Month of Mario: Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)
After the worldwide success of the original Super Mario Bros., the game was followed up by a pair of odd sequels. Japan received a follow-up that was essentially a rehash but with much greater difficulty while the U.S. instead got a game in a dream world with a heavy focus on throwing objects and enemies. Neither really felt like the next step of the athletic platforming concept featured in the original game that made the world fall in love with Mario, so when Super Mario Bros. 3 came along and truly felt like it was trying to expand on that original formula in new and exciting ways, it’s little surprise it became a beloved classic and a showcase of what the original NES could do when pushed to its limits. While the first Super Mario Bros. started things off, Super Mario Bros. 3 is undoubtedly the template that influenced all of the Super Mario 2D platforming titles to follow.
Right off the bat, Super Mario Bros. 3 tries to show this isn’t going to be the same kind of Mushroom Kingdom romp as the first game. Thrown onto a World Map, players now have an influence over where they head, the player needing to clear certain levels to access different regions but there are outright optional stages, houses and bonus games where you can earn goodies, and even dangers on the map to contend with like wandering Hammer Bros. who will pull you into a short fight should you run into them. What’s more, you are able to carry a wide range of reserve items you can activate before entering a level, rewards for work elsewhere able to pay off should you manage to hold onto your prizes for long enough. The land itself is even somewhere new, this opening Grass Land just one of eight special lands Mario and his brother Luigi must adventure into in order to help each region’s king. The Koopa King Bowser has employed what the manual calls his children to help this time around, the Koopalings each attacking a specific land in their airship and turning the king into some creature so he can’t resist their rule. Princess Toadstool actually remains back in the Mushroom Kingdom initially, sending Mario helpful letters after each king he’s rescued that give little tips about the game and provide some of those special items you can then use in future levels.
Super Mario Bros. 3 has incredibly responsive controls, Mario’s jump excellent for landing with ease even on a single small floating block in the air. As a result, some stages can demand that without much concern, the player not worried about slipping off too often unless there’s something else making them a bit antsy. Super Mario Bros. 3 has over 80 levels to conquer, and depending on the world you’re in, you will find a range of themes on show. Desert Land and Water Land naturally have levels featuring their namesakes prominently, but Giant Land features a fun twist where familiar elements like the Koopa Troopa turtles and biting Piranha Plants have been blown up to super size. What really stands out as dangerous though are new enemies Super Mario Bros. 3 brings to the table. The timid ghosts known as Boos would become a series feature after this game, but in their debut appearance, they move incredibly fast when you look away and they often appear alongside other dangers like rising and falling spikes, meaning turning your backs on them can quickly become lethal. Large iron balls with teeth known as Chain Chomps patrol as far as their leash allows, but they do so with such ferocity you really must respect the area around them as you won’t outspeed them should they lunge your way. The Angry Sun, which is exactly as its name implies, will even divebomb towards you in a few levels, its movements erratic but targeted towards you so you need to be ready whenever it’s about to make its next move.
Certain enemies can end up defining a stage due to their danger or their strangeness, but there are many levels defined by their layouts instead. Super Mario Bros. 3 is perhaps a little too proud of its auto-scrolling levels, stages where the screen moves forward automatically and you need to keep up to survive making up almost 1/4th of the available levels on offer. This is primarily because of the airship stages where you face off with Koopalings, their airships having you dodging their cannons, engines, and mole mechanics to try and make your way to their fight. The deliberate speed means you can’t just dash past the obstacles in such stages, and some iterations of these autoscrollers like a stage where you’re leaping between small clouds that zip by still keep things active and kinetic despite the fact you can’t press forward beyond the limits of the moving screen borders. What really does feel too frequent is the boss monster Boom Boom, a turtle creature who caps off many fortress levels who doesn’t have too many tricks and appears nearly as often as auto-scroller stages do. He can be beaten rather quickly once you understand him, this unfortunately a bit true for the Koopalings too, but there are a few like Lemmy Koopa who make their fight a bit tougher since he both rides and fires balls around his arena so you can’t so easily hop on his head to dispense with him.
There are plenty of normal levels that provide straightforward but engaging challenges as level themes and enemy types mix. Some stages really commit to their gimmicks, like one where the big Boss Bass patrols the rising water levels and you often need to make yourself a getaway until the water recedes or risk being gobbled up. Some stages have clear ideas like the vertical pipe mazes that aren’t exactly exciting, but they are an interesting little experiment that break you away from more common left to right levels. A few experimental stages don’t turn out too nice like a weird level full of bricks that is more a puzzle than a test of your ability to handle some athletic jumping under pressure, but a good deal of levels are sweet if a bit short. Sometimes you might reach a level’s end and be surprised it’s over, it not exactly clear what a level was going for because it passed by so quickly, but Super Mario Bros. 3 likely had to throw in a few simpler stages not only to give you chances to gather yourself collecting power-ups and extra lives, but because on the NES, Super Mario Bros. 3 had to be finished in one marathon session. There is no save function, meaning the moment the system is turned off, you’ll have to start back from square one. Warp Whistles do offer an opportunity to skip worlds entirely if you know where to find them, the game providing hints to help with one but otherwise they’re a bit oblique and Super Mario Bros. 3 almost required you to learn about them from someone else or a gaming magazine at the time.
You might have to make a day of beating the game if you wish to go through it without whistles, but there are ways to increase how quickly you beat the game without needing to jump past a good deal of the content. Mario and Luigi can both utilize power-ups to increase their abilities, the basic Super Mushroom letting you take another hit before dying but other power-ups can really change how a level unfolds. Get a Fire Flower and you can now hurl fireballs at enemies to more easily push through dangerous places. The Super Leaf makes you into Raccoon Mario though, this power-up aiding immensely in aerial navigation. Mashing the jump button while in the air will make Mario waggle his tail, slowing his descent so you can have a little more leeway in landing or crossing large gaps. If you build up enough speed on the ground though, you can outright fly for a while, leaping up and over many levels until the power runs out and you drift back down. There are underwater, underground, and vertical levels this won’t help too much with and some of the game’s rough puzzly moments make use of it in less than enjoyable ways, but Raccoon Mario mostly gives you a nice augmentation to your aerial mobility and a way to possibly skip past difficult sections or more quickly breeze through early stages if you have to restart your adventure.
While those three power-ups make up the core set and are found frequently enough in regular stages, Super Mario Bros. 3 introduces the idea of premium power-ups that are far rarer and more useful. While there was already the Starman’s brief invincibility in previous titles, through bonus areas or hidden secrets you can find long lasting power-ups with unique effects. The Tanooki Suit for example is an upgrade to the Super Leaf, allowing you to turn into an invincible statue if you need to avoid an incoming enemy on top of wielding the usual Racoon powers. The Hammer Suit is incredibly powerful, the hammers you throw able to destroy enemies who are outright unkillable otherwise like the large moving stone blocks known as Thwomps. The Frog Suit is a bit dubious when it comes to whether it’s a truly premium power-up, it having a rather unhelpful hop on land but it instead makes swimming underwater far more responsive and can help for sections like a jellyfish swarm or avoiding that Boss Bass. Being able to carry these in your storage means their more niche use cases can actually be found later down the line so you don’t waste the power-up on an ill-suited level, but there are other useful items like the cloud that lets you skip a single level or the P-Wing that gives you full boost for your Racoon suit so flying is possible whenever you wish within a single stage. There’s even the somewhat inexplicable Kuribo’s Shoe found in one level only that lets you ride across spikes and Muncher plants, it sadly not appearing again but also making for another memorable stage in a rather large set of good levels that are more enjoyable thanks to the power-up system at play.
If you are adventuring with a friend, you do have to alternate play, only one player able to enter a level at a time. However, there is a peculiar little bit of simultaneous play possible that makes for a unique if likely often missed touch. While navigating the world map as either Mario or Luigi, should you pass over the stage the other player is on, you or the other player can initiate a quick battle game. This normally takes the form of a reproduction of the Mario Bros. arcade game, players competing to kill more enemies than each other in the sewer and whoever comes out on top will then be the one in control of the normal adventure until they next perish. Some of these battle games can instead involve things like a box busting game or one where you try to grab coins shooting out of a large central pipe, these often quick and not too involved so they aren’t going to really excite players, but they are a neat little feature to dabble in and a way to mess around a bit in something directly competitive.
THE VERDICT: Super Mario Bros. 3 controls like a dream while providing a good range of power-ups to give you more control over how you tackle a level. Not only is there the balance between offensive choices like the Fire Flower and the more platforming focused racoon tail, but premium power-ups and your world map reserves allow you to better tailor your approach to stages that often feature intriguing challenges or some truly dangerous enemies. Super Mario Bros. 3 does repeat a few ideas too often like the frequent Boom Boom battles and some experimental stage designs feel a bit out of place, but more often than not you’ll find some quick enjoyable obstacle courses to test your platforming skills against.
And so, I give Super Mario Bros. 3 for the Nintendo Entertainment System…
A GREAT rating. I’m sure I could have slapped a FANTASTIC on this and no one would have batted an eye; the reverence for Super Mario Bros. 3 is widespread and it is undoubtedly one of the best games the original NES offers. There are stretches where you can see the inspiration in the development team as they roll out new ideas that aren’t too extravagant but still gel well with the superb control you have over Mario and the range of options the power-ups bring. It’s nice to be a little terrified of a Boo before future games sand them down a bit. It’s fun to squeak through an auto-scroller stage that is keeping you constantly moving because the platforms go by so quickly. Then you have a level where you need to figure out some strange puzzle involving shells and the racoon tail where even figuring it out still can lead to slow experimentation or you face your 13th Boom Boom fight and you’re brought back down a little. Levels that go in odd directions or don’t really impress before you’re abruptly at the ending are what hold back the full package, and while there are other odd choices like the muted colors or stage play presentation that is barely committed to that also rub some players the wrong way, Super Mario Bros. 3 is otherwise just an incredibly strong Super Mario platformer that is easy to pick up and enjoy because it is more often than not cleanly handled and quite creative. You’ve got the peppy music to help keep things jolly and fun and most people who play Super Mario Bros. 3 now will probably have some way to save despite that certainly holding it back on its initial release, so it ends up a pretty easy recommendation for a starting spot for players looking to get into the Mario series. It would be tempting to say the original Super Mario Bros. but that game does show its limitations a bit much and isn’t as solid, and even Super Mario World sometimes asks for more thought than an inexperienced player is used to putting into a seemingly simple sidescroller. Super Mario Bros. 3 is a great gateway into what makes the Super Mario Bros. games great and it pulls that off without being too basic or by the books.
Super Mario Bros. 3 really is the game that shaped the Mario series going forward. A game like Super Mario World was able to figure out how to better integrate larger levels with more concepts at play than just platforming after Super Mario Bros. 3 felt out the space and made the necessary successes and stumbles. Future games like the New Super Mario Bros. subseries instead played it too safe as they try to often replicate the enjoyable simplicity but don’t have the same bold approach that leads to unique areas as often as it leads to fumbles. Mario games can even be almost too reverent to this excellent example of how to make accessible yet sometimes challenging platforming as the Mario series still too often throws in repeated bosses or ones who fold far too easily. Super Mario Bros. 3 nailed enough to help many overlook its less inspired moments and it’s little surprise it’s a well often drawn from for future inspiration, but Super Mario Bros. 3 was aiming to take flight and innovate and perhaps that spirit should be better remembered rather than just carrying over the trappings into newer adventures.