Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 is a port of Super Mario Bros. 3 from Super Mario All-Stars collection. If you've played any of the previous Super Mario Advance games, there's everything you'd expect from a Super Mario Advance game: changes to account for reduced resolution, brightened visuals, voice samples, a lot of miscellaneous additions, supposedly worse music, but the play experience is pretty much the same. Not once did I experience screen crunch affecting the gameplay negatively, which is nice, and you can save anywhere. You can play as Luigi only in Mario+Luigi mode, which was kinda disappointing because I thought of playing as Luigi only, even then he doesn't carry his physics from World e levels, but we'll talk about that later. Another note about the base game, is "worse" music. In reality, only two tracks I thought sounded bad, Map 7 theme and Bowser Boss Battle tracks, they simply sound unpleasant to me, which is interesting, because I didn’t feel that way about any of the music tracks in Super Mario Advance 2 and 3 (I didn’t play Super Mario Advance: Super Mario Bros. 2 yet, so I can’t comment on that game’s sound quality). Remember I said screen crunch didn't affect my play experience? Well, I kinda sorta lied, it did make Bowser fight harder, since he jumps lower, because of reduced vertical resolution. But otherwise there's not much to say about the base game, it's Super Mario Bros. 3, and Super Mario Bros. 3 is pretty good.
The main attraction of this game however is the world e levels, available by scanning e-cards with e-reader device, though unfortunately it wasn't very popular in the US, which got less e-cards released for Super Mario Advance 4, and thus less levels, and these cards were never released in Europe. This was remedied by the Wii U rerelease, which included all the e-reader levels, and even a few PR levels, which is pretty cool. First five levels are remakes of the 1-1 through 1-4 of Super Mario Bros. from Super Mario All-Stars, with the fifth level being 2-2, the underwater one, complete with GBA-ized music tracks, but with Super Mario Bros. 3 physics. These were probably neat in 2003, although nowdays the concept feels overdone, but it does show a glimpse of what would've been a SMAS SMB. remake on GBA, if there was ever such a thing. The rest of the levels however are completely original, using assets both new and from previous games, like veggies from SMB2 or Super Mario World enemies and even power-ups. The levels are often pretty creative and fun to play, and have extra collectibles for 100% completion. Though there were a few frustrating levels. These e-levels is where I really felt like the screen crunch was problematic for Bowser fight. There are a couple levels ending with Bowser, and it’s tedious to die to him, since these levels are longer and harder. But otherwise, again, I didn’t feel screen crunch at all. Another positive aspect of the e-world is Luigi is a separate playable character, complete with new physics. There were only a few instances where the levels felt like they weren’t well designed for Luigi, even though all levels should be able to be completed by both brothers and provide optimal experience. Not to mention, I didn’t have fun controlling him, I think because I’m too used to original SMB3 physics and playing as Mario feels natural, unlike Super Mario Advance 2: Super Mario World. That said it’s still a nice inclusion to spice things up. It’s clear the devs had fun coming up with the new levels, heck, there’s even quite a bit of unused stuff relating to those world e-levels, showing just how many ideas the team had. In a way, this feels like a proper sendoff for the Super Mario Advance series, ending it with a bang. This port definitely would’ve just alright, not bad, I mean Super Mario Bros 3 good, but nothing special. But they did go extra to include make these new levels which is rather nice. Even if you couldn’t experience these levels until much later on Wii U. As a port, it’s alright, there’s not much to expect but the underlying game is still solid fun, but I definitely recommend checking out e world levels since they’re pretty unique and interesting.
The main attraction of this game however is the world e levels, available by scanning e-cards with e-reader device, though unfortunately it wasn't very popular in the US, which got less e-cards released for Super Mario Advance 4, and thus less levels, and these cards were never released in Europe. This was remedied by the Wii U rerelease, which included all the e-reader levels, and even a few PR levels, which is pretty cool. First five levels are remakes of the 1-1 through 1-4 of Super Mario Bros. from Super Mario All-Stars, with the fifth level being 2-2, the underwater one, complete with GBA-ized music tracks, but with Super Mario Bros. 3 physics. These were probably neat in 2003, although nowdays the concept feels overdone, but it does show a glimpse of what would've been a SMAS SMB. remake on GBA, if there was ever such a thing. The rest of the levels however are completely original, using assets both new and from previous games, like veggies from SMB2 or Super Mario World enemies and even power-ups. The levels are often pretty creative and fun to play, and have extra collectibles for 100% completion. Though there were a few frustrating levels. These e-levels is where I really felt like the screen crunch was problematic for Bowser fight. There are a couple levels ending with Bowser, and it’s tedious to die to him, since these levels are longer and harder. But otherwise, again, I didn’t feel screen crunch at all. Another positive aspect of the e-world is Luigi is a separate playable character, complete with new physics. There were only a few instances where the levels felt like they weren’t well designed for Luigi, even though all levels should be able to be completed by both brothers and provide optimal experience. Not to mention, I didn’t have fun controlling him, I think because I’m too used to original SMB3 physics and playing as Mario feels natural, unlike Super Mario Advance 2: Super Mario World. That said it’s still a nice inclusion to spice things up. It’s clear the devs had fun coming up with the new levels, heck, there’s even quite a bit of unused stuff relating to those world e-levels, showing just how many ideas the team had. In a way, this feels like a proper sendoff for the Super Mario Advance series, ending it with a bang. This port definitely would’ve just alright, not bad, I mean Super Mario Bros 3 good, but nothing special. But they did go extra to include make these new levels which is rather nice. Even if you couldn’t experience these levels until much later on Wii U. As a port, it’s alright, there’s not much to expect but the underlying game is still solid fun, but I definitely recommend checking out e world levels since they’re pretty unique and interesting.