Pi Reviews Part 2: Super Mario Bros. 3

As you can probably tell, my first project upon getting the Pi was to beat all the old Mario games I had not yet beaten. As I mentioned last time, Mario is one of my all-time favorite series (top 5 if not top 3), and Super Mario Bros. 3 is the best of the bunch, at least on the NES. While I had already beaten Mario 1 on my NES, Mario 2 and 3 still evaded me, so I went in chronological order. I had beaten 3 on an emulator before, with save states, but never done it in one straight run, so I set out to do it on my pi. And it was so worth it.

While I love Mario 2, both for nostalgic and for game play quality reasons, Mario 3 surpasses it in pretty much every way. The controls are again perfect, the music is the best out of the series, and is about as good as Mega Man 2's music. The visuals are among the best on the NES, and I don't think that's a stretch to say. But Mario 3 not only matched Mario 1 and 2, it continued to innovate in a way that is both bold and successful that you usually do not find in other NES series *cough* Ninja Gaiden Mega Man 4-6 *cough*.

The failure of these series to advance successfully is, of course, understandable. Before the NES, there were really no games that got sequels, or at least very few. And three games in the series? There you're pretty much talking about only Donkey Kong, which fizzled out pretty heavily by game 3. There really was no precedent for how to do a sequel well, so the trial and error of a Zelda 2 or Castlevania 2 can be forgiven, since they represented big new attempts at great things, and succeeded partially, and failed partially (neither game is as bad as their modern critics would say). But Mario 3 knocked it out of the park. While you can get fire flowers, mushrooms, and in Mario 1, and mushrooms and hearts in Mario 2, Mario 3 has SO many powerups, from mushrooms, to a frog suit, to a full racoon suit, to a hammer suit, stars, fire flowers, the P finger thing, to everyone's favorite iconic tanuki tail. The overworld map completely altered the way Mario games were played from that point on, and placed Mario in a believable world rather than isolated levels.

And the secrets you can find in Mario 3 surpass any of its predecessors. This is one of the things I love the most about the game, and one of the things I miss most about classic gaming culture. Now, there's no such thing as a secret in video games. Want to find the warp worlds in Mario? Look it up. Want to find those light arrows in Link to the Past? Look it up. Want to figure out how to get Gold Sonic in Sonic 2? Look it up.

We didn't have the internet in those days, and so finding a secret and sharing it with your friends was just an experience that the kids today just won't be able to enjoy the way I did. I still remember discovering from my friend that if you crouched on the white blocks, you could run behind all of the scenery, and use this to find a warp whistle. Or that if you ran fast enough with the tanuki tail in one of the castle levels, that you could fly over the top of the castle to find another warp whistle. It was just so fun, and like learning the hadouken in the arcade, it's a kind of communal and social aspect to video gaming that just won't be replicated.

All in all, it's a fantastic game filled with hours upon hours of pure joy. I'll give it a 10 out of 10, because it's pretty much perfect in every way.

-TRO