http://wii.ign.com/articles/761/761605p1.html
I don't see how you can acknowledge a game's "masterful control" and "peerless level design" contributing to gameplay, and yet not also factor these components into the so-called Lasting Appeal of a title. SMW still handles better than 99% of the games produced since its release 15 years ago.
The game is the golden standard for platform play control. It's not hyperbole, I swear it. Please put that in your review, IGN, and save the Sonic and SMB3 discussion for a more appropriate context such as the sixth billionth "Best Games of All Time" list.
I don't understand the point of these reviews of VC games, most of which I've ignored up until SMW. Just tell your reader how well it holds up emulation-wise and if it's worth the price of admission. You can throw in a few historical details such as "This game is the greatest title ever" or "This game is the ass-suckinest title ever," but keep the history lesson short and sweet (no more than a few sentences). End of review. Instead, all I get is history with no mention of VC performance.
[quote name='daroga']I can't figure out if this whole Mario World control-scheme is just Nintendo being lazy with their VC stuff or done intensionally to sell CCs. It feels more like the latter, and might be the reason that they've not given us the option to change the controls at all. If that's true, it seems pretty darn low.[/QUOTE]
I don't see the conspiracy here, and I'm usually happy to jump onboard the Criticize Nintendo bandwagon. I think the answer is that Nintendo is just being as lazy as they were in the past. They've directly ported the SNES controls to the CC controller. Seems natural to me. The GC controls may suck for these titles, but I recall them sucking when I tried to use the GC controller to play GBA titles on the GB Player. I hated trying to get through SMW2 using the GC controller. It was extremely awkward. So again, I just think Nintendo's putting as little effort into the VC titles as possible, which is exactly what we expected from the get-go (and part of the reason some folks have been complaining about the cost, given that these are straight, no-frills ROMs).
If it's any consolation to those of you pissed about being unable to customize your controls, which I can understand as I'm also picky about controls, the CC is a fantastic controller if you are at all a fan of the SNES controller. Its only flaw IMO is that the wire comes out of a weird place.