Mario Forever has always held its status as one of the staples in the early 2000s Super Mario fangame community. Through its bizarre nature, unconventional level design, and unique soundtrack, it has not been forgotten in the eyes of quite a few individuals. And now, nearly two decades after the fact, it gets a completely out-of-the-blue, full-fledged remake on Super Mario World’s engine.

I want to preface the bulk of this write-up by saying that as a remake, this hack passes with flying colors. Countless elements have been lovingly recreated, whether it be the extra powerups/enemies/bosses, the cutscenes and visual effects, the Amiga scene music (the song used in the tank levels is, as the kids these days would call it, a “banger”), or everything in between.

The general design philosophy, on the other hand… it’s a whole different ball-game, and is it ever in the seventh-inning stretch. As someone who has an affinity for The Lost Levels and has beaten it on many different occasions, I’m all for advanced difficulty in Mario hacks, but there’s a fine line between “expert difficulty” and “cheap trial-and-error”. Some of the deviations of formulaic Mario functions definitely had me raising an eyebrow or two (Poison Mushrooms being instant death, not being able to scroll the screen with L and R), but the numerous “gotcha” traps and situations where the only way out was death just weren’t fun. Though I was able to push through all eight worlds of the main game, the Human Lab, the Lost Map, and Funny Tanks? on my own (it should be noted that only levels in the secret worlds have checkpoints), the Hardcore Worlds very much pushed me to my absolute limit in terms of tolerance. (Good luck finding any of the hidden warps without a guide, by the way!)

It wasn’t until the Roto-Disc hell that was Hardcore 2-4 that I threw in the towel and started indulging in the forbidden, arcane practice known as “save state abuse”. I never, ever like to do this, but after Mario met an untimely demise from a lethal waffle for the fiftieth time, my well of patience had fully dried up. The Bowser fight at the end was a complete joke, not unlike the ones near the beginning of the game, and it felt like nothing short of a slap in the face. All of this very much makes the game show its age, and it’s all too reminiscent of what gives ROM hacks such a negative reputation in the eyes of the general gaming public to this very day.

Upon reaching World 9, it being advertised as a brand-new remake-exclusive secret world, I expected a reprieve from some of the antagonistic design I had seen in the two previous worlds in favor of some more modernized, sensible craftsmanship. However, I couldn’t have been more wrong. As expected from a bonus world, the difficulty had reached its peak, but in a way that I have seldom seen before - the last stretch of levels, chock-full of enemies/pits and stingy with power-ups, had me pressing those demonic hotkeys more than I’d like to admit. The true final level deserves special mention, as not only is it extremely long (you don’t get a checkpoint until the boss), but that very boss is… ludicrous, to put it very lightly. The fact that it has four and a half health bars is astonishingly the least of its problems, but it feels spectacularly overbearing even for a Mega Man game, let alone a Mario game. I fail to see how any sane person would be able to beat it without either save state abuse or spending days upon days learning every single aspect of it by heart (with some generous RNG thrown in for good measure).

I want to close this out by saying that it’s not at all the ROM hackers’ fault that this turned out the way it did. I must reiterate that as a remake of the original Mario Forever, it’s essentially flawless, and I do applaud the great amount of effort put into it. But the game it’s remaking unfortunately doesn’t stand the test of time, and the extra content doesn’t do it any favors. I sadly cannot recommend it.