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Creating Your Own Date With Mario:
First, you're going to need some tools. With the right tools, editing Super Mario World is fairly straightforward. Point and click. Finding the right tools can often be the hardest part.
- 1. You'll need a Mario Level Editor, to start with. I recommend Lunar Magic, which you can find here. There are several available, though, so feel free to pick and choose for yourself with a little Googling.
- 2. You're going to need a copy of the Super Mario World ROM. In this case you're pretty much on your own, since unless you already own a copy of the game, owning the ROM is considered piracy. However, this hasn't exactly stopped people from downloading the ROM from the Internet for years. You can probably expect Nintendo to start caring more about this sort of thing now that the Wii has the virtual console, but for now the ROM isn't exactly hard to find if you know where to look. Sites like Rom-world.com have a huge collection of back-up ROMs; do what you want with them; you have to deal with your conscious in your own way if you don't have a legitimate claim to the title.
- 3. Finally, to test your work you're going to need a Super Nintendo Emulator. After you edit your ROM, you're going to want your date to be able to play it. Unless you've got some significant technical skills, this is probably going to be done on your Windows PC. I personally recommend SNES9X, a fairly versatile Super Nintendo emulator that will serve your testing and playing purposes well. It is open source, and exists for any operating system you're likely to have, including Linux, Windows, and MacOS. Snes9X also supports a number of different gamepads, so feel free to pick up a gamepad somewhere to make the experience feel more like a classic home console. Otherwise your date will be playing with the keyboard.
You're now ready to edit your first level. Use Lunar Magic to open the Super Mario World ROM. You can cycle through levels by pushing the Page Up and Page Down buttons. This is important, since Mario World stores its levels on a hex system, meaning that not only does it have levels 00 - 100, it also has 1AF, and so forth. Finding the level you want to edit can be sort of a pain, but scrolling through levels using your Page Up and Down buttons makes it easier. Just so you know, the levels I decided to edit (as marked by the map) were levels 14 (Yellow Block #1), CA (Yellow Block #2), and 102. 106 is the very first level in the game.
You get to choose for yourself which levels you want to try. Assuming you're editing level 106 you'll be looking at a screen like this:
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