Super Mario Bros. 3 is a game I was honestly skeptical of going in. It's widely renowned as one of the best of its already highly regarded genre, and has the seat as the most hyped game of all time when it came out- but as someone who isn't super into straight up 2-D platformers, I didn't expect to personally get much out of it.
I'm pleasantly surprised though, to say that I really do like this game a lot. It's not quite flawless or the peak of the Mario series (I actually still like the original Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2 more, personally), but it's a damn charming game absolutely dripping with innovation and creativity.
I'll just get my complaints out of the way first, starting with the repetitiveness of some of the level theming. While each world has its own general theme, ranging from the usual grass and desert to the wild sky and pipe worlds, there are levels in each world that feel functionally and visually identical. The main contenders for this unholy category are the airship and castle levels, which ended up pissing me off as the game progressed because they were just SO DAMN SIMILAR EVERY TIME. I mean seriously, ending each world with a nigh identical cutscene and setup is bad enough, but making each final level look like sections of the same map is just boring and frustrating. It doesn't help that the boss fights in both the castles and airships are also incredibly underwhelming and repetitive, so much so that I was so used to slightly remixed Boom Boom fights and lame Koopalings that the Dark World at the end just left me bored. Unfortunately this also extends to some of the regular levels in certain worlds that just feel the same and slightly remixed versions of previous worlds, leading to a lot of the game being visually samey and lacking in terms of thematic variety.
The game is also just too much for the NES to handle, to be honest, and it has more slow down and visual errors than I think I've ever seen in any major Nintendo game. The game absolutely SHITS itself when there are a certain number of moving sprites on the screen, slowing down to a crawl that makes platfoming nearly impossible. It can happen at any moment and inconsistently too, since it only takes that one extra sprite to break the metaphorical camel's back where the game switches from running great to chugging like Joey from Joey's World Tour. There's also this weird visual glitch that plagues the entire game, with sprites on the edge of the screen on the right appearing green as you run, and the sprites on the left disappearing too early. I played the game on Nintendo Switch NES Online, but I highly doubt that its the Switch port that created the errors. It really is ugly to look at and it distracted me on many occasions.
Really though, those two things aren't major enough blemishes for me to discount everything else this game does fantastically. The chug and glitch that the game experiences is wholly because this game is years ahead of its time in so many ways. Just thinking of the platformer genre I grew up with, so much of the staples of it came completely from this game. Collectable power-ups? Auto-scrolling levels? WORLD MAPS? There’s so much that this game did to innovate on the stagnation of Mario games in the 80s that it boggles the mind, and it makes the scope of the game gargantuan when compared to its predecessors. It also certainly is one of the best looking games on the NES, with sprites multiple times more detailed, colorful and expressive than the ones in the original Super Mario Bros. I personally really love the visual details in the level platforms and background flavor wise, with depth, charm and character oozing out of each sprite. On top of that the game is so much more animated than the original, with small touches like Mario grabbing his hat when he crouches and Spikes barfing up spike balls giving everything a lot more personality. A personal favorite of mine is the title screen of the game, which has a colorful logo with a fun animation of Mario dicking around in front of it, all presented like a staged play.
Super Mario Bros. 3 is also a game that set the gold standard for new mechanics at the time. There are so many new things to handle in 3 that it almost overwhelmed me at first, since I wasn’t expecting so much to be thrown at me. First, there’s an inventory of power-ups to deal with, and the new systems of collecting them in mini games, challenge levels and Toad houses. This same inventory also contains items that can be used to interact with the overworld map, letting you find secrets, extra paths or even skip entire levels, which is just so damn cool. The aforementioned power-ups are also kinda bonkers when compared to the simplicity of the fire flower and power stars of ye old days, with the Frog Suit, Racoon Leaf, Hammer Suit and Tanooki Suit each having impact on Mario’s combat, traversal ability and even just his basic movement mechanics. You can FLY with the racoon and tanooki suits, managing the P (heh) meter at the bottom of the screen, which incentivises you to find ways to speed through levels and git gud so you can use that oh-so-satisfying speed boost and take-off. You can also kick and grab and carry a bunch of crap in the levels, allowing for a lot more interactability in the levels, leading to some fun puzzle levels that help break up the pacing of the game a bit and make it feel more mechanically complex. There are also level specific mechanics that are REALLY damn cool, like the one pipe world level where you ride on these controllable arrow blocks, the giant world level where you swap between big and small, and the pipe world level where you have to go off the screen and wrap around Pac-Man style. I really like the pipe world, if you couldn’t tell.
Look, I’m not known for my supreme consistency, but I’m about to compliment this game on its level creativity. BEFORE YOU STOP READING- I’m saying this only to highlight the creativity of this game, and to accentuate my earlier criticism about the levels that stick out as repetitive and uninspired. This game has a lot of basic areas, like grass, desert, water and the spooky Bowser world at the end, but the ones that stand out are honestly some of the best platforming worlds I’ve played. I mean COME ON, Giant, Sky and Pipe World are all absolutely fantastic. The concept of a Mario world where everything is big is great, and introduces new ways to deal with even the most basic of enemies and obstacles. Sky world has the ridiculously delicious gimmick of changing up the world map halfway through, which is accessed through a vine in one of the levels, and you can see the rest of the world down below. And honestly Pipe world is probably my favorite platformer world I’ve played. Each level has its own unique mechanics, with spins on exploration and puzzle solving, and it gives a new context to the iconic mario pipe. Chef’s kiss.
Even in the basic worlds like the introductory Grass world, it has a unique spin in that the level platforms are bolted onto the background or hanging from the sky, along with environmental details.
This game also has a TON of amazing new enemies to encounter outside of the mediocre boss battles, contributing to it having a super fun and creative vibe all around. Here’s a list of some of the highlights: Spikes, little green guys that barf up spike balls, Buster Beetles, an enemy that picks up blocks in the environment and hurl them towards you (IN THE PERFECT ARC THAT ALWAYS SCREWS ME OVER), Chain Chomps that are obviously iconic, Ptooies, walking Piranha Plants that blow spikeballs over their heads, and Pile-driver Micro Goombas that hide inside blocks and jump around when you come near. ON TOP of these the game shines in the smaller more obscure enemies that are just unique and fun to look at, like Micro goombas, Walking Piranhas, Jelectros, Shoe Goombas, Hot Foots (hot feet?), Munchers, and my personal favorite, the Stretches.
All in all, I think writing this long-ass review kinda showed me that I like this game a lot more than I originally thought. There’s so much about it that I think is wacky and creative and supremely innovative, and I really do want to play it through more times to catch things I missed and give it more attention. Super Mario Bros. 3 might not be perfect, but it's a really damn charming game that I think is a must-play for any Nintendo platforming fan. Its influence can be felt to this day in so many ways across the games medium, and while I might not have the nostalgia for it that it’s biggest fans do, I can fully agree that most of its praise is fully warranted.
I'm pleasantly surprised though, to say that I really do like this game a lot. It's not quite flawless or the peak of the Mario series (I actually still like the original Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2 more, personally), but it's a damn charming game absolutely dripping with innovation and creativity.
I'll just get my complaints out of the way first, starting with the repetitiveness of some of the level theming. While each world has its own general theme, ranging from the usual grass and desert to the wild sky and pipe worlds, there are levels in each world that feel functionally and visually identical. The main contenders for this unholy category are the airship and castle levels, which ended up pissing me off as the game progressed because they were just SO DAMN SIMILAR EVERY TIME. I mean seriously, ending each world with a nigh identical cutscene and setup is bad enough, but making each final level look like sections of the same map is just boring and frustrating. It doesn't help that the boss fights in both the castles and airships are also incredibly underwhelming and repetitive, so much so that I was so used to slightly remixed Boom Boom fights and lame Koopalings that the Dark World at the end just left me bored. Unfortunately this also extends to some of the regular levels in certain worlds that just feel the same and slightly remixed versions of previous worlds, leading to a lot of the game being visually samey and lacking in terms of thematic variety.
The game is also just too much for the NES to handle, to be honest, and it has more slow down and visual errors than I think I've ever seen in any major Nintendo game. The game absolutely SHITS itself when there are a certain number of moving sprites on the screen, slowing down to a crawl that makes platfoming nearly impossible. It can happen at any moment and inconsistently too, since it only takes that one extra sprite to break the metaphorical camel's back where the game switches from running great to chugging like Joey from Joey's World Tour. There's also this weird visual glitch that plagues the entire game, with sprites on the edge of the screen on the right appearing green as you run, and the sprites on the left disappearing too early. I played the game on Nintendo Switch NES Online, but I highly doubt that its the Switch port that created the errors. It really is ugly to look at and it distracted me on many occasions.
Really though, those two things aren't major enough blemishes for me to discount everything else this game does fantastically. The chug and glitch that the game experiences is wholly because this game is years ahead of its time in so many ways. Just thinking of the platformer genre I grew up with, so much of the staples of it came completely from this game. Collectable power-ups? Auto-scrolling levels? WORLD MAPS? There’s so much that this game did to innovate on the stagnation of Mario games in the 80s that it boggles the mind, and it makes the scope of the game gargantuan when compared to its predecessors. It also certainly is one of the best looking games on the NES, with sprites multiple times more detailed, colorful and expressive than the ones in the original Super Mario Bros. I personally really love the visual details in the level platforms and background flavor wise, with depth, charm and character oozing out of each sprite. On top of that the game is so much more animated than the original, with small touches like Mario grabbing his hat when he crouches and Spikes barfing up spike balls giving everything a lot more personality. A personal favorite of mine is the title screen of the game, which has a colorful logo with a fun animation of Mario dicking around in front of it, all presented like a staged play.
Super Mario Bros. 3 is also a game that set the gold standard for new mechanics at the time. There are so many new things to handle in 3 that it almost overwhelmed me at first, since I wasn’t expecting so much to be thrown at me. First, there’s an inventory of power-ups to deal with, and the new systems of collecting them in mini games, challenge levels and Toad houses. This same inventory also contains items that can be used to interact with the overworld map, letting you find secrets, extra paths or even skip entire levels, which is just so damn cool. The aforementioned power-ups are also kinda bonkers when compared to the simplicity of the fire flower and power stars of ye old days, with the Frog Suit, Racoon Leaf, Hammer Suit and Tanooki Suit each having impact on Mario’s combat, traversal ability and even just his basic movement mechanics. You can FLY with the racoon and tanooki suits, managing the P (heh) meter at the bottom of the screen, which incentivises you to find ways to speed through levels and git gud so you can use that oh-so-satisfying speed boost and take-off. You can also kick and grab and carry a bunch of crap in the levels, allowing for a lot more interactability in the levels, leading to some fun puzzle levels that help break up the pacing of the game a bit and make it feel more mechanically complex. There are also level specific mechanics that are REALLY damn cool, like the one pipe world level where you ride on these controllable arrow blocks, the giant world level where you swap between big and small, and the pipe world level where you have to go off the screen and wrap around Pac-Man style. I really like the pipe world, if you couldn’t tell.
Look, I’m not known for my supreme consistency, but I’m about to compliment this game on its level creativity. BEFORE YOU STOP READING- I’m saying this only to highlight the creativity of this game, and to accentuate my earlier criticism about the levels that stick out as repetitive and uninspired. This game has a lot of basic areas, like grass, desert, water and the spooky Bowser world at the end, but the ones that stand out are honestly some of the best platforming worlds I’ve played. I mean COME ON, Giant, Sky and Pipe World are all absolutely fantastic. The concept of a Mario world where everything is big is great, and introduces new ways to deal with even the most basic of enemies and obstacles. Sky world has the ridiculously delicious gimmick of changing up the world map halfway through, which is accessed through a vine in one of the levels, and you can see the rest of the world down below. And honestly Pipe world is probably my favorite platformer world I’ve played. Each level has its own unique mechanics, with spins on exploration and puzzle solving, and it gives a new context to the iconic mario pipe. Chef’s kiss.
Even in the basic worlds like the introductory Grass world, it has a unique spin in that the level platforms are bolted onto the background or hanging from the sky, along with environmental details.
This game also has a TON of amazing new enemies to encounter outside of the mediocre boss battles, contributing to it having a super fun and creative vibe all around. Here’s a list of some of the highlights: Spikes, little green guys that barf up spike balls, Buster Beetles, an enemy that picks up blocks in the environment and hurl them towards you (IN THE PERFECT ARC THAT ALWAYS SCREWS ME OVER), Chain Chomps that are obviously iconic, Ptooies, walking Piranha Plants that blow spikeballs over their heads, and Pile-driver Micro Goombas that hide inside blocks and jump around when you come near. ON TOP of these the game shines in the smaller more obscure enemies that are just unique and fun to look at, like Micro goombas, Walking Piranhas, Jelectros, Shoe Goombas, Hot Foots (hot feet?), Munchers, and my personal favorite, the Stretches.
All in all, I think writing this long-ass review kinda showed me that I like this game a lot more than I originally thought. There’s so much about it that I think is wacky and creative and supremely innovative, and I really do want to play it through more times to catch things I missed and give it more attention. Super Mario Bros. 3 might not be perfect, but it's a really damn charming game that I think is a must-play for any Nintendo platforming fan. Its influence can be felt to this day in so many ways across the games medium, and while I might not have the nostalgia for it that it’s biggest fans do, I can fully agree that most of its praise is fully warranted.