Super Mario World hides an entire secret world beyond its Star Road — and completing it transforms the game itself.
What Is the Special World?
Beyond the five Star World levels lies a hidden path to the Special World — a set of eight brutally difficult stages with names like Gnarly, Tubular, Groovy, and Mondo. These levels were designed to push players who had mastered everything else the game had to offer.
How to Reach It
- Complete Star World 1 through 4 by finding the secret exits in each.
- In Star World 5, find the secret exit — accessible only with the Blue Yoshi and a Cape Feather. Blue Yoshi can fly with any koopa shell in his mouth; use this to reach the hidden goal.
- This unlocks the path to the Special World.
The Reward for Completion
Finish all eight Special World levels and something unexpected happens: Dinosaur Land is permanently transformed. Every Koopa Troopa becomes a Mario look-alike, Piranha Plants turn into pumpkins, Bullet Bills become baseballs, and the game’s palette shifts to an autumn color scheme. Even the title screen changes.
Tubular — The Hardest Level
Ask any veteran player and they’ll tell you: Tubular is the cruelest level Nintendo ever designed. The entire stage takes place high above the clouds with no ground beneath you. Your only means of traversal is the P-Balloon — a rare power-up that inflates Mario so he floats. Miss a balloon and fall to your death. It remains one of the most challenging platforming sequences in gaming history.
The Special World’s stage names — Gnarly, Tubular, Way Cool, Awesome, Groovy, Mondo, Outrageous, Funky — are all 1990s slang, a wink from Nintendo’s localization team.
The fact that completing the Special World changes the entire game’s aesthetics is something I didn’t know until embarrassingly recently. Koopas becoming Mario lookalikes is so bizarre and I love it.
Tubular broke me as a kid. The P-Balloon controls are so floaty and the enemies are so perfectly placed to punish every mistake. I still think it’s the single hardest level Nintendo has ever shipped in a mainline game.
Blue Yoshi with a shell is one of the most specific ability combinations Nintendo has ever designed a secret around. It feels like it was designed for people who already know the game inside out. Perfect difficulty curve for the secret.