Okay, it's about time someone began to address this backlog of levels.
First of all, I can't really see how the player is supposed to figure out that the yellow blocks are sand-block sprite-swaps based on the hint given; I can respect that you want the level to reference older games, but its for the best to leave the unintuitive aspects of older games in the past. I recommend changing the yellow blocks' graphic so that they're not palette swaps of the normal blocks and so that it's a bit more obvious that they should be grabbed (example: remove the grey and dark yellow border from all but the top part of the graphic).
On the other hand, the red bees are something you can be vague about (or just leave for the player to figure out himself/herself) since it's relatively obvious that they'll act different due to them having a different palette but being in the same section as normal bees.
Anyway, aside from the occasional block barricade where the player has to pick up more yellow blocks (which really isn't anything novel in and of itself since they're just sand-block sprite-swaps), there's nothing here to set it apart from other Basic Grass Levels. In fact, I'd argue that this is actually
worse than most Basic Grass Levels since the design solely consists of long, flat sizables, Goomba sprite-swaps, and a few Spiny sprite-swaps. The only noteworthy part of the level is, near the end, there is a red bee placed above another red bee and the player has to jump between them (but you did this twice in a row without any variation, making it seem like you had run out of ideas).
Summary:
GOOD:
-Graphics aren't terrible (but could be improved).
-Music fits the level okay.
-Red bee tunnel.
BAD:
--FLAT BLOCK PLACEMENT.
--BARELY ANY NPC VARIETY.
-Using two different Goomba sprite-swaps doesn't count as more NPC variety.
-Unintuitive yellow blocks.
In conclusion: I'm not really sure I fully grasped what novel concept you were trying to introduce with this level, but whatever it was, it wasn't enough to make up for some of the most seemingly uninspired level design and boring game-play I've seen. I'd say this deserves a 3/10.
P.S. If you want some decent 8-bit SMW graphics, I recommend checking out Super Mario Unlimited:
Waddle Derp wrote:I'd call it an experiment
Waddle Derp wrote:nothing here is final
Then...shouldn't this go in Casual Levels? Do I just not understand the purpose of that sub-forum?