This was the first game I played that did variations on a musical theme, and it was incredibly cool as a kid to realize each world's background music was the same basic song in different styles. Most platformers just don't do that anymore. I still hum the cave one all the time. Bum. Bum bum. Bum bum bum bum.

The only thing keeping me from rating this five stars is that you lose all the golden coins you've collected if you get a game over. I know that's kind of a staple of older video games, but it really hurts on this one.