When Super Mario All-Stars was released in late-1993 it only contained the four Super Mario games released for the NES. Little over a year later a second version of All-Stars was released exclusively for console bundles, this time including Super Mario World. This version was, to the best of my knowledge, only ever made available in the US and Europe. It never saw a release in Japan.

This version of Super Mario World is my favourite because of one subtle change - they created an entirely new Luigi sprite-set from scratch.

If you played the original Super Mario World (and if you ever owned or so much as looked as a SNES, chances are you have) you’ll know that Luigi is pretty much just Mario with the reds palette-swapped to greens. This is particularly noticeable in his death sprite, where part of the inside of his mouth is tinted green.

But after having gone to the trouble of differentiating Luigi for the All-Stars versions of the games (basing the new sprites for SMB, SMB: The Lost Levels and SMB3 on his appearance in SMB2), just slapping the original Mario World onto the cart didn’t seem quite right, and so Luigi ended up with his own sprite set.

But they did more than just make Luigi a little taller and a different-shaped head. Luigi’s entire way of moving was altered. They didn’t dick about with the physics, but they did change his body language. Gone was the traditional Mario jump, with one fist in the air and one leg raised higher than the other. Luigi lunged with both legs, and raised them ready to land upon descent. No longer did Luigi throw fireballs from his hands as his stout brother did - he spat them. He didn’t throw the V-for-victory hand signal when he finished a level anymore, instead opting to cross his arms like a badass.

It is, without a doubt, Luigi’s finest appearance in a Mario game.

When the time came to port Super Mario World to the Game Boy Advance as a sequel to Super Mario Advance, itself a port of Super Mario Bros. 2, the Nintendo team in Japan knew they’d have to differentiate Mario from Luigi to keep the game consistent with its predecessor. But they didn’t use the All-Stars sprite set - Hell, they probably didn’t even know it existed. Instead they pulled Luigi’s sprites from Super Mario Advance, and filled in the gaps with frog DNA Mario’s own SMW sprites. And it shows.

They also dicked about with Luigi’s physics, giving him similar movement to his appearance in Super Mario Advance, complete with the leg-waggling higher-but-slower jump. I don’t object to them adjusting his jump physics - The Lost Levels set a precedent - but adding the leg-waggle really irked me. It doesn’t fit with the game, so far as I’m concerned. They did the same thing to him when they ported Super Mario Bros. 3 to the GBA.

There are a number of reasons that the GBA SMW is inferior to the All-Stars cousin it didn’t know it had, but for me this is the Big One.