There's something about playing a Mario game. Like going to your grandma's house and smelling her fresh baked apple pie.
There's also a new and exciting world to explore. This world is split up into islands, and each one offers its own levels, dungeons, and ghost houses. There's also a sports-type theme to everything. I don't know where this idea came from, but it's pretty interesting. Mario will run into guys in full football gear who will try to jump on his head or tackle him. There are little guys with ball bats and baseball gloves on, pitching or batting baseballs at our hapless hero. And at the end of each level there's a tall goalpost where you have to time your jump to hit the moving bar in the middle. Doing this will get you extra points and when you reach 100 you get to play a 1-Up Bonus Game.
The coolest thing about this game is the Cape. You get this Cape by jumping on the heads of certain flying Kopas and thus knocking it off them. Once you have the Cape (which appears as a feather ala Super Mario 3) you can fly through the air yourself. Learning to fly with the Cape can be a bit difficult at first, but its easy to learn with practice. Once you learn to fly then you can sail through entire levels, from beginning to goalpost. This has its positive aspects, especially when you're up against a particularly tough level (and they are plenty), then if you want you can fly through the rough parts.
There's a secret world hidden within this game called Star Road. Once you find it you can beat the different levels to form "warp points" which take you to different parts of the other world. There's also another secret world hidden within Star Road that will take you to some of the toughest levels in the game. Beating all of the levels in this second secret world (which have beatnik names like Groovy and Awesome) will change the colors and certain key characters in all the other worlds.
This world of Mario here is huge, and deep. You should do a lot of exploring as you traverse the many different levels, because not everything is as it seems. In many of the levels (and some ghost houses) there is more than one exit. And there is humor here, as well. I remember the first time I jumped on a Kopa and he popped out of his shell. Yep, that's right. Kopas will sometimes shoot out of their shells if you jump on their heads, and then they get up and walk around - in their underwear, no less.
I played this game when it came out on the SNES, and this port does justice to the original, and then some. The gameplay is fresh and highly inventive. The colors and graphics are splendid. There's just something about playing a Mario game. Like going to your grandma's house and smelling her fresh baked apple pie.