After many months of on and off playing/grinding/hair-yanking/crying, Super Mario World has finally been defeated.
This accomplishment has been about 15 years in the making. This was the very first SNES game I ever played. I remember walking across the street in the middle of Winter to my friend's house where he had just finished setting up the Super Nintendo he got for Christmas.
With a crunch of the cartridge, and the shove of a metallic purple strap-thingy (what the hell do you call those anyway?), the classic intro music began beeping to our heart's content...
The following few years were filled with my friend and I chugging through the first few levels only to get completely stumped on the VERY FIRST ghost house and, being the impatient 6-9 year-olds we were, giving up and moving on to something more immediately satisfying like World Heroes 2 or TMNT: Turtles in Time.
Eventually, the N64 and Goldeneye came out, then the Playstation 2 and GTAIII; and the next thing you know I'm not even hanging out with this friend anymore as the natural progression of life lead us in two different directions.
Years went by without ever even thinking about coming back to this game. I had no idea of it's historical importance. I had no clue that it was a standard bearer for all games to come after it. Only in the last few years when I really delved into the history of games and the ever evolving hierarchy of classics did I realize my plight.
So when I had the good fortune to discover that my girlfriend a) had a SNES, and b) actually loves to play it, I immediately reached for her copy of Super Mario.
We beat that first Ghost House about five minutes in.
Of course, having a full time student life and getting snagged on certain parts prolonged the process. But all in all, I'm really happy we finally got it done. I finally feel like a certain part of my childhood has closure. That, more than the experience of the game itself, was the most rewarding feeling.
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