Preliminary: Wow. Ok. What incredible music. I assume Hubbard? The Sound in between levels is soooooooooooooo good and absurd. That's good because uh, it's like a clunkier/less-well-made first Mario. Here I was, already through the first "Castle" (stage 4). Looks like there are 32 or 33 total levels. Here goes nothing.

Look: 8/10 Cute, functional, nothing spectacular but very good for C64, cute concept and like that it's femme lead characters, and absurd but endearing references/copying of the first Mario.

Sound: 9/10 Oh, I read somebody say Hubbard but it's in fact Chris Huelsbeck. Great music! It does get a bit repetitive since it's the same 2(?) tracks I believe. Still, both are bangers. (Wowwwwww, the ending/credits song. It's incredible!!!!!!!!!. That could boost this to a 10 some day if I replay it, especially with the between-level sound effects... wow)

Play: 8/10 I do like your projectile thing... definitely not as well-programmed as the NES Mario but still fun to use. Despite incredibly clunky mechanics, this still is one of the best C64 platformers I've played. The jumps can actually be manipulated by how long you press Up. Huge! It's like playing a clunkier Mario, with great music, and an absurd concept/Look ha. You'll notice a lot of things you expect are missing, like no shells to pick up, enemies become transparent/passable after you hit them, or harming enemies by jumping up to the block they're on, the run-between-platforms-separated-by-one-space (an endearing feature of the first Mario), and so on. I like the honing mechanism of the Double Lightning power-up :-p Sometimes it caused issues tho when there were multiple enemies it could target, it didn't pick the logical one. And I'm glad it doesn't do the endless spawn of enemies that a lot of the arcade games from 87 liked to do. Like, let me backtrack a bit and deal with what's there before new enemies spawn, let alone infinite spawns of the ones I had to backtrack for/stress about!

Feel: 9/10 Lol that they had the usually-secret-accessing upper area of the "cave" levels, but there were no secrets at the end :-p (apparently there are warps tho). Like with the first Mario I'm just playing through. Not trying to find any secrets, refer to any guides, etc. just pure fun. The worst parts were when it reminded me of Mario Lost Levels, with like the "press to the right while falling at the right time" exploitation of quirks, and the moments it reminded me of a frustrating C64 platformer. The best parts were the parts that reminded me of the first Mario and its own momentum/fun--pure fun. Some of its unique elements that were cute were the aforementioned honing mechanism to the upgraded Lightning power-up, and the way you could see power-ups/clocks "peeking" out of the boxes you could get them out of :-p

It's funny, despite its many faults, I just could not put it down. Like I wanted to step out to say something to Michael, or earlier when I wanted to play a different game etc, but I just kept thinking "okay one more level." The levels are short enough that you keep wanting to push through. And tho the quirks never become endearing, you do get used to them (to an extent) and sometimes you clear out a later level (i.e., level 26 for me) feeling like you speedran it and feeling good at it :-p Always a good feeling. Plus the keep-doing-the-next-level factor, I believe, was super strong in the first Mario too so if their goal was to do a C64 copy of Mario, they succeeded! Not many games can get me to keep pushing to the next level despite reasons to take a break.

Attachment: 9/10 Welp, here I am already on Stage 17 after first play session. In many ways this game reminds me of when I try to program games ha. But it certainly is endearing. And gets you hooked in. (Pretty lame repeated bosses, but then again so did the first Mario)

Welp no one was running Nex on OSRS, so I went uh right back to this game! That definitely says something lol. The next boss was yet again the same flying dragon thingy. This is like a C64 platformer, with their pixel perfect (despite being square/awkward sprites with mediocre collision masks) stand-right-there-and-jump mechanics, meets the first Mario. Cuz like it had some Mario style momentum to its movement but didn't seem to matter for the jumps, which is a classic C64 trope: just stand at the right spot on the platform and the right direction of jump etc and you'll get where you want. Don't need that run buildup like in the Marios.

Wait lol we are back to the original boss at Stage 24. I'm so close to the end and it's almost movie/bed time and I didn't get to boss and yada yada. But here I was. Playing on. Annnnnnd back to the dragon boss lol with the exact same pattern as before....

Booooo, hattttte the Lost Levels style Level 32. If you keep going like you're supposed to, you hit an unmarked dead end.... so I had to kill myself and check the StrategyWiki after all... I prefered the straightforward fun Apparently that revealed that there are bonus stages and warp areas.... that increases the replayability but still didn't like that mechanic at all. Without my power-up, this was much more frustrating. And I still wasn't sure where the secret exit was... (omg turns out I passed it again lol). Lol and after all that... the final boss was a joke... and glitched so I accidentally killed it by landing on it when I should have died? Super lame last normal level and boss. And this is the ending heh (greatttttt ending song tho)

Completion: Main Story Playtime: ~50 mins