Levels’s level design — than a proper DKC game.

Rambi is also used to reveal this level’s 2 bonuses, & this level lays them out well: the 1st is placed just under a small drop so that you’re likely to run into it & reveal it, e’en if by accident. Howe’er, the 2nd is placed where you’re unlikely to accidentally run into it, specially if you take the 1st bonus. The 1st bonus leaves you up on a palm tree just ’bove the 2nd goal’s wall, but when you fall down from the palm tree, you’re going to be past the 2nd bonus. You have to notice that its wall looks similar to the 1st bonus’s cave wall & go back & hit it. While I’m generally not fond o’ the hidden cave entrances, which in other levels oft devolves into expecting the player to ram a barrel or Rambi into e’ery wall they see, this level a’least puts them in logical places.

Not satisfied with 1 way to plow thru e’erything, the developers also hide a steel barrel in breakable ground near the beginning — & by hide, I mean put a giant arrow made o’ bananas high up ’bove it. Players who throw the steel barrel @ the wall @ the left end & jump on it can ride thru mo’ than half the level, ending @ the 1st bonus entrance, which can also be opened with the steel barrel.

Finally, I like the way it darkens into nighttime as you reach the end, which connects this level to the next, which takes place @ night. Like with the opening cutscene, this is done without words & done in the background while you’re still playing an interesting level. Unlike a certain commonly-lauded game, you’re not left constantly rolling thru empty grass just to slow you down so you can see this weather effect. Interestingly, this effect stays e’en if you go back all the way to the start o’ the level.

6. Rope Bridge Rumble

What a simple level, but what a cool level. Sure, moving rocky platforms with stalactites hanging down from them holding rubber tires swarmed with bees has nothing to do with the snowy theme this level has ( nor rope bridges, which appear only a few times & are just a paint job o’er regular ground ); but neither do rotating barrel cannons. A bigger problem is that this level’s focus on dodging Zingers while bouncing on tires & dodging Kritters who hop back & forth makes this level feel dangerously close to “Bouncy Bonanza”, with the only difference being the greatly decreased land mass in this level & making some o’ the tires move o’er bottomless pits. While “Bouncy Bonanza” had a theme that better fit its focus, its theme was also used 5 times, while this level uses a theme only used twice with a unique palette, making this level a lot nicer to look @. That level also has a mo’ complex layout, with a branching path, while this sticks to a straight left to right path & in general feels much mo’ like a fast-paced romp. “Bouncy Bonanza” is only ’bout ⅛th longer than “Rope Bridge Rumble”, but it feels e’en longer, probably ’cause there are mo’ places where you’re s’posed to stop, whereas all the moving objects in “Rope Bridge Rumble” makes it feel like its pushing you to keep going mo’, &, moreo’er, ’cause there are mo’ chasms, so mo’ places where you have to make large leaps o’er a long plot o’ terrain. “Rope Bridge Rumble” certainly feels less bloated, with fewer repeated setpieces.

If anything, I wish they did mo’ with the wall o’ Zingers idea that use twice, with the only variance being 3 ’stead o’ 2 the 2nd time. They probably could’ve gotten something good out o’ having a tire platform with a longer path that challenges the player to bounce round multiple Zinger formations. I’m surprised they don’t do any trickier Zinger formations, like a Zinger high up, challenging you to bounce round & below it to avoid being hit.

Setpiece highlights include the pits with the Kritters hopping back & forth o’er them, which, due to requiring the player to jump to avoid dying, are much trickier than the variants in earlier levels, & the Army up on the cliff near the end, which is tricky to get past with Diddy — & nice callback to the 2 Armies that appear @ the start o’ the level & then disappear for the whole middle o’ the level.

The 1st bonus can barely be seen by the top lip, which is specially noticeably thanks to the camera suspiciously moving down toward it, which isn’t a particularly clever secret, but a’least 1 that they bothered to give some hint to the player.

The 2nd bonus is e’en easier to find, given ’way by a banana, indicating that you need to bounce under the banana on the moving tire platforms to reach it. This bonus is mo’ a challenge to aim your player @ the banana while bouncing on the moving tires & not letting the distraction o’ this sudden secret cause you to slip up on your timing & fall into the pit.

The KONG letters do a great job o’ putting them ’hind challenges, but making them fast-paced challenges rather than long slogs that aren’t worth it. The K is down on an optional lower-down tire with a swirling Zinger guarding it, while the N is up in the air ’bove a moving tire, challenging the player to aim their jump to get it. The O & G are both in pits surrounded by Kritters, forcing the player to defeat the Kritters & do a roll jump off the edge to get them. The G is in a subtly tricky place, a li’l lower than the O was, so that you’re mo’ likely to o’ershoot it as you roll off, sometimes forcing you to change your trajectory a bit back left, & then right ’gain so you can still jump forward to the next platform.

5. Orang-utan Gang

“Orang-utan Gang”, 1 o’ the surprisingly scarce 3 jungle levels in this game, manages to stand out from the thick shadow o’ “Jungle Hijinx”, not only due to its striking purple-to-yellow sunset background, which fits perfectly for a level right in the middle o’ the game, but its complex level layout, making it feel much bigger than most other levels ( tho in terms o’ sheer horizontal length, there are many longer ). & yet despite this, it doesn’t feel like it goes on too long — probably ’cause most o’ the size is thru hidden secrets & niches, up & down, rather than extra terrain spreading out.

This is also helped by the various means this level offers for speeding thru the level, such as the steel barrel right ’hind the start ( 1 o’ the very few times the game has you go leftward ), which you can ride thru the 1st quarter, — in a specially stylish way, thanks to the way all the elements are perfectly aligned so that they don’t hurt you as you ride thru — & the Expresso you can use to fly thru the 2nd half o’ the level, which has the added bonus o’ alleviating some o’ the monotony o’ the repeated hopping Kritters & barrel-throwing Manky Kongs. O’ all the levels in this game, this level feels like the 1 where Expresso is the least o’ a burden — tho her inability to hop on basic hopping Kritters all o’er the place is still an annoyance. But her ability to go thru Klaptraps unharmed makes her useful during the short land areas where you encounter them, specially while getting the O, down @ the bottom o’ hills swarming with Klaptrap.

Said Manky Kongs are the new mechanic introduced to this level, & this level certainly uses them mo’ than a couple times to enforce that focus — perhaps a bit too much, specially since they don’t have too many new uses o’ them: this level has a couple instances where the Manky Kong’s barrels are going uphill ( let’s not think too hard ’bout the questionably physics ’hind this ) & then later going downhill, which is a li’l harder, with later variations having longer hills that go up & down. I feel like they could’ve done mo’ with this than that. E’en if it wouldn’t have created much extra challenge, — ’haps it would’ve made it easier & would’ve worked best as an early variation — but having Manky Kongs with li’l space before a hole would’ve a’least added some variety. I also find it odd that they have the 2nd variation with a steel barrel you can use to nullify the Manky Kong & its barrels & not the 1st variation.

This level is infamous for having a whopping 5 bonuses, mo’ than any other level in the original trilogy ( tho, compare to the Returns games, where 5 jiggies is the minimum ). Most o’ these are found under the eaves o’ trees that make up the main pathway, accessible only by flying with Espresso, an interesting twist on “Jungle Hinjinx”, which had 2 paths, ’bove & below, but had the treetop path be the bonus path. Here, howe’er, the bonus paths feel like obscure beginner’s traps, as there’s not much o’ a way to know that flying a ways under each line o’ treetops will lead to a bonus or just certain death; there are 2 long lines round the middle that do. Despite this, the bonus locations are relatively clever for this game: the 1 @ the beginning rewards players who think to check back thru the 1st half with Espresso after getting her round the halfway point; there’s 2 below the final treetops line just to trip you up; & the final bonus rewards you for keeping the Manky Kong or barrel before it ’live after you pass so you can open 1 mo’ cave opening.

This level probably has the best KONG letter placements in the game: you have the K right in the middle o’ the Zinger, which isn’t that hard to get, specially if you use the steel barrel to kill it, but looks cool when you get it in any case; the O & N are hidden under cliffs; & the G is hidden in 1 o’ the 5 bonuses in this level.

The sunset effect looks nice & fits perfectly thematically right round the middle o’ the game.

4. Stop & Go Station

After mine carts & barrel cannons, this level’s gimmick o’ invincible enemies that run back & forth very quickly, who can only be mitigated by turning them off temporarily with the on-off switch barrels ( ’cause e’erything in DKC needs to be a barrel ), is probably the most well-known, & for good reason: it’s both a weird, memorable gimmick, & yet 1 that feels smooth & straightforward to play: hit switches, race on thru before they turn back on. Like DKC does many times, this takes a relatively sterile, abstract idea from Mario ( P-switches & magical switch blocks ) & breathes extra life into it by making it weirder ( now it’s red-eyed crock bots controlled by barrel switches ) — which, considering Mario is already weird, is something. This is also 1 o’ the rare well-known DKC gimmicks that hasn’t been used beyond this level, unlike mine carts & barrel cannons that return so many times, they’re mo’ basic mechanics than gimmicks, making this level feel much mo’ unique.

Like “Mine Cart Carnage” the developers created a ’scape hatch for this level in case its exotic gimmick was too difficult for players, offering a secret way to bypass almost the entire level. Howe’er, this level’s version is better in that it isn’t something as obscure as jumping into a random pit & hoping there’s a barrel there, but a clever reward for players curious ’nough to try going back into the entrance whence they came, something that would make some kind o’ sense & wouldn’t threaten the player with death for trying for it. Also, unlike that level, which had no bonuses, & thus could be 100%ed without e’er playing the level proper, this level has bonuses in the middle, so this skip only works for just beating the game, which is mo’ effective @ balancing the need for safety nets for novice players & the need to reward playing thru the actual challenges.

The many uses o’ this gimmick follow textbook level design: it starts by introducing the most easy use o’ the gimmick with a Rockkroc in a small pit, much easier to jump o’er e’en if you don’t hit the switch, & then gradually adds difficulty & extra twists. 2nd you have to jump up stairs after hitting the switch, then you have to jump on a tire to reach a switch, then you have to hop off a Klaptrap to reach a switch, & then they have the area just after the next switch vacant for a while, with 2 enemies father ’head, near when the switch is ’bout to run out, & then later you see mo’ complex arrangements & moving platforms, till the level ends with a wide area full o’ an onslaught o’ Rockkrocs & 2 switches that require a tire, the latter o’ which requires you to roll the same tire o’er to it. I can’t think o’ any arrangement the developers missed, which is a good reason why this gimmick’s only used once. If anything, this level’s biggest flaw is probably that it sticks a bit too closely to its gimmick, with only Klaptraps sprinkled ’long the very linear path to save the level from being nothing but Rockkrocs. But a’least this level is short — which is doubly good, considering how much harder this level is than its surrounding levels. 1 o’ the reasons this level’s gimmick is so well-known is that it’s as infamous for being a sudden difficulty spike early in the game as “Mine Cart Carnage” — & unlike that level, which was just basic jump timing, this level deserves it for its tricky enemy layouts, specially the last part — which, I should add, you can’t skip, since the warp @ the beginning warps you to right before the final onslaught.

This level has an interesting twist to its 2 bonuses where ’stead o’ spreading them ’long the level the developers put them both right next to each other in the middle, but in completely different places. The 1st bonus is telegraphed right to the player with a big wall with a Rockkroc running back & forth in front o’ it, both o’ which you can easily jump o’er & have no use other than to throw a barrel @ that wall — &, hey, there’s a barrel just before it. Granted, there’s still difficulty in not breaking it on 1 o’ the Rockkrocs instead or getting killed on the way there.

The 2nd bonus is much better hidden, specially since it’s right after the 1st, the last place you’d expect. Its barrel is offscreen, telegraphed only by a banana trail going upward. I think you can maybe reach it using the Klaptrap just below it, but you’re probably s’posed to use the tire after it, ostensibly put there to help you reach a switch farther on, but can be pushed back to the bonus — 1 o’ the rare times the game expects players to go backward.

Most o’ the KONG letters are right in your path, ’cept for the O, which is the 1st time a KONG letter is o’er a pit in a way that requires you to roll jump off the air, something, which, as we’ve seen, they do plenty o’ other times.

While the mine graphics are 1 o’ the most boring tilesets in the game, the green & red tints showing the switch’s status adds something to make it stand out from the other levels.

3. Snow Barrel Blast

The 1, the only. “Snow Barrel Blast” is a difficulty spike so infamous legend says that Nintendo’s help hotline had a prerecorded message specifically for dealing with this level. This is due to its intricate paths o’ barrel cannons, this time spinning @ electric speed, many o’ which have Zingers swarming round them, making you not only time shots when you’re aligned with the other barrel but also when the Zinger isn’t in your way. I would argue that it is, to this day, the ultimate barrel cannon level.

This level is also a perfect example o’ Gregg Mayles’s technique o’ having timed obstacles passable on the 1st try: you can always shoot from cannon to cannon the 1st time they connect & a Zinger will ne’er be in the way. ’Course, you still need to time them when connected. In this way these levels can still be fast to zip thru if the player’s reflexes are fast ’nough without sacrificing challenge.

If the player is clever ’nough, they can skip large sections by aiming ’way from the main path, such as a few places where shooting up & right will skip a few cannons. This is trial-&-error, ’course, but since it’s off the developer-intended route ( indeed, other than the obvious shortcut @ the beginning o’ the final gauntlet, these minishortcuts may have been unintended & unknown @ development ), it’s not the kind o’ trial-&-error I usually criticize. A bit o’ risk & reward is fine if the “reward” isn’t basic success, ’less the game is specifically catered toward chance, like a board game or an RPG. That said, I think the shortcut near the beginning o’ the final onslaught cheapens the level a bit, since that final onslaught is the main attraction. Without it, this level’s mostly normal platforming with slippery physics. While the “Mine Cart Carnage” shortcut makes sense for how early in the game that level is, this is a late-game level; by this point the player doesn’t need hand-holding.

I like that they don’t focus too much on the barrel cannons, since players will have already seen them used prominently in 3 previous levels before, saving the main onslaught for the end, while balancing out with interesting layouts o’ Neckies, Klaptraps, & Gnawties thruout the 1st half o’ the level. For instance, this level introduces Klaptraps on slippery slopes, where they’re the hardest to hit, which will be further expanded on in “Ice Age Alley”. Tho not the most jaw-dropping layouts, there are a few interesting setups, like some upward staircases o’ Neckies near the beginning & the onslaught o’ Neckies on the steep downward slope not long before the final barrel cannon bonanza. E’en Gnawties, the Goombas o’ this level, are spiced up with a steel barrel you can roll on thru them. It’s not as memorable as the 1 in “Orang-utan Gang”, but it’s something. & e’en the the midway point has some pizazz to it in that you’re blasted into it from a blast barrel — a clever integration with this level’s focal mechanic, which is rare in this game.

That said, e’en tho I’ve mostly ignored animal tokens thruout these reviews, since they’re completely useless — a hindrance, in fact, if you accidentally get 3 & get sent back to the start or midway point after a pointless bonus game — I want to bring up this silly setpiece right before the final barrel cannon bonanza: a barrel cannon surrounded by Zingers with a Rambi token up ’bove. ¿Who’s going to go for this? It’s so risky & tricky to get & the reward is nothing. It doesn’t hurt the level in any way, really; it’s just funny to me.

The bonuses are all right. The 1st is up ’bove the start, accessible by jumping off a slow-moving Necky, an ironic twist gainst the fast-moving enemy you jump off to reach a bonus barrel @ the start o’ “Tree Top Town”, ’cept here they outright hide the bonus barrel, so it arguably takes advantage o’ the way DKC repeats setpieces by rewarding players clever ’nough to remember “Tree Top Town”’s 1st bonus & put 2 & 2 together.

The 2nd bonus is 1 o’ the rare times DKC expects players to go backward, thanks to a blast barrel that shoots you past a lot o’ area. It’s all to easy in a game that’s mostly just going left to right to keep going right afterward, but the map designers reward suspicious players who investigate what they missed. Granted, I feel the barrel way below the camera in a pit with just a single banana pointing it out was a bit much. Since the blast barrel shoots you way ’bove, out o’ sight o’ the ground, they could’ve just had the bonus barrel be on the ground in plain sight. It’s not that much more obvious, & is still hidden, & also doesn’t risk the player missing the bonus barrel they can’t see & falling into the pit round it, which I can say from experience is definitely a possibility.

I’m not fond o’ the 3rd bonus location, tho, which is 1 o’ the few outright obscure bonuses, wherein you have to shoot downward from a barrel cannon without any hint to find hidden platforms with a bonus barrel in the middle. Since there are already 2 other perfectly find bonuses, I don’t see why this needed to be here @ all — it’s fluff that sticks out awkwardly in an otherwise well-put-together level.

Most o’ the KONG letters are right in your path, where I feel like you have to try to avoid them, with the exception o’ the O, which requires actual effort in the 2nd bonus, forcing you to time blasting up round the center to get it, making it 1 o’ this game’s strongest letter placements, tho it’s just a repeat o’ what they did in “Tree Top Town”.

Like “Barrel Cannon Canyon”’s K & O, the N & G in this level can be gotten on both the shortcut paths & the regular paths, which is always a nice thing to do.

If this level’s infamous challenge wasn’t foreboding ’nough, this level enhances that aesthetically by gradually adding mo’ & mo’ snow, starting in the background & then smothering the foreground, — tho thankfully not to the extent o’ actually making it hard for me to see — & making the level grayer & grayer till its full grayscale as the level goes on & becomes harder. ’Hind only the main forest levels, I think the snow levels are probably the best-looking areas in the game, & I still feel torn on that decision. & while “Northern Kremisphere” is nowhere near as famously catchy as, say, “Forest Frenzy” or “Treetop Town” ( don’t ask me why they make the song name 2 words & the level name 3 words ), it’s menacing atmosphere perfectly fits this infamous level. For as much as people talk ’bout DKC2’s “Stickerbrush Symphony” & the famous/infamous bramble levels that have it, I’m surprised & disappointed that not as much talk is given to the match o’ “Northern Kremisphere” & “Snow Barrel Blast”.

2. Ice Age Alley

A much better “Snow Barrel Blast”. While “Snow Barrel Blast” arguably had a mo’ memorable gimmick with its barrel cannons, said gimmick was used in 3 other levels; while this level lacks a strong gimmick, it makes up for that with much stronger terrain layout & enemy placements that do a better job o’ testing your actual platforming skills, with plenty o’ precarious steep cliffs pocked full o’ holes. This level also has a better variety o’ enemies, with Kremlings, Mini-Neckies, & Manky Kongs thrown in with the usual Neckies & Klaptraps. These enemies are balanced out well, with only a few instances o’ each, which keeps this level from feeling o’ersatured & for mechanics to outstay their welcome, specially since all o’ these enemies have been used before.

Probably the weakest part o’ these setpieces are the ropes, returning from “Ropey Rampage”, which are timed, & therefore sometimes requiring waiting for them to swing back to you. Unlike most levels in this game, the ropes don’t seem to be consistently timed with the setpieces that come before them, so there are times where you have to wait for them to come back if you don’t want to fall in the pit as the ropes go ’way from you. This is particularly annoying after the steel barrel section, when trying to jump off the steel barrel to the rope after the edge. Plus, I would argue that their use here is less interesting than in “Ropey Rampage”, as this level doesn’t make you time jumps round Zingers or anything beyond just jumping from rope to rope or rope to platform. A’least they managed to integrate the midway point into it by having you jump into the midway point from a rope.

This level’s most interesting setpiece is near the end with the set o’ icy steps barely wide ’nough for DK to fit on, followed by 2 short upramps divided by a gap with a Manky Kong @ the top o’ the top ramp, tossing a ne’er-ending stream o’ barrels into the gap, giving li’l space to jump onto without running into either Manky Kong or his barrels & short time to weave ’tween the stream o’ barrels. To make it e’en better, the Manky Kong is standing in front o’ a hole before a 3rd upramp, which you’re liable to fall into if you try rolling into the Manky Kong & don’t jump or adjust just afterward.

This setup is preceded by a straight rampup with a Manky @ the very top, but no holes. 1 anal-retentive quibble I have is that I feel like this is too close to the last Manky Kong area: I think putting the section with similar upward slopes with gaps ’tween them but with a Klaptrap ’stead here & putting the 2nd Manky Kong area before that would’ve been stronger & would’ve also introduced this slope formation. Then ’gain, it would’ve been hard to connect these 2 upward-sloping sections ( specially since DKC was probably limited in how high its levels could be ), so this setup might’ve been chosen mo’ ’cause its general shape fit better rather than its elements. In any case, unlike the last Manky Kong setup, this penultimate 1 you can skip thru by rolling on the steel barrel conveniently placed @ the top o’ the slope, as well as the small steps with Klaptrap on them.

Before that a mo’ interesting setpiece where you have flat platform steps going upward with a Klaptrap, & then down a slope with the Manky @ the bottom. Like the 1st uses o’ Manky Kong in “Orang-utan Gang”, it’s much easier going down-slope, where you get mo’ air o’er the barrel, but the part before that with the steps & Klaptrap are harder. But the best part is the way they introduce Manky Kong by moving barrels coming from offscreen, rather than showing Manky immediately, which is quite a shock in a snow level, where you wouldn’t expect this jungle-dwelling enemy.

’Nother unexpected similarty ’tween this level & “Orang-utan Gang”: this level also starts with a secret section to the left, ’cept this 1’s mo’ precarious, with a high-up Mini-Necky guarding the path. The reward is mo’ important than the steel keg, albeit not exactly better, but is ’nother similarity to “Orang-utan Gang” in a different way: it’s Espresso, who adds extra challenge to the level by forcing you to go past the middle o’ the level without losing Espresso to fly high ’nough to reach the 2nd bonus.

The other bonus in this level is interesting in that it’s also high-up, but can be reached with the regular Kongs using conveniently-placed Neckies. You would think you could also reach this bonus with Espresso, & maybe you can, but I for some reason had trouble getting ’nough height with Espresso to reach it, so I would have to dismount Espresso & use the Neckies to reach the 1st bonus. Luckily, this bonus has an extra Espresso crate @ the end, so I don’t have to restart the level to get the 2nd bonus.

To be honest, I don’t think Espresso adds much to this level. Yes, it adds extra challenge to some parts, by, well, sucking, being unable to jump on enemies & having a terrible hitbox ( e’en Klaptrap sometimes hurt Espresso, e’en tho that’s the 1 enemy Espresso’s s’posed to be safe from ), but that’s not a fun kind o’ challenge, as it feels janky & inconsistent; meanwhile, you can still skip large plots o’ interesting setpieces. Playing this level with just Diddy & DK is much funner than with Espresso & I find I dump Espresso as soon as I’m done with the 2nd bonus. Which made ranking this level tricky: without Espresso, it belongs @ #2, with Espresso thruout the whole thing, I think I would rank it below “Snow Barrel Blast”. Since Espresso isn’t manadatory ’less going for the 2nd bonus, & since there’s an extra quality to having the same level change so dramaticlly by whether or not you use Espresso, adding a bit o’ replay value to it, I went with the former.

The letter placements are uninspired: the K & N are in places with the Espresso & 1 o’ the bonuses, which arguably is redundant — tho the N does add extra annoyance by requiring using Espresso while getting the letters, too. The O is in a hole that requires rolling off, like a few other levels, & the G is in a random place in the air. I think there were far mo’ interesting places to put letters, like in the path o’ a Manky Kong’s barrels.

Aesthetically, this level does the opposite o’ “Snow Barrel Blast”: it starts snowy & grayscale & then warms up & becomes clearer & brighter as you reach the end. Since this is the last snow level ( not including the ice cave level, “Slipslide Ride”, there’s only 2 ), this is a fitting way to show the Kongs leaving the snowy areas.

1. Slipslide Ride

O’ all the levels in this game, this is the most like a DKC2 level, & is strikingly different from all the others in DKC1. In addition to the much brighter, mo’ colorful, mo’ fantastical tileset reminiscent o’ DKC2’s ice levels or mine levels with its purple ( a rare color in this game that normally sticks to natural greens & browns ) crystalline background, unique to this level, you have a level that completely breaks ’way from the straight left to right layout that all other non-water levels have. ’Stead, here you have to go up & round in a zigzagging pattern — a mo’ intricate kind o’ layout that’ll become mo’ common in the next 2 games. In particular, I like this weird series o’ downward slopes, going right & left, all going downward, only to continue leftward & back upward ’gain. There’s no challenge to it, but it’s such a breath o’ fresh air after so many levels just going from left to right.

As if that weren’t ’nough, this level adds a unique gimmick as well: ropes that automatically slide you upward or downward, depending on their color. While these start safe, they soon become e’er mo’ swarmed with Zingers, forcing you to jump ’tween them as you’re pushed upward or forcing you to jump ’long downward-moving ropes fast ’nough so that you don’t hit the Zingers below or to jump on upward-moving ropes low ’nough to not hit the Zingers ’bove but high ’nough not to fall off the bottom. They use virtually e’ery variation for these ropes one could probably do. Tho this level is broken up a few times with regular enemies like hopping Kritters & Armies ( particularly dangerous here, with how slippery it is, specially the 1 near the edge @ the top o’ a slope near the end o’ the level ), the level keeps its focus on its gimmick mo’ than almost any other level, but thanks to all the clever variations, it ne’er feels tired. The way it’s all tied together in a sequence that folds onto itself, rather than a straight line, makes it e’en mo’ impressive.

I particularly like how the 1st Zingers are only dangerous if you try to jump ’tween them for a barrel necessary to break open a bonus door just below ( tho the player may be tricked into using it to safely dispatch the Army, just like the player likely did with the DK barrel & Army just before this section ).

An e’en better bonus is 1 round the middle o’ the level, @ the top o’ an upward-moving rope with Zingers ’long the top, ’cept for the 3rd rope, which also has a small gap ’tween its Zinger & the Zinger @ the top o’ the 4th rope, allowing players who notice it a way to squeeze thru & reach the true top o’ the 3rd rope.

The only bonus I quibble ’bout is the 1st, @ the top o’ the very beginning — not for that reason, but ’cause it redundantly requires you to bounce off a Kremling to reach the rope, a puzzle they repeat later to reach the O. I think you should be able to reach this rope without a Kremling as a sneak preview to the gimmick before its proper use & replace the 1st bonus with a letter ( tho, now that I think ’bout it, this would make the K just afterward, which also has you just ride a rope upward, redundant ) & replace the “O” with the bonus. This would better spread out the bonuses, too.

Speaking o’ the KONG letters, they all require using the ropes in various ways to reach them, making this have 1 o’ the strongest, if not the strongest, KONG letter placements in the game. The N is in a particularly precarious place where you have to time riding up ropes while horizontally-moving Zingers are out o’ the way & then use the DK barrel to break a way thru a wall o’ Zingers to go left & continue. Part o’ me thinks this would’ve been a better place for a bonus; but I think players not going for KONG letters are thankful they don’t have to go here.

The G is @ the top o’ downward ropes forcing the player to keep hopping up & left & quickly twisting back to the rope fast ’nough that you go up mo’ than you fall back down, gradually rising. This is such an interesting use o’ the rope that I’m surprised they squandered it on just a KONG letter.

Worlds Worst to Best

6. Kremkroc Industries, Inc.

Yes, it’ll probably come as a surprise that “Chimp Caverns” isn’t @ the bottom; but as bland as its repeated cave theme is, its level layouts are far mo’ interesting & well-constructed, while “Kremkroc Industries” is, as cool as the toxic, factory theme is, — & as great as the song “Fear Factory” is — full o’ weak levels, including the 2 worst levels in this list. To put it into perspective, if not for “Mine Cart Madness”, “Kremkroc”’s only high-ranking level, the highest ranking level is 20th place, with “Elevator Antics”. When “Elevator Antics” is your 2nd best level, you’re not a strong world. Moreo’er, as cool as the toxic factory theme is, this world doesn’t utilize it well: there is 1 factory level where you can actually see the factory mo’ than half the time. Its theme is so halfheartedly implemented that one could argue that “Chimp Caverns” fits the industrial theme just as well. Hell, all o’ its levels involved mechanical things, too.

5. Monkey Mines

I would argue that this is a mo’ forgettable world than “Chimp Caverns”. E’en with such famous levels as “Mine Cart Carnage” & “Stop & Go Station”, those levels are surrounded by mid levels like “Winky’s Walkway”, “Bouncy Bonanza”, & “Millstone Mayhem”. Plus, e’en that world kept a mo’ cohesive theme o’ industrial caves than this world, which mixes in metal walkways, mines, electrified caves, natural caves, & a temple @ the end. E’en “Kremkroc Industries” could be said to have levels that all have some technology in them. ¿What does all the levels in this world have? ¿Rocks?

4. Kongo Jungle

Speaking o’ incoherent worlds, let’s have a jungle world with a cave & water level. While one could praise it for variety, — I praised the 1st world o’ Super Mario Bros. for its variety — here it’s not as impressive. For 1, Super Mario Bros. didn’t have themes to its worlds beyond “night” & “day” &, mo’ importantly, when it did introduce variety into worlds, it didn’t eat into underutilized themes. The underground & tropical levels were rare & ate up not-@-all-rare o’erworld levels; this world eats up a potential jungle level in a game where one would expect jungle levels to be the most dominant theme for yet ’nother entry into the actual dominant theme, a cave level, e’en tho there are already 2 cave worlds. But mo’ importantly, while “Jungle Hijinx” is a great start & “Barrel Cannon Canyon” is arguably underrated, the rest o’ the levels are very forgettable: the blandest cave level in the game, a bland water level just like ’nother, & a bland rope level whose only point o’ interest are its rainy weather & which did a lot o’ harm to DKC’s reputation with its obscure bonuses.

3. Chimp Caverns

Yes, the world that most people would put @ the bottom is in 3rd place in my rankings. But if you look thru my level rankings you will see its levels silently creeping round the top: “Platform Perils”, “Loopy Lights”, & “Manic Mincers” are all strong levels, while “Misty Mine” & “Tanked Up Trouble” are merely mid. Yes, it treads the same level themes as previous worlds; but it does so better than previous worlds. If you had to scrap walkway levels, ¿which would you rather scrap? ¿“Platform Perils” with its intricate layouts & interesting Gray Krusha gimmick or the utterly forgettable “Winky’s Walkway” or tedious & lazy “Trick Track Trek”? & as my rankings show, if you wanted to remove cave levels, “Manic Mincers” would be the last I’d want to remove. Plus, as I said in previous world reviews, “Chimp Caverns” has greater coherency to its theme than most other worlds, including the other cave world, “Monkey Mines”; & for as much as people declare this world forgettable, I find it far mo’ memorable than “Monkey Mines”.

2. Vine Valley

Honestly, I think “Chimp Caverns” has o’erall better levels than this world, but @ a certain point its drab, o’erused themes drag it down, while the forest levels — both the treetop & regular forest levels — are some o’ the best looking levels in a game already renowned for its beautiful graphics & have the best music in the game. Plus, while this world only has maybe 1 or 2 great levels, the only level I’d call weak is “Clam City”, & maybe “Temple Tempest” if I’m being particularly picky.

1. Gorilla Glacier

This should be no surprise given the rankings ’bove, with the top 3 levels coming from this world & 5 / 6 o’ its levels ’bove average. It’s so good that e’en having a water level couldn’t drag it down too much, as it still managed to a’least have the best water level in the game. In addition to having strong level layouts, this level’s snow levels & 1 icy cave level rival “Vine Valley”’s forest levels in terms o’ visual appeal ( in fact, it outdoes “Vine Valley” @ its own game by taking its treetop theme & making it look cooler by, well, making it have a cooler palette ).

While Super Mario Bros. is certainly respected, its oft respected mo’ as a historical artifact than a game that’s still enjoyable to play — which is too bad, as I think the game is still excellent, much better than any o’ the New Super Mario Bros. games, despite all the technological advancements they have. Unfortunately, with this comes a major underestimation o’ Super Mario Bros.’s level design, which while not the best in the entire genre, was definitely the best o’ its time, by a large factor. Tho this game lacked all the sexy gimmicks Super Mario Bros. 3 had & oft had to resort to copypasta just to fit e’erything in such a tiny cartridge, Super Mario Bros. made up for this with strikingly subtle complexity & variety in its layouts & set the groundwork for what games like Super Mario Bros. 3 & the Donkey Kong Country trilogy would be able to do.

In some ways, Super Mario Bros. was actually better than later 2-D Mario games, e’en Super Mario Bros. 3: it was much mo’ consistent in allowing players to play thru levels @ their own pace, rarely forcing them to slow down, in contrast to some o’ the slogging autoscrollers Super Mario Bros. 3 subjected its players to. As much as the castle levels in Super Mario Bros. were weaker than its main levels, they were much better than the borefests that were Super Mario Bros. 3’s airship levels, which were remarkably e’en mo’ repetitive, e’en tho that game didn’t resort to any exact copypasta.

Super Mario Bros. managed to find the perfect balance ’tween the short, fast-paced, challenge-oriented arcade games o’ the past & those longer, slower, mo’ puzzle-oriented console games that it kickstarted. Its levels being fast-paced didn’t stop them from being full o’ secrets that offered mo’ patient players a reason to stop & explore, as well as a reason to go back & play thru the game mo’ than once — something very important in a medium like console gaming wherein people paid much higher prices to permanently own the game, rather than pay a quarter to rent it for a few minutes.

As an extra note, while they won’t affect relative rankings, I’ll be taking the time to critique the red-coin & Yoshi Egg locations in the Game Boy Color remake, Super Mario Bros. Deluxe.

32. World 4-4

Not including the 1 water level the player has to play twice, castles are, generally, the weakest levels in the game. Despite their threatening appearance, they’re usually not the hardest levels, either, as the firebars move consistently like clockwork, Bowser’s flames are so slow you can easily react to them, & Podoboos you can usually just wait for them to get out o’ your way. Breather levels are fine & all, but having the castle levels that end each world be breather levels feels counterintuitive & seems to just sap the drama from what should be thrilling, grand challenges.

But moreo’er, they just show a lack o’ creativity relative to normal levels, with a striking lack o’ variety: get used to those aforementioned firebars, Podoboos, & Bowser flames, ’cause they’re the bulk o’ e’ery castle ’cept 8-4. Added to this is an e’en mo’ striking plethora o’ copy-pasted elements, specially the holes @ the end o’ e’ery castle level ( ’cept, ’gain, 8-4 ), which are all the same even level with each other — presumably so they could compress their data & save memory. ’Gain, tho, it seems weird that the developers would choose castle levels, which should be some o’ the most important levels, to skimp on, & not, say, the 3rd level in each world, which tend to be some o’ the strongest levels.

Perhaps the weakest part o’ the castle levels is that they don’t have the best elements o’ Super Mario Bros. levels: the hidden secrets & bonuses. They’re just straightforward challenges. This isn’t by itself a crime: Super Mario 64, which has an e’en greater focus on exploring for secrets, does something similar with its Bowser stages, & those stages are great. But those stages are actually mo’ challenging than regular levels, unlike Super Mario Bros.’s relatively easy castle levels, & they have actual variety & creativity.

Add to this the fact that these levels are far less colorful, being mostly black & gray, with only the red fire & lava to spice things up a li’l. Tho the All-Stars versions have cool, giant paintings o’ Bowser ( repeated multiple times, ’cause Bowser’s just that much o’ a narcissist ) in the background, e’en they keep a monotonous dusty gray all o’er the foreground & background. In fact, since they lack the blackdrop, they’re e’en grayer.

4-4 is a particularly empty castle level for halfway thru the game, @ the end o’ the same world that introduced the notorious Lakitu & started 4-2 with its somewhat-less-infamous tricky opening. This level clearly banked on its introduction o’ the maze gimmick, which was, indeed, probably confusing for 1st-time players, specially on the original NES version, which gave no audible indication that players had gone the wrong direction, nor any indication @ all that going in any particular direction determined the player looping thru the same setpieces — tho the way the level breaks into conspicuous branching paths, which is rare in a game whose levels mainly go left to right, probably acted as a major clue. Then ’gain, considering how much previous castle levels borrowed from other castles, it wouldn’t surprise me if it took players a few runs thru to realize something stinky going on.

What the maze gimmick isn’t is fun or interesting, since it’s just trial-&-error whittling down the answers, & it’s not any funner or mo’ interesting when you already know the path to go down, as it makes most o’ the level mo’ frivolous than the very 1st level. They don’t e’en make the hardest paths the right paths, which would’ve been an intuitive clue. I guess I do kind o’ like the way you have to go back a bit & zigzag downward for the 2nd maze & I also kinda like the weird block formation before this.

Legit the most challenging part o’ this level is the ending bridge, where they put a firebar & a Podobo, tho it’s certainly not the most interesting arrangement, lacking a ceiling or elevator. E’en the sequence o’ pits before the bridge is the lamest o’ all castles: ¡there’s just 1 hole with ground @ the bottom! You’d think halfway thru the game it’d be safe to have lava pits, since they had 1 2 worlds ago. In fact, this level has a shocking lack o’ pits, which are all small & easy to jump o’er. I legit think it’d be mo’ likely for a player to fall in a pit or die in any way in 1-1.

While the 2nd & 4th red coin location in Super Mario Bros. Deluxe are interesting, it’s lame that you have to intentionally fail the maze to get the 1st & 3rd coins.

A’least they put the Yoshi egg round the most recognizable landmark.

31. World 7-2

Speaking o’ water levels… Yes, water levels have ne’er been the best levels in platformers, & this especially applies to Super Mario Bros., a game that had platforming physics still better than many contemporary platformers, but with very backward swimming physics that have not aged well. How fast the player falls & how high they go when you press the A button feels very inconsistent, specially when near holes, which warp your movement in ways that might’ve seemed clever in abstract from a technical standpoint, but just feel bad in terms o’ actually playing.

While water levels’ layouts are arguably mo’ intricate than castle levels, these intricacies don’t do much but slow you down, since you can just swim round them, & there’s no chance o’ being sucked into a pit ’less you’re playing the Super Mario Bros. Deluxe version & going for red coins placed right next to the bottom o’ a hole. It doesn’t seem like they programmed in hitting ?-blocks underwater ( tho they did in Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, as there’s a Yoshi egg block in these levels, just like e’ery other level ), nor are there any pipes with bonus areas, or any other secrets. No, you just go straight thru, weaving round the debris & dodging the whopping 2 enemy types.

Dealing with these enemies is particularly annoying. Technically, it’s easy if you go slowly, as the Bloopers for some reason are too dumb to hit you when you’re on the ground; ¿but who wants to go slowly? As much as I praise Super Mario Bros. for its positive influences on the platformer genre, I’m not happy it introduced the nonsensical trope o’ being hurt by hitting an enemy from ’bove, which, in addition to not making any sense, makes dealing with enemies boring & the challenge o’ the water levels very lopsided. While the fire flower certainly helped you in normal levels, you could still deal with most enemies by stomping on them. But underwater, without fireballs all you can do is dodge enemies; & thanks to their erratic, random movement patterns, that oft involves waiting round for them to get out o’ your way. I’ve seen e’en speedrunners sometimes get stymied by enemies being in the wrong place @ the wrong time, forcing them to wait.

The only positive thing I can think to say ’bout these water levels is that they’re rare & exotic, specially aesthetically, with their pink coral & music. But while the coral is fresh to see, the water is the same tiles seen in ground levels & the green rocks all o’er the level don’t look much different from the brown rocks in ground levels. The water music is probably the weakest song in the game. Mo’ importantly, tho, they ruin what novelty these stages might have in an e’en greater way than Super Mario 64 did with its 2 water levels by repeating this stage twice. & these levels have the least variance ’mong all cloned levels.

You’re so limited in what you can do in these levels, getting the score challenge in Super Mario Bros. Deluxe’s challenge mode for these levels devolves into just beating these levels quickly. That might seem questionably to judge a Super Mario Bros. level for its weakness in a remake, but this weakness stems from a weakness o’ the original layout — after all, the red coins in Super Mario Bros. Deluxe a’least mitigate the boringness o’ these levels just the li’lest o’ bits. Tho not by much, as they’re not in the most interesting locations — with maybe the exception o’ the cheap trick o’ putting 1 near the bottom, where you can easily get sucked down into the abyss.

The Yoshi Egg is in a much mo’ interesting place than 2-2, tho, in that giant pit, which is the most interesting landmark in the level.

30. World 2-2

2-2 is just 7-2, but with fewer enemies. Since that means fewer annoyances that slow you down mo’ than challenge you, that makes the original slightly better. Plus, in world 2 getting to play such a radically different kind o’ gameplay was refreshing ’nough to make what feels like the equivalent o’ a bad minigame forgiveable.

The red coins aren’t in any mo’ interesting locations, & they once ’gain have 1 near the abyss.

The Yoshi Egg is hidden in a seemingly arbitrary place, which is odd: you’d think they’d make the easier level have the mo’ iconic — & therefore easier to locate — location & the harder version have the mo’ subtle variation.

29. World 7-4

A much better use o’ the maze mechanic than 4-4, with mo’ memorable paths, like the 1 that makes you go from the bottom to the top & the tricky 2nd path where you have to leap high up without getting hit by the firebar & weave ’long the middle section under a low ceiling with many potholes that make you fall into the bottom path.

There’s also the surprisingly tricky 1st section with the quick-falling elevator platforms surrounded by Podoboos.

But despite these, this level’s still sparse compared to other castles & has a weak ending, which is just flat ground with holes you can hide in to keep you save from Bowser’s flames. It’s hardly any different from 1-4, & this is the penultimate world. Bowser’s bridge also has nothing ’bove to impede you, with just a single Podoboo to accompany him. From a difficulty standard, it’s e’en worse than 4-4, since by this point having such an easy castle is just farcical. But, truly, the problem isn’t easiness: it’s possible to have brain-dead easy levels near the very end that are good if they’re interesting. But just like 4-4, this level is just dull & repetitive. It has 2 interesting setpieces, which is 1 mo’ than 4-4 has, but far less than nearly e’ery other level has.

While the 1st red coin near the bottom o’ the 2nd elevator is tricky to get, the rest aren’t interesting, & ’gain the game makes you fail a maze 2 times for 2 red coins.

& it seems like they put the Yoshi egg in the least interesting place they could.

28. World 4-1

The infamous introduction to Lakitu & apparently the original contender for 1st level o’ the game, which shocks some people, but shouldn’t, as e’en me @ 10 years ol’ quickly realized that, e’en mo’ than the leaping Cheep-Cheep levels, you can just run thru most o’ the level, jumping o’er e’ery pipe that gets in your way, while Lakitu throws its eggs uselessly ’hind you. It’s certainly fortunate that they replaced this with the current 1-1 as the opening not so much ’cause this level is too hard as ’cause this level is not nearly as interesting, being mostly flat land & scattered pipes & ?-blocks.

Howe’er, e’en tho Lakitu is less interesting than the leaping Cheep-Cheep gimmick, this level is a bit mo’ interesting with its several scattered ?-blocks enticing players to waste their time while Lakitu swarms the level with Spiny eggs ( note that they go out o’ their way to make these blocks ?-blocks when other levels would’ve had most o’ them be bricks — they truly want you to hit all these ) & the long block formations near the middle, whose bottom line can trip new players up & force them to go backward ( where they will likely meet a newborn Spiny ) or risk jumping with such a low ceiling & possibly falling into the pit in the middle.

Strangely, this level’s hardest part is the middle, with the tall pipes that make you time your jumps mo’ precisely to clear them & their Piranha Plants, while round the end o’ the level the pipes get shorter for some reason. This especially applies to Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, which stunts Mario & Luigi’s jump height ( presumably ’cause their NES & SNES jump height are nearly the entirety o’ the Game Boy Color’s tiny screen height ), making it impossible to clear these middle pipes while Piranha Plants are up.

Most o’ the red coins make good use o’ the otherwise pointless ?-blocks, specially the multicoin block just before the flagpole.

The Yoshi egg, in contrast, is garbage, just ’bove an arbitary hidden ?-block out in the vast wilderness before the staircase. I guess it does add challenge, since you have to jump round while Lakitu’s throwing Spiny eggs e’erywhere.

27. World 2-3

This level doesn’t have the most intricate layout or any secrets ( well, outside Super Mario Bros. Deluxe’s challenge mode ), but the rare hopping fish gimmick does make this level stand out & does add thrill on its own, e’en without many setpieces. They do spice up the arrangements with a few green hills, & this level does have that section @ the end with the 3 small bridges broken up with holes; but I still feel they could’ve done a lot mo’ with this level. ¿Were there technical limitations that prevented them from adding mo’ bricks or pipes?

These levels also stand out by being primarily made up o’ bridges, a setpiece that’s very rare outside o’ castle endings. The background in the All-Stars version is specially notable, with its out-o’-place sandy dunes & Goomba towers.

They did a’least make the good call to make these 3rd levels o’ their worlds, so that players can give themselves the extra challenge o’ trying to jump for all the coins while weaving ’tween Cheep Cheep so they can get the hidden 1-up in the next world.

Being such a simple level, it doesn’t offer many interesting places for red coins, tho they do have 1 in a tricky jump just before the long palm-tree platform. The final red coin position on the ground right before the flagpole is lame, tho. A’least they added an invisible coin block gainst the back o’ the staircase so you can get back up to jump high ’nough to reach the top o’ the flagpole; if not, players would probably have to get the red coin medal & score medal separately.

I kind o’ like how they put the Yoshi egg in this easier version o’ this level on the long palm-tree platform, which stands out ’mong all the other elements, while 7-3’s egg is somewhere on the bridge, much harder to distinguish from other bridges.

26. World 7-3

7-3 is just 2-3, but with Koopas added in. This leaves me torn, as it does make the level a bit mo’ interesting by itself; but where it is in level sequence, much later than its twin, it’s much easier than its surrounding levels. That said, such “breather levels” can be useful for adding pleasant surprises & keeping the difficulty curve from getting too monotonous. So o’erall, I would consider this level an improvement o’er its twin. Still, I wish they could’ve created a mo’ complicated level to mesh with the hopping Cheep Cheep, like they do with Lakitu in 6-1.

Actually, half o’ me is morbidly curious ’bout if it’d have been possible to have a Lakitu with the hopping fish & whether that would’ve been awesome or horrible.

You can tell they used up what few ideas for red coins they had in 2-3, as they’re e’en worse here. 2 o’ them just require finding random invisible coins to go high ’nough to reach them.

25. World 6-4

6-4 is just 1-4 but with a few extra firebars, Podoboos, & Bowser now throwing hammers. While the extra firebars in the middle do make this section much mo’ intricate ( tho for some reason Super Mario Bros. Deluxe removes the 1st extra firebar ), the extra firebars & the Podoboos @ the beginning only pointlessly slow you down, & the extra firebar in the central hallway is just as laughably useless as the others. They don’t make this level much mo’ challenging — not ’nough for world 6. 1-4 may be simplistic, but it has a good ’scuse & benefits from being the 1st castle players will play, where these elements are fresh. By world 6, playing 1-4 ’gain, but with a few extra dangers, has neither o’ these benefits & is just a joke. “Breather levels” are useful when used in the right place @ the right time, but a world-ending castle is a questionable 1, specially in a game that already had castle levels that, on average, are easier than most normal levels.

It has a slightly better Yoshi egg placement than 1-4, but it’s still far from the most inspired location.

& the red coin placements are less interesting: they’re mostly just high up, exploiting the inferior camera in a cheap way.

24. World 3-4

3-4 may not be a true copy, but many o’ its elements are very similar to those found in 1-4 & 2-4, but with setpieces repeated extra times to make it a li’l harder.

We get that in its strongest form @ the beginning, where we’re hit with 3 copies o’ the same 3-block-wide platform from the beginning o’ 1-4, not e’en @ different heights like 2-4’s platfors, all with the same firebar going the same direction @ the same speed. But ’stead o’ a ?-block o’er any o’ these platforms, we just have Podoboos jumping up & down in the surrounding lava, which could look somewhat like a mix o’ what 1-4 & 2-4 started with if you squint hard ’nough @ it; but since these elements are so common, & are combined several other times, too, it’s hard to get much interest out o’ them. I s’pose it does add extra challenge in that you can’t just wait fore’er for Podoboos to be in just the right place before jumping while the firebar clock is ticking toward you.

Next we have the same kind o’ firebar jumps players did in 1-4, but now a block higher & all the harder version with 2 firebars per block, the final pair differing only in their relative position & timing, adding the slightest extra challenge.

The only setpiece worth talking ’bout is the 3-?-block formation with a power-up in the middle, which, if you release a mushroom, it can be easy to drop it into the lava. The same setpiece will be repeated soon in 4-2, tho, so e’en that doesn’t help this level feel in any way unique or vital to this game.

That said, the red coins are all in great locations, requiring precise high jumps off the edge o’ firebar-manned steps & low jumps o’er lava.

The Yoshi egg’s location feels arbitrary, tho: it’s just ’mong a bunch o’ invisible blocks in a wide-open empty space that’s hard to discern from the rest o’ the level.

23. World 2-4

The very 1st section that introduces Podoboos is much weaker than the 1st section that introduced firebars in 1-4. Maybe it would’ve been too trollish to put a Podoboo under the ?-block ( in fact, here I should admit that, in general, Podoboos are much weaker enemies than firebars, acting as just a place to wait for when it’s safe to pass thru, whereas firebars can a’least be placed in tricky arrangements ), but they could’ve done something mo’ interesting than just 3 platforms, 2 Podoboos @ the edges, & a ?-block in the middle. 5-4, ’course, puts a firebar there to add difficulty; but why they need to wait several worlds later to add difficulty in a way that the previous castle did is a mystery to me.

The useless firebar hall in 1-4 has now been split into 2 wherein the player has to estimate which path is safest, with the missing firebar @ the beginning telegraphing the bottom hallway as the safest. While the top hallway forces the player to wait round mo’ for the firebars to get out o’ your way, the bottom is essentially the equivalent to the hall in 1-4. On 1 hand, giving the player a split path is a li’l mo’ interesting; on the other, making the only alternative to 1-4’s straight run thru be the “challenge” o’ waiting mo’ is less fun.

The strongest part is the following elevator section, which is, if anything, perhaps too hard for this early in the game, specially the part just after it with a firebar &, most likely, 1 o’ Bowser’s flame taking up the only other formerly safe space. I would’ve left the firebar out in the earlier 2-4 version to better balance this castle level & add variety ’tween this & its twin, 5-4.

In contrast to this, after that is some pointless section with a block just sitting there, which is obviously just there ’cause it will have a firebar in the inevitable harder copy later. I would say that keeping the firebar here would’ve been mo’ useful than the previous, but e’en with the firebar it’s not an interesting setpiece, so it would’ve been better to just leave out this section in both versions entirely.

It’s odd that they start the ending gauntlet with jumps o’er lava & then make things easier by changing to jumps o’er safe ground.

I also question why they gave so li’l space round the platform ’bove Bowser in such an early level.

This level is a mix o’ setpieces too simple & too challenging for such a level & most o’ it feels like dead space & repeating setpieces so recently experienced in 1-4. A big problem with this level is it feels like too much o’ it is just setting up the added twists in its harder clone, 5-4, than being its own level. The elevator section almost made me rank it higher than 1-4, but 1-4’s strong start & middle are worth mo’ than it, so like Phil Leotardo, I compromised & put it ’tween 6-4 & 1-4.

The red coin locations aren’t too bad, ’cept the 2nd ( tho part o’ me’s glad they didn’t make it so that you had to take a certain path during the fork to get it ). I particularly like the 1 up in the elevators, making, well, elevating actually useful.

The Yoshi egg e’en makes use o’ the otherwise useless firebar block without its firebar.

22. World 5-3

5-3 is just 1-3, but with randomly-generated Bullet Bills & slightly smaller elevator platforms. Unlike the Bullet Bills who shoot from cannons & actually have some strategy to them, these are basically just repainted flames from the castle levels that range from being ordinary obstacles you have to deal with e’ery so oft to obstacles that are way out o’ the way & feel pointless to, on thankfully rare occassions, unlucky situations where you’re struck while already in the midst o’ a jump & it’s too late to change course. Granted, you can avoid these by only jumping just after a Bullet Bill has passed, before it has time to come round ’gain; ¿but who wants to stop & go so oft? 1-3 doesn’t have this problem, since there’s no luck factor in it @ all. Despite this, the Bullet Bills don’t add ’nough extra challenge to make this level fit in with world 5 — certainly not after difficulty bumps like 5-1 & 5-2.

Since this level is so simple & since 1-3 used all the halfway interesting locations, 5-3’s red coin placements are laughably lame: ¡3 o’ them are just floating out in the open, all scrunched together in the middle!

The Yoshi Egg’s location is strikingly e’en worse than the already bad location in 1-3: 5-3’s is @ the end, past the staircase, which has nothing to do with the main level & is too easy to locate after using Yoshi’s egg finder ( ’cause it looks nothing like the rest o’ the level ). The whole point o’ the egg finder is that it challenges you to remember the level to remember where the small screen they show you is; but that’s trivial when it’s the flagpole screen.

21. World 1-4

As you can imagine, the 1st castle level is the least challenging & complex castle level — tho I have to admit, having the firebar under the ?-block is a strong setpiece in which to introduce the firebars, & the arrangements near the middle, specially the 2 next to each other, forcing the player to weave round them, is also no slouch.

After this is a long passageway that looks dangerous, as it’s full o’ firebars, but you can usually just run thru with the firebars timed so that they’re out o’ the way when you reach them. Unlike later levels, this ease works much better in such an early level & does a great job o’ keeping such an early level exciting while still keeping it relatively easy.

Less interesting is the big area full o’ hidden coin blocks, which I guess could, on rare occasions, cause some cheap bullshit hits if you bonk 1 while trying to dodge Bowser’s fire — but that’s hardly a good element to have in the 1st castle, or anywhere, truly. These are only useful otherwise in Super Mario Bros. Deluxe’s challenge mode, where 1 o’ them hides the Yoshi egg; ¿but on any other version, who’s going to waste their time jumping round like an idiot for up to 6 coins?

The red coin locations are all strong, tho, specially the ones right next to firebars, forcing you to run in & out to grab them before the firebar swoops back round to hit you.

20. World 5-4

In contrast to 1-4 vs. 6-4, 5-4 is an improvement o’er its twin, 2-4. The 1st area is a combination o’ 1-4 & 2-4’s opening, but set up in a way that you can rush thru.

Similarly, while the 2nd hallways are mo’ challenging with mo’ firebars, you can still rush thru the bottom path without stopping with a well-timed duck jump.

The arrangement that now has a firebar after the elevator section is a bit silly with the lower passage; — ¿why would anyone want to go under it for those 3 coins when there’s such a high chance o’ getting hit ­— but I do quite like the challenge dynamic wherein it can be quite a challenge to jump o’er or e’en just not run into if you let yourself fall into that area, but can be easy to clear with a long jump straight o’er that whole lower section — with the caveat that this might open you to getting hit by 1 o’ Bowser’s flames.

In fact, 5-4 may be the hardest castle in the game, strangely ’nough. It’s certainly harder than the jokes that are 6-4 & 7-4. That said, it’s still just a minorly improved copy-pasta o’ an already not-very-good level, & it’s certainly not the most interesting castle level.

Unlike 2-4, this level is rude ’nough to force you to take the top path to get a red coin… which is the easiest path, so you want to take it, anyway.

I do prefer the last 2 red coins, tho — specially the way you have to actually dig for the red coin ’mong all the bricks while dodging Bowser’s attacks, rather than just having the red coin be awkwardly next to the bricks. I like how they add the extra challenge by making you slide under the firebar going toward you for the 4th coin.

The Yoshi Egg location is just dumb & arbitrary, howe’er & is right next to the 4th red coin, to boot, but doesn’t e’en take advantage o’ its danger. ¿Wouldn’t it be mo’ interesting if you had to hit & jump on the hidden ?-block ’bove this firebar block in 2-4, but with the firebar now there? I would’ve forgiven them for having the Yoshi Egg in the same place in both levels — it would’ve felt like a clever twist.

19. World 1-3

1-3 falls into that awkward middle o’ not being the kind o’ memorable introductions as 1-1 & 1-2, or e’en 1-4 after it, nor being as complex or intricate as later levels. With all the pits, it almost feels too difficult for how early it is, specially compared to the easier castle level after it, but not much mo’ difficult that it’s as striking as other palm-tree levels. The most interesting thing, other than its introduction o’ its fresh bright green hills tileset so soon after introducing the world to the normal o’erworld & underground tilesets, is the different staircase @ the end; & e’en then, it doesn’t serve much o’ a difference in terms o’ gameplay.

There are a few interesting setpieces, like the 3 times you jump up a high cliff guarded by a Goomba or Red Koopa, & to some extent they have multiple paths, such as the top & bottom palm trees near the middle.

There are also side areas, like the top palm tree with 4 coins & a Red Koopa & the lower area under the flying Red Paratroopa near the end, which could also serve as a safety net — tho why it’d be important to have 1 after plenty o’ unguarded pits is a mystery. ’Twas a smart decision to add the secret mechanic wherein you need to collect all the coins in the 3rd level o’ a world to unlock the hidden 1-up in the next world, as the need to collect coins is the only use for many o’ these side areas, tho the way they integrated this mechanic in such an obscure manner that would make few actually bother to do so feels awkward & is an example o’ how Super Mario Bros. was platformers still naively trying to find their footing leaving the arcade world & entering mo’ in-depth console gameplay.

Some o’ the elements feel forced or thrown in, tho. ¿Why is the 1st elevator moving up & down there? It doesn’t fit with the level theme & doesn’t accomplish anything, since you could reach the top hill without it & certainly the bottom hill without it.

The red coins do serve as a way to legitimize some o’ the aforementioned frivolous setpieces, like the high cliff near the beginning, the low cliff near the end, & the 1st elevator.

The Yoshi Egg’s in a nondescript place, tho — so nondescript the developers felt the need to add an extra cloud background ’hind it to make it stand out mo’.

18. World 3-2

3-2 is a striking step down in complexity & variety, not only compared to its immediate predecessor, but also to possibly e’ery other non-castle level, being mainly flat ground with long lines o’ Koopas & Goombas. On the other hand, this level trades that lack o’ variety for a greater level o’ thematic coherence, focusing so tightly on what we might later call the “gimmick” o’ kicking Koopas @ other enemies. It’s obviously not the 1st time the game gives you the opportunity to do so, but this is the 1st level that practically screams @ you to do so with its straight lines o’ enemies. While 3-1 gives you a tricky opportunity to nab a rare 1-up thru hitting 8 enemies in a row with a Koopa shell, this level introduces this properly with the 1st line o’ enemies, with just the right # o’ enemies to get a 1-up @ the end, making it stupidly easy to get the 1-up — tho also easy to lose it ’gain after the shell ricochets off the block just after the last Koopa. Considering they repeat this setup almost verbatim in 5-1, it’s surprising they don’t make this version easier by putting a pit @ the end.

This level is perfectly inconsistent ’bout where it gives players the opportunity to rack up extra lives. Just after the 1st opportunity, the level seems to offer ’nother opportunity right after, with a Koopa followed by 2 Goombas, but then pulls the rug out from under the player by having a wall early. They follow this with a Koopa in a tiny hole with an infinite-coin block not worth hitting, & then a hopping Paratroopa, who is also followed by too few enemies to win a 1-up from it, making taking the effort to clip its wings & kick its shell pointless, & then, when the level gets it into your head that kicking shells into enemies isn’t going to net you 1-ups anymo’, they twist this expectation & follow this with a section with a Koopa followed by 8 enemies, tho made e’en mo’ challenging than the hopping Paratroopa by putting the 1st Koopa so near the edge that the player has to speedrun to get there & kick it from the left in time — & e’en then it can be an awkward maneuver that leaves the player mo’ likely to get hurt. Finally, they follow this up with 1 mo’ section with a Koopa, followed by… not ’nough enemies to net a 1-up. All o’ these twists exhibit a perfect counterexample to the lazy mainstream view that all levels in all video games should follow a straight difficulty curve upward in regards to the evolution o’ setpiece challenges, but can, in fact, benefit from surprise ups & downs to keep players from getting bored.

Still, this level is perhaps too obsessed with its theme — which, to be honest, isn’t all that interesting, & isn’t e’en unique to this level. There are many other levels with gimmicks just as good if not better that also do a better job o’ balancing these gimmicks with other elements for variety. E’en something as o’erused as a bonus underground room — e’en if ’twere just a copy o’ 1 from ’nother level — would’ve improved this level. A’least this level is brief ’nough that its focus doesn’t become tedious.

Unfortunately, such a simple level doesn’t provide a fertile ground for red coin locations: they’re mostly just thrown out in the open. Many are just high up, requiring you to jump up other blocks to reach them or make mightly leaps. the 1st is literally just right on the ground.

The Yoshi Egg’s location is stupid: it’s @ the top o’ a pyramid o’ hidden ?-blocks that weren’t there in the original version in an indistinct place. Worse, they put a red coin round there — which, now that I think ’bout it, a’least acts as a hint that these ?-blocks are here.

17. World 8-1

8-1 is a mixed bag: it has a few excellent, tricky sections that remind you why it starts the final world, such as the plot pockmarked with holes & swarming with Paratroopas, the staircase broken up with several holes ( which you’re likely to be rushing up, due to this level’s length & tight time limit ), & the infamous 1-block jump surrounded by long chasms you have to run-jump o’er without stopping on the single block.

Howe’er, the designers felt the need to make this the longest level in the game, & filled most o’ that length with what feels like padding, just long lengths o’ basic enemies you’ve dispatched with ease many times before, oft with a shell you can kick to dispatch them all in 1 swoop, with just the need to jump o’er the shell when it ricochets back, as if you haven’t already done that many times mo’ than half the game ago.

Some sections, like the Koopa ’tween the 2 walls, where you’ll ne’er have any reason to go, are just baffling.

The red coin locations are all great, tho, & take advantage o’ notable setpieces for challenges, such as putting 1 ’bove 1 o’ the many potholes in 1 section or in the easy-to-miss multicoin brick round the middle.

They e’en make the small pit with the Koopa walking back & forth less useless by putting a red coin there, giving players a reason to go in there.

The Yoshi Egg is also in the perfect place, the most memorable place in the whole level: right on that single block surrounded by vast chasms.

16. World 8-3

I’m torn on this level. It’s so memorable, specially the way it just unrelentingly sics Hammer Bro after Hammer Bro after you, the hardest enemy in the game. It’s fitting for the final non-castle level. The brick castle backgrounds, unique to this level, also makes this level stand out — specially in a final world that so far had shown the least aesthetic variety, with both 8-1 & 8-2 having the same graphic style as the 1st level — & drive home that this is the lead up to the final castle.

That said, the level is very basic, 1-note, & repetitive. They focus a bit too much on the Hammer Bro theme, just straight-up copy-pasting them o’er flat ground 5 times @ the end. Granted, that does make them mo’ challenging, since you can’t just run under & bump them from below. They have some challenge variance in that they give you a Koopa whose shell you can kick & maybe ( if they don’t jump o’er the shell ) dispatch the Hammer Bros, while the final pair leave you with nothing but yourself to fend gainst them. The problem is, they don’t e’en go all that hard on you: the 2 pairs o’ brick platforms, with Hammer Bros. no harder to dispatch than when you 1st encountered them in this way back in 3-1, each have a power-up, giving you a relatively easy way to get a Fire Flower, allowing you to plow thru the rest o’ the level.

The best part o’ this level is probably the final “staircase”, the ultimate version: it’s so broken up, it’s barely e’en a “staircase”, but just a scatter o’ single blocks.

1 subtly strong element I do want to bring up is the staircase near the middle, which isn’t notable by itself, but does act as a stealth setup to the beginning o’ 8-4, which also has a downward staircase, but 1 where you actually have to steadily go down them without falling into the pit. Here you can mostly ignore the staircase, howe’er, as the hole after it is short ’nough to clear from the top o’ the staircase.

Tho the new gray wall background in All-Stars with parallax scrolling looks nicer than the 1 made out o’ regular bricks in the NES original, it ruins the effect o’ the multicoin block near the end, which is s’posed to be hidden ’mong the brick background, but stands out gainst the scrolling gray background.

This level is simple ’nough that it doesn’t have many great places for red coins, but the developers did certainly try. I specially like the red coin high up on the final staircase, requiring the player to make a dangerous leap back to get it, as well as the 1 on the downward staircase near the middle, forcing the player to go down the staircase like in 8-4.

Howe’er, the 1st red coin is the stupidest red coin in the game: it’s way up on the 1st screen & requires you to hit a hidden ?-block @ the far left to reach it. This could be in any level & it’d fit as well, that’s how generic it is.

Actually, the Yoshi Egg is pretty much the same, also requiring a hidden ?-block to reach ’nother hidden block, but thrown somewhere near the middle o’ the level. I guess that makes it harder to find. ’Cept not really, since finding 2 invisible ?-blocks isn’t much harder than finding 1: once you find that 1 that wasn’t in the original game, you have a good inkling where the other is.

15. World 1-1

It’s hard to appreciate 1-1, not the least ’cause e’ery game critic can’t stop creaming themselves o’er it — tho, funny ’nough, for the short period in which ’twas playable, Super Mario Bros. 35 made its players loath this level due to its ubiquity. It’s certainly o’errated in that the public tends to treat this as the only level worthy o’ discussion.

Many o’ the points o’ praise critics offer this level make mo’ sense in pure abstract principle rather than its actual implementation, such as the lavish praise so many critics give to the way this level has those mini staircases with ground ’tween them & then yet ’nother set, tho with an extra block on the left side & a hole ’tween them, the former presumably acting as training wheels for the latter. They talk ’bout this setpiece as if it’s the only time this game e’er does such a thing — probably ’cause they act as if this is the only level that exists. What they rarely mention is that there are plenty o’ bottomless pits before this section in this level, rendering the need for these training wheels nonsensical. The only interesting use for this safe spot is in Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, where they hide the Yoshi egg there.

I’m also skeptical o’ much o’ the armchair psychological assumptions for how players will “naturally” react to this or that setpiece. Take the 1st block formation: e’eryone talks ’bout the Goomba under the blocks & how this is perfectly set up so that you’ll naturally try to jump & bonk your head, releasing a mushroom, as well as likely die to the Goomba. Ignoring the questionable level design o’ having what they seem to depict as a beginner’s trap… ¿Have these people actually played this game? If you play 1-1, you’ll find that the Goomba goes past the ?-block long before you have a chance to jump o’er them, e’en if you’re running.

But despite my qualms with the o’erwrought way so many critics talk ’bout this level, I won’t criticize it too much. It is good for a 1st level: better than the 1st level in many platformers, e’en many other Mario games. In fact, ’mong traditional Mario games ( not including Donkey Kong Country or Wario Land 3, both o’ which I’d say had better 1st levels ), I’d say only Super Mario Bros. 3 bested it. It’s certainly better than the level they originally planned to be the 1st level, what is now 4-1. I’ve oft said that making good easy levels takes much mo’ skill than making a good hard level, as you need to make the level simple & easy without being too basic & dull, specially to veterans playing the game a 2nd time. Since, as stated in the intro, people were paying what in today’s money would be mo’ than $100 for the special ability to play this game as many times as they wanted, replay value was vital.

But while I can’t deny that that opening brick-?-brick-?-brick formation with the single ?-block higher up is an iconic formation, people oft miss the less brilliant parts o’ this level. For instance, the pipe section just after is quite repetitive. Perhaps this is to better hide the shortcut; perhaps these pipes are meant to offer practice for dealing with enemies in tight spaces, while also giving the player an easy way to skip the enemies completely by just jumping from pipe to pipe. 1-2 does the latter a bit better with less repetition & it makes much mo’ sense for that level to focus so much on pipes, being an actual sewer level.

The next setpiece seems to exists to introduce enemies that come @ you from ’bove & offers a way for players to learn that they can bonk enemies from below ( which players @ the time should’ve guessed, coming just after Mario Bros., where this was the default ). 1 minor quibble: I think they shouldn’t have shown their hand so much by making the mushroom block a conspicuous ?-block, but should’ve double-dipped & used this setpiece to introduce power-ups in regular bricks by making that block, which the player is likely to hit, anyway, when they try bonking a Goomba, a brick. My other quibble is that I think they could’ve made the gap after this setpiece a bit bigger, since they offer a higher route to mo’ easily pass it, anyway. A gap this small makes this set o’ training wheels almost as laughable as the aforementioned practice staircases.

What I’m surprised critics are less oft to note is the Starman hidden in a brick round the middle o’ the level, giving the player a way to safely plow thru the rest o’ the level ( which, conveniently, is much mo’ enemy-saturated that what came before ), giving a win-win for the level designer similar to the aforementioned shortcut by making the level easier but doing so in a way that makes the level mo’ exciting. This use is much mo’ interesting than the shortcut, not only ’cause it feels mo’ creative, but also ’cause it doesn’t just involve skipping the level: you feel like you’re playing thru the level but as an all-powerful god. So great is this technique that Rare did their own spin in the 1st level o’ Donkey Kong Country with Rambi. This version does have a bit mo’ urgency, tho, thanks to its limited duration, & this level takes advantage o’ this to create a twist: several ?-blocks scattered thruout the next area, 1 o’ which has a power-up, so that the player has to choose whether or not to hurry to the end with their invincibility or squander it slowly checking all the blocks for goodies. Granted, there’s a small chance the player doesn’t have full Fire Flower by this point.

Unfortunately, this level ends weakly. After the silly mini staircases, we have 1 mo’ formation o’ bricks & a lone ?-block with a coin, a formation much simpler & less memorable ( & less symmetrical ) than the very 1st formation, & 2 Goombas. It’s not terrible, ’course. Just… shrug. Maybe the developers figured that players were likely to rush thru this section, anyway, & didn’t feel like it’d be worth the effort to make this last section grade A material.

So you can see why this level is in the middle o’ my rankings: it has a mix o’ strong elements padded out with some weak filler.

As a testament to how basic this level is, quite a few red coins feel thrown in. The only 1 I really like is the 1 in that lone ?-block near the end that’s otherwise frivolous.

14. World 5-1

5-1 is mostly a superior version o’ 3-2, with the only weakness being the lack o’ the difficulty twists with the shell kicking for 1-ups: here, all the sections with several enemies that start with a Koopa — as well as 1 with a Koopa after 3 Goombas — offer an opportunity for a 1-up, tho the final 1 can easily be sabotaged if the player still has the star or squashes 1 o’ the opening Goombas before the Koopa later on.

Howe’er, this level does do a better job o’ balancing out the 1-note gimmick o’ kicking shells @ enemies by adding Bullet Bills & a few mo’ vertical-oriented setpieces, adding much needed variety. I particularly like the tricky section with the Bullet Bill blaster under the Piranha Plant pipe, forcing the player to choose ’tween a high jump timed gainst a Piranha Plant or a jump under a low ceiling timed gainst a Bullet Bill shot. E’en the ending staircase is changed up a bit — tho not in a particularly meaningful way: the hole in it just leads to flat, solid ground & falling in doesn’t e’en so much as screw you out o’ a high flagpole grab, as you can easily jump back up.

This level e’en gave a good hiding place for its obligatory hidden 1-up: rather than just being an arbitrary hidden ?-block in the middle o’ nowhere, it’s in a brick ’mong a row o’ them in a conspicuous place that seems otherwise pointless.

I’m half & half on aesthetics: 3-2’s night sky vs. this level’s wintry gray pipes. On 1 hand, the night palette is less rare, pervading both worlds 3 & 6; on the other, this level doesn’t e’en bother to make the ground gray, like in 6-3. In Super Mario All-Stars, this level is definitely less interesting visually than 3-2, since that remake makes 3-1 & 3-2 snowy, too. Still, this level does look better than a lot o’ the regular outside levels, & any attempt @ creating visual variety is appreciated in a game with limited technology that didn’t offer many opportunities.

Most o’ the red coin locations are meh — a lot o’ them are just very high up. I do like the 1 next to the 3-block-high wall that requires a tricky low jump to get & the 1 on the high-up pipe.

The Yoshi Egg is in as good a place as I could think to put it. Yes, it’s the staircase, but unlike 5-3, it’s a much different staircase & the Yoshi Egg location is in the part that makes it different. Furthermo’, most o’ this level doesn’t look radically different from the staircase section like 5-3.

As some bonus trivia: for some reason this level starts with a small castle ’stead o’ a big castle, the only level after a castle level to do so. This is almost certainly an o’ersight — 1 I ne’er noticed in the decades I’ve played this game till, well, right now. Funny ’nough, this error is kept in both Super Mario All-Stars & Super Mario Bros. Deluxe.

13. World 6-1

A much, much mo’ interesting use o’ Lakitu than 4-1, not just due to the mo’ exotic night sky, but also due to the mo’ interesting block arrangements that actually do a bit better o’ a job getting in your way, specially all the staircases, easy to snag gainst — specially the 1 with the backward-L-shaped hole in it — & offering greater elevation to Spinies, making it harder to jump o’er them.

I like the awkward position o’ the 2nd mushroom, which requires you to stop & go back a bit to get it, which is the last thing you want to do with Spinies being dropped all o’er.

I also like how the 1-up is hidden in a similar fashion, in a suspicious alcove to the left that you’d have no reason to go into otherwise. Part o’ me feels like it would’ve been better after the mushroom put the idea in the player’s head; but one could say it works e’en better they way they set it up as a replay bonus ( whether on a subsequent run or if they died — which is far from unlikely ) for those who remember the mushroom location.

I also like how these 2 sections make good use o’ the need for downward-sloping terrain after the staircases ( since the technical limitations required levels to be a flat, straight line rightward & couldn’t just keep going upward ), making them interesting, when they could’ve easily been generic filler.

This level has some subtly strong red coin locations, such as 1 right next to a downward step & a hole that’s easy to stumble in, 1 in the pit in the middle staircase, & 1 in the multicoin brick sandwiched ’tween 2 other rows o’ bricks. E’en the 1 that requires the 2 hidden ?-blocks is clever, since those hidden ?-blocks are actually in the original NES version, so it rewards players deeply familiar with the original, rather than just being an arbitrary invented twist that gaslights familiar players.

On the other hand, this level also has the dumbest Yoshi Egg location, which is similar to 8-3’s dumbest red coin location e’er: yes, it’s on the 1st screen & requires not 1, but 2 hidden ?-blocks to reach. But just like 8-3’s Yoshi Egg, it doesn’t make it harder, it just wastes extra time finding ?-blocks whose locations are obvious once you find the 1st, since there’s only so much space round the 1st you can reach from the 1st. & like 5-3’s Yoshi Egg, this Egg location is stupid ’cause it’s not e’en challenging to find from the egg finder, since that castle @ the beginning is obviously the beginning, as it is in e’ery non-castle level ( well, ’cept 1-1 ).

12. World 8-2

Probably the hardest level in the game, specially with the opening staircase with 2 Paratroopas, a Spiny, & a Lakitu. The last 3rd is also full o’ tricky arrangements, such as the crowd o’ Paratroopas o’er the lone shooter surrounded by a small & large gap, the staircase with li’l space before it with 2 Goombas on it, & the ending staircase full o’ holes & Paratroopas. These aren’t mindboggling, but they do make the level memorable to me, a’least.

There’s also the infamous 2 single blocks o’ ground with 1-block-wide empty space ’tween them before a large chasm, wherein I think you’re expected to run on the uneven ground & jump @ the end to make it, which requires the player to know they can just run o’er 1-block-wide gaps ( as well as that they don’t fall straight into that gap when going down from the pipe ), which would seem unfair; howe’er, I found you can actually just run & jump off the pipe.

They do balance out this level’s difficulty with the rare 1-up that respawns after you die & is guaranteed no matter how many coins you got in any earlier level. This 1-up is notable in that its setpiece is the 1st instance o’ a common puzzle in Mario games: the 1-up that you have to follow ’long with so it doesn’t despawn till you reach the end o’ the brick ceiling & can finally collect it. There’s a good reason they reuse this puzzle: ’twas a clever way to make players earn their extra life. Technically, this isn’t the 1st time this game does this sort o’ thing: 4-2 does something similar near the end with a regular mushroom. Howe’er, its section is shorter & can be avoided if the player is already big & get a stationary fire flower ’stead. This version’s a much grander evolution on that concept.

That said, I feel the level devolves into just a bunch o’ enemies & shooters in uninspired patterns round the middle. This would be fine if they kept Lakitu thruout the whole level, as the previous 2 levels with Lakitu held back from the norm o’ challenging layouts to balance out gainst Lakuti constantly hovering o’er the players shoulder. Having a straight challenging level with Lakitu would’ve been a particularly interesting challenge spike; but alas, Lakuti flies out o’ there right after the 1st few screens, making their appearance @ the beginning feel pointless.

The Super Mario All-Stars version is a notable visual improvement with its autumnal red hills in the background, which adds some much needed variety to a world where 3/4 o’ the levels are all the regular o’erworld tileset & palette in the NES version.

Half o’ the red coin locations are good, half are not. I like the 1 in the pit with the Buzzy Beetle, giving you a reason to go down there, & the tricky-to-hit brick just after the long brick row.

I don’t like the 1 high ’bove the infamous 2-block jump near the middle, as it telegraphs the fact that you can just leap clear o’er it. If anything, I think it would’ve been better if they put the red coin down on 1 o’ the small blocks.

& while I like the idea o’ having a red coin up on the brick ceiling with the 1-up, I don’t like how you have to find a random invisible ?-block that isn’t there in the original to reach up there.

& then there’s the red coin in the bonus room, which is in a brick that’s impossible to reach without a, sigh, hidden ?-block that wasn’t there in the original. I guess it’s to make this very obscure to find, which is somewhat fitting for such an end-game level. But a game that didn’t need to rely on unfairness to make its last world hard shouldn’t be degraded into pulling such cheap tricks to create fake difficulty, specially when the “difficulty” is just hunting round for hidden ?-blocks.

The Yoshi egg’s place is… fine. It’s not the most memorable place; but maybe that’s the point — to make it harder to find with the Yoshi egg finder.

11. World 3-3

3-3 is a middle point ’tween the simplistic 1-3 & 5-3 & the much mo’ complex 4-3 & 6-3 later on, tho as you can see by its ranking, I’d put this closer to the latter than the former. While the former 2 levels didn’t leave much to talk ’bout, 3-3 implements many mo’ notable setpieces with far less repetition. In fact, most o’ the interesting elements o’ 1-3/5-3 are in this level, too, but mixed in with new elements:

You start by going from a low palm tree to a high palm tree guarded by a Goomba, which is done 2 or 3 times in 1-3/5-3.

& then you have the low palm trees of the main path with extra coins. The 2nd & 3rd instances are mo’ interesting than the 2 in 1-3/5-3 in that they have the player go back a bit, & for the 2nd instance if they want to collect the coins on the upper path, they need to retrace their steps & jump back up.

In addition to these, you have 3 thin hills that make a great tutorial for running o’er single-block holes, with a safety net below & coins spread ’mong the palm trees ’bove to in a straight line on the ground to encourage such movement.

This level introduces scale lifts, which are used much mo’ in 4-3 & 6-3. The 2 instances in this level are perfect as a tutorial: the 1st is surrounded by palm trees, including 1 ’tween the 2 platforms, rendering it mostly unnecessary — which is to say, easy to avoid if not feeling up to its challenges — while the 2nd use replaces the ending staircase, challenging players to figure out how to use the scale lift correctly to reach the top o’ the flagpole, but not punishing players with mo’ than that for failing to do so.

The red coin locations are decent, tho I think some o’ them could’ve been improved, such as the 4th coin, which could’ve been somewhere ’bove the elevator just before its current location, & the 5th, which could’ve a’least required you to move the scales in some way before you can get it, rather than just being right there on the bottommost 1.

The Yoshi Egg location is both in a generic place & requires an extra hidden ?-block that wasn’t there in the original. The beginning castle & ending flagpole are the only places that could’ve been worse.

10. World 7-1

While mostly just a ramping up o’ elements introduced earlier in the game, including 2 pairs o’ straight brick floors with matching Hammer Bro pairs ( tho the 2nd pair o’ brick floors are shorter ), this level manages to squeeze in a few interesting setpieces. For 1, it has the most interesting arrangements o’ Bullet Bill shooters, which isn’t saying much, since they’re surprisingly rare in this game. The 1st half or so o’ the level is just an onslaught, specially if the player makes the mistake o’ going after the 4 ?-blocks ’tween 2 shooters & a hopping Paratroopa, only to find coins, or the hard-to-reach power-up in the leftmost brick on the high-up brick ceiling — which, if a mushroom, will fall right in a nest o’ shooters.

There’s ’nother somewhat tricky power-up near the end ’bove a spring boxed in by 2 brick platforms on both sides & a Bullet Bill shooter that can snipe you while you’re bouncing. Small players can take the safer route o’ just jumping from the highest brick platform, safely ’bove the shooter.

The fakeout staircase before the real staircase is interesting in theory, I guess, but kind o’ just padding in practice. I also feel like they could’ve done mo’ with the real staircase than have a single Buzzy Beetle. For such a ramp-up in difficulty as this level is, this ending, far less dangerous than the ending to many previous levels, just feels like a letdown. Since the level focuses so much on Bullet Bill shooters, it seems to me obvious to have Bullet Bill shooters embedded in the final staircase for extra peril — an idea this game & its Japanese sequel surprisingly ne’er implement ( tho D-3 o’ Lost Levels does come close with a series o’ shooters spaced apart going upward in a vaguely staircase shape @ the end ).

This level has OK red coins, with 2 hidden in bricks round Hammer Bros., forcing players to stop & deal with them, rather than just rush thru. The other 2 are in random ?-blocks & bricks that otherwise serve no major purpose. Putting a red coin in the easy to forget underground room is a good idea, but putting it way up high & demanding the player to find a hidden ?-block to reach it is kinda lame.

I don’t get why the Yoshi egg needed you to reveal a hidden ?-block to reach it, either. I feel the egg should’ve been round the Hammer Bros, or perhaps in the Bullet Bill onslaught.

9. World 5-2

A level full o’ variety, including not just a sky bonus, but also an underwater bonus ( tho not the only or best level to do so ). In fact, this water section is better than any o’ the actual water levels in this game, with elevators & tighter coral arrangements.

Despite all this variety, this level creates some level o’ cohesion on its main path thru the general focus on Hammer Bros., an enemy that appeared once as a pair in 3-1, but which is truly developed here, where you start out facing a much harder to dodge or dispatch Hammer Bros on a short staircase.

In fact, this level also has something o’ a focus on staircases, too, with 4 staircases: the 1st with a Bullet Bill shooter perched ’bove, making climbing precarious; the aforementioned mo’ dangerous staircase guarded with a Hammer Bro, & 2 staircases broken up with bottomless pits, the 1 @ the end with 2 & manned by a hopping Paratroopa.

Super Mario Bros. Deluxe makes the underwater bonus relevant by putting a red coin there. I also found it fitting that they put 1 in the multi-coin brick 1 block off the ground, giving players an advantage if they’re small, as it can be hard to hit, specially the 10 times necessary to unlock the red coin, when you need to slide under there ’cause the player’s too big.

The Yoshi egg location is decent, too. For some reason they added the top o’ a snowed-on tree ’bove the block under the hidden Yoshi egg block, which probably wasn’t necessary to make this setpiece noticeable, but I appreciate the extra effort.

8. World 2-1

2-1 is an underrated level with subtly interesting arrangements from start to finish:

You have that hole near the beginning with the 2 Koopas & the hidden block & the 1-up brick ’bove ( unlike most other hidden blocks, this 1 is cleverly hinted @ by the bricks ’bove, since you’d need a block somewhere here to be able to hit them from below ).

You have the introduction o’ the beanstalk leading up to coin heaven, ’nother cool idea that’s become so well-known that it’s easy to take it for granted.

You have a much mo’ interesting use o’ Piranha Plant pipes than 1-2 with bricks with a power-up ’bove, which, if it releases a mushroom, can actually be somewhat tricky to get, leading straight for the Piranha Plant, & then a pit.

& then you have the final staircase replaced by a tall wall & a spring to bounce you high up to reach it, a fantastic, memorable way to introduce the springboard.

My only nitpick with this level is that it has that awkward middleground o’ enemy spam, where there’s several enemies where they don’t make much o’ a difference ( ¿are 2 Koopas in that beginning hole much mo’ dangerous than just 1? ), but they don’t give you ’nough to allow you to chain kill with a Koopa shell for an extra life, which is lame. This game is keen on cockblocking 1-up chains, which I guess is to keep the game difficult. I don’t think that’s a good reason, tho, since chaining for 1-ups takes some skill, e’en when you can do it, & they give you an, if anything, easier way to get unlimited 1-ups later with the infinite lives trick using the Koopa on the staircase, anyway ( note: this technically isn’t a glitch, since the developers claim they knew ’bout it before publication & deliberately left it in ).

The red coin locations are fine, tho not remarkable. I do like the 1 @ the end near the spring, giving you more o’ a reason to use it.

The Yoshi egg’s location is interesting in that they not only added new hidden ?-blocks to reach the brick that hides it, they added high background fences. Unlike 5-2’s extra background element, this extra background, which is 8 blocks, is much mo’ conspicuous, & this setpiece, otherwise, was generic & would be hard to find without it.

7. World 3-1

This level feels like 2-1, but in many ways stronger. For 1, it introduces the night theme & spruces itself up e’en mo’ with the bridge & water ( tho why you can’t swim in this water when you were just swimming in water 3 levels ago is a mystery ).

& while it doesn’t introduce coin heaven, the coin heaven it does feature is mo’ intricate & interesting than the simple 1 that 2-1 does introduce.

But o’erall, this level has mo’ intricate block setups & greater enemy variety, including the introduction to the infamous Hammer Bros, hardest enemies in the game, with their classic 2-row setup o’ brick floors that they would jump up & down, allowing players with tight timing a way to bonk them from below, but also allowing Hammer Bros a way to jump down on players.

To ease players into this new, much mo’ difficult enemy, the developers put a hidden Starman not long before so, but not in an obvious place. In fact, the brick you need to hit to reveal it is positioned in just the right way to make it subtly tricky to get, forcing players to earn their easy mode to some extent.

The opening with the 3 ?-blocks high up, 1 o’ which has a mushroom, & the 2 Paratroopas patrolling the main ground, is an underrated opening, perfect for a middle level that has the feel o’ gradually revving up difficulty.

The bonus room right after has an interesting diagonal arrangement o’ bricks & secretly offers mo’ than just coins & a quick path thru by hiding a power-up in 1 o’ the seemingly innocuous bricks. It’s impossible to reach while small, which would be a dick move normally; but since it comes so soon after a power-up, such an unlikely scenario seems like a justified mockery o’ a player who somehow let them get hit by the 1 Piranha Plant or Goomba after the previous power-up.

E’en tho 3-2 throws kicking shells @ enemies in the player’s face, I like how 3-1 includes a subtly-placed section that allows players to do so to rack up a life, rewarding players who’d played the game before & remember the next level.

Finally, tho not as interesting as the spring & the wall, they do minorly spice up the classic staircase by adding 2 Koopas, creating a section that ended up being far mo’ iconic thanks to the famous infinite-lives trick this enables.

As for the red coins, I have to shout out the devious-to-find red coin in the underground bonus room, in a brick that seems random, till you realize it’s directly opposite the power-up brick.

The Yoshi egg is also cleverly hid in an already-existing brick, rather than a newly-created ?-block — & it’s a brick that’s difficult & dangerous to try hitting.

6. World 8-4

Definitely the best castle level in the game, & the only 1 that implemented the maze mechanic in an interesting way, focusing mo’ on taking the right pipe to the next section than taking the right vague “path”.

This level also has the most variety o’ any castle level, pulling together various gimmicks & mechanics from previous levels, with an underwater section & a section with hopping fish, making it feel somewhat like a final exam level. I feel like the single Hammer Bro just before the large leap o’er the Podoboo-infested lava pool, & then the final Bowser, is mo’ effective than all the Hammer Bros. in 8-3.

I do have qualms with the invisible block needed to reach the pipe in the 2nd maze section; howe’er, I mean, it is a conspicuous pipe, & there’s no other way to get up there, so the player probably has to assume there’s an invisible block somewhere. It’s too bad they hadn’t implemented enemy bouncing yet, as I feel requiring the player to bounce off 1 o’ the 2 hopping Paratroopas that come by would’ve been mo’ effective.

I do like the subtle difficulty o’ the 1st jump off the downward steps under a low ceiling o’er the vast pit o’ lava, challenging players to go down the steps without stumbling too far & falling in. It’s a clever twist that you start the level going down a staircase, rather than ending going up, & fits with the idea o’ descending a hellish environment.

Almost all the red coins are in places that require tricky jumps, such as the 1st right on the edge o’ the staircase, the 1 ’bove the moving platform o’er lava, & the 1 high ’bove the final ax, while the 4th is hidden well high up in the water area — somewhere you don’t want to be lingering round to explore. But the 3rd red coin is lame: ’mong hidden ?-blocks after intentionally flubbing the maze with the leaping Cheep Cheep.

The Yoshi egg, in the water section, is certainly in a memorable place, & makes use o’ the empty top portion o’ the beginning screen.

5. World 1-2

It says something ’bout how much better 1-2 is than 1-1 that e’en tho ’twas ’bout just as ubiquitous as 1-1 in the sadly deceased Super Mario Bros. 35 it hadn’t earned nearly the notoriety as its predecessor. While 1-1 is a relatively simple, straightforward level not too far from this game’s arcade roots that doesn’t take too many playthrus to fully appreciate, 1-2 ramps up not so much the raw challenge as the complexity &, mo’ importantly, hidden secrets. After all, while 1-1 has bricks o’er a Goomba & 2 staircases, this level has the far mo’ famous & exponentially cleverer warp zone.

For instance, we have much weirder block formations, such as the moustache formation o’ bricks near the beginning, hiding a star so well that I didn’t e’en know ’bout it till Super Mario Bros. 35 made it important for high scoring, followed by a Tetris-block shape that seems arbitrary, but actually has an important gameplay role: allowing small players to slip under while large players can break the bricks ’bove & go up & round. This wastes time for those who collected the Starman, granting an advantage to small players, tho big players can mitigate this advantage by run ducking under. After this we have Goombas falling down on you from different heights.

’Course, going the top path is usually how players realize they can break bricks all the way to the ceiling & run under the UI & ’bove the whole level to find the warp zone. It’s so well-known that it’s easy to take for granted, but I do like the silly meta humor communicated thru gameplay, rather than cringy dialogue boxes, as most modern Mario games would do, & the way this rewards clever, curious players.

This section is then followed by 2 cool hook-shaped brick formations, 1 with coins ’bove it, & the other hiding a powerup @ the top o’ its tip, with Goombas that drop down on you from various heights.

The weakest part, unless you count the very 1st screen with the basic line o’ ?-blocks & 2 Goombas, is the middle, with just a few pipes & Goombas & Piranha Plants. I think there’s 3 Goombas @ the beginning to slow the player down so they don’t rush straight into the 1st Piranha Plant, since this is where they’re introduced, but I think the Piranha Plants are almost always already up by the time you get here, anyway. The seemingly superfluous Goomba in the hole ’tween the 2nd & 3rd pipe is maybe there to keep that hole from being too safe & to encourage players to practice jumping from Piranha Plant pipe to Piranha Plant pipe. The bonus in the 1st pipe with the 2 layers o’ coins & the multicoin block @ the end is mo’ interesting than the 1 in 1-1, but not too much mo’.

Near the end we have yet ’nother copy o’ the staircase from 1-1, but this time with 2 Goombas, & then the introduction of elevator platforms. As common with introductions, they’re not used in the most interesting o’ ways, tho they do make use o’ the upward-moving elevators to make it very easy to reach the warp zone. I’d say too easy, since it makes finding the warp zone obvious, ruining the clever secret ’hind it.

The red coins are all in very clever places, challenging you to explore places you likely wouldn’t, such as the easy-to-miss bonus room & on top o’ the moustache-shaped brick formation. The most cleverly placed red coin is way up on the high brick formation ’bove & to the right o’ the 2nd power-up, which is usually only used for dropping a Goomba down on you.

The Yoshi egg’s location is ’bove the pipe exit, which perhaps isn’t the best hiding spot, but is somewhat clever a twist, as players are unlikely to have a reason to go up there, which is technically a dead end.

Since warp zones don’t work with Super Mario Bros. Deluxe’s Challenge Mode, they replaced it with a brand new section that makes you zigzag downward. It’s a cool way to give curious players bonus points — which they’ll need if they want the demanding score medal.

4. World 6-2

An incredibly underrated level. Yes, it’s mostly just pipes with Piranha Plants, the most common enemy in the game; but this level is the apex o’ pipe arrangements, going up high & down low, some e’en floating in the air, 1 e’en embedded in the final staircase, which is a perfect way to integrate this level’s theme while creating a new twist to the common level ending.

& as an extra, before that is a mini staircase o’ pipes, all with Piranha Plants.

Monotony on the main area is spared with a sprinkling o’ brick formations & other enemies in choice places, such as Goombas & Buzzy Beetles that threaten to fall on you from high up ( that is, ’less you climb up the treacherous pipes to take that upper path ). The black evening background makes the black Buzzy Beetles feel particularly treacherous.

Monotony is spared e’en mo’ by offering not just the underworld bonus from 5-2 & the coin heaven from 3-1, but also the underground bonus rooms from 4-1 & 4-2. While this blatant copypasta would be eyebrow-raising if ’twere the normal path ( tho 5-1 also copies 4-2’s bonus room ), since it’s bonus, I don’t think it’s a problem, & I have to admire the fact that this level has the most environmental variety o’ any level — it has e’ery environment in this game but a castle.

While this level can create situations where a normal player might have to wait for Piranha Plants to go back down if they don’t have a fire flower ( if they do they can plow thru e’erything & feel great ), the situations where you are nearly forced to are surprisingly rare, while most other parts you can speed thru with just the right well-timed jumps.

I like where they hide the Yoshi egg in Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, but I don’t like how they redundantly put a red coin right next to it.

The rest are in decent places — tho I find the fact that they replace the power-up brick with a red coin in the 2nd underground bonus kinda dickish, specially since you can’t start Challenge Mode big, so there’s no way to become fiery in the Challenge Mode for this level. O well: by that point the player’s near the end, anyway. I just wish a’least 1 level put a red coin in coin heaven.

3. World 4-2

While 4-1 ramps up the difficulty with a mo’ complex enemy type in a straightforward level, 4-2 ramps up difficulty in terms o’ platforming, starting with an infamously tricky arrangement o’ blocks forcing players to run & jump onto & off small blocks & forcing players to choose aiming on a single block to jump o’er the somewhat large gap after it or run & jump off the 2-block floor o’er a wider gap.

The other famous setpiece o’ this level is the beanstalk — something you wouldn’t expect to find in a sewer. This beanstalk is trickier to get, tho, e’en if you know it’s there: in order to reach it to hit it from below, you need to hit invisible blocks, but be wary not to hit the 1 right below the beanstalk’s brick or else you’ll have a much harder time hitting the beanstalk brick. It’s admittedly a bit o’ a trial-&-error BS for new players, but assauged a bit by the fact that you can still technically hit the beanstalk brick e’en if you reveal all the invisible blocks, specially if you’re small ( which is admittedly unlikely coming right after 2 power-ups ).

This level provides a particularly interesting combination o’ repeating a pattern & twisting it: both sewer levels have warp zones, both by going o’er the top o’ the level, but this level twists it by making the main warp just go to world 5, while hiding this warp zone, using a beanstalk that was previously introduced purely for bonus games, to reach a different warp zone mo’ in line with the 1st warp zone, allowing you to skip up to 3 worlds ’gain, ’cept this warp zone has a fresh new paint job, not high up in the clouds, as would be ’bove an o’erworld level, but on the o’erworld level, which is ’bove the sewers. This warp zone & the level that comes naturally after 4-2 are the only areas that use the mushroom tileset, tying them in a way that implies that this warp zone naturally comes before 4-3 — a part o’ this mushroom forest that’d be blocked off by the entrance & exit to 4-2 if not for the beanstalk.

But, truly, all the setpieces in this level are great & memorable. I particularly want to note:

The ending with the jump under a very low ceiling, which is very easy to flub ( specially in All-Stars, with its botched brick physics that suck you in as you break them ), but which offers the trick o’ a single block down below you can jump up from ’stead.

The section low down after the final elevator with a low ceiling o’ bricks o’er a pair o’ Koopas & a power-up in the leftmost brick, which you have to follow to the end if it’s a mushroom.

All the cramped pits with Koopas & Buzzy Beetles in them ’tween pipes ( 1 o’ which gifts curious players with a Starman ).

The red coins aren’t placed all that well: the 1st & last are in places you’re likely to go, anyway. The 4th does make the kinda pointless final elevator useful, tho.

The Yoshi egg, howe’er, does a good job o’ making the hole ’tween the final upward pipe & staircase with a Buzzy Beetle inside useful for once.

2. World 4-3

Yes, I changed my mind from the article I wrote years ago. You have no idea how much I had to rewrite this & #1’s level descriptions, going back & forth — they were that close.

Despite this game taking place in the Mushroom Kingdom & having plenty o’ mushrooms in ?-blocks, the terrain is rarely composed o’ mushrooms, but more oft those contradictory blocks that are a mix o’ natural cracked rock & unnatural perfect square shape ( or grass, if playing Super Mario All-Stars ). This level & the beanstalk bonus in 4-2 are the only exceptions. Thus, this level immediately gets a major boost for having the most exotic visuals. & having much mo’ red & yellow & a li’l less brown & green certainly makes the level feel mo’ colorful than most other daytime levels, ’specially in All-Stars with the mushroom platforms in the background.

But e’en without the visuals, this level ranks high for having such an intricate layout that is entertaining just to look @, with hills going up & down, challenging players’ jumping prowess mo’ than any time before, while the scale lifts & moving elevators are placed just right to add complexity to your movement without forcing you to stop.

The level e’en rewards you for going backward with the 2nd mushroom hill, easy to forget, used for holding coins, which are ’course not necessary for beating the game, but necessary if the player wants a chance to get the hidden 1-up in world 5.

Just after the 3rd mushroom hill, you see a mushroom tower @ just the right height to stymie you. It grants alternate routes, but unlike the other levels, the alternate routes aren’t arbitrary, but have different challenges: if you go below the mushroom tower, you have to jump low ’nough not to bonk your head on it, but high ’nough to make it to the next platform under it; to go ’bove the tower, you must run & jump high ’nough to reach it.

& in this level, the red Koopa is, for once, a greater hindrance than the green Koopas, as you have to time jumps so that you don’t run into them during their patrol back & forth o’er the mushroom. Thanks to the timing & placement o’ the red Koopas on the 2nd mushroom, the jump to it will leave li’l space & time to jump o’er them before they reach you ( which is very tricky to pull off in Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, thanks to its much smaller screen, allowing e’en less reaction time ).

The ending is 1 o’ the few without the iconic staircase, replaced by a platform moving up & down. This does not make reaching the flagpole harder in the slightest, but it does make reaching the top o’ the flagpole a bit harder, & makes doing so while getting 6 fireworks much harder, which those gaming for the score medal in Super Mario Bros. Deluxe’s challenge mode will know all too well. ’Mong the 3 levels with the teetertotter scales in this game, this is the weakest ending, specially compared to 6-3’s series o’ falling platforms. I think 4-3 should’ve had a series o’ mushroom hills leading to the flagpole, since this feels mo’ in line with this level’s theme, while 6-3 should’ve kept to the falling platforms @ the end & lost the hill.

This, as well as the repetitiveness o’ the very similar last 3 scale lifts, the last 2 being the exact same, & the empty space that is the long mushroom hill before the final elevator, made this level not quite as good as the #1 spot.

The red coins are all placed well, either requiring tricky jumps or use o’ the scale lifts, or placed in easy-to-skip hills, like the bottom o’ the crowd near the middle. I’m mixed on the 1st red coin: I like the tricky jump it makes you pull off, but I don’t like how there’s a Red Koopa positioned just right on the next platform below to come in & hit you with, as far as I know, no way to jump out o’ its way in time — it reaches the very edge by the time you get there, so you either smack into it or fall off the edge. As far as I know, you have to scoot the camera o’er & wait for the Red Koopa to come into view from offscreen, which is not only slow, but also requires you to know ahead o’ time that that Koopa is there in the 1st place. Beginning players are virtually guaranteed to get killed here.

& unfortunately, the Yoshi egg is in what is perhaps the least interesting place you could put it in the level.

1. World 6-3

1st, while not as impressive as an almost-unique tileset, this level does deserve props for its unique wintry all-gray palette ( which is, devastatingly, completely lost in Super Mario All-Stars, making this level look no different from 3-3 ).

But like 4-3, this level doesn’t need good aesthetics to be good, as it has an e’en mo’ intricate layout, with e’en mo’ places where the terrain branches top & bottom — such as near the beginning where you can jump o’er the spring & leap ’long the low hills or use the spring to leap high up & use the moving platforms. & the springs & falling platforms add e’en mo’ variety than 4-3. Like with 4-3, none o’ this level’s complex layout stops you from zooming & leaping thru with minimal delay if you’re skilled ’nough.

I specially like the moving platform under the lone ?-block with a mushroom, the only power-up in this level & 1 that makes you work to earn it, specially if you’re small & it releases an antsy mushroom vulnerable to the gaping pit surrounding it on all sides.

The other highlight is the 4 succession o’ quick-falling elevators right near the end — tho I think we could’ve gone without the final hill & just stuck to the elevators, giving the player no breath before the final jump to the flagpole.

Coins are carefully placed to force you to make use of otherwise easily-skippable pieces, such as the 1st elevator, or to take risky moves, like fall down from the left side o’ the 1st scale lift or let fall the 2nd elevator platform during the final gauntlet, if the player wants a chance @ the hidden 1-up in world 7. Unlike 4-3, which pretty much forces you to wait on the left platform on the 1st scale lift to get 1 coin, this level requires much less waiting round to get all the coins, making e’en coin collection much mo’ fast-paced.

The 1 major weakness this level has compared to 4-3 is that I prefer the Red Koopas o’er the random Bullet Bills — tho actually strategically placed Bill shooters would’ve been a major improvement o’er both. That said, neither the Red Koopas in 4-3 nor the Bullet Bills here make quite ’nough o’ an impact to make up for the other differences.

The red coins in this level are devilishly placed — specially the last, which can be gotten in various tricky ways, depending on how good the player is with the physics, but was most likely meant to be gotten by letting the last platform fall low ’nough to jump & get it without bonking gainst the bottom o’ the final palm-tree platform — a case where Super Mario Bros. Deluxe takes advantage o’ the final palm-tree hill.

The Yoshi egg also adds value to an easy-to-neglect part o’ the level, hidden down @ the bottom o’ a crowd o’ hills.

Worlds from Worst to Best

As a bonus, let’s rank the worlds, too:

World 7

Putting this here is a no-brainer: 3/4 o’ its levels are in the bottom 10 & not only are 2 o’ its levels copies o’ earlier levels, but with some o’ the least changes out o’ all the clones. They’re e’en placed in the same exact sequence. That these levels were not good to begin with makes them e’en less exciting to see a 2nd time. End this world with an underwhelmingly sparse castle & you have a world far too underwhelming to be the penultimate world. The most shining part o’ this world is the 1st level, & e’en that doesn’t stand out much from earlier levels, making this whole world feel somewhat like padding before the game truly gets going in the final world.

World 5

While this world has stronger levels than e’en some later worlds, as a whole, this may be 1 o’ the most forgettable worlds in the game. Having 2 clones o’ earlier levels to top it off doesn’t help. The slight wintry touch to the palette o’ its 1st 2 levels doesn’t do much to help it stand out, either, specially since world 3 already did this with a night sky, to boot.

World 2

While this world doesn’t have the strongest levels — in fact, 2 o’ them are near the bottom — it deserves credit for keeping up the diversity o’ levels still so early in the game.

World 3

After 2 worlds full o’ new idea after new idea, world 3 starts with a new black-skied night theme — a minor palette shift, but still beyond what one might have expected @ the time. While world 3’s levels aren’t the best, there is a greater consistency o’ quality compared to worlds lower on the list.

World 1

Like world 2, the 1st world does an admirable job o’ keeping each o’ its levels feeling different from each other, when it’d be so easy to coast off the still unfamiliarity new players would have with this game to wait till later for mo’ exotic ideas. This world has much stronger levels than world 2 & somewhat better levels than world 3, which almost beat this world for this spot, howe’er.

World 4

World 4 is an interesting duality o’ quality. In fact, ’twas while writing this that I noticed how close I came to having the worst level be just after the best level if I kept 4-3 in the #1 place, as originally expected. & then you have the weak 4-1 vs. the very strong 4-2. That said, I give extra points to this world for its variety o’ memorable elements, such as the great warp zone in 4-2 & the unique mushroom-hill tileset in 4-3. E’en 4-1 has Lakitu — & hell, e’en 4-4 has the maze, as lame as it is. World 4 may be 1 o’ the most memorable worlds in the game ( which, granted, is probably helped by being the highest world you can reach from the warp zone in 1-2, making it 1 o’ the few worlds played in any% speedruns ).

World 8

A memorable end to the game, despite how monotonous its level themes can feel compared to the high variety this game reaches in most o’ its worlds. E’en if 8-1 & 8-3 aren’t the most interesting layouts, 8-1’s sheer length & 8-3’s onslaught o’ Hammer Bros & brick-wall backgrounds make them memorable, & 8-4 is 1 o’ the best o’ Mario games’ final levels.

World 6

A stealthily strong world, starting with a strong Lakitu level, followed by the ultimate pipe level, & then the ultimate level in the game. Only the castle is a low point, & e’en then, it’s far from the worst castle level. Not only does this world have the rare black-skied evening theme o’er most its levels, its 3rd level adds a unique wintry all-gray cast.

Sandwiched ’tween 2 o’ the greatest video games o’ all time, it’s easy for Super Mario Bros. 2 to be forgotten. While many talk ’bout how Super Mario Bros. 2 is viewed a black sheep o’ the series, usually by people praising the game, unlike Super Mario Sunshine, I have rarely seen this sentiment 1st-hand. It did only sell 10 million copies, which while amazing for most games, was nearly half o’ what Super Mario Bros. 3 sold — tho that was also during a chip shortage.

What I can say for certain is that I ne’er liked this game as much as 1, 3, World, or e’en Lost Levels, but this is primarily due to Super Mario Bros. 2’s slower, awkward gameplay & mechanics & its wonky physics & controls. I still find it odd that people call Luigi’s slippery controls in Lost Levels unplayable, but have no problem with the fact that everyone is slippery in this game, specially Luigi. I ne’er liked how easy it is for characters to clip into blocks or how they bounce all round when they get hit.

Also, the decision to make your character shrink when you only have 1 hit point is idiotic, specially with the half-assed way they implemented it ( in the NES & SNES versions, a’least ): they don’t actually change your hitbox; they just make your graphic smaller, so it’s less representative — so it’s a lie. Making your character’s graphics non-representative o’ your hitbox is a cardinal sin o’ bad game design, & it’s shocking that an official Mario game would have such a thing. ¿Why’d they e’en need to shrink your character with 1 hitpoint? Despite the lazy repainting o’ Doki Doki Panic’s hearts to mushrooms, your health is still nothing like health in Super Mario Bros. — hell, despite the trouble they went to to make your character visually shrink, they didn’t bother to repaint your hit points on the side o’ the screen from diamonds ( & for some reason used hearts in the SNES & Game Boy Advance remakes ). Furthermo’, Super Mario 64 didn’t have mushrooms or growing & shrinking @ all, & that game was mo’ beloved than Super Mario Bros. 2, & Super Mario Bros. 2 was just after the 1st game to have the grow-&-shrink mechanic, making it probably the 1 game that most get ’way from the deviance to this “pattern”.

I also ne’er liked how the characters all feel like they have many weaknesses rather than a strength: all but Toad take way too long to pick up things, so that it’s very easy for Birdo to throw off cheap shots you’re vulnerable, unable to dodge as you’re character’s too busy slowly grabbing an egg for, like, a whole second, which is made worse by how slow Luigi & Peach fall, making them mo’ vulnerable while up in the air. Meanwhile, Toad is almost useless @ jumping & Mario is almost useless @ everything. Also, I always found it nonsensical that Toad runs fastest when holding something. Since jumping is still the most important element o’ this game, specially with skipping section, this means most players will probably prefer to stick with Luigi & Peach & just stomach the fact that they suck @ anything regarding throwing or digging & use Toad in the rare places where jumping is less important than throwing or digging. Thus, the game somehow manages to fail @ encouraging balanced use o’ characters while also making e’en the best characters feel crippled.

Most importantly, I always felt the whole Subcon health upgrade system, which, giving you extra health, played an integral part o’ how difficult the game was, was too much o’ a trial-&-error guessing game.

But Super Mario Bros. 2 had 2 strengths: it had memorable graphics & enemy designs & had catchy music. Moreo’er, tho, Super Mario Bros. 2 had underrated level designs that evolved from the 1st Super Mario Bros.’s linear left-to-right pattern to mo’ complex layouts that twisted in all kinds o’ shapes.

20. World 6-1

4 worlds after world 2, which already used the desert theme, we get yet ’nother desert level with the same litany o’ Cobrats & Pokeys. & unlike the other desert levels, which usually make the 2nd half be a cave with sand-digging, this level makes the 2nd half be a cave with… e’en mo’ Cobrats, but popping out o’ pots. I actually don’t know if I should be glad for this “twist” or find it worse.

Actually, I do know: it’s much worse — that 2nd cave involves a genius puzzle wherein you have to trial-&-error thru all 21 pots to find the 1 that has a key @ the bottom to unlock the door @ the end o’ the cave. E’en better: There are 4 pots with sand areas in them, but only 1 o’ these sand areas has the key @ the bottom, so you have to tediously dig thru each to see whether or not each has a key.

This level sucks & I’m baffled why any human would think it could be entertaining to play.

19. World 2-1

Desert levels in Super Mario Bros. 2 fall into what I will now call “Jolly Roger Bay Syndrome” harder than Jolly Roger Bay: it doesn’t truly matter that much which came 1st; the fact that all these levels feel similar brings them all down. & like “Jolly Roger Bay” makes it worse by having it apply to tedious water levels, Super Mario Bros. 2 makes it worse by applying this to desert levels with the sleep-inducing digging mechanic, which just involves rapidly pressing a button & maybe moving every so oft to make sure a Shy Guy doesn’t fall on you — all as a contrived way to make Toad feel mo’ useful, e’en tho he already has advantages when fighting bosses ( & just moving faster for speedrunners ), so these sand sections may actually make the game less balanced.

All 3 world 2 levels follow the same pattern more o’ less: 1st section is stretch o’ sandy outside area full o’ Cobrats & maybe Pokeys, followed by a cave section full o’ sand you have to dig thru. 2-1 has the least interesting sand pattern, being just a rectangle with a few holes with cherries in them. If you preserved your cherries well, you can time it so that the last cherry gives you a star & then rush thru the last stretch & kill Birdo with it. Other than that, there’s nothing else to say ’bout this level.

18. World 2-2

Same pattern as 2-1. This level’s outside area has mo’ intricate terrain that isn’t all flat, but it looks jankier & less natural. Sand just stops gainst a pot with cut-off round the pots edges.

The underground sand section in this level is mo’ interesting, with a branching path. Howe’er, 1 o’ the 2 paths just leads to a dead end. This section is notorious for possibly leading to a softlock if the player, for some reason, removes all the sand there so that they can’t get back up.

17. World 2-3

Similar pattern to 2-1, but with spawning Beezos in the outdoors section & just 1 Cobrat & Pokey each.

The underground section is also mo’ interesting. Rather than just digging down to the bottom o’ a sand pit, you dig to the bottom to grab a key & then race up to the locked door in the middle while avoiding Phanto. This sand patch also has a branching path, but both branches end together @ the same door.

There’s also a short non-sand section @ the start with a branching path. The right path is full o’ enemies, but gives you a POW block for your troubles, while the left path is just an empty hole. The Game Boy Advance remake uses this split to be cheap assholes & put an ace coin on the left, so if you happen to take the right path ( or miss the ace coin floating slightly to the left o’ the left path ), you have to kill yourself or restart the level.

16. World 6-3

This is the least uninteresting desert level that follows the “outside area with Cobrats & Pokeys followed by cave full o’ sand you have to dig up” pattern used for 4 o’ this game’s levels. Actually, while this level has sand you can dig up, there’s no reason to, ’less you’re desperate for cherries or bombs. Your main focus is 2 rock walls you need to blow up with bombs to continue. Not the most interesting challenge, considering you’ve already had to do this in previous levels.

If you want mo’ challenge, you can waste your time blowing up many mo’ rocky walls to get access to a mushroom or some coins, but it’s not worth the effort, not the least o’ which since not screwing yourself o’er is trial-&-error: there’s a 90% chance you’ll accidentally grab the potion, which is just an arbitrary grass in the middle o’ the main route forward, lost ’mong the bombs, which is long before you’re ready to get the mushroom ( or get mo’ than a few coins ), wasting it. E’en better, you can easily get yourself stuck in a lower area if you’re not careful, forcing you to commit suicide to continue.

The 2nd half o’ this level is a climb up to the top o’ a cloudy area to find a pyramid in the sky. While the pyramid in the sky is amusing, I guess, & I like the rare autumnal red vines, the challenge itself is just a mo’ bloated, less tricky version o’ 5-2’s vine section, despite coming a full world afterward. If they had made the section a bit mo’ relevant to the desert theme — a’least have Cobrats or Pokeys, ’stead — this section would be much stronger & feel less like just a generic section that could fit just as well as in any other level.

This level’s strongest element is the secret @ the beginning o’ the level: quick sand that goes under the left wall, which you can use to go under the wall to a secret door on the other side. This door takes you right to the pyramid in the sky @ the end o’ the level. Since, as I’ve written here, nothing you’ll skip is o’ any interest, this is the recommended route ’less you’re the kind o’ poor sap going for the ace coins or Yoshi eggs in the Game Boy Advance remake.

15. World 1-3

This level falls victim to introducing mechanics done better in later levels. It starts with logs falling down waterfalls, which are fun if not impressive jumping challenges, which are perhaps properly formidable in its simplest form for the 1st boss level — a great place for a slight difficulty spike.

After this we have a factory area that gives you a longer-form version o’ grabbing the key & dodging Phanto, introduced in 1-2. Howe’er, since you’re mainly falling downward with the key, it’s still easier than later varieties. The only problem is the last fall, which is blind: the left side can make you fall into spikes, & the only way to avoid that is to know ’head o’ time to avoid the left side.

Other than that cheap blind fall, tho, this is a solid level for where it is. Unfortunately, all other things being equal, the early, introductory levels usually end up being the least great levels.

14. World 3-1

Tho the 1st part is mostly just basic cloud jumps with enemies, the waterfall theme is refreshingly rare. The use o’ the Pidgit straight up the final part o’ the waterfall section builds on World 1-2’s challenge; while that 1 let you easily weave round the Beezos’ paths, here you have to weave ’tween their paths.

The next section builds on the challenge o’ the Pansers. Whereas 2-2 & 2-3 had them o’er flat land, here they are o’er short platforms o’er a pit. Granted, being fiery plant enemies, they don’t fit the sky as well as deserts. You can skip this section with a door past a wide gap if you’re playing as Peach ( Luigi might be able to reach it, too, with clever jumping ); but this section is so simple, you may not want to bother, specially since you need to bomb down a rock wall in the shortcut, anyway. Speedrunners don’t e’en bother taking this “shortcut”.

The mushrooms in this level are dickishly placed before their respective potions, & the 2nd mushroom isn’t worth the effort: you can’t climb out with the potion, leading the player to doubt the designers would put a mushroom outside o’ that li’l cave area, which means that e’en if the player knows where the mushroom is, they have to race up the ladder & onto the mushroom — making sure not to o’ershoot their drop & run right off into the pit — before Subcon kicks them out, leaving no extra time for grabbing coins. Worse, after this you need to climb up the ladder with the Panser back, hovering o’er you.

I’m not sure how to feel ’bout the secret @ the bottom o’ the waterfall, under the 1st platforms. While putting rewards down where players expect death is unintuitive, designwise, I guess it works as a consolation prize for those bad ’nough @ the game to fall down by accident.

13. World 1-2

Widely known as “the Pidget level”. Pidget is surprisingly underused in this game, & e’en mo’ surprising, this level may be the best use. This mechanic is e’en better since the game doesn’t tutorialize it: it just shows you a pit that’s obviously too large to jump past ( ’cept maybe with Toadstool — I’ve ne’er tried ) & a bird on a flying carpet & expects the player to fill in the squares themselves. I like how the Beezos seem a threat; but since you can freely fly anywhere, not really, since you can just fly o’er them. &, ’course, I can’t ignore the clever way this game lets you skip the whole underground section with careful use o’ the flying carpet.

The underground section introduces breaking rocky blocks with bombs to get thru. It’s just 2 walls, but they did still implement a shortcut: the main path actually involves going up a ladder round the 2nd rocky wall that doesn’t have any bombs in front o’ it & tediously blowing up all 3 rocky blocks to the right with the bombs up ’bove ( you can’t go down the ladder with bombs, so you can’t just break the bottom wall ) to drop back down below the rocky wall below. Howe’er, you could also just go back to an earlier part o’ the underground section, grab a bomb, & then race to the 2nd bottom rocky wall to break it & bypass the whole upper area.

12. World 5-3

This may be 1 o’ the most bizarre-looking levels in the original NES version, thanks to its bizarre palette with the lime grass & yellow dirt accompanied by eye-searingly red hills with dark blue borders. To be honest, it looks tacky, specially with the log platforms that blend in with them — some o’ which are missing their left face for some reason, leading to jarring cutoff. This is 1 o’ the few times I prefer the remakes making the palettes mo’ consistent with other levels. That said, I do like how the hills continue down into the underground area — e’en if they don’t quite line-up, technically.

This level introduced Bob-Omb-dropping Albatrosses, with rocky walls that said Bob-Ombs can break ’pon exploding, just like regular bombs, tho you have no reason to bother, since you can easily jump o’er them. This pattern continues to the end o’ the 1st area, where you have 2 rock walls that hide a secret mushroom you can just jump round to get to the next area, which starts with a lower section blocked by rocky walls you can skip, which only hold coins. Considering the game forces you to break rock walls with regular bombs as early as 1-2 ( or 3-2 if you skip that section using Pidgit — which takes mo’ forethought that skipping these rocky walls requires ), it’s odd that they don’t force you to use the Bob-Ombs anywhere in this level.

Inside the tree-hill thing has clever challenges timing dropping down block-clogged passageways while dodging the spinning Sparks, with 2 subtle shortcuts with a single-block space o’er the Shy Guy producing pots that a ducking character can slide thru with the right momentum. Then there’s a climb up short platform steps while dodging the fireballs o’ Pansers moving down the steps & a long outside area with the last Pidgit in the game & a bunch o’ short jumps with enemies.

This level goes on a bit too long & tapers off the rails o’ its theme @ the end. This level has a lot o’ good ideas, but some are wasted by making them pointless & many o’ them don’t belong together in a single level.

This level may have the most blatantly obvious warp secret in the game, with that pot right up there where you can clearly see it & a potion right next to it.

11. World 4-3

This level begins with the most iconic puzzle in Super Mario Bros. 2: a benign Birdo whose eggs you need to ride past the gaping hole right @ the start.

After that you have vertical versions o’ 4-1’s Flurry dodging challenges, going up, & then down, with half o’ the downward section requiring you to carry a key to the bottom.

The downward section also starts with a short challenge forcing you to ride a Shy Guy or Tweeter o’er spikes. It’s less memorable than 4-2’s cannon o’er spikes, but arguably trickier, specially in the Game Boy Advance remake, as you have to jump off the enemy before the long fall to reach an ace coin on a small alcove that in all other versions o’ this game has no purpose. You can skip 1 o’ these long sections with Luigi or Peach by jumping o’er a long gap ’tween the entrance & exit o’ the palace.

I don’t know why the crystal ball room is designed the way it is. It’s just a crystal ball followed by a small hole you have to try to fall into & the hawk entrance, but there’s a high-up place with a single Flurry & nothing else. Maybe it’s there to create the ( cheap, bullshit ) risk o’ the Flurry falling on your head as you move for the Hawk head, but it’ll probably fall off before you e’en reach the jump, & a dumb challenge e’en if it worked.

10. World 5-2

The 1st half is a clever layout o’ rising & falling Hoopsters you have to weave thru, followed by the most interesting vine-climbing section in the game, forcing the player to weave ’tween both Hoopsters & Snifits.

Then the level ends with a bullshit drop where you have to weave ’tween spikes you don’t have nearly ’nough time to move round before you see them, making this section trial-&-error. The floor @ the very bottom e’en has holes o’er bottomless pits. Also, the Game Boy Advance remake has an ace coin in a very unnatural place you’re almost certain to miss the 1st time, with no way back up but suicide or restarting the level.

Fighting Birdo in a waterfall area with hopping Trouters ’stead o’ in yet ’nother cave is refreshing, a’least.

9. World 1-1

This game’s 1st level is subtly clever, with both a variety o’ themes that don’t feel contrived — including a cave you enter & climb up to reach the top o’ a mountain, which ends @ a vine that you climb up as the mountains gradually end while the clouds come into play. The level has a U shape, entering from a door in the middle o’ the sky ( which is night in the original NES version, for some reason ) & dropping straight down, going straight right on a seemingly normal grassland, & then climbing up a sky area to the fight with Birdo in the clouds.

The level also subtly introduces mechanics, such as the hill that stands out near the otherwise flat beginning that hides the 1st potion, to the short log-rolling section you can skip if it’s too hard for you so soon, to the POW block just after, & then the cherries spread out that the player will likely collect & likely see the star appear. The level weaves them together into what feels like a normal level, rather than breaking them out into conspicuously separate areas like a modern game would do.

This level also provides 2 shortcuts for mo’ skilled players, such as a way to jump the mountain in the main room to skip the cave or the door in the cave hidden ’hind a rocky wall that requires timing a bomb throw before it to break the rocks, allowing the player to skip the whole 2nd half o’ the level.

8. World 4-1

This level introduces the ice theme unique to world 4, which starts by honing your skills dealing with slippery physics with a simply but challenging section wherein you jump from ice-block bridge to bridge, weaving ’tween Flurries who slip round back & forth, trying to follow you & oft o’ershooting their mark thanks to their low traction.

This is followed not by the typical Birdo fight, but by a long battlezone littered with Flurries & cannon-manning Shy Guys, who shoot you with fireballs as you try climbing up the high ice towers.

7. World 5-1

World 5 is to world 3 what world 6 is to world 3 in the original Super Mario Bros., with world 3 having a vague tropical waterfall & hill during the day & world 5 having the same theme, but @ night.

This level may have the cleverest use o’ the Panser, challenging you to cross both o’er & under it while dodging its fireballs.

Most o’ the level takes place in front o’ underground waterfalls wherein the player must hop ’cross falling logs & hopping Trouters, the only time this game requires the player to cross waterfalls in such precarious ways with no way round it.

Tho the mushroom halfway thru the section is just a plain platform just after the potion, the last mushroom is a clever puzzle that requires the player to hop up to the ceiling & grab the block to fall down so that the mushroom can fall down when you go into Subcon. Howe’er, this puzzle loses points for having 2 blocks up there, forcing the player to either risk going up & doing it ’gain for the other block or try 1 block & hope they guess correctly.

6. World 6-2

This level has the gimmick I ripped off in Boskeopolis Land’s “Dark Sahara”: ride on the heads o’ flying Albatrosses ’cross the pits far too large to jump o’er. Howe’er, this original version’s has a simpler layout, but still feels much harder thanks to Super Mario Bros. 2’s slippier controls. This gimmick is unique to this level; but since Albatrosses are enemies who have appeared in other levels, & riding enemies heads is something you’ve done many times, if only to pick them up, this gimmick feels like a natural variation to this game general mechanics.

This is the only desert level to take place @ night on the original NES version — tho 2-1 seems like it’s s’posed to be dusk with the stars in the sky. I’m not sure why they didn’t continue the day/night scheme from the 1st Super Mario Bros. that this game uses for world 5 vs. world 3 for world 6 vs. world 2.

This level’s birdo seems harder than it is, a green ( eggless ) Birdo in a cramped room with just 2 mushroom blocks. Howe’er, Birdo standing on a dais gives you an advantage in that you can just duck on the bottom floor as Birdo shoots fireballs ’bove your head while you wait for Birdo to pause & hop to get up & grab a block or throw a block you’re holding.

5. World 3-3

While many people complain ’bout 4-2, 3-3 is arguably worse & is definitely the largest difficulty spike in the game.

This level introduces bomb-dropping Albatosses, but there are only 2 o’ them o’er a flat plain, so there’s not much to say ’bout them. Perhaps it would’ve been better to keep them to the levels that use them mo’ thoroughly so that they would feel fresher in those levels.

The inside factory area is where the game just fucks you in every way. There are 3 doors, 2 o’ which are unlocked. The top door leads to the key, @ the top o’ a room you have to go up & down, full o’ pots that repeatedly generate Shy Guys. The other door leads to a room that seems to end in a dead end @ a tall cliff you can’t reach — that is, ’less you bring the Ninji from the bottom up to the top, wherein if you stand on his head & high-jump off @ the top o’ the Ninji’s jump, you’ll be able to bypass half the key room. That half you skip is full o’ clever arrangements o’ blocks & Sparks, but a pain in the ass to navigate.

Just after this shortcut is a door whence the key door’s area meets up with this room. What’s bizarre is that if you go thru that door trying to go farther up from the key room leads to ’nother dead end before a tall height gap before farther up in the level, which you can’t skip this time, making this dead end useless. You have to continue upward, which will re-meet with the key room higher up, past the key room’s dead end. ¿Confused? Imagine trying to play this.

E’en if you take the Ninji shortcut, you still have mo’ tricky Spark arrangements & possibly the hardest Panser challenge wherein you have to dodge 2 Panser’s fireballs while slowly climbing up a chain & then go side to side on chains, trying not to slip off with these chain’s wonky hit detection wherein you need to be right in the middle to be able to climb them.

This is certainly a cleverly constructed level, & I e’en quite like the strong castle aesthetics thruout the whole level. But there’s something questionable ’bout having possibly the hardest level in the game before the half-way mark.

4. World 4-2

The 2nd ice level evolves 4-1’s simple but challenging beginning with a simpler but e’en mo’ challenging — a notorious roadblock for players — mostly-flat icy bridge that throws Beezos @ you from every vertical position, forcing you to duck & jump with quick timing to weave ’tween them.

My only problem with this level is that your character’s dumb ducking high jump mechanic gets in the way: you’ll usually want to be ducking & sliding to keep higher-up Beezos from hitting you & only jump ( while still ducking to minimize the chances o’ a higher Beezo hitting you will still waiting to land back to ground ) before Beezos @ the very bottom; but ducking too long lengthens your jump height, which not only changes your jump height, but also keeps you in the air longer, where you’re vulnerable to Beezos with li’l you can do to control whether or not you get hit.

This section is followed by a unique area with whales as platforms, who spit water out o’ the blowhole, which you can use to reach the top section o’ the area. Their tails can also act as platforms & hold this area’s mushroom. While I love this unique theme, & can certainly understand the whale’s water hurting you if you hit it from the side, sometimes the water hurts you if it hits you from below if you don’t jump before it rises under you, which just feels arbitrary & cheap. Presumably, they programmed its hit detection with the same janky “¿is the player’s vertical speed greater than 0?” check that the original Super Mario Bros. uses for testing bonking enemies on the head.

The last section o’ this level requires you to jump on the cannon-manning Shy Guy, throw the Shy Guy off, & ride the cannon rightward past the spike pit. Don’t try riding past the spike pit with the Shy Guy still on, as it just goes back & forth & you’ll just get knocked off the cannon by the low-hanging ceiling thanks to the extra height the Shy Guy gives you.

While these 3 sections don’t fit seamlessly together, they do a’least all fit the ice theme. My only complaint is that I feel this level squanders a’least 2 great ideas for 1 level, when they could’ve replaced a superfluous desert level — or e’en just replace a superfluous desert world with an ice world, since it’s clear they had mo’ ideas for ice levels than desert levels.

3. World 3-2

This level has an intriguing path shape, with the main room having a unique o’erground/underground counterparts in the same area. The main path involves going to the far right or halfway thru the ’boveground area & then down to the far right o’ the top underground area & then go down e’en further, going down & up ladders as you make your way to the left end o’ the underground area. Howe’er, halfway thru the top underground area there’s a gap going leftward that Peach can float ’cross, skipping a whole room full o’ rocky walls you’d need to bomb thru.

My only complaint gainst this level is that the 2nd mushroom puzzle is bullshit trial-&-error gameplay. The mushroom is under 1 o’ the 2 rock-blocked alcoves, which is to be expected, but the area only gives you 1 bomb, so you need to guess & hope you’re lucky or look up the answer.

2. World 7-2

This level starts with a series o’ outside cloud platforms with an onslaught o’ column-helmed Snifits, who are far from the trickiest layout, but a fitting warm-up.

The bulk o’ this final level is a factory maze with branches here & there, most o’ which act simply as alternate routes to the same end, tho there are 2 that lead to rooms with mushrooms ( as well as bullshit bomb plants, which are surrounded by towers, making it pretty much impossible to throw it & not have it blow up in your face ). Other than that, the way the mushrooms are hidden within this giant maze is a fitting way to make players work for their extra hit points in this end-game level.

All o’ this level’s main rooms revolve round block & Spark arrangements — tho oddly, none are as challenging as the kind found mo’ than half the game ago in 3-3. Many o’ the rooms present li’l danger, such as the drop down the mushroom block bridges or, e’en odder, the chain climb wherein most o’ the climb you can go straight upward without the Sparks e’en e’er able to hit you. The long climb up conveyor belt platforms @ the end o’ the bottom path & the climb up the teal blocks on the upper path with the upside-down T block & Sparky formations can be tricky, tho. This early the developers had already figured out what is now known to every rom-hack developer: that marathons make for particularly challenging levels. Howe’er, 3-3 was already something o’ a marathon itself, & the tameness o’ these rooms dampens the danger o’ e’en redoing many sections. Unfortunately, many, like the room with the Sparks & mushroom blocks, are mo’ boring to have to redo than difficult.

The hardest part o’ the level is the Birdo on the conveyor belt near the end, holding a key needed to reach the end rather than a crystal ball, specially thanks to this game’s bullshit wherein eggs hurt you e’en after they’ve hit a wall & are falling offscreen.

But ’tween the locked door & Wart is a cleverly designed room with just a crystal ball & hawk face, ominously littered with 2 mushroom blocks & no enemies @ which you’d need to throw them — that is till the player runs into the infamous twist: the hawk face, rather than peacefully opening its mouth & letting you inside as it does on every other level, starts flying @ you in wavy patterns, forcing you to throw a mushroom block @ it 3 times to tame it & continue to Wart.

Unfortunately, Wart himself is mo’ tedious than challenging. While the bubbles he constantly spits out are easy to dodge, the speed @ which he spits them makes it hard to toss a vegetable into his mouth before he spits a bubble out & breaks the vegetable, which usually turns this battle into a stalemate, which is worsened by Wart’s bloated 6 hit points.

1. World 7-1

While this game has had cloud sections here & there, including the 1st level, 7-1 is the only level 100% dedicated to its cloudy theme.

The 1st main area is a shorter, less straightforward variation o’ 6-2’s gimmick, which requires the player to ride an Albatross o’er the left wall & past the large gap after it. While most players need to go all the way to the far right to where they can climb up on a hut’s roof to get high ’nough to reach the Albatrosses, Luigi can high-jump up to 1 right @ the start, skipping most o’ this section.

The next section involves a cloud maze full o’ pots that repeatedly generate Shy Guys that zigzags down to go under a tall pole — tho Luigi can just jump o’er the pole by jumping off the Snifit on the pole to the left o’ it.

The 3rd section involves climbing up cloud sections littered with circling Sparks, including 1 section that requires the player to stack Mushroom blocks while dodging Sparks if they’re not Luigi. This is slow & annoying, howe’er, so you should just play as Luigi.

This is followed by short ladder climbs guarded by Snifits & Hoopsters, — a less-developed but better-looking version o’ 5-2’s vine climb — which ends @ a hut @ the top.

Inside the hut is the least accommodating green/gray Birdo in the game, with just 1 mushroom block with which to throw all 3 o’ Birdo’s hits & tight space to grab it while Birdo shoots fireball after fireball @ you.

Super Mario Sunshine’s gone thru an interesting reverse reputation change that Super Mario 64 has gone thru. While Super Mario 64 was universally beloved when it 1st came out, it has become a common punching bag for cries o’ “o’errated” by players nowadays for s’posedly being “outdated”¹, Super Mario Sunshine was universally reviled as a dumb joke that gave Mario a water pack & made him clean up graffiti & made Bowser a sitcom dad during a period when Nintendo themselves were widely considered a joke with their GameCube compared to Sony & Microsoft, — so much that people feared Nintendo would go bankrupt — only for Sunshine to now be considered an underrated gem.

I must confess that I myself harbor nostalgia for Super Mario Sunshine, a game I once played every summer when I was in high school or college. I also admittedly started to see some o’ the flaws in Super Mario 64’s armor while analyzing its levels, which made me curious to see… ¿would I find that Sunshine’s design was, indeed, better?

Then I played Sunshine & realized it aged e’en worse. I was shocked as I played with fresh & careful eyes & saw so many sloppy decisions — the lazy blue coin placements, the incompetent handling o’ coins, the underdeveloped level structures that don’t take full advantage o’ their themes, the challenges so awfully constructed they in many cases must’ve been created thru pure spite & hatred o’ the player rather than accident, & the absolutely broken physics & controls. If I were to compare Sunshine to any game, it’d be to Donkey Kong 64, ’nother game that I held a lot o’ nostalgia for as a kid, but have grown to realize wasn’t well made for the same magnitude o’ terrible level design, terrible controls, terrible physics, & terrible programming. Indeed, just as Donkey Kong 64 was probably rushed to meet the Christmas season, looking into the development o’ Sunshine reveals that that game definitely wasn’t finished; & as my level analyses will reveal, there are many places in which this game simply was not playtested. ’Cept a’least Donkey Kong 64 had a rather ambitious design core with the multi-character gimmick² & felt bigger & deeper, despite being on a mo’ primitive system. Super Mario Sunshine is a painfully simplistic game & yet they still fucked it up.

The only thing Sunshine succeeds @ is aesthetics, which is something Super Mario 64 failed @, being on a console so underpowered, it may as well not have e’en bothered 3D gaming, since it could ne’er do 3D graphics that didn’t look worse than the average Super Nintendo game. &, in its defense, it does show some good art direction, creating a variety o’ clever level theme combinations while making every level fit the o’erarching island theme. Super Mario 64 had no such theme to tie its levels down, & yet mainly stuck to tired themes like deserts, caves, volcanoes, snow mountains, & lots o’ mountains & general.

The only reason I’ve e’er read for why Sunshine is s’posedly great is that it’s water looks nice. This has, in fact, been regurgitated so oft in such a transparently derivative way that it feels like a jokey meme by now. ¿Who cares ’bout level design, controls, game physics, programming? All that matters is that your water looks nice. This isn’t out o’ the ordinary for gamers, who are now pumping up the upcoming Playstation 5 & Xbox Series X ( Microsoft continues to up the ante in creating stupider & stupider names for their consoles ) ’cause it can make generic cliffs look e’en mo’ realistically generic & can make their uncanny-valley human models have e’en mo’ detail to their uncanny valley.

Howe’er, I’m mo’ interested in level design than pretty water. & unfortunately, as we shall see, Sunshine doesn’t look nearly as pretty when we look ’neath the surface.

7. Bianco Hills

Those familiar with my tastes won’t be surprised to see this level here. 1st levels are rarely my favorites, & 1 o’ the main reasons is ’cause developers for some reason always insist on using the blandest level theme for their introduction. In the developers’ defense, they did attempt to spruce up the level with a li’l village & windmills all o’er the place, making the level not just a generic grassland. It’s certainly mo’ memorable than “Bob-omb Battlefied”. But compared to the other levels in this game, “Bianco Hills” falls far ’hind.

“Bianco Hills” is not just weaker than the rest in terms o’ aesthetics, but also in its mission challenges. “Road to the Big Windmill”, involves going a short path through a village without having to do anything in said village & up a short hill to fight yet ’nother Proto Piranha, which you’ve already fought 2 times before in the 1st few minutes o’ gameplay, for the shine. Compare that to Super Mario 64’s 1st intended star, which has you go through most o’ its 1st level, climb a much larger mountain, & fight a unique boss ( well, ’cept for the DS remake — but e’en that changes the boss so much that you need to use a different character ) — & that wasn’t e’en that great o’ a star.

What’s worse, the developers had a clearly better choice for the 1st shine: the 2nd shine, “Down with Petey Piranha!”. This is the 1st time you fight Petey, a boss far mo’ memorably & interesting — so popular that he’s a playable character in later Mario Kart games. Petey Piranha’s battle is similar to the Proto Piranha’s, anyway, — both require you to spray water in their mouths; Petey just requires you to also ground pound his belly button.

The repetitive nature o’ this level’s shines reveals that the developers couldn’t think o’ much to do with this level. You have 2 shines wherein you must defeat Petey Piranha. The 2nd fight, “Petey Piranha Strikes Back”, is quite different, gameplaywise, but is annoying & involves a lot o’ waiting, specially if Petey throws his pointless whirlwind attack. The Swoopin’ Stus that endlessly spawn from the goop & jump @ you while you’re trying to aim are particularly annoying here, as if you’re interrupted while spraying water into Petey’s mouth, he closes his mouth & rises into the air, forcing you to go thru ’nother cycle o’ knocking him down & dodging his pointless whirlwinds.

This 2nd battle is so hilariously pointless that the developers don’t e’en bother to make up a good reason for fighting him. Petey isn’t “striking back” @ all, but is simply sleeping on a far-off cliff. Mario’s the dick this time.

Getting up to the ledge beyond which he’s initially sleeping using a Chuckster works well as a stealth tutorial for Chuckster physics, tho, but the fenced area feels too detached from the level — conspicuously thrown into some hiding place clearly just for this shine, rather than feeling like it belongs organically to the level. Furthermo’, it’s easy to miss the Chuckster & jump to the cliff from higher up on the village rooftops. After all, the game ne’er indicates to you that 1 o’ the Piantas will fling you for no reason, & this isn’t an RPG, so many players wouldn’t e’en think to talk to every Pianta, much less hate themselves ’nough to engage in such tedious scouring. While giving the player an alternate route is great, this does weaken the use o’ the Chuckster as a tutorial. O well: the Chuckster had no relevance to the o’erarching challenge. The developers should’ve replaced 1 o’ this level’s many redundant shines with an easygoing shine dedicated to Chucksters so that the player could better practice for a later, harder shine. ( But we’ll get to that shine when we get to that level… )

You also have 2 red-coin collection shines, whose red-coin locations aren’t e’en that far from each other: “Red Coins of Windmill Village”’s are just round the village while “The Red Coins of the Lake”’s are round the lake just past the village. That the 2nd red coin mission is this levels’ 8th shine is particularly disappointing. Most levels’ 8th shines are memorable. Granted, they’re memorable to most people ’cause they’re frustrating — & maybe frustration wouldn’t be a good idea for the 1st level, e’en if this would technically be an optional shine you can do @ any time after playing all the other levels.

I think they could’ve improved this by making only 1 red-coin challenge, with maybe the red coins spread all o’er the level, — there are a a’least a few red coins in each challenge that aren’t exactly unique — & made 1 o’ the challenges simply reaching the top o’, say, the village, or the tightropes o’er the lake ( the village would probably be better, since you can’t reach it from somewhere else, while the lake tightrope can be reached from the top o’ the windmill ). A’least these shines’ names are mo’ accurate than the average star name in Super Mario 64.

The only other 2 shines, not including the Shadow Mario shine, which I need not discuss, since it’s just the basic mechanic as it works in every level, are secret FLUDD-less challenges, whose entrances are found in caves in the lake. The latter, “The Secret of the Dirty Lake”, is @ the end o’ a dangerously toxic lake, which is fair ’nough; but the 3rd shine, “The Hillside Cave Secret”’s, entrance is just a seemingly arbitrary cave opening up on some hill.

The secrets themselves are some o’ the strongest elements o’ the level, but not the strongest secrets in the game. Both involve simple moving & rotating platforms, presumably to warm you up. “The Hillside Cave Secret” does have maybe 1 subtly tricky jump ’tween spinning star platforms & “The Secret of the Dirty Lake”’s area has 1 surprisingly tricky required wall-jump off a parallel wall to get ’cross a gap otherwise too long to jump o’er. “The Secret of the Dirty Lake”’s challenge also introduces cubes that you have to ride while they rotate, which can be annoying, thanks to gravity physics as finicky as Super Mario 64 had. Fitting this level’s generic aesthetics, while later secrets have workshop, sandy, casino, & Yoshi egg visuals to make them stand out, these secrets have the same starry train-track backgrounds most o’ the secrets have & use the same general mechanical graphics — including the screw boxes, nails, & those white plastic cubes — all the other secrets use. They’re not ugly or unbearably generic; just not as cool as later secrets.

Since this level has 2 secrets, its 2 secret shines are simply red coin challenges in the 2 secret areas, bringing the # o’ red-coin collection shines to a disgusting 4 out o’ 10 in this level. 1 difference is that these red coin challenges have those infamous time limits that magically murder Mario if he doesn’t collect all red coins in time. Yeah, it’s hilariously stupid that Mario develops a spontaneous heart attack from red coin deficiency; but time limits looming o’er the artificial UI have been assassinating Mario since Donkey Kong. Then ’gain, Super Mario 64 arguably created a standard by ne’er killing Mario with things that wouldn’t kill a normal person; & in fact, usually opted not to kill him when any sane game would, such as when falling in a bottomless pit in a bonus sky level magically warps him to a random waterfall. I would honestly rather the game disappear Mario in an instant, like classic “The Good Life” kid, than cornfield him & make me just waste time getting back into the level like in the Johnny Bravo parody. Still, I wonder why they couldn’t just let Mario restart the task without killing him, as other games like the Spyro games would do. The fact that Sunshine’s developers made a Mario game that feels less polished than a Spyro game should make them feel embarrassed.

Now would be the best time to point out that these secret area bonus shines allow you to use FLUDD, taking ’way what made these secret areas special in the 1st place. The vast majority o’ the time, the red coin challenges are easier than the original FLUDD-less challenge, making them weak bonus shines. “The Hillside Cave Secret”’s red coin challenge, in particular, thanks to how small the area is, has red coins all thrown round the same area, with a red coin in each corner o’ the orange-block cluster & 3 on 3 rotating star platforms that aren’t e’en part o’ the main challenge — they’re so far ’way you need FLUUD to reach them & exist purely to put red coins on them. “The Secret of the Dirty Lake”’s red coin challenge does add some surprise challenge with the red coins floating o’er the moving flipping platforms, as you need to time getting them when a platform is near ’nough to them & not flipping o’er.

1 thing “Bianco Hills” does better than “Bob-omb Battlefield” from Super Mario 64 is make its 100-coin challenge less dickish. This is probably the only time Sunshine handles a 100-coin challenge better than Super Mario 64, & the 1 element “Bianco Hills” does better than most other levels. While “Bob-omb Battlefield” made it easy to get screwed out o’ getting the 100-coin star if you tried to go after it before unlocking the wing cap, “Bianco Hills” has no such requirements, & gives you so many coins that you’ll collect ’nough far ’fore you’ve run out. Why most o’ the other levels don’t work this way is a mystery to me.

“Bianco Hill”’s blue-coin placements aren’t great, tho. Probably the most interesting are the 1 on the cliff that Petey sleeps on in “Petey Piranha Strikes Back” that appears in later shines, wherein you have to jump ’cross moving cloud platforms to reach it & the 1 under the bridge that requires bouncing on power lines.

The rest are in places where you’ll find them in every level — washing off Piantas, cleaning graffiti, spraying a blue bird — or just lying round, such as a few just randomly in the water.

Then you get bullshit obscure locations, like spraying the middle o’ 1 palm tree out o’ many or spraying the spokes o’ 1 out o’ dozens o’ windmills.

Annoyingly, 2 blue coins require Yoshi to eat a bee hive or eat a blue butterfly, which means you can’t collect everything in “Bianco Hills” all @ the start. Since the game saves each blue coin separately, this isn’t too big a deal ( not ’less you’re trying to record footage o’ each level in single clumps… ). But I find it odd that they don’t just put a Yoshi egg in this level, e’en if you haven’t unlocked him in “Delfino Plaza”: this level has no problem giving you the useless turbo nozzle & rocket nozzle, e’en if you haven’t unlocked them in “Delfino Plaza” yet.

1 thing “Bianco Hills” does do better than every other level, tho: you can collect all 30 blue coins in the 8th shine. It is, sadly, the only 1.

6. Gelato Beach

Visually & thematically, “Gelato Beach” is weaker than every other level ’cept for “Bianco Hills”, being the most obvious theme to use for an island-based game. & while half its challenges are interesting & memorable, they’re marred by this game’s janky, buggy physics that make it frustrating & unfair. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I was screwed o’er by mo’ than 10 physics bugs while playing thru this level ( tho, to be fair, there was maybe 1 or 2 that actually helped me, like when Mario just warped onto a tightrope I was trying to reach ). “Bianco Hills” bored me the most out o’ these levels; “Gelato Beach” pissed me off the most, when it wasn’t making me crack up laughing in disbelief @ how broken everything is. The other half o’ this level’s challenges are forgettable & thrown together.

This level does have 1 o’ the most interesting bosses in this game: “Mirror Madness! Tilt, Slam, Bam!”, a puzzle boss that requires you to ground pound the opposite side o’ tilted mirror platforms that Plungelos are on to fling them off completely & get them to stop messing with the mirrors so they can point @ the crystal ball in the center o’ the tower & melt the caterpillar resting on it, releasing a shine. It makes no sense whatsoe’er, but a’least it’s creative.

Right after that we get “Wiggler Ahoy! Full Steam Ahead!”. Those who have read my Super Mario 64 analysis will recall that that game had a late-game Wiggler boss that involved… jumping on it 3 times. Truly it put Dark Souls to shame with its brilliant boss design. This boss isn’t nearly that brilliant, but still makes use o’ the “Dune Buds” introduced in this level’s 1st shine to burst right under the Wiggler as it passes, knocking it o’er. Howe’er, somewhat like the “Eely-Mouth” boss in “Noki Bay”, while this boss in theory is interesting, in execution it’s annoying thanks to the poor hit detection on the Dune Buds that make it easy to miss the Wiggler e’en when it clearly should’ve hit them, forcing you to stand round waiting mo’. Worse, they path the Wiggler so that you have to use a Dune Bud surrounded by water to defeat the Wiggler, presumably for aesthetic reasons. The problem is that this makes it likely the Wiggler will be flung into the water where you outright can’t stomp its belly, wasting your time. I won’t lie: it sometimes made me wish for the simpler times o’ just jumping on them 3 times.

“The Sand Bird is Born” is legendary ( a’least as far as the French translation is concerned ), challenging you to stay on a bird composed o’ blocks that moves round, shifting the gravity under you, while collecting red coins. This arrangement is almost as simple as the red-coin puzzle from Super Mario 64’s “Lethal Lava Land”, with all the red coins right there on the bird & just 1 point when the bird slowly rotates, but is made much harder than its arrangement would seem thanks to Sunshine’s far worse physics than 64, including hit detection so bad it’s borderline broken & this game keeping Super Mario 64’s absolutist slope physics that make it so that once a slope goes past a certain threshold, it just acts effectively like a perfectly vertical wall, throwing you right off into the abyss. My 1st attempt recently ended with Mario just phasing right through the corner o’ the bird’s tail as it rotated.

This ’splains why this shine is rightfully reviled: since you’ll mostly die due to glitches, it’s not a fun challenge, just a tedious battle gainst this game’s bad programming. Once you adjust to this challenge’s nonsensical physics, tho, you’ll be guaranteed to ’ventually get it, which ’splains, on the other hand, why I read some super fans o’ this game wonder why people complain ’bout challenges like these so much. On the other hand, if this game’s physics weren’t so laughably bad ( say, if the rumored remaster fixes them ), this level’s arrangement would probably need to be tuned up a bit to make a bit mo’ challenging, as a game with decent physics would render this challenge too easy.

Only slightly less memorable, thanks to it being, technically, a bonus shine, is “The Watermelon Festival”, which challenges you to push a giant watermelon down a hill & thru a beach infested with Cataquacks, also known as the best Super Mario Sunshine enemy e’er, onto a narrow pier to win a contest & get a shine. Technically, that shine is the property o’ the Delfino government & that Pianta is peddling stolen goods & Mario should sick the police on him; but Mario knows it’s not wise to bring law enforcement into situations like these — that is if he doesn’t want to find himself buried in Pine Barrens. As annoying as the watermelon’s janky physics are that cause it to, for example, warp round things when not suddenly exploding just by lightly nudging walls on random occasions, — but not on other occasions — the main idea is a solid challenge, & I specially like the way they reward clever players who realize they can permanently destroy Cataquacks using the Dune Buds. I am annoyed @ the cheap way Cataquacks can combo you, tho.

This level’s worst shine is definitely “Red Coins in the Coral Reef”, which lazily throws all the red coins into a small lake, forcing you to endure Sunshine’s awkward swimming controls while trying to grab moving red coins — which can move into solid rock, making them literally impossible to collect till after they reemerge all the way on the other side.

Probably the most forgettable shine in this level is “Il Piantissimo’s Sand Sprint”, which is most players’ introduction to everyone’s favorite racist Piantaface Koopa the Quick ripoff, Il Piantissimo, challenging you to a race to the end for a shine with the threat o’ cold-blooded murder if you lose to him. Such is the law o’ omerta. E’en tho I got flubbed while trying to shortcut thru sloped terrain with its weird physics, I still beat him by minutes ’cause apparently Piantissimo stopped for a slurpee in the middle o’ the race.

This level starts with a FLUDD-less secret course, which does a good job o’ introducing Dune Buds by forcing you to find the 1 that unlocks the secret entrance. The secret course itself is a basic path o’ destructible sand blocks, ending in a mountain with the shine @ the top. This area couldn’t have taken mo’ than a few minutes to design, it’s so basic, but the sandy theme fits the level better than, say, “Bianco Hill”’s secret courses. While part o’ me finds it disappointingly easier than the secret courses in the previous 2 levels, I have to remember that this is this stage’s 1st shine & that the developers probably expected the player to play this before the 6th “Bianco Hills” or 4th “Ricco Harbor” shine.

This secret course’s red-coin challenge is similarly simple, with all red coins in obvious places, & is definitely easier than the already-easy main course, with FLUDD making the crumbling blocks e’en less a threat.

The final secret shine is hidden in a sandy staircase created by a Dune Bud, found by spraying 1 o’ its walls, revealing a shine picture. This is a bit too obscure & arbitrary for my taste, ’specially compared to the mo’ intuitive yellow bird in “Noki Bay”.

“Gelato Beach” has e’en worse blue coin positions than “Bianco Hills”, amazingly ’nough. There are 4 blue coins just in random places underwater, some o’ which move &, yes, go through solid ground, ’cause the developers thought that was very funny. They were wrong. Meanwhile, there are no blue coins, or e’en yellow coins, in the coral reef, ’cause using significant setpieces that an entire shine is dedicated to is so passe when you can just use empty filler area ’stead.

E’en lamer are the 4 places on the beach where you can magically reveal a shine by — ¿what else? — spraying water. It amazes me that as they were programming these in nobody stopped to think, { Maybe we don’t need 30 blue coins in every level }.

Continuing the rule o’ 4, we have 4 blue coins, each 1 on a single cloud you pass while riding the giant sand bird. None o’ them are challenging to reach; you just have to live ’long ’nough to access these clouds, which you have to do to complete “The Sand Bird is Born”, so you basically get 4 bonus blue coins for completing that shine. Meanwhile, that area has 4 towers in the distance that look like they may hide blue coins, but don’t, & I’m quite certain it’s impossible to reach them.

The best blue coin in this level is a blue Cataquack hiding in a palm tree during “The Watermelon Festival”, a reversal o’ earlier shines, when the blue Cataquacks are the dominant species & it’s a rare dangerous red Cataquack that gives you the blue coin. This blue coin is ruined, howe’er, but the fact that sometimes you can accidentally make it spawn inside a wall, making you leave & come back to try getting it ’gain.

The other is a blue coin hidden under the shack where you deliver the giant watermelon in “The Watermelon Festival”. If that doesn’t sound like a great blue coin position that’s ’cause the bar is very low in this level.

There’s also a swing with buggy jumping physics that are trying desperately to emulate a swinging jump, but just looks fake & feels bad on a palm tree with a blue coin in front o’ it. They went to the trouble o’ ( badly ) programming these special physics ’stead o’ fixing the broken physics they already implemented just for a blue coin or 2 ( I think this is in ’nother level, to no significance, too ). I know Super Mario 64 has a reputation for having jarringly weird level design, but as I discussed in my analyses, there was a logic to its levels’ constructions. Super Mario Sunshine legitimately has setpieces & general game design decisions that seem like they were made by people who had ne’er e’en seen a video game before.

God help you if you make the mistake o’ trying the 100-coin shine on the 8th shine, which is what most would probably try. It’s possible; it’s just super stupid. There’s barely any coins thruout the level. Whereas “weird” Super Mario 64 would scatter coins thruout its levels like levels made by normal human beings, “Gelato Beach” barely has any coins out in the open. What you do have are watermelons you can ram into walls for single coins. It seems you can do this infinitely, which would be hair-tearingly tedious, but relieving in contrast to Super Mario 64’s real risk o’ making you run out o’ coin opportunities just shy o’ 100 coins; howe’er, some coke-addled programmer decided that while you can explode watermelons for coins multiple times, you can only do it 10 times. After you squeeze 30 coins out o’ the 3 watermelons, you can collect most o’ the rest by bullying Cataquacks & spraying birds — ’cause that is what this game has reduced Mario to. I read you can also roll the smaller watermelons to the shack for coins, but I thankfully didn’t have to do that, as that sounds ’bout as fun as painting a house’s walls with just a single paintbrush hair.

The sad thing is that most people online recommend this shine for the 100-coin shine, which comes 2nd to the success o’ Animal Crossing: New Water Can Breaking Third Time Today as proof that gamers have no dignity or understanding o’ the value o’ time.

Honestly, this level is arguably much worse designed than “Bianco Hills”. It is only those few gems, like “Mirror Madness! Tilt, Slam, Bam!” & “The Watermelon Festival” ( janky physics notwithstanding ) & my preference for hilariously incompetent design o’er boring that I put this ’bove “Bianco Hills”.

5. Noki Bay

“Noki Bay” is a tricky level to rate. The strangest thing ’bout it is how it’s both strange & not particularly interesting @ the same time, being a mix o’ bizarre, mysterious cliff mazes & boring swimming challenges with big areas o’ water that could barely be described as designed. The aesthetics work the same way, being generic green grassland cliffs surrounded by surreal purple water & seashell spires with droning music that is both odd &, well, droning.

Its difficulty is similarly dualistic: its main shine challenges make this feel like a breather level ’tween “Pinna Park” & “Sirena Beach”; — e’en its 8th episode, which is usually a particularly tricky challenge in most levels, is a breather shine by this level’s standards — but its blue coins are some o’ the most obtuse & frustrating to collect.

“Uncork the Waterfall” is the general “get to the top o’ the stage” shine straight from the Super Mario 64 playbook — & we e’en get a mountain in a game that did a better job o’ not having half the levels surround mountains. Unfortunately, “Noki Bay”’s mountain is no “Tall, Tall Mountain”, being far smaller & having far less variety. While the weights tied to the pots that challenge you to spray water into the pots to move the platforms upward are clever from a design perspective, from a gameplay perspective you just stand there & spray straight @ a single pot. Worse, you can trivially skip these “puzzles” & just use wall jumps to get higher up, which you’ll want to do, since it’s much faster. The only other “challenge” this mountain offers is neon orange goop that you need to spray to make parts o’ the mountain sprout out from under them — ’cause apparently this goop was so heavy it pushed back thick mounds o’ concentrated rock. When all you’ve got in your game is a hammer, it makes sense that everything should be nails; but this challenge doesn’t e’en attempt to make its nails look like they should actually be nails.

@ the top o’ the stage you have to fight the same bomb-throwing mole boss as in “The Beach Cannon’s Secret” from “Pinna Park”, but this time you’re doing it so you can blow up the cork & release the waterfall. This version’s trickier than “Pinna Park”’s thanks to a gap ’tween the mole & the land you can walk on. Actually, as far as I can tell, the only way to throw Bob-Ombs @ the mole & make them reach is by doing a side-flip & throwing @ the top o’ your jump — requiring quite advanced acrobatics for a mandatory shine to beat the game, specially the 1st shine o’ the level. Nearly everything after this is a joke in comparison.

The most memorable shine in this stage is definitely “Eely-Mouth’s Dentist”, a boss that is both clever & obnoxiously slow & tedious, not helped by this boss closing its mouth & diving down so much, which basically makes you wait a long time for Mario to slowly float down to their new position or float round waiting for the idiot to open their mouth ’gain. Since you’re also slowly losing oxygen, this will also make it likely you’ll have to either try fiddling with the questionable hit boxes o’ the purple bubbles & spray them into oxygen bubbles or take a detour to grab coins to buy back oxygen, I guess — which means slowly floating o’er to a row o’ coins way off in the periphery & then floating back to the boss ( during which you’re sure to lose a point or 2 o’ oxygen ). I’m falling asleep just imagining it.

“The Boss of Tricky Ruins” is actually my favorite main shine in this stage. While the mountain o’ “Uncork the Waterfall” had you reveal passages by cleaning up neon goop magically holding back giant structures o’ rock, these ruins a’least add a bit mo’ plausibility by having sections shift by pressing down on weights with your water ( e’en if it doesn’t make sense that you can’t just push into them with your body ). Mo’ importantly, while that mountain was much less impressive than the kind o’ mountains in Super Mario 64, these ruinous mazes reminiscent o’ Super Mario 64’s red coin maze in “Rainbow Ride” are clearly the mo’ developed & interesting ( actually being a true maze that might stump someone with a triple-digit IQ helps ).

This shine’s only weak point is a 3rd fight gainst Gooper Blooper, which works just like the 2 in “Ricco Harbor”. Why they needed this, I don’t know, since you already do quite ’nough before it & all defeating the boss does is open an entryway to a cavern with the shine inside. ¿Why not just have the cavern open from the beginning & just have the challenge be climbing up to the cavern hole?

The 2nd most interesting shine is the uninterestingly-titled “The Shell’s Secret”, which has you climb the aforementioned seashell towers, using wire to cross from tower to tower. Admittedly, this entrance challenge is the same gimmick as “The Red Coins of the Lake” from “Bianco Hills”, but less challenging; but it’s the most challenging path to a secret in the game.

The secret course itself is 1 o’ the better 1s. While it doesn’t stand out as well as the courses in, say, “Pinna Park”, it’s the best straightforward challenge course, with clever jumps that require wall kicks, & is able to balance standard secret course elements to create a better variety than most secret courses.

The best actual shine is 1 o’ the few creative secret shines that isn’t just “hurry & collect red coins in a secret area before ultra-Progeria-suffering Mario dies of ol’ age @ the ripe ol’ age o’ 27” ( tho 1 o’ this level’s secret shine is, indeed, that ): a yellow bird @ the top o’ the ruins produces a secret shine if you spray it ’nough times with water.

Like “Bianco Hills”, this level has 2 red coin shines, 1 o’ which squanders the usually interesting 8th shine, which is insulting ’nough. While this level a’least spreads those red coins in distinct places, both shines require you to collect their red coins while using Super Mario Sunshine’s awkward spaceman swimming controls. It’s too bad, ’cause shrinking down into a bottle for a water level, as you do in the on-the-nose-named shine “Red Coins in a Bottle”, would actually be a cool level idea, thematically, if only they had any kind o’ challenge-based design to do anything with it rather than just an open room with red coins splayed round in the least interesting way possible.

Meanwhile, “The Red Coin Fish” doesn’t hide its red coins, but makes them partially living as part o’ a single-minded organism: a fish that flips round weirdly & then explodes, spreading its coins all o’er. It’s mo’ annoying than challenging: only a fool would go after the coins while they’re spreading off in the distance; just wait for them to coalesce back into the center & try to grab as many as you can while they’re all bunched together.

We also get a race with Shitty Koopa the Quick in “Il Piantissimo’s Surf Swim”. It takes him 40 whole seconds to get to the flag ’cause he takes the widest fucking swimming path e’er & probably stops @ Taco Bell for a meal partway thru, too. I bonked my face into walls & took probably the least efficient path any serious human being could take & still got round 20 seconds.

Something “Noki Bay” has that no other level has is that its sequence o’ shines sort o’ tells a story, something that might’ve made the forced sequence o’ shines in this game worthwhile if mo’ than 1 level did it. “Noki Bay” is the only level that remembers that this game is s’posed to be ’bout Mario cleaning up the environment & has a story arc o’ Mario trying to figure out how to clean the polluted bay, starting with deluging it with clean water from the cork ( which, unsurprisingly, doesn’t work ). Later, Mario blames Gooper Blooper & summarily tears off all Gooper’s limbs before he bothers to get any proof. As it turns out, Blooper was innocent ( & Mario truly does belong in Delfino prison now ) & that it’s the “Eely-Mouth’s” tooth decay from being busy playing too many MMORPGs to clean his teeth. & after that… this arc ends & we just get mo’ random shines.

“Noki Bay”’s a bit on the middle-ground when it comes to coin placement for the 100-coin shine. I’m not sure if it’s possible to get 100 coins in the lower shines, but a’least episode 8, where most would try, has plenty & they’re actually scattered round the cliff mazes & undersea section, rather than expecting you to grind watermelons & Bullet Bills. Howe’er, slowly falling & awkwardly sliding ( I love how Sunshine fans love to praise Sunshine for how beautiful its water is, but say nothing o’ how stiff & lifeless Mario looks while sliding round the ocean floor ) to collect coins ’long identical walls is far less interesting than, say, jumping ’long girders for coins in “Ricco Harbor”.

I have mixed feelings ’bout the blue coin placements. There’s a refreshing lack o’ blue coins gotten from spraying blue birds or eating blue butterflies ( I’m kind o’ annoyed that the 1 level that doesn’t demand I have Yoshi to get all the blue coins is after I collected Yoshi, tho — but whate’er ), & shockingly for such a water-focused level in such a water-focused game, there’s only 1 blue coin underwater in the main area — & it has coins pointing down to it, rather than just being in random empty places like in “Bianco Hills” — & 4 blue coins in the underwater area. Granted, those 4 are all on 4 identical columns surrounded by coins.

They do have some blue coins floating ’bove the water, for which the developers probably intended you to use the rental boats to sail o’er to them. I say “probably” ’cause you can easily collect them by just jumping under them & hovering a bit, & this is much faster & mo’ convenient than going thru the trouble o’ sailing a boat all the way o’er with the janky sailing physics. If this was the intention, this could act as a nice optional practice for when you’ll actually need to deal with these physics in “Corona Mountain”, & I certainly don’t mind that they make it optional. Howe’er, the boat’s so out o’ the way that for most people it probably doesn’t work that way. I know when I 1st played this game “Corona Mountain” was my 1st encounter with the boats, as I’d completely missed this boat in “Noki Bay” till my recent playthru.

The vast majority o’ blue coins are in the cliff mazes, some ’hind those weird hieroglyph squares & some ’hind random walls you need to spray without any indication.

There are also extra cliffs to the side o’ the weighed pot wheels, which are awkward to maneuver & also require you to spray walls with no indication that they do anything. As I tried this I kept running into a lovely bug wherein Mario would just have abrupt seizures & the only way to get him to move @ all was to drop him from the cliff, forcing me to climb back up. These seizures felt utterly random, tho I suspected they were caused by the rotation o’ the camera in some way.

The developers also threw in a bunch o’ gotcha traps wherein a Cuckoo bird shoots forward & flings Mario far ’way from certain holes, wasting the player’s time by making them climb all the way back up to where’er they were for the crime o’ not already predicting where developers may put random bullshit. It’s the kind o’ childish bullshit you expect from a rom hack & doesn’t belong in what is ( a’least attempting to be ) a serious, official game.

While it’s cool they hid blue coins in the shine room o’ “The Boss of Tricky Ruins”, expecting you to spray not just 1, but multiple pots for blue coins is questionable, specially since they have terrible hit detection & give you nothing most o’ the time you spray them.

The worst problem with “Noki Bay”’s blue coins is the arbitrary way this level restricts blue coins or nozzles needed to get certain blue coins in only certain shines. ¿Why can you get the rocket nozzle on episode 6 & not 8? If anything, you shouldn’t be able to get the rocket nozzle on episode 6 ’cause it breaks the challenge o’ climbing up the seashell towers by letting you just rocket a few steps up.

Honestly, I have mixed feelings ’bout “Noki Bay” in general. It was actually almost below “Gelato Beach” till I remembered that “Gelato Beach” is arguably e’en mo’ bland & far mo’ janky & terribly designed. “Noki Bay” has the cool cliff secrets & seashell towers, which balances out the boring water sections & red coin collection. Plus it didn’t piss me off as much as “Gelato Beach”.

4. Pinna Park

“Pinna Park” & “Ricco Harbor” were close, & I almost considered “Pinna Park” better than “Ricco Harbor”. But while “Pinna Park” has a mo’ exotic, interesting theme, its theme isn’t utilized to its full potential as well as “Ricco Harbor” uses its; & while “Pinna Park” has some excellent shines, like “The Runaway Ferris Wheel”, that’s balanced out by some o’ the worst shines in the game, like “Roller Coaster Balloons”. “Ricco Harbor”’s best shine isn’t quite as good as “The Runaway Ferris Wheel”, but its worst shine isn’t nearly as bad as “Roller Coaster Balloons”. Plus, “Ricco Harbor”’s music is banging, while “Pinna Park”’s music makes me want to bang my head gainst the wall so I can no longer hear it anymo’.

“Pinna Park” is a bit like “Dire, Dire Docks” in that it’s the middle level that plays a key role in story progression. For Super Mario 64, which didn’t have much o’ a story & had no twists whatsoe’er, “Dire, Dire Docks”’s 1st star acted as just a key required to reach the 2nd Bowser level, necessary for reaching the 3rd act, whereas the 1st shine in “Pinna Park” acts as the reveal to the twist that Baby Bowser is “Shadow Mario” & that Bowser is the one ’hind everything. Neither work well, howe’er: “Dire, Dire Docks” is 1 o’ the weakest levels in Super Mario 64 & its star is just a simple platforming challenge o’ crossing a timed bridge to reach the submarine, without any risk o’ death for failing; & forcing the player to collect this star to beat the game ruins Super Mario 64’s open-ended nature for no story payoff.

Super Mario Sunshine is a mo’ linear level that requires the player to get the 1st 7 shines o’ all levels to beat the game, anyway, so its open-ended nature had already been ruined from the beginning, & “Pinna Park”’s 1st shine, “Mecha-Bowser Appears!”, while far from the best boss in Super Mario Sunshine, — it’s, in fact, a janky mess whose main gimmick is screwing with your camera as you try to aim shots @ Bowser, which would be unfair if the boss wasn’t trivial, while constantly forcing you to waste time wasting rockets on nothing just so you can use your regular spray to destroy the incessant Bullet Bills & Mecha-Bowser’s firebreathing ( till you realize it’s better to just tank the hits & just hurry up & defeat Mecha-Bowser ) — is a’least mo’ than the most basic platforming challenge in the world.

The twist, like much o’ Super Mario Sunshine’s story ( which we have, thankfully, not had to talk ’bout much, since it’s otherwise irrelevant to level design ), is dumb, which is hurt e’en mo’ by this game’s embarrassingly bad acting that makes 4Kids anime dubs sound like Shakespearean plays. Worse, this game follows that inane trope wherein after beating the boss, the boss just leaves with the prize ( in this case a human being, Peach ) while the hero just stands round gawking like a moron, making the whole ordeal feel pointless. Also, ¿why can’t FLUDD tell what’s going on during the cutscene? ¿Can he not see? Thruout the game he constantly insults the player’s intelligence by saying what they could obviously see in front o’ them, ¿but now they randomly went blind for a cutscene?

“Pinna Park” also acts as a key by serving as the means for unlocking Yoshi, who is necessary for 100% every level & unlocking “Sirena Beach”. Choosing the amusement park level is an interesting choice ’mong a selection o’ levels in which none o’ their themes truly fit Yoshi. The developers make sure to fill the level with quite a bit o’ Yoshi theming, too, including making both secret courses have Yoshi’s Island style backdrops & Yoshi egg blocks, e’en “The Beach Cannon’s Secret”, which otherwise has nothing to do with Yoshi.

Howe’er, the shine that unlocks Yoshi, “The Wilted Sunflowers”, doesn’t have much to do with Yoshi: you magically make sunflowers happy by defeating Snooza Koopas, who have shells that look like Yoshi eggs, but otherwise have nothing to do with Yoshi eggs.

But my main qualms with “Pinna Park” are that it doesn’t use its amusement park theme to its full extent. A full 2 shines — the aforementioned “The Beach Cannon’s Secret” & “The Wilted Sunflowers” — take place completely outside o’ the park, on a beach not much different from “Gelato Beach”, the level the player has likely just played before this 1. This could be effective as a way to cock-tease the player by making them “earn” access to the amusement park if these were the 1st 2 shines, but the 1st shine does have you enter the amusement park, so it’s just a pointless diversion. Granted, this 1st shine & the 8th shine barely have you do anything in the park, anyway, so only half o’ the main shines have you do anything in the park. What kind o’ developers would look @ a level theme as beloved as an amusement park & think, { A whole level’s too much for this theme; let’s use mo’ generic beach }, is beyond me.

This leaves “The Yoshi-Go-Round’s Secret” & “The Runaway Ferris Wheel” as the strongest shines in this level. “The Yoshi-Go-Round’s Secret” challenges the player to wake Yoshi by bringing its desired fruit ( & on the off-chance that that fruit isn’t the pineapple or papaya, eat a nearby papaya, ’cause it needs to be an orange Yoshi ) & bring Yoshi o’er to the empty spot on the merry-go-round where a Yoshi has gone missing to magically warp Mario to a secret course. While this has a nice paint job to it, it’s effectively a simple fetch quest to the secret course. Still, probably 1 o’ the most interesting ways to get into a secret course.

The secret course itself is 1 o’ the strongest, starting with new spinning box platforms that become increasingly faster, then opening to the main course o’ circles o’ Yoshi egg blocks that alternate from clockwise & counterclockwise, & then ending with a tower o’ orange blocks. This course has a variety o’ setpieces without any feeling o’erused & feels tricky without feeling unfair.

“The Runaway Ferris Wheel”, which is not only the best shine in this level, but also 1 o’ the strongest shines in the whole game, has you take a back-end path to the top o’ the Ferris Wheel, which is now spinning way too fast for non-speedrunner players to use. This climb involves clever puzzles involving platforms that flip for a short period ’pon being sprayed & wire nets with Electrokoopas that knock you off if they hit you on the same side, but which can safely be knocked off themselves if kicked from ’hind. The shine ends with a bouncy wire common in Super Mario Sunshine, which you need to use to reach the top wire net, ’pon which sits a giant Electrokoopa apparently causing the Ferris Wheel to spin out o’ control. You knock them off to return the Ferris Wheel to regular speed & then ride up the Ferris Wheel to the top.

“Red Coins of the Pirate Ships” — whose name sees a return to that classic Super Mario 64 naming pattern o’ inaccurately implying that all the red coins are in a place where only ’bout 2 are — is a middleground shine. Rather than having you explore the whole level full o’ attractions for red coins, the challenge is, in fact, a straight path from the pirate ships to a path o’ wire netting. But it doesn’t e’en do linear paths all that well, breaking the principle o’ difficulty evolution: jumping ’long the rotating ships @ the start with their janky slope physics is the hardest part, while everything afterward is trivial.

The same can be said ’bout “The Beach Cannon’s Secret”, which takes place on the irrelevant beach area with a Monty Mole helmed cannon shooting Bullet Bills @ you. Much like in “Noki Bay”, you have to toss 3 Bob-ombs @ the Monty Mole to defeat them & gain access to the cannon. I would call this irrelevant to the level, but I guess the level entrance does involve a cannon that shoots you to the level.

The secret course itself focuses on disappearing & appearing blocks. Strangely, the 1st part is mo’ complex than the final stretch, which is just a straight path that just challenges you to keep diving forward to go down the blocks before they all disappear. In the middle they add variety with a few springs that don’t look like springs, which, in typical Sunshine fashion, are laid out in a simple pattern that would be trivial to do if not for Sunshine’s janky physics that cause Mario to go in strange directions after a bounce whose logic I still haven’t uncovered. Strangely, there’s a path straight past these bouncy platforms that doesn’t lead to the shine @ all. I think it leads to a 1-up — ’cause those are worth the long diversion.

The absolute worst shine in this level is “Roller Coaster Balloons”, which is some extreme Beaver Bother shit — e’en mo’ than the rings in Super Mario 64. “Roller Coaster Balloons” uses the same cheap rollercoaster mechanics as “Mecha-Bowser Appears!” with its camera screw & demands you to pop 18 Baby Bowser balloons within 3 laps or Mario will spontaneously die o’ a heart attack, kicking you out o’ the level & making you go back in & talk to the guy to try ’gain, ’stead o’ just letting you try ’gain right from failure like a well-developed game would do. Luckily, this challenge is so lenient that you’ll usually stumble ’pon victory within the 2nd try; but like the infamous “Beaver Bother” from Donkey Kong 64, it doesn’t feel earned any mo’ than the unfair losses do, since you have li’l control o’er your aim with the camera yanking it round, & just feels like the game randomly decided to make you win. It’s just boring & obnoxious & it sucks ass. Let us ne’er speak o’ its shittiness ’gain.

Since this level has 2 secret courses, both secret shines are red coin challenges. The “The Yoshi-Go-Round’s Secret” challenge does a good job o’ balancing red coin spread o’er the area & puts them in interesting places; but they oddly give that challenge a high time limit compared to most o’ the other secret course red coin challenges, which barely give you time. I made a lot o’ screw-ups when 1st trying this challenge & still had round half a minute left ’pon collecting the last red coin. Most o’ the red coins in “The Beach Cannon’s Secret” are in the 1st area with the vanishing blocks. Like most secret course challenges, FLUDD makes e’en collecting the red coins trivial as you can stay in the air ’bout as long as the blocks stay missing, which means you have to be truly not paying attention to let yourself fall into an empty hole — far less attention than you had to pay when doing this challenge FLUDD-less, as you’ve had to do before. The dead-end has no read coins, which makes it completely pointless in the whole game. I’m still not sure what’s down that path, since I’ve ne’er had a reason to explore. The Mario Wiki claims it has a Strollin’ Stu spawning wall. I think this game’s developers might’ve had a few too many drinks, ’cause that sounds like an e’en dumber thing to have @ the end o’ a path than a 1-up.

“Pinna Park” has, on average, much better blue coin placements than most levels. While it still has repetitious placements, like marks you have to spray, including timed pairs, or birds you have to spray or blue butterflies you have to eat with Yoshi, & has multiple blue coins you get by just spraying random parts o’ the beach, — tho, thankfully, only 2 — the ratio o’ these vs. interesting blue coins is far lower than in other levels, & there are no blue coins in random places in the water.

For instance, 1 unique blue coin challenge this level has are baskets that you need to lead Bullet Bills into the open, allowing you access to the blue coin. There are a lot o’ these, which can feel repetitious — but for Sunshine standards, that’s good, sadly.

This level also has some cleverly placed blue coins just out in the open, like 1 on a high platform that requires jumping onto the bottom o’ a pirate ship as its swinging all the way round.

Taking a page from Super Mario 64, there’s an attraction with rotating seashells that you can spray to open, revealing their contents, 1 o’ which hides a blue coin. The only downside is that this makes me imagine what much mo’ interesting blue coin locations they could’ve devised in attractions. They could’ve had an attraction wherein you have to throw something ( ¿a coconut or other grabbable fruit, perhaps? ) @ a target or stack o’ bottles to win a blue coin. Or you could have you ground pound a “Test Your Strength” machine. Hell, they could’ve made it so that spraying the merry go round makes it spin faster & that if it spins fast ’nough, a blue coin pops out.

“Pinna Park”’s 100-coin challenge is e’en dumber than “Gelato Beach”, which was pretty fucking dumb, so this 1’s really fucking dumb. I 1st tried episode 8, as most would expect, & after collecting round 64 coins on the beach area — which any reasonable person would expect to be ’nough — I ran out in the amusement park ’cause there are apparently fewer than 30 coins in the amusement park area. Once ’gain, they don’t scatter coins thruout the level like any sane collectathon would do, but hoard paltry coins ’hind a single timed switch, a few sprayable clams, & a few green birds. Looking this up on the internet, I found everyone recommend trying shine 2, wherein you’re s’posed to just spray Bullet Bills for infinite coins. Now, I could understand someone not liking the idea o’ exploring a whole level collecting many coins ( I disagree with the sentiment, but I can see it as something a reasonable human may have ); but if someone were to tell me they would prefer repetitive grinding to get 100 collectables, ’stead, as rude as it may be, I would honestly think there may be something wrong with their head. ¿What the fuck were the developers thinking?

While “Pinna Park” is far from the worst level in this game, it feels like the the 1 with the most wasted potential. An amusement park is full o’ opportunities, many o’ which the developers didn’t take in favor o’ mo’ beach bullshit. One could maybe ’scuse a level as bland as “Bianco Hills” for having forgettable, seemingly arbitrary blue coin placements due to just not having many notable areas; — you know, other than the fact that developers made a bland level with few notable areas @ all — but as I showed in the previous paragraph, this level had so much mo’ potential, & the fact that the developers didn’t take advantage o’ that potential while copy-pasting other blue coins multiple times wasn’t due to a lack o’ options, but simply due to laziness.

Thinking ’bout the potential blue coin ideas the developers didn’t take made me realize something that truly makes this level look bad: Banjo-Tooie had a much better amusement park level in “Witchyworld”, which stuck mo’ with its theme & had far mo’ creative ways to win its collectables. & I didn’t e’en like “Witchyworld” ’cause o’ all its fetch-quest, backtracking, shaggy-dog-story bullshit.

3. Pianta Village

“Pianta Village” has perhaps the most ambiguous level theme I’ve e’er seen. It’s called a “village”, but has no houses. If anything, the large plots o’ tall grass on the sides & the many trees & mushrooms scattered all round makes this level feel mo’ like a jungle level, just a jungle that has been mildly domesticated not so much with residential, but civic areas, such as the public bath with the saluting Pianta statue near the back, with paved paths all leading to it. It’s yet ’nother example o’ Sunshine’s strength @ twisting together traditional level themes to create something unique & shows yet ’gain Sunshine’s excellence when it comes to aesthetics, despite its gameplay flaws. ’Nother subtle touch is that the even episodes take place during the day while the odd episodes take place @ night — the only time one sees nighttime in this sun-focused game³.

Making this likely the final main level you unlock is an interesting decision in a game where none o’ the levels stand out as harder than the others, unlike Super Mario 64, where “Rainbow Ride” & “Tick Tock Clock” were a notable difficulty increase. It very well may be the hardest, specially with its infamous secret course challenge — tho that’s mo’ a hard-to-get-used-to gimmick, rather than an unambiguous evolution in challenge; some, particularly those who have practiced the gimmick thru repetitive play, may find “Noki Bay”’s secret course’s traditional tricky platforming to be mo’ challenging. “Secret of the Village Underside” requires the player to get Yoshi, & then hop from mushroom to mushroom below the village so they can spray the weird yellow material that looks like those hanging brushes @ automatic car washes, which can only be destroyed by Yoshi juice. Like many challenges in Super Mario Sunshine, these jumps are simple in theory, & the platform layout would be baby easy on a game with good controls; but in typical Sunshine fashion, Yoshi has janky, different physics wherein it’s hard to turn while in the air, so the developers needed to hold back level design to accommodate bad controls, rather than simply fix the bad controls. But like many Sunshine challenges, taking your time & stopping to aim Yoshi toward the next platform & then jumping straight for it, rather that trying to jump & turn while already in the air — which has a high chance o’ failing — will make this not so troublesome. It’s, ’course, much less fun than a platformer with good controls, but less frustrating.

The secret course itself — which is also notable in being the only secret course to have a nightly blue cast o’er it, fitting the fact that it’s the only secret course found @ night — revolves round the gimmick o’ “Chucksters”, Piantas who fling you backward. Like other gimmicks, such as the boat, Sunshine does a terrible job o’ giving the player practice, only introducing this gimmick elsewhere for a bonus shine in the hub world & during a part in “Bianco Hills”, both o’ which are easy to miss. This ’splains why this has a similar reputation o’ being frustration.

’Nother reason is, also typical o’ Sunshine, the gimmick, while sound in theory, is badly programmed & hard to control. The player needs to time when they talk to many Piantas so they fling you @ the right place, while also being @ a precise angle so they fling you @ the right angle. Messing up either will easily make you pass the target platform & fall into the abyss all round & die. Some Piantas move, so you need to time when you talk to them. ’Gain, this is all reasonably necessary to make this gimmick a challenge @ all, but is crippled by the unreasonbly picky hitboxes o’ the Piantas. You’d think being near them @ all would allow you to talk to them: you talk to them with “B”, which you technically don’t need for any other part o’ the course, so it’s not as if being mo’ lenient would intrude on the player’s playing. This means it’s easy to accidentally dive @ a Pianta, possibly flying straight off the platform or into the abyss, specially when quickly pressing the button to time a throw right when a Pianta gets into a position. Expecting the player to act quickly while also waiting to see when the game arbitrarily decides they can talk to a Pianta & shows the “B” icon is simply unreasonable & could’ve been fixed if the developers properly playtested this gimmick — or the whole game in general, truly.

This secret course’s secret red coin challenge is arguably the only 1 that’s harder than the original, FLUDD-less challenge, due to the ( moderately tight ) time limit making the itchier player mo’ likely to flub something up in this finicky gimmick that requires exact precision. Also, for once this secret challenge uses alternate routes not used by the main challenge for red coins, rather than having the same main path & only using the alternate routes for useless 1-ups that shouldn’t be in the game @ all ’cause making a game in 2001 with lives is stupid, specially when Donkey Kong 64 & Banjo-Tooie already showed they weren’t needed or useful in a collectathon platformer the previous year.

Possibly the 2nd hardest shine in this level is “The Goopy Inferno”, the only episode that takes ’way your FLUDD @ the very beginning & expects you to maneuver thru the main level, rather than a secret course, without FLUDD. The whole village is covered in fiery goop that spam-hits you till you’re dead, effectively making it instant-kill in most cases, ’less you luck out & the game fails to instant-kill you, since nothing in Sunshine is set in stone.

“The Goopy Inferno” reveals what an awkward bridge Sunshine is ’tween Super Mario 64 with its many ways to do tasks & Super Mario Galaxy with its insistence on doing tasks the way the gods intended. “The Goopy Inferno” has a clear method it wants you to take, — go round the perimeter & find the right hole that leads to a wire fence underground that takes you to a hole in the center o’ the level — but it’s terrible @ communicating it, to the point that I think my recent playthru was the 1st time I e’er did this shine the legit way. I actually forgot precisely how I’d do it as a kid, but I think it involved slowly walking ’long a narrow fence somewhere, which got me close ’nough to uncovered dirt to allow me to jump ’long safe areas to the center. Speedrunners, meanwhile, let the Wind Spirits hit them so they have temporary invincibility & use that to safely walk on the lava — not unlike what Mega Man can do on spikes — for long ’nough that they can reach safe land. Unlike Super Mario 64, whose alternate routes are usually intentional, or a’least natural, these are clear glitches in their janky, unintuitive glory; but the fact that so many people stumble ’pon these odd solutions shows how unintuitve the intended route is. & yet, while this doesn’t feel as clever as what Super Mario 64 oft did, it still feels better than Galaxy’s utter lack o’ options & paint-by-#s design. Plus, exploring the wire fences below the level mixes the fun o’ exploring twisting paths with the tension o’ avoiding being knocked off by enemies.

The 3rd trickiest shine may be “Fluff Festival Coin Hunt”, which uses “Pianta Village”’s 8th episode for quite a memorable red-coin challenge — probably e’en better than “Sirena Beach”’s ( not the least ’cause it doesn’t have an arbitrary timer ). This episode does a great job o’ hiding red coins in places where they’re tricky to find, but not unintuitive. Yes, a reasonable person would check under a conspicuous stack o’ crates, under the fruit tree, or all ’long the tree tops & on the wire platforms ’neath the village. What helps is how wide-open “Pianta Village” is, with plenty o’ places to hide things.

Finding all the red coins is only part o’ the challenge, tho: the shine appears on clouds far in the distance, requiring the player to grab onto dandelions blowing back & forth in the wind to reach it. Unfortunately, this gimmick is only used here, with no practice beforehand, &, you guessed it, is janky & doesn’t work well. Their hit boxes are questionable: you’ll dive @ dandelions many times & go right thru them when trying to grab them. Also, be careful aiming in a direction while preparing to jump off: holding right on the control stick can make you fall off & into the abyss, forcing you to collect all 8 red coins ’gain. Normal games would have made down or B make you fall off, while relegating right or left to simply adjusting your aim; but as we’ve seen, Sunshine is not a normal game.

1 o’ the coolest secret shines in the game challenges you to reach the highest point o’ “Pianta Village”, a platform on the tallest tree, & spray the sun itself to reveal a shine image, which gives you a shine for some reason. ( Granted, this is, ’gain, weird, since this game wherein you’re s’posed to clean graffiti is now asking you to add graffiti yourself to the sun itself, which can’t have good ecological consequences. )

“Pianta Village” loses quite a bit o’ points for the rest o’ its shines, which are rather weak. “Piantas in Need”, for instance, is a weaker version o’ “Scrubbing Sirena Beach”, not only ’cause daytime “Pianta Village” isn’t nearly as nice to look @ as “Sirena Beach”’s sunset beach. “Pianta Village” lazily double-dips by making 8 out o’ 10 o’ the villagers give you blue coins if you talk to them after cleaning them — which means if you didn’t think to talk to them, you’ll have to do 80% o’ this shine’s challenge ’gain. “Scrubbing Sirena Beach” has 2 characters you need to clean ( 2 mo’ are also on “The Manta Storm”, for some reason, for a total o’ 4 ) for blue coins. “Scrubbing Sirena Beach” has better variety & doesn’t squander as many blue coins on double-dipping.

“Pianta Village” also has 2 shines that are basically cooling down Chain Chomps & moving them into water sources, which would be a creative gimmick if done once. Episode 1, “Chain Chomplets Unchained”, is the better o’ the 2, allowing you to yank back the Chain Chomplets’ tails & fling them into water, while also threatening you with their lava trails. Neither o’ these are hard compared to the challenges you’ve likely already faced in “Noki Bay” or face in other episodes o’ this very level, but the 1st iteration is strangely harder than the 2nd. “Chain Chomp’s Bath” requires you to slowly pull back a Chain Chomp by its chain, while routinely cooling it back down after it heats itself up ’gain. Anyone can easily pull this off; it just requires patience & holding down in a single direction for long periods.

One might expect that in the last main level everyone’s favorite racist Piantaface-wearing racer who threatens to murder Mario if he doesn’t beat him in a race would offer the slightest semblance o’ a challenge. If so, one will be very disappointed.

The developers use coins in inane ways in “Pianta Village” just as much as every other level. I, for some reason, tried “The Goopy Inferno”, for the 100-coin shine, ’cause it seemed like “Fluff Festival Coin Hunt” had fewer coins ( tho in hindsight, I think that was usually where I got it as a kid ). I wouldn’t have to make these calculations if the developers just put coins all o’er the level on every episode, rather than have some episodes have the underground area full o’ coins & the trees have nothing, while others have the trees full o’ coins but nothing underground. Just have coins everywhere, for fuck’s sake. After quenching every fire & getting all the coins I could out o’ the lava-pooping Coo Coo’s, I had maybe 97 coins & searched desperately for scraps, only to find out you can make a whole ring o’ coins appear by ground pounding the center o’ the bath. I think I only thought to do that cause I may have read ’bout that in an ol’ strategy guide years ago & it clung to my mind ’cause o’ how nonsensical it is. I always thought while playing Super Mario 64, { This would be much funner if I had to do obscure bullshit to find 100 coins in a level }. No, in reality, I thought, { They probably couldn’t fuck up 100-coin challenges any worse }, & to my surprise, Sunshine’s developers took up my challenge.

“Pianta Village”’s blue-coin placements are average quality: not as good as “Sirena Beach” or “Pinna Park”’s, but not as bad as “Bianco Hills” or “Gelato Beach”’s. As I mentioned, a full 8 out o’ 30 are from cleaning Piantas in “Piantas in Need”. We also have the obligatory ( well, ’cept in “Sirena Beach”, which was actually creative ’bout its blue-coin placements ) blue bird, blue butterflies, timed triangle paint, M’s, & a whopping 2 beehives you have to spray down & eat all bees with Yoshi. ¿Is that exciting, or what?

Then we have obscure bullshit, like ground-pounding the statue’s nose or spraying a random sign.

Honestly, the only good blue coin is the 1 you get by spraying the moon on night-time levels. Yeah, it may be obscure, too, but a’least the moon is much mo’ notable than a fucking sign or some statue’s nose.

2. Ricco Harbor

“Ricco Harbor” is a solidly-designed level with a refreshingly uncommon level theme. The developers weaved together setpieces that fulfill all the main criteria for a good level: smoothly coming together in a way that feels like a real cohesive environment, rather than a scattering o’ independent challenges with no interrelation ( the Galaxy method ); having both a variety while also all feeling relevant to the o’erarching harbor theme; & having these setpieces serve as interesting challenges in & o’ themselves.

This level’s most prominent & memorable landmark is the web o’ girders with hooks & wire nets high up to explore, which is mainly used for “The Caged Shine Sprite” ( albeit most o’ this area can, in classic Super Mario 64 fashion, be skipped with clever use o’ the rocket nozzle below the cage ), & 1 o’ the most interesting implementations o’ the ubiquitous 7th shine Shadow Mario battle ( tho with the least interesting title, “Shadow Mario Revisited” ).

Below & beyond the girders is a harbor bay full o’ boats, which makes a great obstacle course for the unfortunately blandly-titled “Red Coins on the Water” while riding on a Blooper. Showing no mercy on the player, this game not only saddles the player with ’nother patented red-coin death timer, but also demands the player collect the shine that appears while still on the Blooper, with the very-real risk o’ smacking into 1 o’ the main walls & dying instantly round the harbor where it appears.

& yet, this is probably easier than the 2nd shine, “Blooper Surfing Safari”, which introduces blooper surfing in a subterranean area entered through a sewer tunnel in the harbor wall. Here you’re forced to race round a winding track using a Blooper that’s not good @ turning & beat an unspecified time limit. Luckily, there are shortcuts found by jumping o’er walls that would otherwise make you sharply turn round them ( or, mo’ accurately if you chose the fastest purple Blooper, will make you ram into a wall & die ) that make the time limit easy to break; unluckily, whether or not you can jump is finicky. If you don’t beat the time limit, which is very much possible if you use the slowest Blooper & don’t take shortcuts, the Pianta automatically ejects you from the level, but doesn’t kill you. It’s a jarring break from this game’s pattern. ¿Why couldn’t the programmers figure out how to just let you retry a challenge after failing without throwing you out o’ the level, like a normal game?

In possibly the lamest secret shine in the game, you get a secret shine for beating “Blooper Surfing Safari” a 2nd time… but 5 seconds faster. Chances are you’ll beat 40 seconds the 1st time, so it’s basically just doing the same thing twice. What blatant filler.

The other major landmark is the lighthouse, which holds the entrance to the secret course for “The Secret of Ricco Tower”. I only wish they bothered to make getting to the entrance an actual challenge beyond just jumping from the top o’ a nearby ship directly to the top platform.

The secret course itself is probably the most generic ’mong them, with just a bunch o’ those janky rotating peg blocks & a few rotating screw platforms in the middle for the barest o’ variety.

The only thing to note ’bout this secret course’s red-coin challenge is the admittedly well-hidden red coins @ the top o’ the walls in the middle break platform — tho I would’ve preferred they didn’t double-dip 2 red coins here. It fits well with the timing o’ the rotating screws: when I 1st played through this area, during which I missed these red coins, trying to go fast, I was annoyed @ how the stage seems to make you wait for the screws to rotate to the middle so that you can reach the red coin in the middle. But if you wall-jump up the walls to get their red coin, but the time you make it back down the screws will have rotated to the middle, right where you need them.

The least relevant areas o’ this level are the small marketplace @ the northmost end & some helicopter landing pad off to the side o’ it. These areas are used for the 2 Gooper Blooper fights they, for some reason, saddle you with. Both battles are basically the same: stomp on the Blooper’s front appendages & pull them back till you rip them off so they can’t smack you with them, & then clean their face off & grab their nose to snap them ’way. I’m glad they a’least made the boss only have 2 phases. It’s an interesting boss ( with a surprisingly gruesome means o’ battling them ) that’s only marred by the fact that they use it multiple times. Unlike “Noki Bay”, Gooper Blooper is actually responsible for making the harbor bay oily, & their defeat leads the bay to become clean ’gain.

The marketplace is also used for the least relevant shine in the level, “Yoshi’s Fruit Adventure”, which challenges the player to get a Yoshi, spray fruit @ hopping fish to turn them into moving platforms, & ride them to the shine in a cage locked ’hind that strange moving yellow goop that reminds me o’ those weird sponges they have @ the car wash that can only be destroyed with Yoshi juice. “Yoshi’s Fruit Adventure” is 1 o’ the notoriously hard 8th shines in the game, but strangely, I didn’t find it very hard @ all & was able to beat it 1st try on my recent attempt.

The most frustrating, & ridiculous, part is unleashing Yoshi in the 1st place. You need to get Yoshi a durian & kick it o’er to his egg. The durian’s kick physics feel arbitrary, with sometimes attempts to be as light as possible with my movement kicking it clear ’cross the market while other times I was able to just hold forward & keep kicking it in short bursts. But the worst part is that you have to alternate ground pounding buttons @ the top o’ 2 towers to release fruit & some jackoff developer thought it’d be great if it randomly spit out a fruit, 1 out o’ 4 o’ which is actually relevant. E’en better, sometimes when you release a durian it’ll go flying off into the water, destroying it, specially if there’s other fruit in its way, which means you need to drop down & fling the useless fruit to get it out o’ the way. There’s no compelling challenge to any o’ this: it just wastes your time & you have no control o’er any o’ it.

Thankfully, after so many levels with dumbass 100-coin challenges, “Ricco Harbor” has a decent implementation, with coins actually scattered round the level & plenty to reach the goal ( a’least in episode 8, the 1 most would try, tho it seems as if all would likely have 100 coins, too ). It’s sad that I would need to praise this level for accomplishing something Super Mario 64 always accomplished, but those are the rock-bottom standards Super Mario Sunshine has left me with.

“Ricco Harbor” also has some o’ the most interesting blue coin placements with probably the least repetition in all the levels, ’cept maybe “Sirena Beach”’s. The worst blue coins are probably the 1 you find by spraying a random part o’ a random wall to make 1 o’ those blue shine marks appear ( which makes no sense: ¿you’re rewarded for creating graffiti, the thing you’re s’posed to be getting rid o’? ) & yet ’nother blue coin you get by just eating blue butterflies with Yoshi — & the latter isn’t e’en bad, just used in every level.

The rest o’ the blue coins are spread evenly thruout the level: up on the girders, round the towers you climb with Yoshi, & round the marketplace & ships all o’er the bay. There are e’en some clever blue coins, like 1 you get for spraying a fan to raise a yellow submarine ( tho the yellow cage before it is pointless &, bizarrely, only appears on the 1st shine despite having nothing to do with that episode’s challenge ). These blue coins were e’en able to turn repetition in a clever hint: you get blue coins for killing 2 Klambers on the wire net in 1 o’ the ships by knocking them off while hanging on; howe’er, there is also a Klamber on a non-wire wall. Apparently, you can spray them & slide o’er them while they’re stunned, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that, since they’re stunned for maybe a second, & it sounds glitchy in any case; most players would probably try getting Yoshi & eating it, which is much easier.

My only problem with “Ricco Harbor”’s blue coins is that I feel like they could’ve all been available on episode 8, if not all episodes. In particular, the developers for some reason made 1 blue coin floating o’er the bay near the entrance to the Blooper race only obtainable on episode 2, e’en tho there’s ’nother blue coin floating o’er the bay that is available on any episode.

Finally, the way this level handles nozzles is unintuitive as hell. There is 1 turbo nozzle ( virtually necessary to get 1 o’ the graffiti race blue coins if you’re not a speedrunner ) box on a rooftop that was always a “hologram” on every episode, e’en after unlocking the turbo nozzle in Isle Delfino. Finally, I had to look it up online & found out you need to collect a specific nozzle box hidden in a ship to make them all appear in full.

1. Sirena Beach

“Sirena Beach” is Super Mario 64’s lackluster “Big Boo’s Haunt” done well, which is the only time Sunshine bests 64 on such a large scale. The tropical hotel theme mixed with the haunted house theme transforms a tradition Mario theme into something unique, while offering far mo’ variety in challenges than fighting Boos for 3 stars.

While fans always love to heap praise on “Noki Bay”’s visuals, it’s nowhere close to as good-looking as “Sirena Beach”’s orange & purple dark sunset beach & plaza.

Unlike “Pinna Park”, “Sirena Beach” pulls off its cock-tease, closing off the hotel for the 1st shine, “The Manta Storm”. As a kid I always hated this shine ’cause I found it hard once the mantas are split off into many & begin chasing you & it came in ’tween me & exploring the hotel, & sadly many adults concur with this same sloppy “hard, therefore bad” argument. Howe’er, e’en as a kid I was able to figure out a safe, albeit slow, way to pick the mantas off from under a hut, while the older & mo’ capable version o’ me was able to blast them off easily while going on the offense. Unlike most other bosses whose gimmicks, howe’er clever they may be, were slow & boring, this boss manages to match a clever gimmick with compelling gameplay, allowing the player to choose how whether to go slowly & carefully or quickly & aggressively. I think I now consider this 1 o’ the best bosses in the game, save maybe the Plungelos in “Gelato Beach”’s “Mirror Madness! Tilt, Slam, Bam!”, which I ding a few points from for being a bit too simple & trivial to beat.

The 2nd episode, “The Hotel Lobby’s Secret”, gives a li’l taste o’ the hotel, but only opening ’nough thru the pink Boos infesting the hotel to climb up the top o’ the pillar to enter the boo statue’s mouth, developing the cock-tease a bit mo’.

Unfortunately, the secret course itself is forgettable & feels like it belongs on the cutting room floor o’ “Gelato Beach”, involving the same straight paths o’ sand blocks. With both the path o’ sand blocks below the main path & the whole inside o’ the weird block formation afterward, which are both a complete waste o’ time for the main shine, you’d think the obligatory red-coin secret shine would force you to explore these areas for red coins. Well, there is 1 red coin right @ the bottom o’ the weird block formation, but absolutely no red coins down that 2nd sand-block path, making that part o’ the level utterly pointless, ’cept that there might be a 1-up down there that only a fool would risk a life & wasted time for. Unfortunately, e’en the best level o’ the game isn’t safe from a bit o’ thoughtless level design.

But the main shine o’ attention is the 3rd episode, “Mysterious Hotel Delfino”, which challenges you to explore a 3D maze o’ rooms, going door to door or up & down floors from the 1st floor to the ceiling vents, starting from secret passageways in the bathroom stalls, trying to find the secret entrance into the blocked-off pool room. The path is twisted ’nough to get my interest without going on too long, & the developers interspersed the path with clever ways to get from room to room, like having the player spray posters to reveal holes ’hind them they can jump thru.

As an extra twist, to get past the Boos blocking all paths in the vents, you need to grab a pineapple hidden in 1 room & bring it to the Yoshi on the 1st floor so you can eat the Boos. My only problem is that sometimes while exploring with Yoshi you can end up stuck in a room with no way to go thru a door back out while on Yoshi, so you have to abandon Yoshi; & since you need Yoshi & the Yoshi egg won’t spawn while Yoshi’s still round, you’ll have to kill Yoshi. Make sure you don’t leave Yoshi round where a pineapple spawns ( as the pineapple room is easy to get stuck in ) or it’ll ne’er die & you’ll be waiting fore’er.

Episode 4 & 5 focus on the hotel casino, with “The Secret of Casino Delfino” forcing you to spray slot machines till they show triple 7s, 1 in which you can change each square individually & 1 in which all squares spin in sync, followed by an obnoxious grid wherein you have to spray each individual piece & hope that it spins with the picture-side out & hope you don’t undo progress on ’nother square from the residue o’ your spray. It feels random, which I guess is how casinos work; but that doesn’t make it a compelling challenge in any way. Finally, you will be able to enter a pipe to the secret course.

Thankfully, this secret course is mo’ interesting than “The Hotel Lobby’s Secret”’s. Aesthetically, a sunset casts its light o’er everything, which helps this secret course stand out from all the others. It begins with a board with weird white cubes sliding round, threatening to shove you off or squish you. Howe’er, you can just flip jump onto 1 & jump ’mong the tops o’ cubes for an easy way thru. I would also advise moving the camera straight ’bove so you can actually see. Sadly, the course gradually tapers off from here, leading to wooden blocks that move out & in, & then the dozenth spinning wooden block with pegs you’ve encountered as the finale.

The absolutely worst part o’ this level is that you have to do all the tedious slots & that spinning tile puzzle yet ’gain to try the 2nd red-coin secret shine. ¿Why don’t they just let you go into the pipe on later episodes? You’ll still have to do this tedious nonsense the 1st time you beat the secret course, since you can’t do episodes out o’ order, but you won’t have to for the repeat, which is only fair.

“King Boo Down Below” has you ground pound a conspicuous purple tile on the roulette wheel to make it drop down to a fight with King Boo. As cool & clever as this boss is, it falls victim not only to a bit o’ Rareware stop-&-go tedium, but also to luck: every time you spray King Boo, he spins the slots under him & will only release the fruit you need to hit him if he gets 3 pineapples. Anything else will waste your time cleaning up what garbage he throws @ you. Since King Boo can’t hurt you directly, only send mooks after you, there’s no chance o’ you dying, so the only “challenge” this boss offers is wasting time.

Episode 6, “Scrubbing Sirena Beach”, challenges you to clean the beach & a few beachgoers within a certain time limit. They give you plenty o’ time & are very lenient — I still had plenty o’ conspicuous goop when the game said I was done. Still, it’s slightly mo’ compelling o’ a challenge than “Pianta Village”’s, has a bit mo’ variety than just spraying 10 Piantas, & looks nicer. Having 1 mo’ challenge take place outside also adds variety after 4 shines indoors, & does so in a much mo’ effective way than “Pinna Park” — not the least o’ which ’cause the outside area isn’t just yet ’nother beach with a few plain grass & flower beds, but has an elaborate yard with stone walkways, mini ponds, lit torches, huts, & flower gardens.

The ubiquitous Shadow Mario chase episode 7, “Shadow Mario Checks In”, sugars stuff up with Boos posing as Shadow Mario. Since they’re clearly a whiter shade, they’re not convincing. Unfortunately, this shine reveals a major problem with this level’s camera when you’re on the stairs, making it slower & e’en mo’ tedious to try aiming your sprays @ Shadow Mario while chasing him up & down.

Episode 8, “Red Coins in the Hotel”, while not as hard as “Gelato Beach”’s “The Watermelon Festival” or “Ricco Harbor”’s “Yoshi’s Fruit Adventure”, perfectly wraps up this level with a red-coin collection challenge thruout the the maze o’ rooms. I could’ve gone without the time limit, which feels like trial-&-error, tho.

Once ’gain Super Mario Sunshine sabotages a 100-coin shine by being needlessly stingy with coins. “Sirena Beach” is better ’bout spreading its coins round the hotel, but I was still barely able to find 100 coins on episode 8 & couldn’t find ’nough on episode 3 ( tho IGN seems to claim that you can ). Some may call this “challenge”, but making it so easy to get screwed out o’ 100 coins & have to start o’er is tedious, not challenging, specially when most o’ the coins are gotten by spraying dozens o’ torches & doors. You can also get 100 coins by going into episode 4 & just grinding for triple coins on the slots. Since I had ’nough grinding for coins in “Gelato Beach” & “Pinna Park”, I passed.

“Sirena Beach”, thanks to being such a large, complex level, has the greatest variety o’ blue coins. It has so few copypasted blue coins that it’s 1 o’ the few wherein having 30 blue coins was reasonable & didn’t feel like overt padding.

The only problematic blue coins are the 1s where you have to spray the ceiling light — which, to be fair, I guess is a notable landmark — & some random flowerbed & random bookcase — which isn’t notable & all. There’s also a blue coin way off in the tides out from the beach — but a’least there’s only 1, & it’s in the corner, as if it’s trying to hide, so it doesn’t feel as arbitrary as the underwater blue coins in “Bianco Hills”.

You also have to spray a few torches out o’ many to get some blue coins, but you’ll probably do that to get coins, anyway. You also get blue coins for ground pounding ( or sometimes just jumping ) under certain slot machine levers, which is actually clever.

I feel like you’d also need to be paying close attention to find the “M” graffiti mark in the casino, which only appears on episode 5, which feels like a particularly rude form o’ Sunshine’s infamous blue-coin episode limits.

While not bad in theory, the timed triangle & X blue coins are made a bit unfair by the screwy camera. You literally can’t see the blue coin that spawns on the 2nd floor ’cause it isn’t loaded, showing just a black void ceiling. Serious developers would’ve looked @ this conspicuous visual glitch & not kept these here, but Sunshine’s developers clearly didn’t give a fuck when they were making this game. ’Cause the camera forces itself in a weird angle as you go up the stairs, you basically have to get the blue coins blind while going up, ’less you’re able to quickly rotate the camera while moving & diving forward, which requires either tremendous dexterity or 3 hands.

Most o’ the rest o’ the blue coins are spread throughout the hotel rooms & vents. I think my favorite 2 blue coins are the 1 on the roof ’hind the hotel & the 1 you get for spraying a blank portrait, revealing a shine picture.

Most o’ this level analysis was description rather than analysis, ’cause there wasn’t much to rant ’bout, save the same kind o’ problems every level has. This is o’erall a solid level with a few instances o’ very clever design.

Honorable Dishonorable Mentions

Corona Mountain

[ Insert obligatory topical reference to coronavirus that will date this post. ]

Ah, the infamous. This is a widely reviled level ’mong e’en fans who love Sunshine. Something you could definitely say ’bout the level is that there’s not much to it. You jump from fire platform to spike platform, quickly spraying out the fire platforms ( or just hovering o’er them & hoping you’re high ’nough to not get hit by the flames — which, with this game’s wonky hit detection, is ne’er a guarantee ) before the spikes spring back up. It’s also a severely linear level for a game that was still rather open. Still, the quick platforming is rather fun for a game wherein platforming was rarely fun.

Despite being simple & linear, the level isn’t very coherent, with 3 completely independent sections. After the simple platforming ’tween spike & fire platforms, we have the infamous boat section. You have to spray your water ’hind the boat to make it go forward, & spray to the sides to rotate whiche’er end you’re nearest, which means if you’re smart you’ll stay on 1 clear end, so turning isn’t a surprise, as the game gets confused as to where you want to rotate it when trying to rotate it from the center. Honestly, the boat’s not hard to navigate if you’re not charging forward. Despite all the struggles I had with many things I didn’t expect to struggle with thruout my playthru o’ this game, I didn’t crash this boat once. That said, the game doesn’t prepare you for this boat much, ’less you happened to use the fully optional boat out o’ the way in “Noki Bay”, nor does it ’splain how the boat works, so players will likely die a few times just trying to figure out how this gimmick works, & have to redo the previous section each time. This is why you don’t mix completely different gimmicks into the same level, dumb shits.

Also, there are blue coins near the end, which you’ll want to use the boat to get — tho, ’cause blue coins save when you collect them, you could always just dive @ them without the boat & take the death. For some reason, they waste a full 3rd o’ Delfino Plaza’s 30 blue coins in this 1 area. That’s right — this game expects you to collect 10 blue coins in just this small circle round the last platform o’ “Corona Mountain”. If that doesn’t convince me the developers o’ this game were as lazy as they could be ’bout blue-coin placement, I don’t know what you’d consider lazy placement.

Far worse is final section, wherein you have to take the rocket nozzle & rocket up a bunch o’ moving cloud platforms. Now, after 2 very tricky sections, e’en for this point in the game, ¿why do they end with a trivial section that not only “challenges” you to do simple versions o’ much harder challenges you must have done before — ¡as far back as “Bianco Hills”! — without e’en the threat o’ death for missing — you just land on the ground & take damage?

People also widely pan the final boss for being too easy & having a sitcom dad voice: you just rocket up & ground pound 4 corners while avoiding Bullet Bills & fire. Or don’t, ’cause you can easily tank most hits. Actually, tho I surprisingly aced the boat section 1st try, I died, like, 4 times trying this boss. The 1st time I ran out o’ water & couldn’t get any mo’ ’cause Bowser would ne’er give me blue Bullet Bills & I committed suicide; ’nother time I fell thru the crumbling floor, ’cause ’course hit boxes don’t always work; ’nother time I launched straight upward o’er the red mark on an outer platform & when I fell back down I was magically far forward & off the platform, leading me ground-pounding in utter bemusement to my death. By this point I had become numb to the terribleness.

This level’s the apex o’ mediocre — specially if you compare it to Super Mario 64’s excellent final Bowser level, which did a lot better job o’ being a linear challenge level without being boring.

Super Slide

I love how Super Mario Sunshine’s development team didn’t have anyone there to say, <Hey, guys, maybe we should only include actually designed levels, & not a few thrown-together setpieces we left in the corner>. I also love how they start by making it seem as if you should avoid the far left with a big gaping hole, only for the level to require a sharp left turn after that that you can’t make. What you need to do is aim straight for that gaping hole, which you can jump o’er. After that there’s, like, 1 mo’ relatively easy turn & a thin slope, & then the level’s o’er.

This level is found on a random pipe on a hill in a series o’ hills off the coast o’ “Gelato Beach”’s entrance. Honestly, the arrangement o’ these hills took mo’ thought than the level itself.

Red Coin Field

You have to collect 8 red coins in a field full o’ large grass that makes it hard to see — ’cept you can just move the camera ’bove you, making things much easier to see. You basically just defeat all the enemies, including this game’s only red bird, break some random watermelon block in some random place, fall into 1 o’ the many holes with a red coin hidden in it, & spray some guy running round on fire for hours & hope you don’t run out o’ water, ’cause there’s no way to refill your water. ’Cause the developers hate you & are laughing @ you for being dumb ’nough to play their game, they put a fire, which you’d think gives you a red coin for spraying it out, but it actually does nothing but waste your scarce water.

You find this stage by crossing a series o’ palm trees growing out o’ the wall spreading out from the cannon entrance to “Pinna Park”.

Pachinko Game

Ah, yes, e’en mo’ infamous than Coronavirus Mountain. & for good reason: this level is absolute shit. While other levels sometimes give you annoying bugs, this whole level is a bug & is exhibit A in my proof that this game wasn’t bugtested.

The gimmick is that you jump onto a bouncing platform & up a tunnel ( which has 3 red coins, since they couldn’t e’en find mo’ than 5 places to hide red coins in the machine itself ) & try to aim yourself with the hover nozzle o’er a slot with a red coin while invisible walls & magical, unintuitive physics push you round for no reason. If you play this level ’nough you may develop an inkling for how these alien physics work as well as my unending sympathy that you spent so much o’ your precious time playing shit & not an actually good game. You can’t see the slots under you, so this is effectively “Blind Jumps, the Level”. If you don’t land in a slot, you go toward the bottom, where you’re destined for death.

I’ve heard some say that this was a good concept, just badly implemented, but no, this could ne’er be good. @ its best, if this level were designed in a way that was fair & controllable, it’d be negligibly easy, since aiming for big slots is a simple task, which is what most Mario games probably would’ve done. For some reason, Sunshine preferred unfair hard o’er negligibly easy, so they hacked together invisible walls & made you aim for slots you can’t see to manufacture fake difficulty. So ’stead o’ a pointless trifle most would forget, we get possibly the most infamously bad level in all Mario games. ¿Is this black mark better than being completely ignored for eternity like, say, the average Super Mario Galaxy level ( or that dumbass “Super Slide”, which wasn’t e’en “super” in the slightest )? You decide.

Lily Pad Ride

This secret level’s infamous not ’cause o’ the level itself, but its inane method for reaching it. You have to get Yoshi, jump onto a boat, spend minutes standing round doing nothing, jump onto an island, eat fruit to avoid letting Yoshi die o’ dehydration, wait for minutes doing nothing till ’nother boat arrives, jump onto that boat, ride it for minutes doing nothing, jump onto a platform with bananas lying there for no reason, — ’cause bananas regularly grow on metal platforms with nobody on them — wait for minutes doing nothing for a 3rd boat to arrive, jump onto it, & then ride it for minutes doing nothing before jumping onto a final island to spray ’way that stupid yellow slime covering a pipe with Yoshi’s fruit. This is mo’ like a parody than a real challenge. ¿Did Beat Takeshi disguise himself as a developer & manage to get himself hired by Nintendo & sneak this shit into the game? Only someone who truly despised their audience would develop something like this. I couldn’t e’en stay mad @ the developers after this: if after this, you still continue to play Super Mario Sunshine, you’re the one who has the mental problems.

The course itself requires you to ride a lily pad o’er deathly toxic water & hope the lily pad passes by red coins in a way that makes it physically possible to grab them. You can try to control the lily pad with your spray, but since the lily pad moves so fast with such strong momentum, these sprays are slight suggestions. If you do reach the end without collecting all red coins, there are 3 options:

1. You can kill yourself ( in real life, too, which you may want to do if you’re wasting your summer playing this game & typing up a novella ’bout how unbearably bad it is ’stead o’ doing something productive with your life ).

2. You can jump into a pipe some asshole developer laughing his ass off put in that sends you back to the beginning o’ Delfino Plaza, which means you have to wait on those 3 boats with Yoshi ’gain. If this does not convince you that this game’s developers actively despise their audience, & perhaps all o’ humanity, you pretend e’en a glass half full is full. If you do fall for this troll & jump into the pipe, my recommended remedy is to shut the GameCube off & throw the game disc into moving traffic. Luckily, I played this game before, so I didn’t. Just remember that I played this game a few times as a kid, so as frustrated as I am, imagine how much mo’ pissed off some poor newbie who didn’t already know ’bout this troll job & actually fell for it would feel.

3. You can take the “Walk o’ Shame” ’cross the very thin winding path ’long the edge o’ the level back to the start, where ’nother lily pad will be.

Turbo Track

Compared to all the other secret levels, this 1’s excellent simply by being functional. You charge forward with the turbo nozzle & jump… a li’l before the edge, ’cause there’s a weird delay & if you try to jump right before the edge you’ll just fall off. ¿Did I say “functional”? I meant “halfway functional”, which is the best we should expect from this game. Hopefully, when you land on the final platform you don’t land past the shine & can jump immediately ’pon landing to grab the shine, as that last platform is so small there’s no chance you’ll be able to stop on it before falling off from the gradually-decreasing momentum. It’s also likely you may only hit the front edge o’ the final platform & grab the edge, stopping you immediately, which is usually what happens to me. It’s a pleasant surprise that the game is lenient & doesn’t just bonk me off, like most games would.

You find this level by breaking thru a door with the turbo nozzle — the 1 ’tween the 2 cops who apparently don’t care that you’re going round destroying property. [ Insert obligatory topical reference ’bout George Floyd riots that will date — O, ¿who am I kidding? White cops killing black people for no reason is as timeless as death ( specially for black people ) & tax loopholes ].

Delfino Airstrip

It’s cool they let you return to the intro level & give you an extra shine to get, tho I wish they’d done mo’ with it than yet ’nother red-coin collection shine ( ¿is this what Sunshine fans call being mo’ oddball than Super Mario 64? ¿Exacerbating its worst vices? ). O well, a’least you get to use the turbo nozzle for collecting red coins.

They could’ve a’least taken some o’ the 10 blue coins all round the end o’ “Corona Mountain” & added some mo’ to this area. I think all this area has is a blue coin in an ice cube you melt by spraying with water.

Delfino Plaza

& last but definitely not least, ’cause unlike Super Mario 64, whose hub actually had contenders, “Delfino Plaza” is the only non-main area that isn’t @ best underwhelming in Super Mario Sunshine.

But we must credit Sunshine here: “Delfino Plaza” is a contender gainst Super Mario 64’s hub, & possibly better ( & it’s certainly better than Galaxy’s joke o’ a hub & Galaxy 2’s lazy map screen that’s e’en mo’ primitive than that found in Super Mario Bros. 3⁴ ). While “Peach’s Castle” had some interesting stars, like grabbing MIPS, specially the DS remake, which had that secret white room in the mirror room, most o’ them were gotten in secret areas or just by talking to 3 Toads in random rooms. Sunshine does o’eruse the “wash thing — whether it be 2 bells or the shine on the gate” or “find shine picture in the sand”, & while its crate-breaking minigame isn’t particularly interesting, it’s something.

Howe’er, “Delfino Plaza” does have the cleverest use o’ Chuckster, who throws you into a broken window for a small fee so you can break into that building & collect the shine inside.

Plus, we have some interesting blue-coin challenges, such as getting the fruit into villagers’ baskets, specially kicking the durian ’cross the river. My only problem with these are that the programmers stupidly made it so that you have to talk to the villagers before giving them fruit counts. If you put fruit into their basket before you talk to them, the fruit disappears, but it doesn’t count toward anything. Also, I think it would’ve worked better if they kept them to just 1 fruit, since requiring 3 is just repetitive. If spraying a random M or finding a blue coin in a random place underwater is worth getting a blue coin, I don’t see how just kicking 1 durian into a villager’s basket or e’en just throwing a coconut in a villager’s basket is too easy.

I do feel many o’ “Delfino Plaza”’s oddball blue coins or shines would be better if they were actually unique. I remember when I was a kid I was always fond o’ finding the blue coin by spraying the blue bird on the rooftops; but now that I’ve learned that that same mechanic is in almost every level, I can only shrug in boredom. Perhaps the developers should’ve taken a page from Super Mario Bros. 3 with its Kuribo’s Shoe & realized that weird gimmicks are better when they’re rare, as their freshness is what makes them interesting, & they can’t stay fresh after the dozenth iteration.

Also, the golden bird, which falls into this same problem, adds pointless padding by putting the shine it spawns all the way on the hill islands near “Gelato Beach”’s entrance. This doesn’t add any challenge; it just forces you to slowly swim o’er to that area. ¿What was the point?

I do feel like the level entrances aren’t as memorable or interesting as Super Mario 64’s. “Sirena Beach”’s, which requires you to eat the giant pineapple, is the most interesting; but then once you’ve done that, it’s just a pipe you jump into. Similarly, I like the way “Pianta Village” “requires” you to unlock the rocket nozzle to reach it — or not, if you’re clever with your jumping. Howe’er, almost all the rest are just M’s or a cannon you jump into, & “Noki Bay”’s is just a rehash o’ Super Mario 64’s entrance to the wing cap stage. None o’ these entrances have any way to change how the stage works based on how you enter, like “Tick Tock Clock”’s, “Wet-Dry World”’s, or “Tiny-Huge Island”’s.

Honestly, I still think “Peach’s Castle” is better. “Peach’s Castle” pushes its hub with many secrets, while still staying concise, specially in the DS remake. Nothing in it felt like padding, ’cept for the Toad stars, & nothing felt missing. “Delfino Plaza” looks concise compared to the kind o’ bloated monstrosities modern video games like Zelda: Breath of the Wild subjects the player to, but still has some setpieces that could’ve been exploited mo’, like the underwater hole near “Pinna Park”’s entrance, which holds a useless 1-up mushroom ( competent developers would’ve put a blue coin there & taken 1 o’ the — let me remind you ’gain — 10 blue coins round the end o’ “Corona Mountain” ). On the other end, I feel there were many mo’ opportunities for hiding blue coins that were missed — they could’ve put many mo’ hiding places in the buildings — & the level entrances were just underwhelming in comparison. It’s still a great hub, tho, — specially by the low standards Sunshine set with most o’ its other levels — & the fact that it comes very close to “Peach ‘s Castle” says something.