Super Mario Bros. 3

Back in 1990, Super Mario Brothers 3 was the most anticipated video game ever.  The success of the previous Mario releases raised the Mario series to a whole new level of popularity.  There was now a Saturday morning cartoon based on the video game series.  McDonalds had happy meals where the toy was a Mario Brothers character.  Plus, Super Mario Brothers 3 was featured in the movie The Wizard months before the release of the game.

In case you are too young or don’t remember, the movie The Wizard was your typical cheesy late 80’s movie.  Looking back at it now, it makes you wonder how a movie like this ever got made.  It has a pre Wonder Years Fred Savage and his younger brother running away to Los Angeles to play in the biggest video game tournament.  Fred’s younger brother, who we are led to believe is autistic, is a natural at every video game.  They have to outsmart every adult that is trying to stop them on their way to the tournament.  The movie also takes advantage of every opportunity they can to showcase Nintendo games.  There is even a scene where the dad who is looking for his lost kids has to be pulled away from the Nintendo System by his younger son, played by Christian Slater, because they got a new lead on where the kids are.  Still, anyone who saw the movie when it was released still remembers the scene where Mario 3 was played.  I remember seeing the movie in the theater and I couldn’t believe they were playing the game.  I also remember being excited how it looked a lot more like the original Mario game and not Super Mario Brothers 2.  Also, they show in the movie how to get a whistle to reach the warp zone in SMB 3.  You would figure that the character playing the game for the first time wouldn’t know about the whistle yet, but I guess that’s why they call him The Wizard.

With the anticipation of a new Mario game and the game being shown in the movie The Wizard, everyone was waiting for the release of this game.  I was only 8 years old at the time, but I remember that every store couldn’t keep the game on their shelves.  The lines for the game were out of control.  Every time one of my friends got the game it was a big deal because it felt like no one was able to find this game at a store.  The whole country was Mario crazy, which was properly represented in the commercial for SMB 3.

This commercial is not an exaggeration for how many people were waiting for the game.  With all the improvements added to SMB 3, it was worth the wait.  Mario 3 made a huge leap from the last release, and brought back the features of the original game that made the Mario Brothers game such a success.  This game lived up to the hype too.  It received perfect reviews and was remade a couple of times so it could be played on the new Nintendo game systems.

In Super Mario Brothers 3, King Bowser is back, and this time he brought his 7 kids into the mix.  Bowser captured Princess Peach again, and Mario has to go through each of the 8 worlds in the Magic Kingdom to get her back.  Each world has been taken over by one of Bowser’s kids, and they turned the King from that World into an animal with a magic wand.  When Mario defeats one of Bowser’s kids, he gets the magic wand back and is able to turn the King back into his original self.  Mario also gets a note from the princess with a gift attached to it.  Normally it’s a P wing, which lets you fly through an entire level, or a cloud, which lets you skip a difficult level.  By having Bowser’s kids as the boss of the world, it makes the game more interesting.  Each kid requires a different strategy to defeat them.  This is a huge improvement from the original game where you face seven Bowser look a likes.

I mentioned earlier that some improvements made in this game from the previous releases, but to get a true appreciation for it, I’m going to go over each major improvement.

The first major improvement that everyone noticed right away is that Mario has the ability to fly in this game.  Flying was huge, not just for gameplay, but for the level design.  The developers of the game made a strong point about Mario flying by the way they designed the first level of the game.  After you get your first Super Leaf to turn Mario into a raccoon in the first level, you find a section of the level with coins placed in an upward direction for Mario to fly in.  When you fly in the direction of the coins you find a secret cloud area above where you can get a 1-up.  This teaches the gamer that exploring throughout the level rewards them.  Not only did this game introduce flying for Mario, but it also contained a number of power ups for Mario.  There was a Raccoon Power up that also allowed Mario to fly, a Tanooki Suit Power up that allows Mario to fly and turn into a statue to be safe from enemies, a Frog Power up that increases Mario’s ability to swim, and a Hammer Bros Suit that allows Mario to throw hammers.  The game also brought back the Mushroom Power up and Fire Power up.

SMB 3 was the first Mario game to have an overworld map where the player go to choose the level they wanted to play.  This meant players could skip levels or play the game in a different order.  For this project I decided to play every level because I love the challenge of each level in this game.  Not only did the overworld map contain levels for Mario to play, but there were side games placed throughout the worlds[A2] .  Each world contained a spade panel game that was a slot machine type game where you had to match up the picture to get a power up.  There was a memory type game where you get two chances to pick two cards to flip over and see if they both have the same power up.  They also added the option to play the original Mario Brothers game when two people are playing at the same time.  When one player is walking through the overworld map and walks over the second players marker, either player has the option to hit either the A or B button to start the original Super Mario Brothers game where both players get to play against each other.

 

The enemies made some improvements from the previous Mario Brothers games.  The Hammer Head Brothers can now throw fire balls and boomerangs.  There are new enemies like the Thwomps, which need precise timing to get past, Dry Bones, which you can only knock down for a while, Boos, which are ghosts that follow you when you aren’t looking, and Chain Chomps, which are like wild animals attached to a block by a chain.  The addition of the new enemies with the same enemies from the previous Mario Brothers games increases the difficulty for each level.

Since the enemies and levels are harder in this game, it’s only fair that the developers allowed Mario to have a few new advantages in this game.  You can now store power ups and apply them to Mario before you start a level.  You can earn the power ups by either visiting Toad’s houses, matching the correct cards in the memory side game, or when Princess Peach gives you power ups after each world you save from one of Bowser’s kid.  There are also multiple ways to receive extra lives beyond the traditional ways in this game.  After each level you hit a box to get a mushroom, flower or star card.  If you collect 3 mushrooms you get a 1-up, if you collect 3 flowers you get a 2-up, and if you collect 3 stars you get a 5-up.  If you get good at this, you can time the card selection and get a star each time.  This adds up as getting 5 extra lives for every three levels can really allow you to get many extra lives.

Another neat feature about this game is the difference in appearance for each world in the game.  The developers of the game did a nice job of applying the themes for each world into the design of the levels.  Some of the most memorable were World 4, a giant world, World 6, an Ice Land, and World 7, a pipe world.  Each world has the last stage as an airship called the Doom Ship.  It features a scrolling level and one of the Bowser’s Kids at the end.

Even though this game is over 20 years old, it still holds up and is fun to play.  There were some parts of the game that I forgot and other parts that were different than I remember.  First, the graphics were not as good as I remember them to be.  At the time of the release of the game the graphics were as good as they come, but looking back at the game now you could make the argument that SMB 2 graphics were better than SMB 3.  The second part of the game that I didn’t remember correctly was the difficulty of the game.  I remember this game being the easiest of the 3 released for the NES.  This was true for worlds one through five, but once you enter world 6 I would say the game gets just as hard, if not harder, than the other two games.

I kept a log of when I died throughout the game.  I went into this thinking I would be able to get through most worlds without dying once.  Unfortunately that was not the case, and I placed my log of deaths in each world below.  Looking it over, some things that stand out to me were how many times I died in World 3, how little times I died in World 5 and that World 7 was the world I died most in.  I remember World 7 being hard, but I also remember World 8 had some insane levels.  Playing it again now, both levels were about equally as hard, and it shows in the log.  I also wouldn’t say that World 6 is as hard as it seems by the amount of times that I died.  At the time I was playing it I made some dumb mistakes, and that is why I died so many times in World 6 compared to the rest of the worlds.

World	Total Deaths
World 1	1
World 2	3
World 3	22
World 4	8
World 5	5
World 6	27
World 7	28
World 8	20

In the end I died a total of 114 times.  This was way more than I thought it would be, but there are more levels in this game than any of the previous Mario games.  I ended the game with 6 lives, which meant I finished plus one because you start out with 5 lives.  I figured I would end with somewhere between 20 and 30 lives, but I was still happy to beat the game.

In 2008, Guinness Book or Records announced Super Mario Brothers 3 as the most sold video game of all time.  You can’t find that as surprising news, because the game was wildly successful back in the day and also today.  To me, this is my favorite Mario Brothers game of all time.  I’ve played most of the other Mario games, but for whatever reason they just don’t compare to this game.  I think part of the reason for that is due to me playing this game as a kid, but it also has to do with how it was made.

This marks the end of an era as this is the last Mario game made for the Nintendo Entertainment System.  Nintendo released 4 Mario games for the NES, more on this console than any other console.  After this game, Nintendo moved their focus to making games for the Super Nintendo console.  I can’t blame Nintendo for not releasing another Mario game for the NES.  I feel this game was the best they could do back in 1990 and with the limitations of the NES console.  With the release of the new console, came the release of a new Super Mario Brothers game, Super Mario World.