Mario XP

[Anastasia]

http://www.gamehippo.com/pub_20041021_54e15b04ecabb8a119c4/1847_marioxp121.lzh

It's a fun freeware game. Imagine Mario 1 blended with Castlevania, with a few thousand grams of awesomeness mixed in. Give it a shot, it's a blast to play.

[Zenthor]

It's insanely hard, though.  I got up to level 6, had ~20 lives from pounding on skull koopas in the fifth level, and lost all of them on that level.  Augh.

[Anastasia]

I finished it.

Wait until you unlock stage 8 after being the last boss. It's hard, but it gets easier each time you go through.

[Brian]

It looked very interesting, but wouldn't run for long on my system.  It would loop sound effects, and then suffer from amazingly horrendous slow-down.

[Dracos]

Eh.  I have to say I didn't find it all that good.  The lack of bounce off of enemy stomps really was a pain.  The hit detection was a visibly a bit rough.  They screwed up on the sound programming somewhat (though admittingly, playing it straight without doing anything else one wouldn't notice) and seriously, encountering a flying winged goomba just felt dull rather than exciting.

Dracos

[Zenthor]

Hold shift when you jump onto an enemy to get that bounce effect.

[Anastasia]

Brian - Shitty break. Hal had the same problem, said it was a sprite management issue. Any idea on that?

Eh.  I have to say I didn't find it all that good.  The lack of bounce off of enemy stomps really was a pain.  The hit detection was a visibly a bit rough.  They screwed up on the sound programming somewhat (though admittingly, playing it straight without doing anything else one wouldn't notice) and seriously, encountering a flying winged goomba just felt dull rather than exciting.

Dracos

As Zenny said, you can hold shift to bounce or not to bounce.  However, I would like to know where you found the hit detection rough. I can't recall an instance of it being bad; it struck me as one of it's good points.

As for the last, it keeps getting better. The stage 2 and on bosses get more interesting. Can't help you if you found that dull, but eh.