Often (and rightfully) in contention for the best 2D Mario of all time. It happens to fall just shy of that for me, with Mario World's less inhibited gameplay and flow earning it the honor.
Super Mario Bros. 3 is more traditional in its design, eschewing many of the mechanics introduced in the USA version of Mario 2. This of course isn't surprising considering it wasn't the Mario 2 Japan got (even if it may seem like the defacto follow-up today) but it's probably for the best as Mario 3 feels like a proper evolution of the gameplay introduced in the original Super Mario Bros. Graphically it's a marked improvement. Mario himself is far more "readable," and enemies feel much more expressive and cartoony. This is where a lot of the series aesthetics started to solidify, and it's impressive how good the game is as communicating these designs on 8-bit hardware. Flipping between the manual and the game will show you just how faithfully rendered the characters are, whereas most other NES games demand a hefty amount of imagination to fill in the gaps.
The level-to-level structure of the original Mario is mostly gone, as players now move between levels in a (somewhat) non-linear fashion. Not only can you break the level order with the use of warp whistles (skipping large chunks of levels was really tradition by this point), but the world map provides some small amount of freedom to skip levels and forge your own path. These maps are also dotted with minigames, which make for perfectly fine diversions and allow you to bank power-ups, a useful new feature.
Levels are generally well designed, but very short in length. This is where the game falters a bit for me. A few level concepts don't get the time they need to breathe, and there's a few too many levels towards the later half of the game that just don't feel like they justify their inclusion. You could probably remove a whole world's worth of levels from this game and it would feel much better to play through. It's usually around world 6 that the lack of a save feature starts to wear on me. There's a lot of game here. Not so much that beating it in one sitting is unreasonable, but save backups were becoming more common and it certainly would have been appreciated.
Mario 3 makes for an excellent end to the series' run on the NES hardware. It's a brilliant showcase of what the NES is capable of, as well as the ingenuity and creativity of Miyamoto's team.
Addendum: Larry Davis is holding my family at gunpoint unless I up this by .5 stars. Says both this and World can be 5/5's, says I don't know what it means to hurt.
Super Mario Bros. 3 is more traditional in its design, eschewing many of the mechanics introduced in the USA version of Mario 2. This of course isn't surprising considering it wasn't the Mario 2 Japan got (even if it may seem like the defacto follow-up today) but it's probably for the best as Mario 3 feels like a proper evolution of the gameplay introduced in the original Super Mario Bros. Graphically it's a marked improvement. Mario himself is far more "readable," and enemies feel much more expressive and cartoony. This is where a lot of the series aesthetics started to solidify, and it's impressive how good the game is as communicating these designs on 8-bit hardware. Flipping between the manual and the game will show you just how faithfully rendered the characters are, whereas most other NES games demand a hefty amount of imagination to fill in the gaps.
The level-to-level structure of the original Mario is mostly gone, as players now move between levels in a (somewhat) non-linear fashion. Not only can you break the level order with the use of warp whistles (skipping large chunks of levels was really tradition by this point), but the world map provides some small amount of freedom to skip levels and forge your own path. These maps are also dotted with minigames, which make for perfectly fine diversions and allow you to bank power-ups, a useful new feature.
Levels are generally well designed, but very short in length. This is where the game falters a bit for me. A few level concepts don't get the time they need to breathe, and there's a few too many levels towards the later half of the game that just don't feel like they justify their inclusion. You could probably remove a whole world's worth of levels from this game and it would feel much better to play through. It's usually around world 6 that the lack of a save feature starts to wear on me. There's a lot of game here. Not so much that beating it in one sitting is unreasonable, but save backups were becoming more common and it certainly would have been appreciated.
Mario 3 makes for an excellent end to the series' run on the NES hardware. It's a brilliant showcase of what the NES is capable of, as well as the ingenuity and creativity of Miyamoto's team.
Addendum: Larry Davis is holding my family at gunpoint unless I up this by .5 stars. Says both this and World can be 5/5's, says I don't know what it means to hurt.