YMMV / Shobon no Action

• Awesome Music: The game's overworld theme is set to the Cheetahmen theme from Action 52, its underworld theme is the main song of Spelunker, and the castle theme is the stage 1 theme of Ghosts 'n Goblins.
• Crosses the Line Twice: A Platform Hell game filled to the brim with Invisible Blocks, Kaizo Traps, and Everything Trying to Kill You, and you'll probably be laughing rather than screaming every time you die just because of how ridiculous it is.
• Difficulty Spike: The second world contains level design, obstacles, and puzzles that are far more devious and rely on trial-and-error than the first world's.
• Fan Nickname: "Cat Mario" and "Neko Mario" are nicknames for the game itself, due to being a Super Mario Bros. clone where most of the cast is replaced by cats. The historical spelling Syobon Action was a accidental example of this, which found itself being used in various fan projects like Open Syobon Action, Syobon Action 2, Syobon Action Halloween Edition, etc.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • This game is nicknamed Cat Mario, due to being a Super Mario Bros. clone where you play as a cat. Years later, Super Mario 3D World features a cat suit that allows the real Mario to become Cat Mario.
  • As stated on the front page, the game is sometimes called Dongs.exe. Fast forward to around 2013-2014, and then a meme called "Expand Dong" comes to exist based on Donkey Kong 64's box art... Donkey Kong obviously being a character in the Mario universe. Then flash forward to 2023, and another Donkey Kong meme from The Super Mario Bros. Movie ends up summing up Shobon no Action rather concisely: Donkey Kong laughing at Cat Mario before suddenly saying "Now you die."
• Memetic Mutation: "Oh my god, it's a Pedobear!"^Explanation Cauchemar's reaction to the Pedobear-inspired enemy from level 2 has become a popular reaction to the titular Memetic Molester himself, with many edits and remixes being made of the original clip.
• Paranoia Fuel: Like any good Platform Hell game, the game is built upon subverting your expectations of 2D platformer games to murder you at every single opportunity, especially when you least expect it. Expect everything to try to kill you, even especially if it looks safe.
• Porting Disaster: An unofficial Chinese Adobe Flash port gained popularity through various well-known online lets players (most notably Markiplier and PewDiePie), in some cases outclassing the original's. Many of the tricks that could be done in the original are not present, the controls and physics are more slippery, hitboxes were altered- usually for the worse, and all the unique songs of the original are replaced with Super Mario Bros. 3 music. To top it off, Stage 4 is no longer passable in one life^note The On/Off block at the beginning of the level only alters the length of the first two Firebars, lengthening the first but shortening the second allowing you to pass under it, but in the Flash port, it affects all of them, including the two immediately before the checkpoint, forcing you to pass through both Firebars at their maximum length, followed by one more right after the checkpoint placed in such a way that you cannot pass it. Thankfully the bars readjust their length after death.. This port also adds two levels, but they're not the Level 5 and Level 6 from Syobon Action 2, instead they are cheap modifications to Level 1, removing just about everything but the area leading to the flagpole. Level 5 is made into an endurance on the elevators seen at the end of Level 2 but with no special tricks to them, and Level 6 is just a long, repetitive sprint under a row of falling block ceilings.

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