Super Mario Bros. 3 Review
You have no idea how hard it is to review this game without simply acknowledging that this is indeed Super Mario 3, slap a 5/5 on it and call it a day. And I say this as a person who didn't even play the Mario games all that much when I was a kid and shouldn't have any nostalgic ties to the franchise.
My relationship with mr. Mario is a troubled one. Unlike everyone in the entire world I did not have a NES growing up so my experience (up until this point) with the Mario franchise consists of mostly watching my friends play the games, sometimes throwing me the controller for five minutes of uncoordinated platforming before angrily taking it back.
But being a gamer all my life, I certainly felt the impact and popularity of the Mario games and has always held them in a high regard.
The game starts off with Mario and Luigi running around on the screen throwing shells at each other and just having a good time in general, which I felt was a little weird for a predominately single player game, but whatever. There's no introduction to the minimalistic story, it just throws you right to an overworld where you're left to figure out everything for yourself. I guess it was quite common for NES games to do this and let the manual fill in the blanks, but this was 1990 and there was definately games that did it better by then. But the story is basically non-existant anyway, so I guess it's no big deal.
Gameplay-wise it's what you'd expect from the sequel to Super Mario, you choose a level from the overworld, jump around on platforms avoiding enemies, go to the next level and do it again. It's simplistic and you'd think it'd get boring after a few levels but the level design is really good and varied enough that you never really consider that you're doing the same thing over and over again. In addition to the superb level design, it mixes things up by throwing in a bunch of power ups like frog suits that makes swimming easier, raccoon suit that makes you able to fly for whatever reason and many more. Some are essential for finding secrets and the game seems good about giving you power ups when you need them, you never feel like you need to save a bunch of power ups just in case, they're expendable.
It took me a while to realize I could actually use items in the overworld screen. Once I figured that out the game got alot easier as I didn't need to start a difficult level as "mini Mario" (whatever, there's probably some name for his small form that I don't know about). Nothing is more frustrating than dying on a particularily hard level and having to restart it weakened, so that was a smart move.
Each world consists of eight or so numbered levels, a fortress or two with bosses at the end, and a castle with a harder boss. Every level is basically a road block and you need to complete the level to go forward. Usually you can skip a few levels in each world by taking another path, but the fortresses needs to be completed to unlock the path the castle. When you've beaten the castle you go to the next world. In addition to this, there's also a slew of various mini-games, "special" levels that might as well be numbered but aren't from some reason, but with the icon giving away clues to what the level might contain, hammer bros. blocking my way and pipes for fast travelling. I just don't see point of the hammer bros. The enemy is commonly found all throughout the game on the standard levels, why are these given special treatment? There's nothing special about them, you go up and kill him, as you would any other hammer bro, yet these are given a level of their own. The pipes are bullshit, too. In the time it takes me to go through the little pipe level, load times between level transitions included, I could have gone there through the overworld. The pipes need to transport me immediately, there's no need for a tiny little level that serves no other purpose than taking me from one pipe to another.
The difficulty curve of the game seems somewhat inconsistent. I'm used to games going from easy to hard in a straight curve, and that's what I expected, but there was levels I was having problems with in like the second world and levels way later in the game that was ridiculously easy. I guess it's nice having the odd breather, but there's no pattern to it, you never know what to expect going into a level. The boss battles are all pathetic too, and exactly the same throughout the entire game. I really wish Nintendo had made something more with the bosses. When I've fought myself through a world I expect an epic finish, not jumping on a turtle three times.
In conclusion, Super Mario 3 is a good game, but I can't help feeling it's somewhat dated for 1990. The "fake" Super Mario 2 had more variation going on and in my opinion better graphics. My review might be tainted by the fact I've not played an oldschool platformer like this since...well... since they weren't oldschool, but I wasn't *that* impressed by it.
