Super Mario Bros. Crossover - Survival Mode Playthrough (Warpless)

Instead of a solo character run, here's something new. The 8 non-Mario characters work together to stop Bowser, bringing each of their best qualities to use.
In Survival Mode, instead of having the standard life system, any character that dies is truly dead and becomes unusable.
Upon completion of a world, you have a chance to use the 1-Ups you've collected to revive dead characters or upgrade the ones that are alive.
I'm now going to go over the strategy in this run.
The first two levels are spent on getting upgrades for Sophia and Samus. Sophia will be used for the underwater levels and the last three of World 8, while Samus takes on the castles thanks to her Varia Suit making it easy for her.
The other easy levels that have a good amount of power-ups are used to grow the other characters, as backup.
Nothing interesting happens (as usual) until the point where the difficulty starts picking up, in 5-3. I picked Simon because his double jump is good at clearing the annoying tight platforms near the end. 5-4 and its dreaded Unreasonably Long Fire Bar were no issue for Samus, alongside the rest of the level.
6-1 goes to Link because I thought it's the pipe level but it so happens Link can snipe Spiny Eggs before they even reach the ground with his boomerang. 6-2 is the aforementioned pipe level, where Ryu can easily defeat the countless Piranha Plants in one hit. 6-3 is a breather, it's a free power-up for basically anyone. I thought 6-4 was already 7-4 so I brought Mega Man instead of Samus. Nothing bad came out of that anyway.
7-1 is where the Bullet Bill spam begins and is basically a mini version of 8-2. Bass died, but Simon barely made it though in his place. 7-2 is the other underwater stage and Sophia is the safest bet for it. No messing around with all these Bloopers. Samus was chosen for 7-3. She got hit along the way, but it didn't really matter anymore at that point since 7-4 is so easy there's no need for the Varia Suit. You're basically free to bring anyone there, but Ryu and Simon can get a free power-up. If you do that, make sure they have enough ammo to take on Bowser.
8-1 is the long marathon full of combat. Link can probably make it out the fastest thanks to his downward thrust. The almighty 8-2, I saved a powered-up Sophia for this one. I haven't made it clear enough just how good the Hover Pack is, it eliminates most of the bullshit in this level. But I end up messing up and losing the hover. Oops! Sophia dies and my next best bet is using Link. I get enough luck to get through this monstrosity of a level safely. Link deserves to take on 8-4 after what he managed to do here but he's sadly the worst character for 8-4 because of his limited ammo and the precision of the final jump. For 8-3, I choose Simon. He's not exactly the best for this one, but he can do it.
Just before, 8-4 you can revive and power-up characters, so I use that opportunity to revive and fully upgrade Sophia. I'm not letting my original plan go away like that. I sadly get hit by one of the Cheep Cheeps but it's not like 8-4's any hard for Sophia anyway. It makes it through to the final Bowser battle and defeats him, finally saving a Tetris block after a long and stressful adventure. Joy.

Total amount of level clears by each character:
Link - 4
Samus - 7
Simon - 6
Mega Man - 3
Bass - 4
Bill - 1
Ryu - 3
Sophia - 4

In case you didn't notice, Bill kinda bad in this mode for obvious reasons lol

Link to the game: https://explodingrabbit.com/games/sup...