I loved the aesthetics of this hack, especially the changes to the enemy sprites. It was fun guessing which Mario enemy was representing which Castlevania enemy. The powerups were changed as well in ways that made sense in the context of the hack. Substituting the fire flower with the holy water is nothing short of genius.

I found the level design to be a bit of a mixed bag, but not bad overall aside from a leap of faith that I came across in Level 7. The only thing that I wasn’t fond of in general was the overuse of hidden blocks. These things are everywhere, and there were a few times where hitting one of these sent me right into a pit. I wouldn’t have minded this so much if it weren’t for the fact that there are no checkpoints in any of the levels. It’s a total bummer when you die and have to do the entire level again. Good luck to anybody who doesn’t know that they can continue by pressing A+Start at the title screen. Also, every level ended with having to search for hidden blocks to progress forward. I personally didn’t find these segments to be very fun, but your milage may vary.

Despite my gripes with the hidden blocks, I still quite enjoyed myself with this one. The positives definitely outweigh the negatives here. This hack does a wonderful job of blending Super Mario and Castlevania, and I can’t help but admire the creativity on display. And let’s be honest here: Having a game like this being a bit on the difficult side is par for the course in the romhacking scene, and it’s not like the Castlevania games that inspired this hack are walks in the park either. Plus I managed to make it through the whole thing without ever resorting to using save states, so it’s not like it’s THAT hard.

Check this one out if you’re a big fan of both Mario and Castlevania.