Super Demo World: The Legend Continues is the first full-length ROM hack of Super Mario World and one of the longest. Created by the creator of the popular Level Editor Lunar Magic, FuSoYa (who also made a simpler predecessor called Demo World a few years before) and his brother Zero-G, it contains pretty much all the features it was possible to have in a Super Mario World hack at the time. Containing 120 exits, it is known for its relatively high difficulty and the large amount of puzzles involved, which often require deep knowledge of the game's physics.
The Excuse Plot is as follows: Mario's breakfast eggs were stolen by Bowser and he [Mario] has to get them back before they hatch. What seems simple at first, however, starts to get a little deeper in World 4's Vacant Ghost House...
Tropes:
- All the Worlds Are a Stage: Star World is like this; every world receives a level based on it here, accessed from the respective world. Additionally, it contains the Backdoor Star World, which provides a shortcut to Bowser's Castle, the Secret Star World, which leads to Star World's Bonus Stage, and the entrance to Big Boo's World. Big Boo's World's first level is also called "Big Boo's Star Road" and has the same mechanics as the Star World levels.
- Big Bad: Bowser. He stole Mario's breakfast eggs!
- Big Bad Duumvirate: However, The Big Boo is the Big Bad of his own world, and Bowser helped him get there.
- Bittersweet Ending: Mario's breakfast eggs hatch before he can eat them. Oh well!
- Bonus Stage: One is accessible via secret exits in every world. They all contain capes and fire flowers, and most contain Yoshi as well. They also all have a unique "gray box" item that you can bring to other levels. Big Boo's Secret contains them all.
- Boss-Arena Idiocy: The Big Boo doesn't have to include three throw blocks (the exact amount needed to defeat him) in his boss room, but he does.
- Briar Patching: In Big Boo's Star Road, the Big Boo informs Mario that using the key and keyhole will lead to him. If you fall for it (although due to the Star World mechanics and map structure, it's obviously a trap), you will be locked out of Big Boo's World forever.
- Checkpoint Starvation: Not as bad as other hacks, but Big Boo's Tower in particular has no checkpoints at all up until the very end. Have fun dying.
- Cranium Ride: You can ride on Mega Moles, just as in the original. In fact, one level in Crystal Cavern consists entirely of this.
- Creator Cameo: In the level "...?", which is the entrance to Big Boo's World, sprites representing FuSoYa and Zero-G are seen arguing.
- Demoted to Extra: Yoshi in general is a lot less common than he was originally, being mostly restricted to the Bonus Stages. In fact, Red Yoshi is the only colored Yoshi to appear in a regular level, and only once.
- Developer's Foresight: The secret exit in the third castle involves a "tide" layer ... but the game also lets you bring a message box anywhere in any levels to get hints. The message box messes with the tide layer, but the message box in that castle also lets you know about a particular hint about dropping into a pit. Dropping into said pit has said room dry, as if the water was drained beforehand.
- Disc-One Final Dungeon: Bowser's Castle could be considered this. Although it seems like The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, you have to visit it before Big Boo's World, which contains the real final dungeon.
- Easter Egg: The gray box item in Water Secret is a message block. You can bring it to any level to read the messages there. Most of them are just random trivia, but some give hints on secret exits and the like.
- Evil Tower of Ominousness: Big Boo's Tower is a Marathon Level composing of 100 floors without a midpoint.
- Exact Words: The Needle in a Stack of Needles mentioned below has a message box taunting the player about it, saying they won't even be able to tell that the keyhole directly beneath said box is a fake. Because it isn't one.
- Excuse Plot: Although it gets a little more complex once the Boos get thrown into the mix...
- Fake Difficulty: Cocks its head relatively quickly in Misty Star Road, which is a marathon of an auto-scrolling level that, in order to put the key to the lock, expects for you to haul a P-Switch from before the mid-point to the end of the stage, as well as being a very wide stage in general that expects you to quickly switch between feather and flower to destroy blocks. Not bad in itself (other than the autoscrolling), but it also tends to throw unbreakable blocks in with the identical breakable blocks that can just screw you over there. Water Star Road is a repeat of auto-scrolling key nonsense, in that you need to haul a Silver P-Switch past the point you'd think you'd use it by going under the screen and find the key later, as well as bouncing from Star Block to Star Block to get to the end without having to contend with the myriad of hazards on the way. By the way, this stage is wide too so you might miss one completely. It's rather alarming that the non-autoscrolling stages on that map tend to be quite simple in comparison.
- Returns for an encore in Pipe World 5. The reason being the introduction of orange munchers which are a hazard that have broken collision (they have two different apparent heights, but as far as collision is concerned they're either all the way out or not), cannot be killed in any way, cannot be ducked under if they're a single block above you when you're riding Yoshi, can hit you from standing next to them if you're on Yoshi, and damage you directly even if you're on Yoshi. Basically they're awful and cheap, and every level they show up in in guaranteed to be fucking awful.
- More broadly, the sloppy way the game is put together means you'll get hit by things you couldn't see in advance when going through scrolling pipes on an alarming basis (usually Piranha plants that come out the other side of the pipe, but not always), and sprite overload causing either terrible slowdown or things to simply not load where they're supposed to, which is most egregious when going for the secret exit of Desert World 2, where some platforms will fail to appear where they were before when you're hauling a P Switch back to where you need it to be.
- Gimmick Level: Ice World Igloo, where it's so cold that Mario's fireballs turn to ice. Basically, this means you can freeze coins and Munchers into safe and solid platforms.
- Guide Dang It!: In the original game, the feature of silver P-Switches to turn Munchers into coins was never used. Despite that, you need to understand said feature to complete several levels, not all of which are even secrets.
- Hard Levels, Easy Bosses: The castles, as with all levels, are all new and very difficult, but the bosses are identical to the original, since custom bosses weren't possible at the time of release. The one exception is in Big Boo's Tower, since, while the boss itself can't be edited, the arena can, and now has only exactly the three ice blocks needed to defeat the Big Boo. It's still easy in comparison to the level, though, and you get a Checkpoint before the fight.
- Infinite 1-Ups: As mentioned above, if you use a key... creatively in Pipe World 1, you can cause a certain block to spawn infinite lives.
- Infinity +1 Sword: A special Power-Up in Big Boo's Secret, almost certainly the last location visited, upgrades Mario's fireballs to the equivalent of Yoshi's fire ability.
- Lock and Key Puzzle: This hack is what made this trope so popular in Super Mario World hacks in general. Many levels and secret exits require you to move several P-Switches, keys, and springboards throughout the level in a specific order. Desert Pyramid and Desert World 2's secret exit both require this extensively.
- Magical Mystery Doors: The regular exit for Vacant Ghost House. It's the door you entered through; the others are useless.
- Marathon Level: Misty Star World and especially Big Boo's Tower. It's 100 incredibly difficult floors of vertical platforming.
- Needle in a Stack of Needles: Big Boo World 3's secret exit involves finding a key in gigantic stacks of P-Switches and throw blocks disguised as keys. Turn Layer 1 off on your emulator and all that's left are P-Switches and the real key.
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Nintendo Hard: Much more difficult in general than the original game. A few levels, such as the castle for world four, verge on Platform Hell. - Nostalgia Level: Misty Isle 4 has the exact same level design as the first level of Super Mario Bros. 3. You can even use the white block to access the secret exit. Two levels from SMB 3's Pipe Maze are also copied later.
- Number of the Beast: Floor 66 of Big Boo's Castle is just a ton of "666" blocks everywhere. Nothing else.
- Offscreen Start Bonus:
- Mario reaches Sky World 3's secret exit by flying behind the starting point.
- You have to get a key straight above the starting point as part of Desert World 2's complex secret exit.
- Permanently Missable Content:
- The Star World levels' normal exits, and therefore the paths they unlock, are lost if the secret exit is reached first. Entirely on purpose, since the secret exit turns the level into a warp (which means it's impossible to escape without getting one of the secret exits).
- This applies to Big Boo's Star Road (the first level of Big Boo's World), and The Big Boo attempts to lock you out of his world permanently by tricking you into getting the easy secret exit first.
- Post-End Game Content: Big Boo's World is effectively this, since you must access the secret exit of Bowser's Castle, ostensibly the last level, to reach it.
- Save the Princess: However, it's so incidental to the plot that the game doesn't bring it up at all until you clear the seventh castle.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: After going through the entire game to retrieve the seven stolen breakfast eggs, Mario defeats Bowser, marches home triumphantly... and then the eggs hatch. "Oh well..."
- Skeleton Key: One of the gray box items available at Big Boo's Secret is a flying key. You can bring it to any level to access secret exits that might've been missed otherwise.
- Tech-Demo Game: As said by the page quote, this hack shows what Lunar Magic can do with Super Mario World levels
- The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Bowser's Castle, of course. But really, Big Boo's Tower. It could be called a Bonus Dungeon, though.
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Trolling Creator: The secret messages in most of the Crystal Cavern levels (which you can read with the Message Block you get from Water Secret) and an extremely secret location hidden deep in Big Boo's Secret seem to hint at some sort of compatibility between Lunar Magic and Super Mario World's Updated Re-release, Super Mario Advance 2. As of Lunar Magic 2.11, a full 10 years after the release of this hack, there's nothing but a simple, third-party, level importer. - Warp Whistle: As in the original, the Star World works like this. However, Permanently Missable Content makes this much more difficult.
