Beta64 - Super Mario World

SMW has to have been my most requested video of all time... so far, and why shouldn't it be? The game is amazing! It has been on many lists of the best games and has even received the "Best game of all time" award from "Empire" magazine. No matter where you look, SMW is highly praised, but how did this all come about? Where did the idea for Yoshi come from? What's with that cape feather enhancer? And why is the game subtitled "Super Mario Bros. 4" in the original Japanese release? Well, buckle up, because we're going to take a looong look at the development of SMW. *SMW Title Theme* SMW began development around 1987, with a team of approximately 16 people.

Some familiar names on the team include Takashi Tezuka as director and Shigeru Miyamoto as producer. Since the Super Famicom was released in the late 1990s, it is very likely that SMW was one of the first games developed for the system and because of this, there were some difficulties in creating this Mario title, which is why later games on the system They didn't have to do it. worry. As; incomplete development tools and of course simply the fact that they are starting something new with newly created tools. That creates many challenges. Despite the problems working with the new hardware, there was one advantage.

The team had fewer restrictions compared to development for the original Famicom. For example, artists found it much easier to depict what they wanted to see on the screen. However, it was more challenging for Koji Kondo, SMW's composer. Creating music for the game was very different from that of the original Famicom. On the Super Famicom, you had to create your own sound samples, as they were no longer built into the system. This made composing music, as Kondo said in an interview, "100 times more difficult." Not only that, the team also had to include their own expanded color palette.

So even though the SMW cartridge is 4MB compared to the 3MB SMB3 cartridge, the computer actually had less memory to work with, and speaking of SMB3, even before starting SMW, the computer ported SMB3 to Super Famicom to experiment with the new hardware. and although it was the same game, it featured some more detailed sprites and more attractive colors. Unfortunately, we don't have any photos of it... so you'll have to take Miyamoto's word for it. However, when looking at this port, he realized that the team couldn't just remake the same game, they had to make something "new", and that was a problem that stayed with them throughout development.

At the time, many people who watched the team while developing SMW told them that they didn't see much difference between this game and previous Mario titles, which solidified the need to create something "new." One of these new ideas was the cape enhancer and I'm sure many of you are well aware of it. However, at first, the cape was controlled differently, according to Tezuka. To make sure the controls felt right, they let a few people test the game and give them feedback (as any good game development team would do), and as they expected, the controls were too difficult for test players and for fix them.

They then adjusted the handling of the cape to make it more playable at the cost of making Mario fly a little, as Tezuka said, "clunky." Another new idea for SMW was to ride Yoshi, although it was technically an old idea. In fact, Miyamoto had a sketch of a dinosaur character taped on his desk for five years, before they finally had the technology to do it on the Super Famicom. After developing the game further, they brought back the game testers. At that time, some mentioned that the game was too difficult, so to solve this problem, the team decided to create SMW for beginners.

In the end, although SMB3, it was intended for more experienced players. SMW was intended to be friendly to those less skilled but still provide an exciting experience for those who are veterans of the series. One way they hoped to achieve this delicate balance was with the new dot blocks, which after flipping a switch, will create blocks where the dotted lines were. Doing this helped make the game easier for those willing to search and find those switches, but despite it being a clever way to balance the game's difficulty... it was actually just a side effect of trying to create new blocks for the game. game.

In the early 1990s, outsiders were able to see SMW's first footage of a 1989 version of the game. Let's take an in-depth look, starting at this first title screen. Compared to the final version, this initial version is quite different; In fact, the only thing that looks the same is the border, but it's what's INSIDE the border that counts. Inside, there is a hand-drawn map of some island. The logo itself is the same as the Japanese version, except for the color, which was changed from blue to various colors. One thing you should know about this version is that during this point of development the team was modeling SMW after SMB3... at least more than the final game is modeled after it.

That's why this first logo is blue, because so is the SMB3 logo. Now, the island in the background is actually the over

world

, which you can see in the image below. If you compare this version to the final game, the only thing that is the same is the Mario icon on the map and the borders around the map. On this edge, Mario's sprite DEFINITELY changed between the two versions, and along with it, the

world

stage label is completely different. In the final game the label shows the world name and then the stage number next to it, but in this first image it uses a similar style to the original SMB1 by having the .

To the right of the text you also have a coin and a score counter which I assume was deemed unnecessary and removed from the game. The actual overworld in this screen is MASSIVELY different from the final game. From the looks of it, you start in this central green-looking mushroom house and then choose one of four paths. Each path is its own world and we know from these images that the lower path is World 4 and the right path is World 2. Each path appears to end with a fortress, however, we cannot say for sure because it cannot be fully seen. . the upper path, but I have a couple of theories about where this upper fortress might be.

First, we could assume that the fortress must be somewhere in this missing location, or of course it would be somewhere on top of these images, but now we have a couple of problems with this and that is due to the level pattern... You see it? It turns out that the left, right and bottom path each have 3 stages before the fortress, so assuming the top path would be the same, the fortress couldn't be at the top of the image, because that would mean that there would be 4 stages and then the fortress. If you want to believe that the upper path follows this three-level pattern, then it would have to be both stages and a fortress in the missing place on the left, but then if you believe that... what are these stages for?

Where do they lead? Needless to say, there is quite a bit of mystery surrounding the top of the map. Counting the stages, we can see, including the fortresses, that there were at least 16 levels in this version of the game. Assuming the game only took place on this island, that means this build was much smaller than the final game. However, this first version is much more open and not as linear as the final one. Now, let's take a look at some footage of the actual game. The first thing we'll look at is the HUD, which looks pretty much the same as the final game (minus a couple of things).

Now, what are those changes? Well, the bonus star counter is missing and the coin counter is taking its place, plus the life counter is not centered. You may also notice that some of the colors appear to have changed, but that is probably not the case. The colors in these screenshots vary because they were probably taken by a real camera taking a picture of the game running on a TV. (So ​​technically they're not screenshots.) For example, in this image, the outline of the saved item is blue, like the end, but in this one it is greener. These photos were all taken from the same version of the game, so it's not likely that this is a real change... just a bad image.

Speaking of that item box, the fire flower seems to look a little different though, don't you think? Actually, it's more like a specific game... can you guess what it is? It's SMB3 of course! In fact, many other sprites in this version were made to look like their SMB3 counterpart. Such as question mark blocks, wooden blocks, and brick blocks that were replaced by spinning blocks. Not to mention these completely different Paragoombas and Koopa Troopas. However, the most interesting thing related to SMB3, in this early version, is this raccoon leaf power-up from SMB3, which was never used in the final game.

Instead of SMW, replaced it with cape pen. In this image, there are also some other differences that you should notice. First, the triangular block that looks more mechanical instead of the happy, smiling block that was later. Not only that, there are donuts in the sky (not like a real donut), just a donut-shaped cloud. This cloud is visible in many of the Dinosaur Land screenshots, but is nowhere to be found in the final game. Also, there are some large coins in this image that definitely weren't in the final game. They were probably replaced by dragon coins that have a similar shape.

The interesting thing is that there are 4 of them next to each other, which is strange if they were meant to work the same as a dragon coin since, in the final, you only need to collect five or less of them per stage, and only making that jump would raise more than half. Now, let's go back to this image we briefly looked at earlier. I believe the stage shown in this image is the final "Mondo" special stage, and why do I think that? Well, the Koopa Troopas don't normally appear like this underwater except in "Mondo" because in that final stage, the water rises and falls and even when it covers the Koopas they stay the same and keep walking.

There's not much else to see in this image, but we can safely say that one of these floating platforms is not in the finale. Can you guess which one? It turns out that while the smaller platform is in the final stage "Yoshi's Island 4", the larger one is not in any stage of the game... In fact, this larger platform will be mentioned again in this video... so, you know...stay tuned! Now, you may have noticed that there is no backstory in this first version of "Mondo" and I probably have the answer to that. It's because this scenario is probably using an unused mode that allowed a transparent water layer on top of the scenario layer.

Using this mode leaves no room for the background, which would explain why there isn't any. Now, I can hear you saying, "Wait, what about those other water stages like Yoshi's Island 4, the one you literally just showed us?" and, well... yes, Yoshi's Island 4 does include water, platforms and a background, but there is one thing... The water is not transparent! If you look at the water while it is being played, it may appear transparent, but pause the game and you can clearly see that it is actually a checkerboard pattern with a blue square and a non-existent square. This creates the illusion that the water is slightly transparent.

As evidence that this first image actually uses transparent water; Notice that the Koopa and other underwater objects do not appear pixelated due to the checkerboard water, so we believe it is using the unused mode. The next stage we will look at is the castle level. The first image of the stage shows a different looking floor and appears to be missing lava. Other than that, the background appears to be more or less the same, although it probably looks different due to the HORRIBLE exposure of the camera that took the photo. Why don't we look at another image and see if we can spot more differences without those fences blocking the view?

Oh well. Well, it looks like the candles are slightly different, but there are definitely more changes to the floor, which is very different compared to the final. The next image here is of a ghost house, but due to the strange placement of the note blocks, platforms, and... lack of background, this is probably just a test level... ...and... .that's really all I have at this stage... but there's a big conglomeration of screenshots, in the image below, and after removing the ones we've already seen or the ones that never changed, there are still a few more we have. to look!

The first one here shows a piranha plant, but if you look very closely (and I mean VERY close), the enemy appears to be a normal piranha plant, like... it has a stem. Now, for those of you who really know SMW, you might be saying, "Wait! There are some normal piranha plants in 'Vanilla Dome 3'." To which I will answer: "Yes... but there are some differences." ". First, they all go down but the eliminated version goes up and second, they are all red and the eliminated version is yellow.The following image is quite interesting to me. It shows Larry Koopa's boss battle from the final game, but it has some very distinct differences.

First, Mario is wearing a raccoon suit, but we've seen that before. The interesting changes are that the platform is much closer to the lava, making the battle more difficult, and Larry is in the air. In the final game, Larry Koopa never jumps in this boss battle, so he was apparently destined to do so. Both changes were likely made to prevent this battle from being too challenging. The arrow you see in this image points to another image that shows what happens after you win the boss battle. Ignoring the magazine text... there are a couple of changes you'll want to know about.

If you look at this image next to the final one, you will be able to see that next to the text that says "Mario" is the course number, which was originally supposed to be displayed and, below it, "Course" is misspelled (because it is missing an "r"), which is more of a bug than a removed feature. ...Perhaps most interesting, however, is that Mario is giving the "V" sign, which in the final game is only done after finishing the normal courses, never occurring after a boss battle. Fast forward a bit to a new version of SMW, which from the looks of the HUD in this image, came much closer to the final release.

The good thing is that we know exactly where this image was taken, in relation to the final game; the stage "Yoshi's Island 1". Do we compare and contrast? First, you've probably already noticed that the sky here is yellow instead of blue, but did you notice that there's only one Rex on the ground in this initial version instead of 4? (RIP 4th Rex :<) Now this could be because the team hadn't added them, or maybe Mario had already defeated them. Every scenario is completely possible. However, the biggest change is the Banzai bill. The first version is gray instead of black and lacks a lot of detail, overall...it's just...boring.

Banzai Bill also appears in this second early image, which was taken shortly after the first. The last change we will see is the evolution of the North American title screen. Now, first of all, in the final game, the SMW logo in the North American version compared to the Japanese version looks very different, thanks to the placement of the shadows and the brand logo. but thanks to this first screenshot, we can see that at first the North American title screen logo would look very similar to the Japanese version, at least in terms of the shadow. Other than that, there are still a lot of changes between these two versions, such as "Super" being on top of "Mario" instead of being in the middle and the addition of the "Super Mario Brothers" subtext next to "Super." Aside from that logo, the only other differences are that the copyright text is missing and the ground is missing grass on top of it.

Moving forward, we get a slightly later image that is almost exactly the same as before, except for the addition of "4" next to "Super Mario Brothers", the final copyright text, and the fact that the background looks like the finale, but it's taller than him and that was the last initial version we got to see, but what's interesting is that even though the "Super Mario Brothers 4" subtext disappeared from all versions of the SMW title screen on the box art Japanese, still has it clearly visible on the front of the package, and it's even on the cartridge as well.

Following the development of SMW, Miyamoto said in an interview that he felt the game was incomplete when it was released, as development towards the end was apparently rushed in order to release the game on time. (Whoops!) Now it's time to move on to the unused stuff in the game's file system, of which there is a lot. As much. Unused graphics, objects, enemies, items, levels, sounds and more (!). In fact, there are SO many things that I literally can't list them all, so I suggest heading over to The Cutting Room Floor, after this video, if you want to see more.

The link is in the description! Well, we'll start with unused objects. First, there's that platform that was floating in the first image we saw earlier. While the smaller ones are already in the final game, the larger ones were not used. Speaking of screenshots, remember the yellow piranha plant with the stem removed? Well, there is actually an unused RED piranha plant with the stem in the game. Now you're probably saying, "Hey, the red variety IS in the final game, we saw it before!" However, that piranha plant is falling and is not simply invested in the game. This is a completely different and unused version, but it continues...let's say; "Where's the stalk?

All I can see is this strange fish..." Well, it turns out that that specific place in memory that contained the stalk was replaced by the Cheep Cheep sprite used when out of the water. Needless to say, the piranha plant was not intended to have a fish for a stem. Another unused enemy is the blue Swooper and if you played SMW, you should know that the final Swoopers are green. To get these unused enemies into the game, you can place a spawner that will create them at the same Y position as the spawner. Trying to jump on these enemies, like in the final game, will hurt Mario and will not defeat the Swooper.

So maybe this was the original intended functionality for the enemy, but it was changed to make the stages easier. Another thing about the Swoopers is that they are missing a frame from their flight animation. So after the team scrapped this color scheme, they had to replace what was in that frame with something else. What's interesting is that the Swooper's green color scheme was eventually changed to the unused blue color scheme for every other Mario game since then, and speaking of flying things, there are a couple of unused flying items that were originally supposed to be Mario had to collect.

One is a flying golden mushroom that, when collected, gives Mario an extra life. The other is a flying red coin and in case you don't know, there are no red coins in SMW. In fact, the first Mario game to have red coins was SMW2: Yoshi's Island, which was released 5 years later. This discarded coin moves to the right and when picked up, grants the player 5 coins, but not only was there an unused red coin, there is also an unused blue coin, except this one seems to work just like a normal coin. ..pretty disappointing...but these blue coins have a secret function when you press the P switch.

It turns them into magenta blocks, although they can still be collected like a normal coin because they probably never finished programming this item. Getting back to the flying things, there's also a very glitchy flying cage that wasn't used in the game. If you place it on the stage, Mario will automatically start inside it and if you also make the level auto-scroll, the cage will also move across the screen in a specific path. Someone (BMF54123 at TCRF) was kind enough to make a mockup of what they think it would have looked like if everything had been displayed correctly.

Also, that blue bird over there; some think that's the one holding the cage and it's also not used in the game... but we'll come back to that in a moment. Next, we will see an unused block, which just walking towards it will cause it to bounce and release a feather for the first time, but it will be empty. There is a problem with the graphics, however, because hitting the block will reveal a P-Switch that was obviously not intended to be shown. There is also another unused block in the game, but this one is just a normal question mark block... right?

Mistaken! This one was going to free a Koopa Troopa, who is hiding in his shell. However, if you wait long enough, he will come out of his shell and start walking as usual, but if you want to defeat this enemy, you cannot use fireballs, because fireball collision was not implemented for this Koopa. Below are some removed conveyor belts that use an animated version of the rope elf. They work as expected, but were never used in the final game. Another unused item that still works as expected are these medium-sized doors. Now, how would you expect them to behave?

Well, it turns out that these doors can only be opened and entered by little Mario and any other form of Mario will not be able to do so. Both the normal and P-Switch versions work perfectly in the game. The last unused item we're going to look at is this... grass. It is only used in 4 stages and looks and... acts like... grass. Now, I know I just said that the grass was the last unused object we would look at, but what I really meant was that it is the last unused STAGE object we would look at. We still have many more unused overworld objects to look at which, as the name implies, are objects that were meant to appear on the overworld map.

Like this unused Piranha Plant, which was supposed to be a decoration on the map. Unfortunately, your poor plant was never used, probably because the classic Piranha Plant with a stem was barely used in the final game... so why have a decoration with it? Although this Piranha Plant was just a decoration, the following unused objects actually have some functionality besides looking cool. Remember the flying cage mockup we saw earlier? Well, it is speculated that this bird designed for the overworld map was the one carrying the cage. In the overworld, the bird doesn't do much except follow Mario around the map, with the exception of Vanilla Dome, where he can't follow him.

Another unused overworld item is good old Lakitu. It works exactly the same as the bird, except it can't appear on ANY of the submaps, including Vanilla Dome. This item was supposed to appear in stages where Lakitus is present, but there's one thing... Lakitus only appears in submap stages... and the overworld Lakitu can't appear on the icons of those stages AT ALL, so In the end, we really don't know exactly what the purpose of this object was. The last overworld object we'll see is that this Koopa kid has never been used, technically they are used... in a way.

There are actually three of them on the final game map, but you can't see them because the path that makes them work was replaced by the corners in Star World. So what did they originally do? Well, it turns out that they work exactly the same as the hands in SMB3, which drag Mario to the stages. What's interesting is that the placement of these three Koopa kids doesn't make any sense, with the map layout, so it's likely that they were ruled out from the beginning and that the overworld used to be very, VERY different. Next, we have some unused sprites that have no functionality left... well, except this one;

Originally, jumping on Yoshi was supposed to spawn dust, and that's it. and although it was removed, you can always re-enable it with a Game Genie code, if you deem necessary. Now on to something that is much more interesting! It turns out that there is an early, not-yet-animated sprite of a Yoshi Berry that is loaded into memory every time you start a level, however, that spot in memory is overwritten with the final animated berry. Comparing both versions, the early berry is much rounder and brighter than the final version. There is actually one more, slightly later version of the berry in the game, which is a mix between the early and late iterations.

Another unused item is a text that says "5UP", which would have been used if you hit enough enemies in a row. Now in the final game it is impossible to achieve this because the bonus for hitting enemies is limited to 1UP, which is 8 enemies in a row, but there is a bug that allows us to see this. It turns out that the developers forgot to add this bonus limit when bouncing on Wigglers, so if you bounce on more than 8 of them, you will be able to see these additional bonuses, and everything that appears here after 3UP is not used.

Of these bonuses, only the 5UP item is still in the game, although it is not displayed correctly. Once you get past the 25 coin bonuses, the game starts giving you random bonuses, which are usually large amounts of coins and points. Moving on, remember these little birds that jump on top of Yoshi's house? Well, according to these unused animation frames, those birds were actually meant to fly. The cool thing is that while these birds never flew in SMW for the SNES, they did spread their wings in SMW for the GBA. If you find all the objectives in the GBA remake, you will be presented with a cutscene showing the same birds flying around Luigi in a hot air balloon.

Next up is the Dino Rhino, which, like the birds, has a few unused frames of animation. To present; In the final game, Dino Rhinos will not attack you... per se, however, if Mario jumps on them, they will turn into a Dino Torch, which will attack Mario with fire. Now, why do I mention this? Well, it originally looked like the big Dino Rhinoceros were going to attack Mario with fire as well, as evidenced by these unused animation frames and Yoshi's fireball spinning 90 degrees and placing it with the Dino Rhino sprites. It's funny though. These same animation frames that were not used in SMW were later used in Super Mario All-Stars for the SNES on SMB3.

Do you remember howIn that game the Kings transform into various creatures? Well, take a look at King of the World 3 and compare. Turns out all they did was change the color and add a crown! Interesting, huh? Now let's look at the Koopalings, specifically Iggy. Looking back at SMB3 as we have (many) done in this video, compare Iggy and Larry's hairstyle. Completely different, right? Iggy's hair goes in the front and Larry's hair goes in the back, so why in SMW do they both have the same hairstyle during boss battles? To make things even stranger, why is Iggy's hair at the end totally different from the rest of the game?

Well, it turns out that probably due to a team oversight, Iggy wears the same hair as Larry and here, unused in the game, is what his hair was supposed to look like. Notice how it comes out to the front like in SMB3, so in the end this unused hair sprite probably should have been used and Iggy having Larry's hair was probably just a mistake. (See? Even the developers behind SMW can't be perfect.) But we're not done with the Koopalings yet. According to some more unused animation frames, both Roy and Morton Koopa were going to spit fireballs at Mario as an attack. but how do we know from these frames that they are shooting and not...

I don't know, screaming...? Well, it's because these unused frames are more or less the same as Ludwing von Koopa's Fire Attack. Apparently, Roy and Morton were supposed to attack Mario with fire in the same way. The last set of unused graphics we'll look at are some unused parts of the title screen. Now, if you remember when we were talking about the North American title screen, you would recognize this unused graphic right away, as it appears in one of the images we saw earlier. However, something we haven't seen before is this "AND". and... the only place it probably would have gone is between 1990 and 1991 in the copyright text at the bottom of the screen.

Alright. We've finally reached the end of unused objects and graphics in SMW, but we're not done yet, in fact we have some unused stages to look at. Before we get to that, you might remember that some levels in the endgame have intros; like when entering a castle, for example. Well, there's an unused intro in the game where Mario looks at a sign that seems to say "no Yoshis allowed on stage." Which was never used in the final either. Interestingly, this introduction actually has three different backgrounds. Therefore, it is likely to be used quite a bit in many different stages.

An unused stage that this intro uses is a test level that has been named like this... "TEST" and if that wasn't enough for you to decide that this level was a test level, it also comes with a bunch of blocks of shifts that are formed. the word "TEST"... and an arrow. When you play this level, all you have to do is walk to the right, although under the T you will receive a 1-UP, but only if you pass these four points in order, which can only be seen in Lunar Magic (A SMW) . editor.) The arrow pointing down in this level only points to death because, unfortunately, that is the only way out of this level.

There are also three other test levels in this game. The first of them is a room to test boss battles. At the beginning you have two blocks of question marks. The one on the left holds a cape feather and the one on the right holds a fire flower. Beyond are nine doors. The first is Bowser, as evidenced by the "B". and the other eight are; Morton, Roy, Ludwig, Iggy, Larry, Reznor, Lemmy and Wendy, in that order. Going through these doors will take you to their respective boss battles, as expected. The next level of testing was designed to test the slopes and how they would work on vertical levels.

There's nothing too special here, although you do need to change the tileset to an unused one for the background to display correctly. Finally, the last stage of testing is just two blocks away from each other. It is probably used to test enemies that stick to walls, as evidenced by the two Hot Heads and two Sparkys moving around the blocks. The next three levels we will look at are for ghost house exits. While this first one isn't technically guaranteed to be an exit from the ghost house, as it's just a pipe and land, in the final game this land only appears in the ghost house stages, so that's enough to at least group them with the next two. unused levels.

This is certainly the exit to a ghost house, but it is missing the exit and arrow sign, as well as the doors to the house. And the last exit level of the ghost house is literally exactly the same as the previous one, but it includes clouds. There are also some entire levels that were removed as well. Although none of them can be completed. One of them is this underground cave with lava. Which, unfortunately, I wasn't able to fully work into the game, so enjoy this image of the stage instead of the gameplay video. It's not the most difficult level, but the good thing is that the orange platforms were going to sink into the lava.

As in Vanilla Dome 1. For those with technical knowledge you may be interested to know that this level, instead of using the lava from the underground tile set as would have been usual. He's using a generic lava item as you can see by the waves it contains. Which normally aren't there. Also. In fact, the pipe at the end is set up to allow Mario to enter, but there's no level he needs to go to, so it defaults to the bonus room. Which is normal if you don't tell a pipe or outlet where to go. The next almost complete level we'll look at is actually an early version of Wendy's castle, and it turns out that this is the only early version of a final level ever found in the game.

Although they look similar, they are definitely not. The interesting thing is that while this first version is easier in the first half, it is more difficult in the second half. At least for me, or I could just be terrible at Mario games... but anyway, once again you can't complete this level. This time it's because it's missing a door at the end that takes you to Wendy's boss battle. I'm sorry Mario, but you can never leave. Now that we're on the topic of unused early levels, there are two levels that we know for sure are from a fairly early version of SMW.

In the first, Mario jumps on mushroom scales. The interesting thing is that in the final game, when you place a mushroom scale, he automatically places a second one at a specific distance. However, at this stage you can clearly see that they are definitely not at a fixed distance. So that functionality must have been programmed later, but you're wondering, "How can we be sure that this stage is actually one of the first?" Well, look here. Those are the normal discarded Piranha Plants we saw earlier. They were scrapped fairly early, so using them in this level is incredibly interesting, to say the least, but perhaps the first unused level in the game is this stage, which has been dubbed "Ride Among the Clouds." Some say this level resembles levels 1-4 of SMB3, but there isn't enough resemblance to say for sure if that's what the level designers were going for.

This is also quite interesting. This unused stage features the removed platform we talked about earlier floating in the air, which when you step on it, starts moving to the right. At the end of the stage there is even a pipe, but as expected it leads nowhere. In fact, it's not even set up to be accessible. So after saying all that, it's obvious that this level was definitely never finished when the team scrapped it. To finish, I saved the best unused scenario for last! It's three bushes, nothing more, just bushes... now, I bet you thought we were done, I mean, we've talked about almost everything that isn't used in SMW, what else could there be?

Well, turns out it's time to look at the first sprites in a completely different game and technically it's not even a "game." In fact, there are some of the first SMW sprites in the SNES testing program, which was used by Nintendo's world-class service, to test and diagnose problems with the Super Nintendo and its accessories. There are actually a lot of differences between the sprites on this test cartridge and the final SMW version. However, many of them are 1 or 2 pixels different, so we'll only focus on the biggest changes that were made, starting with these blocks that look similar to their SMB3 counterparts.

You probably remember them from the first images we saw a while ago right now. Another early elf we saw in these images was an early fireflower that is present and accounted for on this test cart. Raccoon Mario also appears in these sprites. However, it's just the blade and two Mario poses. The first one was obviously used for the end of the levels. The other one, however, is very interesting. Some think it may have been used when Mario spins his tail or when Mario hits the rotating fence panels, but we can't be completely sure since there are no other sprites to help us answer this mystery.

There are also some other discarded Mario sprites that were seen in some of the early images. The first one is from Super Mario and if you compare them side by side with the final version you can see that the previous version is more saturated but that's not it No... no, no, no... well, okay, maybe it's for Super Mario... but it's not for little Mario and here he is now and yes, as you can clearly see, he has changed in more ways than one. In fact, it's the same little Mario we saw in those first images of the world map.

Interesting, right? We didn't see the following sprites in the first images, but we did talk about them before. They are those unused bonds that we had never seen, because they were corrupt, but here they are in perfect condition. There is also another sprite that would have been used as a placeholder for when Mario presses the P switch, at least until the secondary sprite of the swappable item has been created and moving on to the next unused sprite, it is a crushed *Galoomba, which means that these enemies in SMW were meant to function like Goomas in previous Mario games instead of the final functionality, where jumping on them simply flipped them over.

However, the most interesting discarded sprite to me is this Fire Piranha Plant seen before in SMB3, like almost everything else. Unlike the normal Piranha Plant, this enemy was never in SMW and has also never been found in the game's memory. As someone noticed, with the mouth open the head doesn't fit properly on the stem, as it is attached by the mouth for some... strange reason. So, we finally reached the end! The only thing left to talk about is this unused sound effect in the game. While some speculate that it was eventually used in SMW2: Yoshi's Island, I couldn't find the sound in Yoshi's Island so I can't say for sure that it is... so why don't you give it a listen if you want?

You know exactly where it's from, let me know. *This sound effect is used in SMW2: Yoshi's Island. It's the sound the expansion blocks make when you hit them.* That's SMW development! There were so many things that changed in those three years of development that I could never identify a single change that I thought was good or bad. Really, this entire development story could be summed up by saying that the team was creating something new directly from the old. They basically started it all with a port of SMB3 and kept making change after change until it finally became what SMW is today...

One of the best Mario games of all time! So this has been Beta64 with the development of SMW. Thanks for watching! *SMW course clear topic* Subtitles by Brodie, Evan Streblow, FSC 89, Furutaka7575 and Redstonian101