[No Commentary] Super Mario Bros. -- #7. World 7
0In case you find the original, two-hour, babbling puppet show somehow preferable:
https://youtu.be/qbHFlMw8g-U
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Well, that's already almost the entirety of the game in the books as it is... what could possibly go wrong from here on out?
A lot, actually... but also... not? I imagine World 7 is one that doesn't actually get a lot of visitors, and of those that stop by, I can't imagine it makes much of a unique impression.
Its claim to fame for my money has always been its Bill Blasters. Sure, we've seen them before, and even just Bullet Bills launched at us from sights unseen... but we've never quite had so many to worry about at one time! And the entire first stage is absolutely packed with tense moments and terrain like this!
The remainder of the World is... far less unique, however. World 7-2 and 7-3 happen to be pretty much EXACTLY like their counterparts in... World 2? That can't be right!
I say they're the same... but they're absolutely crawling with foes in concentrations I can scarcely believe to be true! Bloopers are frequently notable nuisances as they are, but now we've got them in multiples, as the meandering Cheep-Cheeps mosey on by.
You really might find yourself overwhelmed through no actual fault of your own, as this overwound clockwork catastrophe runs amok all over you!
That's why it's honestly best to try to tackle the thing as relatively quickly as you can manage. Slip by those pesky squids and leave them behind! No, really, they'll stop being able to chase you if you scroll far enough past them!
The next stage is even closer to its original, they just cranked up the flying fish factory and you'll be even more vulnerable to their attacks. Same deal as before they recycled it and eerily like the preceding stage's proceedings... just go fast. reasonably, though. It's easy to overdo it and dig your own early grave instead...
The reasons in the case of Flying Cheep-Cheeps is even simpler, however... they're designed to jump in arcs above and around and occasionally right at your current location. Moving along at a fair pace will cause then to add the screen scroll to their airborne velocity. This will make the ones going straight for you flounder behind, the ones trying to land in front of you will overshoot by an impressive margin, and that just means you need to be wary of bumping into the ones trying to leap above and behind you.
Maintaining onward movement and simply modulating your speed in response to fishy threats as they appear will keep you much safer from the widest possible variety of aerial assaults.
This is also why you'll be most vulnerable if you stop, like trying to pick up a handy life-prolonging pick-me-up, especially with the higher concentration of foes afoot. It then becomes a lot more like trying to find a safe gap in a Hammer Bro.'s attack arc... except from all sides at once.
Thankfully, it's not a very long level, no matter how you end up tackling it... even a really sketchy run with lots of mistakes and near-misses only needs to go on for so long before you're in the clear.
World 7-4 is another one of those strange "puzzle" castle situations... I'm not really sure I can be objective about whether or not each one is intrinsically tricky... or just that I happen to already have a certain level of familiarity not only with each one, but also the mindset under which each was apparently designed.
In this case... I just plain have no idea! As I mentioned, this is presumably one of the least-traveled Worlds in the whole game, and the final stage within it would therefore be exceedingly esoteric to many... ... ... well, that includes me as well, if only for a change of pace!
All I can say is that there are only so many paths, and you can possibly eliminate some options as infeasible or unreasonable. I myself was especially torn over whether I expected them to want Mario to run across tiny gaps or make an especially precarious jump through a hot zone.