Super Mario Bros. 3

Para mi el mejor Mario 2D, creativo con sus mundos, en sus niveles y hasta con sus jefes. Esta repleto de secretos que no serán muchos pero si variados y dignos de rejugarse, y de paso también es de los más rejugables. Una OST con varias de mis melodías favoritas están aquí.

La razón por la que pongo este por encima del World es que si bien Yoshi es espectacular, me encanta el sistema de trajes y la variedad de jefes que si bien la ciencia es la misma, sus técnicas te harán cambiar el uso de los patrones y la velocidad con que atacas a estos. Con un mundo 7 infernal y un mundo 8 raudo pero pesado. Varios mundos superan los 10 niveles. Y por supuesto Mario Puede Volar y usar el Mapache para camuflajeaese.

Obra maestra.

Super Mario Bros 3 can't quite capture SMB's infectious whimsy despite a more diverse catalogue of levels, area types, music, etc. Rather, this is the technical peak of 2D Mario, full of interesting and creative ideas that somehow managed to fit within the constraints of NES cartridges. Its new tanuki power is the ideal complement to their emphasis on momentum and to their more vertical levels, while the overworld map (the standout feature) offers new ways to tackle world progression. A smoother, 'fixed' version of Super Mario Bros, and perhaps the best demonstration of their platformer difficulty, although it'd still be easier to look elsewhere for a much better challenge.

Inarguable the best of the original trilogy and just a towering platformer in its own right. I really feel that SMB3 is the best of the franchise, past or present and in the 34 years since, hasn't been topped by Nintendo. Looking back though the game obviously has some chinks in its armor that reflect the game design of its day. Admittedly I got into this game rather late, as I was introduced to most of the mainline Mario series through the Game Boy Advanced remasters and having played that platforms SMW adaptation I always felt the storybook like overworld of this game to be a detriment, now with a more critical lens it really adds to this games charm (seriously though Super Mario Advance 4 is such a great port, sans the gimmicky e-reader feature.) Really is there a negative to this game I could give?

If you want to see a prime example of what experience with developing on a specific piece of hardware can have on a final product, just compare everything about this game to the original Super Mario Bros, it's actually insane. More than that, there's just a lot about this game that feels as if it transcends its limitations as a whole and feels genuinely ahead of its time in a variety of ways, along with obviously feeling like quite the leap forward in certain respects from its predecessors. You've got so many improvements to the formula that helped establish the Mario franchise conventions as a whole, an ambitious scope, boasting a whole 90 levels, and an overall polished aesthetic combined with some pretty forward thinking and forgiving mechanics to top it all off to make for an extremely well-rounded game with a lot to love, overall making it feel pretty clear why this is regularly considered one of the peaks of the console as a whole.

To add to that comment about the high level count that this game, it's also remarkable just how much time went into making each stage feel entirely distinct, not only from an aesthetic perspective, but mechanically as well. The virtues of Super Mario Land introducing completely new concepts even moments before the final boss feel turned up to 11 here. Almost every stage has its own unique idea, whether it's something as simple as having a heavily sloped level terrain, to more involved ideas like having to guide moving blocks through a labyrinth of pipes or staying on top of rail platforms in order to avoid falling into the fish infested waters below. Once again, even the final stages offer new challenges, and ones that radically change things up as well. This lends itself to a strong feeling of variety and freshness that never truly leaves at any point, every stage has something new to offer, and while they're not always great ideas, it doesn't even matter too much because you won't have to deal with them for very long until you've made it through. With this said however, SMB3's relentless creativity in certain respects makes the total lack of inspiration in areas feel that much more noticeable, particularly in terms of boss battles. While each world ends with its own unique boss, it feels like all but the final one boil down to a very similar solution, usually dodging a projectile attack and then jumping on its head, moving back a bit, jumping on their heads the moment their invincibility wears off, and then repeating this pattern one more time to defeat them. This essentially means that despite the fact that you're technically fighting different enemies, they all mechanically feel so indistinct from one another that it might as well not matter at all. With that said, it's still nowhere near as egregious as with Boom Boom, the miniboss of every stage, who feels as if he changes in such negligible ways that you're essentially just fighting him over 15 times in the game with the exact same strategy. This lack of variety unfortunately kills some of the drive that the usually exciting stages attempt to establish, as you end up knowing that the culmination of your efforts will often just lead to yet another underwhelming fight that feels no different from any other.

I'd also argue that the game loses a lot of steam in its final 2 worlds, with world 7's labyrinthine design detracting from the strong sense of momentum that feel consistently reinforced throughout the runtime of the game, especially with some of the more cryptic ideas near the end. The fact that the game expects you to find a a hidden switch on top of a bunch of bricks in one of the castle stages here feels particularly ridiculous to me, as adding this sort of obscurity into a game focusing largely around its tight, responsive and creative platforming ends up going entirely against the core loop of everything else. While this would have already been problematic in a slower, more methodical game, the stark juxtaposition this section (along with a few others) has ends up making this solution a more difficult thing to understand, and ultimately undermines so much of the experience when such things become possibilities. The game also relies a bit too heavily on autoscrollers, especially in the final world where the vast majority of the stages are these ones. While I admire world 8 and the atmosphere it conjures, with pieces of scrolling level geometry along with enemies being cleverly constructed to resemble tanks and airships being thrown your way, I feel like there are too many of them and they all take too long to get through for how mundane the levels themselves feel to play beyond this admittedly incredible atmosphere. Having the last quarter of the game fall so flat ultimately contributes to a game that felt amazing to play but very hard to actually finish.

With this said however, there are still some other very positive things I have to say about this game and the way it approaches difficulty and rewards for the most part. Rather than focusing exclusively on rewarding the player with extra lives for all their accomplishments, Super Mario Bros 3 seems to understand how functionally useless these are as a means beyond extending the gameplay time. That's not to say that they removed them from the game or anything, but instead, this also gives you other rewards for some of the more substantial challenges that you'll undertake. The game rewards you by allowing you to store a bunch of powerups for later stages if something feels too difficult to overcome in your weakest form when you enter a stage, a mechanic that feels uncharacteristically forgiving for an NES title, but an incredibly welcome addition nonetheless. Some of these special items even allow you to fly through or outright skip a stage entirely, at the cost of still not being able to walk through it on the world map, essentially making you commit to a path once you've used this. This helps alleviate some of the aforementioned issues with some of these levels being obnoxious to play through, as you can just decide to skip them with little to no consequence and continue on your way, though this ends up falling a bit flat if you die too much and use up all of these additional resources, leaving you in a state where every level more or less becomes mandatory. This idea also made having to replay certain sections upon a game over feel far less tedious, as the option to entirely skip a level if you really hated it and didn't want to play through again was an option, and allows the player to tailor their experience towards gameplay elements that they enjoy, while being able to avoid the more undesirable traits to them.

I've also got to give props to the way Mario controls in this game, as while it's not perfect, feeling a tad heavy and carrying momentum a bit too far for my tastes, he still controls leaps and bounds above the previous games, really being the first time where he feels truly fun and satisfying to control rather than just being serviceable at best. It's also admirable how so many stages in this are full of cleverly hidden secrets that add that much more depth to each stage, knowing that you're likely to find something of interest if you look around enough, even if it sometimes is nothing but a hidden stockpile of coins, it still adds a lot. I can't quite say I outright love this game due to some egregious examples of recycled content in a game that clearly proved that it had ideas to spare in other areas, along with falling flat in its final stretch, but still, I like this a lot more than I did a couple of years ago. This is the game that really began to solidify the Mario identity that would stick for decades, and is really the true point in which the series started rapidly expanding and iterating off an incredibly strong base point as a direct result of this. Whether or not I actually always like playing this game, I also cannot deny that this is an incredible achievement that I believe could further grow on me when I inevitably come back to play through this one yet again.

While the first Super Mario Bros. was a landmark debut on the NES and the savior of the video game medium, it’s hardly considered the best Mario game. The only people who argue for it are merely crediting its accomplishments and historical significance. The game itself is so rudimentary that I’d be surprised if anyone legitimately enjoyed playing it even a couple of years after the NES’s library expanded. Sure, it’s still a competent game, but to say that the game hasn’t aged gracefully is still being fairly diplomatic. This is also not a case of every subsequent Mario game that comes out toppling over the previous entries in quality. A common contender for the greatest Mario game, the one deserving of Super Mario Bros. early legacy, is Super Mario Bros. 3. Unlike the bizarre reskin of another game that was Super Mario Bros. 2 in the USA and the uncanny, blisteringly hard more of the first game that was Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3 was the true successor to the first Super Mario Bros. game. Super Mario Bros. 3 had all of the familiar elements from the first game without seeming derivative. This natural evolution of the series was all the third game needed to cement its stellar reputation. Super Mario Bros. 3 is not only considered as the greatest Mario game but it’s often considered to be the greatest game in the NES library. Popular gaming publication IGN even claimed it as the greatest video game of all time, the one game to represent Mario’s unparalleled, indelible mark on gaming. I’ve even claimed this to be Mario’s finest outing at some point in time. After replaying it again for this review, I have a few new insights about all of this colossal praise for Super Mario Bros. 3. I’ve concluded that the adulation everyone, including myself, have given Super Mario Bros. 3 isn’t 100% fresh.

Could one still make an argument that Super Mario Bros. 3 is the greatest game of all time? Maybe, but it could easily be many other Mario titles. Putting Mario at the top would make sense on an objective scale, and this is one of the proper games to honor the iconic plumber. It doesn’t have the same historical weight as the first one does, but it comes fairly close. Super Mario Bros. 3 didn’t need to save the video game industry from collapsing to absolutely eclipse the first game’s impact. It took all of the familiar elements and gameplay elements from the first game and expanded upon them superbly, and even that’s an understatement. The game begins like any other Mario game with Princess Peach getting kidnapped by Bowser. It’s a series staple that verges on being the oldest of Mario cliches at this point, but repeating this from the first game meant that this would be a recurring catalyst to a Mario game. Remember that the last time we Americans were treated to a new Mario game, Peach was just as front and center as Mario was. Peach getting kidnapped wasn’t a prime element to the stories of Mario games quite yet, but repeating it here most likely set a course for the rest of the series to follow. The first level features Goombas and Koopas instead of Shy Guys and Snifits. Piranha Plants pop out of pipes and blocks with question marks make up the foreground. When Mario hits those blocks, the familiar mushrooms, fire flowers, and start to occasionally pop out. Mario’s offensive strategy goes back to jumping on the heads of his enemies instead of picking them up after riding around on them. I’d say that all of this sense of familiarity is enlivening, but I can only claim this in retrospect after so many Mario games with these elements have been released. At this point in the late 1980s, the only distinguishable Mario series identifiers were the characters. The American Super Mario Bros. 2 shook things up enough to the point where using the familiar characters would've been enough to make a Mario game. It was Super Mario Bros. 3 that put its foot down and decided that the world of Mario needed a concrete identity. Most of these characteristics may have been established in the first Super Mario Bros., but it was in Super Mario Bros. 3 in which they were solidified. This was the official beginning of the Mario franchise's distinctive properties, and we haven’t deviated too much from this since. In fact, the influx of modern 2D Mario games seems to be shameless rehashes of Super Mario Bros. 3 with more animated graphics. Even after generations of progress, the formula laid out by Super Mario Bros. 3 remains strong.

The return to a more recognizable form of the first game was certainly beneficial, but this wasn’t a case of Nintendo giving up on providing variety and an evolution of ideas for the franchise. They didn’t just repackage the first game with a few new features as they did with the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2. Super Mario Bros. 3 is a bonafide sequel with a myriad of new elements that enhance the Mario experience. One of my main criticisms of the first game was that every level throughout the eight different worlds was so similar that it verged on monotony. Super Mario Bros. 3 organizes the eight different worlds by a theme. If anyone was wondering where the platformer trope of theming levels by geographical location came from, it most likely stems from Super Mario Bros. 3. The desert, water, sky, fire, and ice worlds may be one of the most tired cliches in platformers nowadays, but they were an invigorating change of pace from the consistent pattern of the overworld, underground, underwater, and castle set that made up the entirety of the first game. These types of level foregrounds are present here but are sprinkled in amongst the consistently themed levels. Each world will always end at a castle icon on the map where Mario has to retrieve the power scepter of that world’s king from the clutches of one of Bowser’s children, the final boss of each world. Each Koopaling mans their own airship complete with a heavy defense system. Once Mario defeats that world’s Koopaling, he’ll move onto the next level. It’s a little more involved than getting siked out by a Toad after encountering Bowser again and again. While I say this, the Koopaling bosses are only physically different in design as none of them are any more difficult than the other. It’s a familiar sore spot of repetition in a game that accomplishes so much to deviate away from the repetitive hiccups of the first game. The even worse offender is the Boom Boom encounters in every single castle.

Instead of being presented in a linear pattern, the levels in Super Mario Bros. 3 are organized through a means of a world map. A Mario icon moves in a restricted range of movement through a series of simple, constructed paths. The theme of the world is presented all over and the order of the levels is represented with numbers. To break the course of linearity even further, the world map is designed in a way that the player can skip some levels if they so choose. Of course, the player might have to play these levels anyways due to the final level’s airship moving erratically throughout the world map, so there is a bit of strategy to consider with this mechanic. The world map also feels very lively as there are also enemy encounters, toad houses, and warp pipes on the map amongst the level placements. While several other NES games like the first Super Mario Bros. presented the course of a game through strict linearity, this world map gave players a little more freedom. The only other NES game I can think of that offers this sense of nonlinearity is Mega Man, but that game’s direction still seems restricted compared to the world map of Super Mario Bros. 3.

The more nuanced approach to level design and direction also carries over to the gameplay of Super Mario Bros 3. Mario’s range of movement in the first game was as rudimentary as every other aspect. He was confined to a single, stilted jump, and his running was difficult to accelerate properly. In Super Mario Bros. 3, Mario had never felt so fluid and capable up to this point. Mario can still only jump once, but his jump feels much smoother to properly navigate when jumping on enemies and or platforms. His running is gauged by a meter and can be halted when needed to. Mario can also throw blocks at enemies and slide down steep inclines to dispatch a large array of foes (while this is fun and displays the fluid movement of Mario, I often had some trouble maintaining Mario’s sliding stance and died as a result). This nuanced level of movement and combat is further supported by the new power-ups that are at Mario’s disposal. The frog suit is a new power-up that allows Mario to swim more gracefully and allows him to jump higher. The green goomba boot also lets Mario jump higher and walk over some hazards, but it’s only available on one level. The Hammer Brothers suit acts similarly to the fire flower, launching an array of projectiles from an overhead angle instead of a straight one. The most iconic new powerup (considering Mario has it on the box art of the game) is the tanooki suit. In its most underdeveloped form, the tanooki suit will only take the form of a tail which is represented with a leaf icon. This allows Mario to glide downward which is useful enough for traversing the grounds of most levels. With the complete suite, Mario can launch himself up to the sky and uncover the hidden secrets the levels have to offer, signifying the level of depth the developers implemented. A “P badge” that comes with the Tanooki suit allows Mario to fly at will, giving him the potential to essentially skip entire levels.

Given that Super Mario Bros. 3 is a far more sizable experience than the first game, it’s also much more difficult because of it. This isn’t a case of the levels being consistently more hectic, but rather because the game is sizable to a fault. One unfortunate thing about Super Mario Bros. 3 is that the game does not come with a save feature. Every world has about seven to twelve different levels, so one would think being able to save would be necessary. However, this was obviously not an idea Nintendo had in the game’s development, so NES owners had to leave their console on all night to save their progress. If the player gets a game over, they no longer have to restart the entire game, but instead, have to start the world over again. This may seem like a relief until one realizes how many levels there are in each world. It then becomes a grind to work up to, especially without a save feature. I think an appropriate time to implement saving in this game would be after defeating Boom Boom in a castle. The castle levels are often right in the middle of a world after three or four stages. Having the player work up to that milestone and relieving them with a chance to save their progress does not mitigate the difficulty. One also has to keep in mind that the player only has a mere five lives to complete all of these levels. Again, this amount seems paltry stacked up against the number of levels one has to endure. The game gives the player plenty of chances to earn extra lives in the toad houses and power-ups can be used before entering a stage, but the game still seems to ask a bit too much from the player.

Other than that aspect, Super Mario Bros. 3 has a fairly consistent difficulty curve that increases appropriately as the game progresses. The first level is an unassuming grassy plain that eases the player into the gameplay. The second and third worlds are more feverish as they add a sort of “stalking mechanic” in which Mario is chased down by an angry sun in the desert and a giant, carnivorous Cheep Cheep dubbed by players as “Big Bertha”. The “Giant World” is a fan favorite where the size of enemies and objects becomes a new gimmick to hurdle over. World’s five and six add air and ice respectively and are quite extraneous in length. In World 7, known as “Pipe World”, this consistent curve hits a brick wall. This was the one world that made me give up this game as a kid and I thought that I would excel here as an adult. I however had the same trouble I did but persisted nonetheless. I realized that this wasn’t due to a larger amount of enemies per level, but because the design of most of these levels was unfairly obtuse. I even had to look up what I had to do in one level to complete it because it was so obtuse. I appreciate the variety of level design the developers implemented, but the execution is much too abstract for a Mario game. This would’ve been better implemented in a bonus world for an extra level of difficulty for more incentivized players.

Carrying over the elements of the first Super Mario Bros. isn’t what makes Super Mario Bros. 3 a considerable contender for the best Mario game. Otherwise, everyone would most likely only sing the praises of the first Super Mario Bros. Retaining the same elements from the first game was definitely important to the mix of Super Mario Bros. 3, but it’s the changes that made a world of difference and elevated it in terms of quality. Super Mario Bros. 3 is much more organized, fine-tuned, and vaster than the first game. In fact, this proved to be the case compared to every other NES game at the time. It was groundbreaking because gamers had never experienced a video game with so much graphical polish, fluid control, nuanced level design, and considerably lengthy playtime. Gamers were practically spoiled by the capabilities of Super Mario Bros 3., and it made every other NES title pale in comparison. Its spectacular, timeless presentation matched with its fluid gameplay and level design makes it easy to mistake it with the quality of a game from the technically superior SNES. Declaring Super Mario Bros. 3 as the greatest NES game seems like an objective statement, one that can be supported with clear evidence that proves itself. On a more subjective scale, my opinion about Super Mario Bros. 3 standing as the reigning champ of all Mario titles isn’t as concrete as it used to be. I now find fault with being unable to save one’s progress, especially considering how long this game can be. I’m also not a fan of the steep difficulty curve and the obtuse level design in world 7. With all of these new criticisms coming to light for me, Super Mario Bros. 3 is still incredibly impressive in many ways and has aged better than any of its NES contemporaries.

Super Mario Bros. 3 is my favorite Mario game in this retrospective so far. Took me a while to get it done but I'm happy to have pushed through and beat it because it was so worth it.

Super Mario Bros. 3 released back in 1988 for Japan and 1990 for the US and it is a drastic overhaul from the previous games.

Like before, the game is 8 Worlds and the objective is to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser. However, there exists an overworld and the challenge is to get through all the levels and find ways to maybe pass through optional levels to complete a world. The game also has its fair share of mini-games such as matching cards and creating a shape by timing the press of the button. Toad houses are introduced as well. Toad Houses allow you to get a power-up that will be stored and can be used before entering a level. The levels are mostly the same. You gotta get to the end of a level through platforming and avoiding obstacles. I'd say that this game does a better job at difficulty progression. Never felt unfair. Completing a level gets you a card and getting the same card after 3 levels can earn you 5 1-Ups. This game introduces new characters as well. Bowser's Minions (They aren't actually his children, contrary to popular belief), The Koopalings. Which consists of Larry, Morton, Wendy, Iggy, Roy, Lemmy, and Ludwig.

The Power-Ups are crazy. Too much for me to simply go over. There are the Power-Ups we've seen. The Mushroom, and Fire Flower. But there is also a Frog Suit which lets you swim better, The Hammer Suit which lets you throw hammers like a Hammer Bro, etc. But the main selling point was the Tanooki Suit. A Power-Up that allows you to hover for a short period based on your running speed. There's also the P Tanooki Suit which lets you fly for as long as you please.

This game is so interesting and weird. So full of personality and charm. Easily one of the best NES games of all time and likely one of the best 2D Platformers of all time.