Super Mario Bros. 3

Overview

The long-standing debate between whether Super Mario World or Super Mario Bros. 3 is better rages on. Due to the weaknesses of the NES, I'll give the nod to Super Mario World; nevertheless, Super Mario Bros. 3 is one of the top games of the NES, although the ports give at an edge.

Review

I know I first saw Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES but I first actually played through it on Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World, but the original 1990 NES game, while less graphically featured than the later updates, was the first Mario game to really play with new power-ups and introduce standard world designs, with the ability of a mini-map, skipping levels, and keeping and storing items. Nintendo even published a fantastic strategy guide as an issue of Nintendo Power (which we covered earlier on this site).

The ports of Super Mario Bros. 3 through the SNES and GBA is probably closer to the way people have played them; other than adding new color and save features it's essentially the same thing. Other than that, the only thing I can really say is that while I stated that the theory of "Super Mario Bros. 3 is a play" was "hogwash" (see the original review), I think there's far too many autoscrolling levels (which aren't fun) and levels that can be cheesed with items (which is an argument Super Mario World faces).

Player Notes

While I did play it through on an emulated copy of Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World, I had only first played through to completion on Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3, arguably the definitive version of the game...which I got for Christmas when I was a lad of 12. (The best time for such things, really). In the original version of the review, I had concluded that "there was no definitive version of the game" and "definitely worth a play-through [as] one of the best games of the NES era" and gave it a "GOOD" review.

Port & Rerelease Notes

Just a few years after its release, SMB3 got a new release with Super Mario All-Stars, which added save features and new graphics. In 2003, this version was ported to the Game Boy Advance as Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3. Like all Super Mario Advance titles it had a port of the arcade Mario Bros.. It is somewhat of a mixed bag, however.

It has all the usual trademarks of the "Advance" series, downgraded music, voice samples ("Hoohoo! That's what I needed!" when you get a powerup). Even though I couldn't play the extra "e-Levels" (scanning levels on cards into the game via the Nintendo e-Reader) when I got this for Christmas (because of a lack of the peripheral), it was fantastic. However, World-e, the new feature introduced in Super Mario Advance 4 wasn't really used much when the game was released. The idea was you could scan in extra levels and even a few new items into the game but like all of the e-Reader enabled games, you had to have TWO Game Boy Advances and a link cable to make it work, one to plug in the e-Reader and scan stuff in, and one to receive the data for the game. Plus, the e-Reader wasn't used for many games anyway. There was Animal Crossing, Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, some exclusive cards that functioned with the device, and....that was pretty much it.

The Virtual Console release lets you play with the e-Reader levels (including the ones never released in the West). The e-Reader levels have all sorts of items and enemies from other games, like vegetables and POW blocks from Super Mario Bros. 2, the Cape and Charging Chuck from Super Mario World, even some Yoshi's Island items like the one-way gates. But you also don't get the power-up items and some of the levels just are more frustrating than good. It makes for a weird game. One thing that everyone talks about Super Mario Maker is how everything is thematically consistent...so no SMB3-style enemies in a Super Mario World-like level...but SMB3 physics means that Super Mario World enemies don't work as well, and you get to see the dark side of that in World-e: Chargin' Chuck can't just be bopped on continually, Mario will tend to bounce off after the first hit right into his path.

While the game was actually made larger in size to accommodate for adding ALL of the levels on cards (you had to delete some to make room for it), a "real" release won't let you scan anymore cards in, which has some stuff like not just "demo cards" (showing a technique) but item cards, letting you have extra lives, getting P-Wings whenever wherever, or adding the Cape Feather into Super Mario Bros. 3's world (that has some WONKY physics to it).

Screenshots

World 1.

Title screen.