It was Friday morning. I had ordered a Super Mario World cartridge for my dust-collecting SNES on eBay. I’d always wanted to play the original game, and today was the day it was going to arrive. Now, I'd been waiting for a week, so when it came, I was very excited to start playing. But that excitement went away. I sprinted over to the SNES with the cartridge, aware of the adventures I’d have with this game. But, as soon as I powered it on, I knew something was…off. There was no Nintendo logo. It just read “-presents-”, sitting alone in the middle of the screen. The title screen was strange also. Mario didn’t hop on Yoshi or kick any Koopas. Instead, he looked around nervously and stayed silent. No matter what he did, he couldn’t get the screen to scroll to the right. Eventually, he just crouched on the ground. The whole scene slowly got darker until I could barely see Mario. Then, a silhouette Mario appeared and walked toward him. This silhouette Mario started jumping on him, the screen got brighter again, and then the game froze with that buzzing sound you hear on those badly made anti-piracy screens. I immediately restarted the console, wondering if this was just a glitch or something more sinister. After the reboot, the text now said “Nintendo presents”. The title screen was normal, and I could begin playing. At this point, players will usually get a message that reads “Welcome! This is Dinosaur Land. In this strange land, we find that Princess Toadstool is missing again!”. But now it read “You…you can help me…”. I knew at this point that something was very wrong. Who knew my name, and what did do they want me to help them with? After that was over, I was on the iconic world map of Yoshi’s Island. But this time, there were no twists and turns in the path. It was just a straight line. The first course was named “HE WAS HERE AND DESTROYED IT ALL”. Were they talking about that Shadow Mario from earlier? Anyway, I started to play. This level resembled Yoshi’s Island 1, but there were a few changes. No power-ups were available, which obviously meant this was going to be a hard playthrough. Then there were the enemies. Tons of them, but they weren’t moving. I rushed through the level, not knowing what was about to happen. As I touched the end goal, a text box appeared that said “Turn Back”. Then the “time’s running out” tune played, followed by silence. As I started walking towards the left, all the enemies were turned into this weird, sideways Luigi. It took a while until I noticed that the eyes were following me. I thought, “What does this all mean? Why is Luigi sideways? Why do I have to turn back?” And when I thought about that last sentence, about turning back, the game somehow responded by freezing the game to show me a text box, reading, “Do you really want to know?” I was scared half to death when I read this text. As soon as I finished reading this text, the level ended. I had touched some invisible goal, and it was all over. At least, that’s what I thought. When I was back on the world map, it actually looked normal this time. So this time I decided to take a break. I came back after five minutes, ready to play again.
I went to Yoshi’s House, only to find…no baby Yoshis in sight. There was only one grown-up Yoshi, and when he hatched, he didn’t say “Thank you for rescuing me!”. He stated, “I am Yoshi. I will protect you from the forces trying to harm you.” Finally, something in this game was trying to protect me. But before he could say anything, Shadow Mario walked on-screen and jumped onto Yoshi’s back. He screamed, “GET OFF OF ME!”, but then the game froze again. I reached out to reset the console, but then the screen switched to complete whiteness. Except that Shadow Mario, standing alone in the middle of the screen. “I think it’s time we really get to know each other, yes?” he said, but this time he actually had a Luigi voice to go along with the text boxes. “I am Shadow Mario. I’m the one who’s trapped inside your SNES copy of Super Mario World.” I knew the whole time someone, or something, was messing with the cartridge. Shadow Mario continued. “I have one final request. Play my level, and I will be able to escape this cartridge,” he said. “We will both be free of this curse.” This time, the text box actually gave me two options: yes or no. I didn’t want to inflict any more damage on Shadow Mario, so I chose yes. The screen faded to black, then faded to a ground level (with music this time). This level was somewhat simple. At the end of the level, just enter a pipe to enter an underground room. In this room were a key and a key slot. I picked up the key and walked towards the key slot. The iconic sound of finding a key exit played as the screen faded back to white. “Thank you,” Shadow Mario said, “I may now rest in peace”. Then the cartridge started shaking, and the ending credits started to play. At the end, the text “Thank you” appeared on the screen. I knew now that I could play my cartridge in peace.
