After finishing Super Mario Bros. 1 for the first time earlier this year I went ahead over to SMB3 after getting a free copy off of Club Nintendo. It may be hard to believe I'm actually LTTP on this game. I do have a history with it, but this is the first time I've actually sat down and made a serious attempt at completing the game.
I never even owned a copy of my own until All Stars came out and the battery pack save on that was shitty. I didn't want to pay $30 for what was essentially an All Stars ROM printed on a Wii disc, and old Game Boy Advance and NES copies of the game always seemed absurdly expensive given its age. So Virtual Console became my final choice. Playing this game, really any 2D Mario, after seeing everyone else play Mario, feels kind of like first learning to ride a bike at the age of 27. I'm having to work out shit my peers have been learning since probably kindergarten.
Anyway, in most cases the proper time to do an LTTP is just after you've finished a game and other times it's better to do one and keep the thread going while you're still playing through the game. I decided to do this one after making it most of the way through the game.
Quality-wise, I can see why people might look at this as the best Mario game. It certainly presents the biggest leap forward in terms of 2D Mario game design. It introduced the world map system and a lot of the staple items and mechanics.
The first thing I noticed coming off of SMB1 is the fact that the game scrolls left as well as right, which immediately turns stages into explorable places. Lots of levels seem to take advantage of this as well, adding a puzzle and adventure element to the game at times. It also increases the ways in which Nintendo can manipulate item placement. In contrast, games like New Super Mario Bros. (the only other 2D Mario I've finished) hardly utilize this at all, being much more like SMB1 with a rudimentary world map system.
Ah, the world map system. Y'know, what with all the special areas, cards, mini games. layouts, and the way each attempt at a level acts as a "turn," SMB3's world map feels more like a table top game than a world you explore. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole system was inspired by a board game. I can see how people could spend years figuring out different routes, secrets, and other ways to game the system. I like how even after you get game over and get knocked back to the beginning of the world, what's happened on the map stays persistent.
I also only recently figured out there's a turn-based two-player mode. Does anyone ever do that? Has anyone ever actually hosted a party where people just got together and played "a game" of Super Mario Bros. 3? Nintendo seems to have at least anticipated the possibility with the inclusion of battle mode when Mario and Luigi end up on the same square. I think this feature by itself has huge potential. The only similar thing I've played was an SNES Flinstone game I played with my brother where you had to roll a die (in the game) to move across a board and do platforming levels.
As of this writing I'm in the middle of world 7. Specifically I'm at the first castle in world 7 trying to work out where the exit actually is while also farming lives. I'm contemplating if I should farm to 99 lives since I heard if you get game over in world 8 or something you get decked back to world 1. Right now I've farmed up to 33 lives and I can definitely tell you I might end up using all of them just in world 7. With the exception of world 1 I've gotten several game overs in every world in this game so far. I suck at it. SMB1 took me years (and permanent save states for world 8) to complete, so at least I'm doing a lot better here.
If I do get decked back to world 1 and can't finish the game before I get my new gaming HTPC built in the next few days, I'm probably going to load up a ROM on the TV and save scum my way through it.
I never even owned a copy of my own until All Stars came out and the battery pack save on that was shitty. I didn't want to pay $30 for what was essentially an All Stars ROM printed on a Wii disc, and old Game Boy Advance and NES copies of the game always seemed absurdly expensive given its age. So Virtual Console became my final choice. Playing this game, really any 2D Mario, after seeing everyone else play Mario, feels kind of like first learning to ride a bike at the age of 27. I'm having to work out shit my peers have been learning since probably kindergarten.
Anyway, in most cases the proper time to do an LTTP is just after you've finished a game and other times it's better to do one and keep the thread going while you're still playing through the game. I decided to do this one after making it most of the way through the game.
Quality-wise, I can see why people might look at this as the best Mario game. It certainly presents the biggest leap forward in terms of 2D Mario game design. It introduced the world map system and a lot of the staple items and mechanics.
The first thing I noticed coming off of SMB1 is the fact that the game scrolls left as well as right, which immediately turns stages into explorable places. Lots of levels seem to take advantage of this as well, adding a puzzle and adventure element to the game at times. It also increases the ways in which Nintendo can manipulate item placement. In contrast, games like New Super Mario Bros. (the only other 2D Mario I've finished) hardly utilize this at all, being much more like SMB1 with a rudimentary world map system.
Ah, the world map system. Y'know, what with all the special areas, cards, mini games. layouts, and the way each attempt at a level acts as a "turn," SMB3's world map feels more like a table top game than a world you explore. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole system was inspired by a board game. I can see how people could spend years figuring out different routes, secrets, and other ways to game the system. I like how even after you get game over and get knocked back to the beginning of the world, what's happened on the map stays persistent.
I also only recently figured out there's a turn-based two-player mode. Does anyone ever do that? Has anyone ever actually hosted a party where people just got together and played "a game" of Super Mario Bros. 3? Nintendo seems to have at least anticipated the possibility with the inclusion of battle mode when Mario and Luigi end up on the same square. I think this feature by itself has huge potential. The only similar thing I've played was an SNES Flinstone game I played with my brother where you had to roll a die (in the game) to move across a board and do platforming levels.
As of this writing I'm in the middle of world 7. Specifically I'm at the first castle in world 7 trying to work out where the exit actually is while also farming lives. I'm contemplating if I should farm to 99 lives since I heard if you get game over in world 8 or something you get decked back to world 1. Right now I've farmed up to 33 lives and I can definitely tell you I might end up using all of them just in world 7. With the exception of world 1 I've gotten several game overs in every world in this game so far. I suck at it. SMB1 took me years (and permanent save states for world 8) to complete, so at least I'm doing a lot better here.
If I do get decked back to world 1 and can't finish the game before I get my new gaming HTPC built in the next few days, I'm probably going to load up a ROM on the TV and save scum my way through it.
