YMMV / Mario Forever

• Awesome Music: Besides of a selection of Mario songs, Mario Forever has a Public Domain Soundtrack which uses various songs that are normally associated with the game.
  • World 8's theme, titled Federation, starts off bleak but ends with a very epic sounding, with a feeling that you're going through Hell itself just to kick ass and give Bowser the beatdown he deserves. What's even better is when you play the third and fourth levels, that bleak start gets skipped entirely and the epic portion plays immediately.
  • Apolexy Tanks, used for the two tank levels in World 8, is northing short of awesome as well. You're faced with the brute of Bowser's forces, and they're not holding back.
  • World 6's main theme is actually "Speed-E Boy" track from Jaguar XJ220 - an Amiga 500 game where you race in the namesake supercar across many tracks. Quite funky and groovy tune for Mario Forever standards. It gets faithfully recreated for SNES ROM hack version without significant loss of quality.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Gray Spinies and Cheep Cheeps are introduced in the lategame and for a good reason. Both of them No-Sell anything you throw at them.
  • The pink/red Piranha Plants introduced in World 6 fire rapidly and can be really hard to defeat if they're hanging from upside-down, which 6-3 and 8-4 have.
  • Fire Bros behave more erratically than their Super Mario Bros 3 counterparts. They're exclusive to the postgame levels though.
• Older Than They Think: It is very often said that the game was released in 2004, but it actually wasn't released in that year. The oldest known version, 1.15, was released on September 8, 2003, but is considered lost.
• Polished Port: The SNES ROM version is considered to be a really good port of Mario Forever that plays exactly like the original, albeit a few small differences here and there. There's even a few exclusive levels added too. Due to the saving mechanics of the game, it's also far more forgiving than the original PC version (if you got a game over in the PC version, you'd have to start over from the beginning of the world. In the SNES version, you don't have to worry about replaying certain levels). In addition, all of the SNES music is now pitched correctly.
• That One Level:
  • 5-1 is when the game decides to take off its gloves and hit hard. Lots of enemies such as Spinies and Bullet Bills are prevalent throughout and there are a lot of small jumps you need to perfect if you want to beat the level. The PC version even introduces the Poison Mushroom in that very level.
  • 6-2 is considered a major roadblock, as it's a Pipe Maze where you have to guess certain pipes correctly to proceed. The problem is there are multiple pipes to choose from and almost every single one of them will take you back to the starting section. There's also sections that are completely unnecessary too. To show how confusing the layout is, one of the pipes you have to go through involves going up a pipe you literally came out from, something that most players wouldn't even begin to think is possible. And once you finish the maze, you're not done yet. You have to deal with a small gauntlet of Hammer Bros and falling land (if you stand on certain land, it'll fall down quickly). That's right, if you're caught off guard from that final stretch, you have to repeat the pipe maze again. The layout is also wobbly and disorienting too.
  • 7-2 might be short, but it's definitely not a fun ride. You're underwater with Cheep Cheeps that home in after you and black spiny ones that No-Sell your attacks. Have fun trying to maneuver through the water while avoiding these fish.
  • 7-4 is pretty unkind as well. It's long for a castle level, and it introduces rapid firing Lava Bubbles which have random patterns, meaning you could be right in its line of fire. There's also several unforgiving segments that will guarantee a lost life if you mess up. And just for the game to remind you it's a water themed world, it throws in one last segment which is partially underwater, which has those same exact fish mentioned in 7-2. You'll probably end up rushing through Bowser to beat this one.
  • 9-2, included in v6.0, is infamous for its difficulty. The level is filled with various glitches and bugs, a Lakitu that constantly throws Spinies, two roto-discs at the beginning that are tricky to avoid (and they even one-shot you regardless of which power-up you currently have), not helped by the fact that the entire World 9 has a bug in every level which causes a softlock and doesn't even allow you to progress to the next level^note This bug was fixed in v7.01, however.