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Super Mario Bros. 3 (sometimes referred to as Mario 3, SMB3, or Super Mario 3) is the last major Mario video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was released on October 23, 1988 in Japan, February 12, 1990 in North America, and August 29, 1991 in Europe. The game was directed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka, with music composed by Koji Kondo. Super Mario Bros. 3 introduces a number of advances to the Super Mario Bros. series: the addition of a map screen, minigames, many new power-ups, enemies, and level types. It also features the first appearance of King Bowser's children, the Koopa Kids or Koopalings. Unlike Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA), it remains true to the original Super Mario Bros. gameplay formula, yet it features a great deal more innovation and freshness than Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels. It consistently places highly in lists of top games of all time. Although widely regarded as being the best-selling video game of all time, the original Super Mario Bros. is actually the best-selling video game, at 40.23 million copies compared to Super Mario Bros. 3
Gameplay The gameplay is a return to the style of Super Mario Bros. after the vast departure of the North American version of Super Mario Bros. 2. The heroes can again jump on many enemies to destroy them, as well as take on many different forms by acquiring special items. However, despite the familiar gameplay, Super Mario Bros. 3 is still a different game from its predecessor. More puzzles, enemies and secret areas were added to enhance difficulty. Rather than simply move forward in the game in a linear fashion, Mario travels the Mushroom World via a map, which often splits into different paths, giving the player more of a choice of which levels to play. Now the player could know what to expect while entering a level: for instance, a level situated near or on a body of water would most likely have aquatic elements. Furthermore, the player could skip levels entirely, allowing there to be greater control over the gameplay. While on the map, Mario can acquire special items through "Toad Houses" and battles with Hammer Brothers, which are saved in an inventory, and can be used in between levels. Furthermore, smaller mechanics are changed. For instance, as in Super Mario Bros. 2 but not the original Super Mario Bros., the player can travel backwards in a level in case he had missed a special area or item. Super Mario Bros. 3 introduced the further ability of the screen to scroll diagonally (in Super Mario Bros. 2, it can sometimes scroll vertically and sometimes scroll horizontally, but never in both manners at once). Also, due to the increased difficulty, a luxury was given to the player in the U.S. and PAL releases: if he had one of the "special" powers (Fire Mario, Raccoon Mario, Hammer Mario, Tanooki Mario, etc.) and then took a hit, he would revert into Super Mario, allowing for an extra hit. This is contrary to the original Super Mario Bros. and the Japanese release of Super Mario Bros. 3, where if a player had been hit as Fire Mario (or any other power-up mode), he would revert to regular, small Mario. This game play mechanic was not used in the original Super Mario World, but it was used in the later Super Mario Advance 2: Super Mario World for the Game Boy Advance, and New Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo DS. A stripped-down version of the first Mario game in the series, the 1983 arcade release Mario Bros. was also included as a 2-player minigame. Levels The final island group in World 3 is shaped like the islands of Japan, with a gold coin in the approximate location of Tokyo and the castle in the approximate location of Kyoto, where Nintendo is based. Note that the original NES release included the Japanese names. It was a re-release that came out slightly later that initially changed the names. The Super Nintendo and Game Boy Advance versions also use the original names with the exception of World 3 and World 8. In both the SNES and GBA version, "Ocean Side" was changed to "Sea Side", even in the Japanese version. In both the English NES first release and the SNES version, "Kuppa" in World 8 is changed to "Koopa", which is the more common spelling. The English GBA version renames World 8 to the generic "Bowser's Castle." Some versions refer to World 2 as Koopahari Desert. Also in the GBA version, "WELCOME TO WARP ZONE" is shortened to "WORLD 9 WARP ZONE" because of the Game Boy Advance's screen resolution. If Warp Zone is excluded as a set of stages, the entire game has a total of 90 accessible levels (as well as fifteen "lost levels" only accessible by hacking the game). It is therefore considered the largest classic Mario Brothers game of all time, having more than Super Mario Bros (32 levels), Super Mario Bros. Special (32 levels), Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels (Super Mario Bros. 2 in Japan; 52 levels) and Super Mario World (72 levels). It is often mistakenly assumed that Super Mario World has 96 stages, but that number includes the 24 secret exits in the game. Items Like the original Super Mario Bros., Mario can use several different items to give him power-ups. These are acquired through various points in levels, Toad Houses, Princess Peach's letters and other events. Items that returned from Super Mario Bros.: Items and forms new to Super Mario Bros. 3: Note that the only purpose of World 9 is to get to the other worlds, and players can only get to it by using one of the Warp Whistles. According to Nintendo Power, the first person to find all three magic whistles was Anuj Shah. Minigames Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA) featured a slot machine minigame, and Super Mario Bros. 3 built on this by featuring several different minigames which can be accessed from the map screen. There are two different game show-style bonus games, both hosted by Toad, which consist of a sliding matching game and a memory game where the player has to match up two of the same card without missing twice. Though not games per se, there are also "Toad houses" which give the player free items, as well as coin bonuses similar to those found at the end of beanstalks in the original Super Mario Bros. U.S. and Japanese version differences While Super Mario Bros. 3 was in development in Japan, rather than directly porting the exact game code, Nintendo of America took the time to alter the game by enhancing it somewhat and adjusting the difficulty by either adding or removing some elements of the game. The following table is a mostly complete list of differences between the U.S. and Japanese versions of Super Mario Bros. 3. Lost levels There are about 15 "Lost Levels" that are in the game, but they are inaccessible through normal means. They can only be accessed through a ROM patch for SMB3. However, the levels can have one or more of the following: no exits, no enemies, can be short, or are early versions of other levels. Graphics Although technology was primitive at the time of the game's release (1988), the developers were able to implement some pseudo-3D effects into it. Various sprite rotation effects were made such as Mario moving his head from side to side when he is walking and Bowser turning around. There is also some moving cloud sprites in the airship levels, and when Mario falls out of the sky with a wand after beating a world which tries to "simulate" parallax scrolling. Music and sound The theme music during most of World 8 (as well as the Airships) is an arrangement of Mars from Gustav Holst's The Planets. The tune which plays when Mario uses the whistle is identical to the melody used for the Recorder in The Legend of Zelda, and in both games it summons a tornado that sweeps up the hero and dumps him elsewhere. Koji Kondo composed the music for both franchises. Critical reception With its expansive gameplay, Super Mario Bros. 3 is often considered to be Nintendo's true masterpiece for the NES, and is commonly referred to and voted as one of, if not, the greatest video games of all time. Several months before its North American release, a "sneak peek" of sorts was given to the American public in the movie The Wizard (1989), where the game was featured as the final lap of a video game competition. Well before its American console release, Super Mario Bros. 3 was made available for play on the PlayChoice-10 arcade machines. Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement In 1990, three of id Software's founding members, Tom Hall, John Carmack and John Romero, then working at Softdisk, used a new smooth-scrolling game engine of their own devising to recreate the first level of Super Mario Bros. 3 on the PC, replacing Mario with their previous character and creating Dangerous Dave in "Copyright Infringement". A project manager approached Nintendo with it, but Nintendo was not interested in entering the PC market. As Softdisk was unwilling to use the engine, the three struck out on their own, resulting in the creation of id Software and the Commander Keen series.• Additional information, as well as the demo itself, can be found on Romero's website. BS Super Mario Bros 3 In 1995 Nintendo released an add-on for the Super Famicom called the Satellaview, also known as the "BS-X" in Japan. One of the games for this system is a demo version of Super Mario Bros. 3, with enhanced graphics just like in Super Mario All-Stars. The game is not a copy of the original. It features some new features like "flower icons" and cartoon style pictures that appear every now and then, among other things. Super Mario All-Stars Super Mario Bros. 3 received a graphical and audio facelift for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) (and in Japan, the Super Famicom) in the Super Mario All-Stars (also Super Mario Collection) cartridge of 1993. On the Super NES version, the Spade panels on the map are animated. The action scene (numbered) panels sparkle. The airships have thunder effects and they are all the same color. The king transformations have also been changed, mostly to popular creatures from other SMB games. When Mario became Fiery Mario he was previously orange where in the updated version he resembled Fiery Mario of the original Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario World (Red and White). Most notably, the king of World 7 was transformed into a Yoshi in the Super Famicom/SNES version of the game, but he was transformed into a Piranha Plant in the Famicom/NES version. A save feature was also added for the Super Famicom/SNES version. For the aforementioned world name table, Super Mario All-Stars uses the original world names. King Transformations Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 A similar version appears on the Game Boy Advance as Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3. It includes the updated original Mario Bros. and the ability to connect with the link cable for multiplayer battles. Newly created levels based on Super Mario Bros. 3, and demonstrations of how to complete certain levels can be downloaded through e-Reader cards. However, this feature was not very popular. Furthermore, the e-Reader was discontinued in the U.S. not long after the game came out. This rendered some of the games features, such as the Super Mario World cape, inaccessible to most players. Some levels were changed in the new Game Boy Advance version to make the game easier. The kings originally thanked the player by saying, "Thank Heavens!" In keeping with Nintendo's policies on religious references, this was removed in the Super Mario Advance 4 version and replaced with "Oh, Splendid!". In the original game and Super Mario All-Stars, Mario and Luigi do not appear to be wearing gloves except in most closeups. This was changed in Super Mario Advance 4. See also | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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