Super Mario World: Dots of Disappointment

 
Let me describe to you the biggest disappointment of my childhood.  It wasn't finding out Santa wasn't real or breaking my favorite toy; it was when I found out the colorful dots at the top of Super Mario World's Special Zone didn't actually do anything or lead anywhere.  Random, I know.  After completing all 8 super-hard levels and ending up right back in the mainland, albeit a bit altered, I was so upset I even considered calling the 1-800 number on back of box to find out what I was missing.  But I'd already been in big trouble for calling paid "hotlines" of another variety and decided against that.  😬

Sure, Special Zone is cool and all, but I assumed those dots were worlds of their own or portals to yet another undiscovered zone such as "GENIUS" or "GODLIKE".  If this was outer space, maybe the next level was Heaven!  Or maybe they were lights on a spaceship that would lower & beam you up out of Super Mario World into Super Mario Neptune or Super Mario Mars...   🪐

Alternate reality

A tiny part of me still holds out hope this is possible, that a glitch or hack will send Luigi moonwalking up there to discover a hidden version of Polybius or a map to where all those ET Atari games are buried.  Heck, it was only recently I discovered all the glitch Yoshis in this classic game, which already has more secrets than Area 51.  If I had hacking capabilities like all these Youtubers, I'd go straight for the 4 dots and make them "playable".  Perhaps they'd lead to 4 different universes that look like this:

Still not that impressive, but at least I TRIED.  😤

Perhaps the theoretical post-Special levels in the dots could've featured some of the glitch Yoshis but without having to do weird complicated glitchy shit to obtain them?  (I favor the ice blue one and the black one personally).  Throw in some more bonus level games and rejected levels from this or past Mario games and viola--DotWorld.  Maybe give them backward names like repuS, sreknoB and !rezwoW.  

Okay, I'm just giving away brilliant ideas for free at this point.  🙃

Someone please tell me I'm not the only shut-in nerd child who thought these dots led somewhere or did something?

P.S. - I know they're just the colors that represent the 4 elements/color scheme of the game now... I get that.  No need to reiterate.  But they still feel out of place in Special World as mere decoration to me, especially with all the other hidden aspects of this game.