Random SMW Experiment #4: CHAMPION'S ROAD

This is a single level hack I started back in September 2022 made as a personal challenge: designing a level in the style of the final levels that could be found on some modern Mario games such as Special World 8-Crown from Super Mario 3D Land ( • Super Mario 3D Land Fi... ) or Champion's Road from Super Mario 3D World ( • Super Mario 3D World *... ), consisting in a gauntlet level (i.e. a lenghty level without checkpoints).
As it could be seen from this video and the mentioned levels above, I designed the actual level with multiple sections, some of them being directly inspired by Special World 8-Crown which uses sprites featured in this level (hammer bros for the first section, firebars for the second section, etc.).
Level design decisions aside, I also modified the time to actually be similar to real-time seconds (a second in SMW being inferior to a real-time second) and used a patch to give directly a mushroom stocked in the item box as in Super Mario 3D World.
As usual this was unfinished as I lacked of inspiration in terms of design: the main goal and difficulty of this project was to design the level in a natural (as Nintendo would do if I dare to say) and not romhack-y way which ended being difficult to do especially in this last sections. However recording this level somewhat gave me a spark of motivation to finish it, so let's hope I can actually complete and release this little thing one day. :)