Month of Mario: Super Mario 3D Land (3DS)

While the glasses-free stereoscopic 3D of the Nintendo 3DS was an impressive piece of tech, many players wondered if it would ever really enhance the video games for the system beyond the added visual depth. With the 3DS also getting off to a sluggish start and in need of a savior, Super Mario 3D Land ended up arriving at a time to both save the system’s weak sales with a surge of interest and show how the 3D can be used in a gameplay context. Admittedly, it wasn’t as deep as some players likely hoped, but even though it wasn’t strictly necessary to play with the 3D on to clear the game, it did lead to a game that was built in a rather different way than other Mario platformers.

One way the 3DS system seemed to influence the game’s design was in its approach to player commitment. When you first start your save file you barely get an explanation of why Mario’s on another adventure, a picture of the evil turtle king Bowser holding Princess Peach captive immediately spurring Mario to his latest heroic quest without anything really said beyond Peach calling out Mario’s name. Normally you’d expect the journey to get to Bowser to take Mario through a set of worlds containing thematic levels from there, but while they are sorted in such a way, there is very little in the way of an overall theme to a world. A world can have you go from underwater caves to a forest to a clockwork climb with no real effort to make it seem like the levels lead into each other or take place in the same area. Instead, they’re pretty heavily focused on their obstacle course construction first and foremost, and this is another area where Super Mario 3D Land seems like it doesn’t want you to feel like you have to commit to long sessions with the game. Beating a world usually just means you happen to have cleared the airship or castle level that tops them off rather than putting a cap on a certain type of stage theme, meaning its quite easy to just pop open your 3DS, play a few levels, and put it back down without feeling like you’re leaving anything hanging when you’re short on play time.

This design direction actually might have lead to a peculiar phenomenon surrounding Super Mario 3D Land. Players will remember enjoying their time with it and yet when asked to remembers specifics about it, they can’t really recall standout levels or unique moments. Normally this would make someone assume the game was quite generic, and Super Mario 3D Land does rely on a lot of familiar Mario series elements like Goombas, the Fire Flower power-up for flinging fireballs at foes, and Warp Pipes that can take you to side areas. However, the obstacle courses are well designed and keep the player engaged and involved, and what’s more, there are strong guiding ideas behind the designs of many levels. One level has you exploring the burrowing tunnels of giant moles, another has you riding across large cookies in the sky as the screen automatically moves forward, and one level even has you traveling between large platforms that are actually designed to mirror the 8-bit sprites from the original Super Mario Bros..

Levels often do feel bite-sized though, not lingering long on their specific gimmicks but still having enough meat to them that in the moment you are being asked to contend with something new. Levels don’t have long to leave an impression on you, but they’ll still have strange and unique ideas and even the enemies can be rather strange at times like the spiked Blokkablok which is a hovering snake made of brick blocks where you need to jump beneath it at the right time to get the goodies within instead of injuring Mario. The repeat boss battles with Bowser also feel well conceived, focusing more on him trying to attack you as you cross dangerous lava-heavy terrain rather than the kind of direct and simple fight you’ll get with Boom Boom and Pom Pom who mostly just spin around or throw boomerangs in a tiny boss arena.

The stages you encounter can also feel fairly unique to Super Mario 3D Land over other Mario titles because of their efforts to cater to the stereoscopic 3D the system provides. The most obvious case of this are little side rooms where your perspective on them makes a bit of an optical illusion. You’ll see a stack of blocks and think you know how to navigate it only for the 3D’s added depth to reveal some blocks are closer or farther than they first appear. This is kept to optional areas, but normal level design can cater to it in less direct ways. Wooden standees exist of helpful items, dangerous enemies, or warp pipes, and while you can usually spot the fakes for what they are if you take things slow, their presence can mask where the real thing is between the decoys if you aren’t relying on the 3D to more quickly spot them. What ends up giving some of the levels a more unique identity is Super Mario 3D Land’s use of viewing angles to change how you explore. You will be running around in 3D spaces that often have a pretty clear intended end point, but some of the stages will tip the camera over to look down on you from above or otherwise position things in ways that would allow the on-screen visuals to pop. A fair few sky levels actually have you do a lot of dives down towards the platforms necessary to navigate leading to a somewhat frequent focus on heading down instead of simply traveling forward. Again, these stages don’t necessarily stand out, but that’s also because they fit in rather organically, the platforming feeling just as clean to control regardless of your viewpoint on it.

In some ways, the fact you won’t commit level designs to memory actually allows Super Mario 3D Land to bolster its level roster by having unlockable stages for after the main adventure that reconstitute and redesign them in ways that often won’t leave you thinking you’re playing the same thing. The changes can be significant in some cases but others try to reinvigorate a stage by forcing you to clear it quickly or even play it in reverse, but they hardly feel like rehashes because they don’t deviate from the game’s focus on fast fun. Mario’s movement is responsive and a bit varied, the hero’s jumps able to be augmented with backflips and wall jumps to better explore levels that aren’t just flat sprints forward. You’ll be asked to move around a fair bit to clear the level obstacles and even should you fall, it’s not too hard to run back to where you were whether you’ve hit a checkpoint flag or not.

You can find power-ups and carry them between levels, one kept in reserve and whichever one Mario has active lasting until he’s taken damage or died. Beyond the basic Super Mushroom that just allows you to take an additional hit before perishing, you also have the Fire Flower for more actively attacking enemies with fireballs and the Boomerang Flower that can also allow you to grab useful items from afar. The Super Leaf though is the game’s star power (not to be confused with the Star that gives you brief invincibility). Grabbing a Super Leaf turns you into Tanooki Mario, the raccoon suit allowing you to mash the jump button to slow your falls and thus better handle the platforming. In fact it can be a bit too useful at times, some dangers like spinning platforms easy to just pass over, but the game doesn’t lose its difficulty entirely if you can keep the suit for a while, especially since levels also contain three Star Medals to collect that ask you to look around more closely or do a bit of tricky platforming. Star Medals are key to unlocking later stages but not all of them are necessary for completing the normal adventure. They do add some depth to traversing a stage though as you look for things out of place or must engage with something you could have floated over with your raccoon tail otherwise, the game able to root you in the moment just enough that the quickness of stages doesn’t lead to them feeling shallow.

THE VERDICT: Super Mario 3D Land doesn’t want you to linger and keeps the game’s energy high, meaning it can fail to leave an impression at times but still leaves you entertained as you can quickly pop into the next stage and face something new and challenging enough to hold your attention. Star Medals mean you won’t just breeze through in a rush and specific stage gimmicks do their job well when you’re in the level, but it’s also very easy to find yourself clearing a string of stages because they’re low commitment but high engagement. There is creativity despite some of the very familiar Mario series trappings, the presentation all in service of a general sense of speedy fun.

And so, I give Super Mario 3D Land for Nintendo 3DS…

A GREAT rating. I had wondered coming back to Super Mario 3D Land what I’d think of it after observing I too was subject to the unusual phenomenon of the game seeming like it was enjoyable in retrospect despite so much of its specific design touches being forgotten. However, there is a reason Super Mario 3D Land works better than a game like New Super Mario Bros. Wii despite both having some marks of the generic Mario platforming experience. Taking on the goal of trying to show off the 3D’s usefulness in a game leads to level designs that try to lean into the added depth it allows but don’t do so in a distracting or disorienting way, diving through the sky not worsened if you don’t have the system’s slider for 3D up. 3D navigation also has the advantage of being more involved than running from left to right like in a 2D Mario game, there being more ways to ask you to explore a space with some levels being a bit more open to running in every direction. At the same time, Super Mario 3D Land tries to mix in the shorter level design of 2D games so it doesn’t delve too deep into it stage and enemy concepts, which does mean we could have likely had a more involved and memorable game had it lingered on its ideas longer but instead get something that is doing its job and doing it well. Like the unassuming worker who keeps a company afloat doing his job without drawing attention to himself, Super Mario 3D Land wants to be a quality Mario experience but isn’t going to roll out anything too unusual or involved that might rock the boat. It’s reliably enjoyable, quick to play through, and still knows it needs some strong ideas here and there to avoid it losing its luster, so while there is a better game that can be made with these components, Super Mario 3D Land wants to be THE Mario 3DS game rather than carving out a path that would make it more memorable for something else.

Admittedly, some day Super Mario 3D Land could see a port that doesn’t lose much by stripping away the stereoscopic 3D. Even the bonus rooms that see it at its most useful can be figured out without it with a little gumption, but this Mario game still has a somewhat unique shape because of its playfulness in integrating 3D appropriate sights without really shoving them in your face. Like many things in its design, it’s unassuming because it’s all so natural and works towards a clean platforming experience, so even though I’ll likely forget enemies like the Sandmaargh that lunge out of shadows in the sandy levels and and stages like a ghost house full of disappearing floors, I can at least say now that the good times people remember with Super Mario 3D Land do come from a place of truth.