I just had an idea that, in the process, may remove the status bar completely.

What if the stats only update (as sprites that would look like score points) when you received them.

As if you got a coin, a sprite would appear above saying "55" or "(coin symbol)55". Even other events like receiving a 1UP or if you are storing items then it would say you "5" fire flowers or something.

It would make it seem more realistic because you don't really know how much cash you have every pain staking moment, do you? Nope, you check your pockets or wallet when you receive cash! Just like in this instant when you receive a coin!

This would allow for the opportunity of removing the status bar while preserving the statuses that appear over time!

EDIT: This is some concept I made in a matter of minutes.

SMWCP2 has done a really similar status bar you just described.

Are you sure about that? The sprites I'm describing appear from the place of capture. Such as touching a coin, where the coin was.

In SMWCP2, the sprites scroll from the top of the screen and are more of a distraction than a use.

Oh, guess there was a misunderstanding there. Sorry.
But yeah it sounds pretty neat.

What about a hack, that's built as you play?

The story would be, Mario wakes up. It starts with a frantic message from the "creator" saying Mario woke up too early, and the team will have to work twice as fast. The game begins as normal, the first world seemingly perfectly okay. The occasional message from the "creator" telling you to kill yourself so you can be put back into stasis, which you obviously ignore.

Moving onto world 2. The OW is quite obviously a work in progress, no where near the quality of world 1, although not terrible. The "creator" has given up trying to convince you to kill yourself, he's pleading for you to slow down so they can prepare for you. After stages in world 2 are complete, the events would be the OW building itself, until your at the end of world 2, at which point the OW looks completed!

Now world 3. Now the OW is a mess. You overhear the creator talking to the hack team, he says to abandon the over world, focus on levels. For the next few worlds, all of which have shitty unfinished overworlds, levels also get progressively worse. Starting with small mistakes like cuttoffness, and then moving onto bigger graphical errors, and maybe even the occasional unedited level. All the while the creator is speaking to you, telling you these errors are your fault and should be looking beyond.

Finally, in world 5, there's a level that just abruptly ends. Once you find the cuttoffish end of the level, the creator pipes up again. Tells you you've worked his team to the limit, and now there's little left for you to do. He opens up a door for you, that takes you to an inappropriate level end room (i.e. a ghost house end room when it was an outdoor grassland level kind of thing). A star appears on the overworld, and takes you to a "special" style world, full of random, context-free, polished levels. "Everyone, set full effort to ENDING MARIO!", the creator says, (It would be better written, though xD) and the next levels are HARD. Not kaizo hard, but still, quite challenging. Requiring quick reflexes. After you're done there, the creator apologizes for the... inconvenience you received in special world, and says you're welcome back to the real game. You're placed back in World 5, and you see the OW is complete. Very nice. You play through, until the last level, there's a pipe, next to a slanted pipe, next to an uncrossable gap. Naturally, you hop in the pipe...

Bam. Level 0. Creator pipes in again, frantic this time, realizing he forgot to set the exits up in this level! Once you beat the Level 0 bonus game, the screen rumbles, then boom! a hole opens in the side of Level 0. You jump out, only to fall, and fall, and fall... then sploosh, you're in water. There's a platform, and a weird looking door... "NO! DONT GO THROUGH THERE!"

Too late. Mario goes through. The next world is a mess. A big, broken graphix, demo-ey level mess. After you break free of this really long, level, listening to the occasional, pissed of blurb by the creator, you escape to an overworld, that would appear to be a desktop. The levels are desktop icons, and are actually different tools used for SMW hacking. Each level would be a boss fight, based around that tool. For example, for a hex editor, it could be a boss fight based on ther being values that represent the boss himself, and you have to use bomb-ombs to blow those values up, while the boss himself is messing with your values, such as disabling jump, disabling run, you know, doing dickish things that make the game hard for you to play. Lunar magic could be based around the level itself being changed while you fight the boss, and just generally fun fights like that. I'm writing this at 3:00 AM so my brain is a little broken when it comes to ideas for these fights atm.

anyways, yeah, that's my idea. I can barely whip together a decent grassland level, so I have no dreams of ever bringing this to life. Thus, it's being shared!