Super Mario Bros. 3 (Virtual Console) Review

When Super Mario Bros. 3 was ported to the Game Boy Advance, I had very mixed feelings about it. On one hand, it still proved to be a solid, challenging, and rewarding platformer that sported the updated graphics from Super Mario All-Stars. The downside was that Nintendo added some unnecessary and annoying tweaks to the audio and slapped a $30 tag on it. Well, times have changed, and Super Mario Bros. 3 is back to its original form with a very affordable price point of $5.

Love it or hate it, this is the NES version. Seventeen years later, it’s pretty hard to look at this game and appreciate its now outdated graphics. The colors are washed out. Backgrounds are bleak and empty. There is a distracting solid bar of color on the left side of the screen, and the right side flickers and flashes as it renders the level. Once you get past the first world, however, you’ll no longer care, as you’ll be so wrapped up in experiencing again the game that once stole your childhood (and later your college years).

I say all this with people who have already played the game in mind. If you haven’t played Super Mario Bros. 3 before, I feel sorry for you. I really, really do. Master Chief may be this generation’s Mario, but you definitely owe it to yourself to see why Nintendo ruled the industry in the 90s. Super Mario Bros. 3 is the ideal platformer. The design is straightforward but rife with secrets. The enemies are endearing and memorable. The power-ups are cool and put completely different twists on how you tackle certain levels. You can go through the game alternately with two-players. And since it’s on the Wii, you can save your progress at any time and come back to it later.

The best thing about Super Mario Bros. 3, though, is just how much fun it is to play multiple times over. It’s always enticing you to get better, to learn its secrets and hidden areas, to collect more 1-ups than you did last time. There is a very distinct difference between watching a pro play the game and watching a novice. A pro can speed through the first two worlds, picking up the magic whistles and winning all the matching mini-games along the way. These are the players who narrowly escape death multiple times, evading a fire-spitting piranha plant only to jump on a koopa and bounce to an otherwise unreachable ledge. These are the moments that make you say, “Wow, this is one cool player,” where any other game would have you questioning his/her role as a functional member of society.

Final Comments

Yeah, we’ve all played this game 100 times already, but that’s the beauty of it; Super Mario Bros. 3 never gets old. This is such a fun, fun game, and it’s great to finally have it in a form that lets us put away our old Nintendos and Super Nintendos. The only thing I really hold against this Virtual Console release is that it is the NES version and not the vastly superior SNES All-Stars version. The latter had better graphics, a world select, multiple save slots, and a battle mode that kicked serious butt. However, I have a feeling we won’t see Super Mario All-Stars on the VC for at least another year (if at all). And even then, it’ll cost $21 and not support the Wii remote. So it really does make sense to buy the game now.