Super Mario Advance 100% playthrough comments

Got high and went through every single level with Mario and used no warps...
lol I used to be so bad at this game when I was a kid, and thought it was way too hard to beat without cheating... I actually find this game easy now. Only got game over twice at 5-3. I think I got about 65% of the "A" coins along the way...

Some of the differences I really liked about it:
- Killing more than one enemy with a single throw gives you hearts. Health was very rare in the NES version and it made that game kind of unfair later on.
- There are giant versions of some regular enemies, and killing them gives you a heart.
- The koopa shell actually bounces off walls now instead of disappearing. It makes it more risky to use because it can kill you, but it also gives you a heart for every enemy you kill with it.
- Every stage has 5 "A" coins, similar to the Dragon coins in SMW, which gives the game some extra challenge if you feel like collecting them all.
- There are stationary heart pickups before bosses and at certain hard sections, but they become less frequent at later levels to keep the difficulty going up at a fair pace.

This game is a terrific improvement over the original SMB2.

Oh yeah there's also the "Yoshi Challenge" after you beat the game, where you have to find 2 yoshi eggs hidden somewhere in the potion world of each stage. it's kind of tedious though, there's no kind of indicator to help you find them so it's just a matter of luck. I used a guide to find the eggs cuz it would just be way too tedious otherwise. Getting to them is pretty easy, but if you die before finishing the level you gotta collect the eggs again...Getting the eggs in the last level was intimidating, because after getting the 2 eggs, I had to beat 2 conveyer belt birdos, the birdface (which is easy), and Wart, without dying once... but it was actually not that hard with Toad.

Used the level select mode to collect all of the "A" coins, mostly using Peach. Unlike the Yoshi Challenge, I was able to find all the "A" coins without a guide. I guess exploring the levels to get the eggs first made me more familiar with the layout and made finding the "A" coins easier.