LogFAQs > #951419054

#8. Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES, 1990)



Mario games are about some guy in overalls named Mario who is a plumber, which is why he uses pipes to travel, and he tries to rescue the princess, and he jumps on enemies like goomba and koopa troopa and cheep-cheep and

Okay, Mario doesn't need any real explanation now, and he didn't even really need one back when Super Mario Bros 3 came out. Mario was already huge, and the hype for SMB3 was massive. And somehow, this game lived up to every bit of hype surrounding it.

There is something about Mario 3 that screams fun in every single square inch of the game. When I see the title screen, one of the world maps, the black end of level screen, the mushroom house, the airships, the warp zone, and even the box art it all feels me with feelings of joy and adventure. The Koopa Kids are also a very special part of this game. Mario 3 added a ton of power-ups. There is big Mario and fire Mario again, but then there's raccoon, tanooki, hammer suit, frog, and p-wing. Some don't appear as often, but it helps make them feel special and useful when you can have them. There is a massive number of levels in this game. Way more than any Mario game before it, but even more than Super Mario World brought after it. And there's not a level in this game that I don't see and instantly uniquely recall.

At some point as a kid, I borrowed a copy of the Nintendo Power Super Mario Bros 3 Strategy Guide from someone. It was the first kind of strategy guide I had ever seen, and I thought it was so cool. I tried to learn all the secrets it told me, but I also really just poured over all the maps of levels. From then on, whenever I sat down with a piece of paper to draw or color or whatever as a kid, I would just draw Mario levels. Mario 3 had become my creativity outlet.



Another older memory I have of the game, my grandparents were watching me and I was playing Mario 3 for one of the first times. I got into World 2, the Desert Land, and I got stuck. I had cleared every level I could, but I was stuck on the world map with nowhere else to go. I asked my grandpa to help me, but he didn't play games, so he had no clue what I was trying to ask of him. I ended up turning the game off without figuring it out. I probably figured it out the next time I played, but what had happened was I reached the quicksand level (with the angry sun), which is displayed on the world map as a square of quicksand. I made Mario stand on it, and tried to move him through it, but never hit the A button to enter it, because I didn't realize it was a level. Oops.

I still have fun popping this game in every now and than to just see what I remember. Maybe I can pick the frog suit for the right levels with water, maybe I can still find the hidden music blocks to coin heavens, maybe I can get the right number of coins to turn hammer bros. into coin ships, maybe I can clip the subpixels in 7-1, maybe I can get all the right doors in the world 8 fortress, maybe I can match all the cards in one shot, maybe I can beat the fast airship without getting hit as small Mario or as frog Mario. Mario 3 is so packed full of neat secrets and moments from top to bottom. It has always felt like the game with the most pure feeling of "fun" no matter how I play or what I'm trying to do.

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