thumbs are sore again but mechanical demands aside, the game is delightful, sprite designs are unbearably cute, narrative is immaculate. [playable character spoiler]'s mobility made the second half of the game much easier than the first for me, which may be an instincts/playstyle thing (and I'm sure getting better at the game as a whole was a factor too), which genuinely made up for a lot of the frustration I felt in the first half... it felt like payoff.

I maintain two caveats:

1. the game is advertised as a Mario 3 tribute but it definitely carries the lineage of challenge romhacks and Mario Maker; if you only played the original game, expect significantly more demanding challenges than you remember. if I'm honest, a nagging sense of inaccurate advertising was part of that initial frustration; but taken for what it actually is, none of this is a flaw — just some mixed messaging.

2. it really needs some accessibility options. like I said, my thumbs are sore! despite being eager to keep going once I hit the mid-game shakeup, I forced myself to take a night off because I was still feeling it from the previous session. ironically, the problem is that at baseline they faithfully recreated the Mario 3 controls — which means you are holding Run nearly always (and by default it's right next to Jump, meaning you frequently need to press the latter with the middle of your thumb which is frankly harder to deal with on a modern controller than it was on much smaller, lower-button-profile NES).

with those things said: buy this game immediately, it is GAY and GOOD!

personal control scheme accessibility wishlist below the cut!

Just adding that I watched the majority of this playthrough and can confirm;

it is GAY and GOOD!