Super Mario Bros 3

If there is one thing I've learned these past few days playing Super Mario Bros. 3 its that that is one fuckin hard game. If you're a game developer that wants to make a difficult game in 2009 you simply up the violence and the satanic imagery. If you want to do it in 1988 you call in this guy (and, ostensibly, his brother).

The beauty of early Super Mario games is that they start off easily enough with a couple of goombas and some tubes but by the end you're dealing with goombas, spiky monsters, piranha plants and (the best baddie ever) Boo. Not to mention a moving stage, quicksand, and all other kinds of natural obstacles. Fuck its like nature itself was against Mario rescuing Toadstool. (no, I will never call her Peach).

This is a primitive platformer, one with a plot that, if taken out of context, appears to be out of a bad LSD trip: you play as an Italian plumber with a mustache who must rescue the aforementioned princess from a lizard and his family, by jumping on various monsters, moving forward, going down tubes and climbing beanstalks. But dont worry, in your way you're aided by mushrooms, fireflowers, a leaf that turns you into a flying raccoon and a frog suit. This is what we were playing back in the early 90's and, yes, pretty soon we're gonna be running this country.

The gameplay level is so high, however, that these kitschy, nonsensical plot elements are quickly accepted and soon the player is engrossed in trying to get that fucking lizard. But this is limited to the games themselves, its no surprise then that when they tried to make the game into a tv show the results were fuckin horrible, when they tried to make it into a live action movie in which the subject matter was taken seriously starring John Leguizamo it was even worse.

Getting back to Super Mario 3, like I said its not an easy game, even though I managed to get pretty far ahead in one sitting it did feel challenging and I did have to repeat many a level. It is never tedious, however, because the levels are varied enough and it contains a high number of mini games which take the mind off the fact that you are failing to make it out of that water level.

Super Mario 2 was an atypical game in which one could play as both Mario Brothers as well as Toad and the Princess. It was also about pulling radishes out of the ground and defeating a pink dinosaur, so the true sequel to the original Mario game was Mario 3 and it was quite an improvement. Sure, Super Mario World of the SNES was better (imo, of course) because it introduced Yoshi (and I do love Yoshi) and the goombas were replaced by little tomato men but Super Mario 3 is not any less because of that.

If Nintendo is known for something in particular its for its ability to exploit its past for profit. This is not a bad thing when there is a progression in the games and this was certianly the case between 3, World and so on. I like the 3D Mario games (as introduced in Mario 64) but I love the sidescrollers even more, thankfully we can replay these either on the Wii, the old consoles or play new incarnations of the model on the handheld systems. Is Nintendo exploiting my nostalgia? yes but when its doing it with New Mario Bros and Superstar Saga then here have some more money.

Graphics wise I vaguely remember that the SNES version (on All Stars) had better colors while the NES version had a limited, opaque pallette. The Wii version is true to the original so the overall look of it is dated and often choppy, but few will argue with keeping it the way it was. The only thing missing would be hooking it up with an RF modulator to an old grainy TV and blowing on the cartridge to make it work, I'm sure I can survive without doing all of that.

I have yet to finish the game (I never did back in the day either) but I'll get around to it. I should also mention that the game features the Koopa Kids who are, I assume, Bowser's kids. The Koopa kids are the best part of this game as well as World so I'm going to devote an entire entry (later on) to them. Thats why we havent gone into it at this point.

To finish this thing off, who knew that a full twenty years later this game would retain its playability so well? I would have put my money on Sonic the Hedgehog.