With my earliest gaming years built around the universally appealing Super Mario Bros. and it's highly unorthodox sequel, being taken to the theater to view 'The Wizard,' where Mario made his surprise return to miraculously take flight...was legitimately one of the most exciting moments of my life. Honored as the ultimate NES game more often than not, Mario 3 is simultaneously the most ambitious, flawless and indefinitely replayable masterpiece from the 8-bit era. Not only did it usher in the type of variety and depth which would become standard for action games during the 90s, no platformer from the more advanced 16-bit consoles could definitively best it.
Returning to the straightforward formula established in the first game, the far more forgiving and accessible physics take the pressure off controlling Mario and allow the huge variety of enemies and novel ideas within each stage to shine. 3's genius is that each level is highly engaging, yet just short enough that you'll never feel quite ready to put the controller down. This was the final Mario with a constant sense of tension, as the game allows no backtracking to farm lives and provisions, or simply seek respite. You're compelled to collect each coin, participate in every bonus game, carefully manage your power-up inventory and remain vigilant for highly elusive secrets.
The game smoothly transitions from an easy to hard act. The Grass, Desert, Ocean and Giant lands gradually escalate the difficulty while remaining cheerful and whimsical. After World 5's peculiar thrill of giving goombas the boot from inside Kuribo's Shoe, Mario ascends the possible Tower of Babel, emerging to a nerve-racking Cloud World, hostile tundra, isolated and gloomy Pipe Land and Bowser's Dark World, where his entire army is on the advance. If you're not up to the game's hardest stages, which require diligently honed skills to overcome, the P-Wings and Jugem's Clouds sent by the Princess allow one to excuse themselves without necessarily feeling guilty of wimping out.
Smoothly rendered for the most part, Mario 3 is one of the most visually pleasing NES games with a huge variety of expressive, colorful sprites. Each kingdom possesses not only a highly distinct visual style, but also its own tangible mood, making this multi-hour experience so tempting to finish within one evening. The surprisingly varied soundtrack brings the fun reggae influence of steel drums, pleasantly warm, lingering waveforms, and even beatboxing in subterranean stages.
To this day, Super Mario Bros. 3 remains the ultimate distillation of pure plumber platforming action. There aren't tons of branching paths within levels, but their fast-paced, deliberate design and constant new tricks never fail to please. While you may prefer the copious secrets, cohesive overworld and superior boss battles of Super Mario World, Mario 3 arguably elevated the benchmark of quality for gaming as a whole to a larger degree than any other title. Millions of people's expectations of how amazing a game could make them feel were forever changed, immediately upon flying the racoon towards the heavens.
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