Super Mario Bros. 3

Super Mario Bros. 3 "SUPER MARIO BROS. 3!" Protagonist(s): Mario Luigi Genre(s): Platform Platform(s): Nintendo Entertainment System Arcade Game Boy Advance Release: Nintendo Entertainment System JP: October 23, 1988 NA: February 12, 1990 PAL: August 29, 1991 Arcade NA: July 15, 1989 Game Boy Advance JP: July 11, 2003 EU: October 17, 2003 US: October 21, 2003 AU: October 24, 2003 Developer(s): Nintendo EAD Publisher(s): Nintendo Country: Japan Series: Mario Predecessor: JP: Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels WW: Super Mario Bros. 2 Successor: Super Mario World

Super Mario Bros. 3 is the fourth main game in the Super Mario sub-franchise. It was released in 1988 in Japan and 1990 in North America for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The PAL version came out in 1991. It was developed and published by Nintendo.

The game was remade as part of the compilation game Super Mario All-Stars for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, which served as the basis for the Game Boy Advance port released in 2003, titled Super Mario Bros. 3: Super Mario Advance 4.

Plot

Bowser and his seven children, the Koopalings have conquered seven kingdoms. Princess Peach (or Toadstool) sends Mario and Luigi to defeat Bowser and his children to save the world. Upon defeating the seventh Koopaling, Bowser kidnaps Toadstool forcing Mario and Luigi to defeat their nemesis once again.

Why It's a Wizard

1. It takes what was good about the first game and adds so much more, unlike The Lost Levels.
2. Improved backgrounds over the first game.
3. More power-ups are added to the game including
   • The Super Leaf turns Mario and Luigi into Raccoons that enabled flight.
   • The Tanooki Suit allowed Mario and Luigi to not only fly, but transform into a statue to bypass enemies.
   • The Frog Suit turned Mario and Luigi into Frogs, allowing for faster and better swimming controls.
   • The Goomba's Shoe, which is exclusive in World 5-3, allows Mario and Luigi to ride in a boot that can stomp on spiky enemies such as Spinies and Piranha Plants.
   • The Hammer Suit gives Mario and Luigi Hammer Bro-like costumes, and is a very powerful power up as the hammers can defeat normally indestructible enemies such as Boos, Thwomps and even Bowser himself. Not only that, but you can even absorb fireballs using the shell when you duck.
4. While there are still eight worlds like the original game, each world is split into many stages allowing for hours of game time.
5. Each world has unique quirks and challenges, such as World 4 having giant enemies and World 6 having slippery ice.
6. The P-Wing allow you to fly constantly over levels and even skip them.
7. The end of each stage allows you to obtain one card in a slot machine type fashion. Obtain three stars will grant five extra lives, a flower will grant three extra lives and a Mushroom will grant two extra lives.
8. Even if you don't get three of the same cards in a row, you can still get an extra life.
9. Mini-games to increase extra lives and power-ups.
10. It introduced stored power-ups, in which Mario and Luigi can store away power-ups to use for later.
11. Introduced the Koopalings, which would appear in other games, including the heavily acclaimed Super Mario World.
12. It is the debut of many iconic enemies that made here, such as Boos, Thwomps, Dry Bones, Spike, and many new variations of enemies from the last game, (example: Fire Bros, Boomerang Bros and Sledge Bros)
13. Extremely fluent control.
14. While its difficulty can be challenging, especially in later stages, Super Mario Bros. 3 is not as overtly punishing as The Lost Levels.
15. In two-player mode, gamers can play the original Mario Bros. arcade.
16. Hidden locations that allow for extra coins and even some extra lives.
17. Incredible graphics. It was an NES game, but it looked like it could've been a SNES game. 
18. Excellent soundtrack, which each overworld map having its own unique song. It also has one of the largest soundtracks for an NES game.
19. As with Super Mario World, the Game Boy Advance version adds so many new features, even more than in that one:
    • You can still swap between Mario and Luigi at any time by pressing R on the world map, and Luigi retains his abilities from that game.
    • Mario and Luigi once again are able to speak.
    • The E-Reader allows players to use power-ups from the previous games through the cards, alongside exclusive levels from the special World-E.

Bad Qualities

1. There is no save function, especially considering the size of the game as well as the difficulty in later worlds. However, this was remedied in the enhanced remakes in Super Mario All-Stars and Super Mario Advance 4, and the Virtual Console, the NES Classic Edition, and Switch Online versions of Super Mario Bros. 3 allow for save states.
2. For the NES version of the game, Luigi is reverted back to being simply a palette swap of Mario rather than having the unique design introduced in Super Mario Bros. 2. This was likely done in order to save memory, given the amount of content in the game. Fortunately, he has been improved in both the SNES and the GBA versions, with the latter version featuring Luigi as a separate playable character, as in Super Mario Advance 2.
3. Graphical glitches and slowdown can occur if too many sprites are on screen at one time, particularly on auto-scrolling levels.
4. The Frog Suit is pretty much useless when used on land, as Mario travels very slow.
5. Outside the Game Boy Advance port, you can't revisit any of the levels you already completed.
6. Sometimes whenever if you use any single Game Genie code during the playthrough, the game softlocks in the final battle with Bowser after being beaten meaning that you can't advance to the ending scene. The same applies in the All Stars version. This is intended to avoid cheating.

Reception

Super Mario Bros. 3 is not only considered one of the best games ever made, James Rolfe, in his mh:besttvshows:The Angry Video Game Nerd persona, stated that it's the best game on the NES.

On GameFAQs, it's the highest rated NES game.

This game is the second most liked 2D Super Mario game, being beaten by Super Mario World.

Trivia

• id Software (formerly known as IFD) made a demo port of this game for MS-DOS. The demo was done from scratch and used the scrolling engine of Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement. The demo was completed on September 28, 1990 and id then sent it to Nintendo, but while they were impressed, they rejected it because they wanted their IP exclusively for their own hardware. id then started making the first trilogy of the Commander Keen series of games.
• This is the first decent game James Rolfe reviewed specifically during an AVGN video.

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