This Mario hack is so cool! The story is inspired by the Bowsette meme, and by the end, you even get to make a choice 🙂

The level design is excellent. I really appreciate small details - like coins that guide you where to fall, or how all the dragon coins are placed either before or after the checkpoint.

The difficulty is similar to the original game. Some of the Special World levels were pretty tough, but the hack has an adaptive difficulty system: coin blocks sometimes turn into power-up blocks if you have 5 lives or fewer. If you're down to your last life, the level even adds a few Starman power-up blocks!

There are also a bunch of quality-of-life improvements. I especially loved the removal of the timer and the fact that falling into a pit doesn't immediately result in a game over.

And the soundtrack is absolute banger. Most of the songs are well-known hits ported into SNES. Here is the link to the playlist.

And here is the link to the hack.

What’s your favorite SMW hack? 🙂