My favorite benefit of the two player mode was the way it allowed players with different skill sets to contribute to the common goal. My brothers were better at precise plat high-speed forming, while I was better at more methodical levels like the pirate ships. Unlike Mario 1, where it quickly becomes obvious which player is better and which one is worse, Mario 3 allowed players to complement each other and both contribute in different ways.
Yes, but you can just hand the player one controller to your brother or friend. We never bothered with the 2 player mode, just took turns. 1 player mode - You gotta shit or get a snack, let your friend take a couple stabs at the same level he cant seem to beat. ... no problem. 2 player mode, now hes going back and forth on 2 controllers... while you drop a duece.
On the topic of Mario Vs. Luigi, whichever player gets to rest can also "catch" the active player if they move over the square in which they are found resting. So, not only Mario can engage Luigi during his turn, but Luigi himself can try to "steal" Mario's turn, if Mario, for some reason, wanted to backtrack, or had to pass over Luigi's resting square on the way to a minigame or bonus stage.
Actually, that's probably a really hard thing to measure. The same could be said about Popeye, and that's probably not the first game that did it either.
@Taiga's Tunes Not really what I meant though. OP said that Mario 3 invented the idea that each level should have a gimmick. I was just saying that Popeye the arcade did the same thing a decade earlier.
Nice one! I don't know if anyone besides me did this, but the VS-mode provides another option for unskilled players. When one player loses all his lives during a two player game he is able to continue but all the levels cleared by him become uncleared again and can't be passed by either player until one of the contestants clears it again. When one of us was down to his last life during a two player game, we "played" several round of the VS-battle in order to switch a level cleared by Luigi over to Mario before Luigi lost his last life. I can't remember the specifics but I think the player about to lose, went to a level already cleared by him and left it again. Then the other player could engage the battle by choosing the same field on the map and had to win to take over the level. Once we did this for every level owned by this player, he ran into an enemy to start with a new set of lifes.
The map screen and the generous offering of extra lives also represented the franchise moving away more or less completely from Mario's arcade roots in Donkey Kong (although it still maintained some vestiges such as numerical scoring). The original Super Mario Bros. already allowed players with even a little bit of skill to enjoy far more gameplay than you could usually get for a quarter, but Super Mario Bros. 3 really took advantage of the possibilities available to a console platformer.
Great video. I never thought about the big 2 player mode enhancement, I mean it felt so natural, so logical that you just go with it. My friends and I had a lot of fun stealing cards from each other and waiting for the toad house to be opened by the other player completing a level
There's one detail about the 2-player battle game that I really love but have never heard anyone else talk about: *either player* has the option of initiating the battle game, regardless of who happens to be in control of the map at the moment. If it's Mario's turn, but he happens to pass over the spot on the map where Luigi happens to currently be, then Luigi can press the A button on his controller to "catch" Mario as he passes over that space. It's sort of like the hand trap stages in world 8. If you really want to be a jerk, you can play all the stages along the "main" paths of the map that the other player will have to follow behind you, and then just force him into the battle game as he tries to pass you, bullying him into never getting a full turn if you want.
Yes. Understanding the nuances of initiating battle were important, but not always fully appreciated by players who usually played alone. And also caused a lot of fights between my siblings and I.
The warp whistle system pretty much took care of that problem. The most you'd have to replay before warping to wherever you left off would be the first several stages in world 1. No big deal.
I agree. When I first saw Super Mario World, I thought it looked worse that mario 3 graphically. Like I could tell there were more colors and backgrounds, but I thought mario and the enemies looked goofy compared to Mario 3.
I feel like the best change they made in SMB3, compared to SMB, is that you can change your horizontal velocity mid-air more easily. It makes you feel more in control of the character.
If you loved Space Invaders on the 2600, you owe it to yourself to play the 5200 version. My first console was the 5200 and for games like Pac-Man, Frogger, Centipede, Moon Patrol and Popeye, it was so cool having a system that was this close to the arcade experience at home. Space Invaders for the 5200 was really something special though. To this day it is still the best version of the game ever made. And when you get to the "special" aliens it was really beautiful for the time. What a cool color changing effect that was unmatched in the early 80s. Its a shame about those controllers though, and if you want to build a 5200 library and have good controls you're going to have to put a lot more effort into it than you would setting up most other emulators. But trust me, it's worth looking into. :)
One thing to keep in mind is that Super Mario Bros was a launch title for the NES and by the time Super Mario Bros 3 came out, the developers had approximately 3 more years to learn how to work and get more out of the console. It definitely shows.
Good joke but from one who lived through the Atari 2600 era we know he is referring to the absolute horror of rush games and poor quality control from Atari it was the control of quality from Nintendo that saved the gamer market during the 80s. Examples Pacman and E.T. for the 2600. The pain...
As much as I love this one I think I enjoyed Super Mario Bros 2 better. I can just clearly remember seeing a demo at Toys R Us and playing briefly. There was some magic in the second game for me ;)
The UK gaming timeline is almost completely different. We didn't get a crash, rather we had a boom in bedroom coders in the early 80s which made the microcomputers of the time the most popular systems to have. The ZX Spectrum, C64, BBC Micro, and Amstrad CPC were all far bigger than any console here, and this rolled over to the 16-Bit Atari ST and Commodore Amiga. As for Mario, it's hype was almost akin to the first Batman movie, and it deserves all the praise it gets.
I'd add on to the first one with continues: not just hidden behind a special button combination, but up front and center, asking if you want to continue, putting less emphasis on lives And you keep your acquired power ups, as well as unlocked portions of the map. Still misses what SMW and further had--the ability to go back and revisit levels and even pick up lost powerups or additional lives--something carried on in every Mario platformer to this day.
Brilliant work my friend. Having loved this game since it came out when we were 7 and watched so many takes on the subject, you hit on new aspects and qualities often overlooked. Even by life long fans.
You know, your explanation as to how Mario 3 improved on Mario 1 makes me think that a rom hack of Mario 1 can be made. Complete with an over world map (from Super Mario Bros Deluxe or the super obscure BS Super Mario Collection Dai-1-Shuu), an over world inventory sub screen (with mushroom,, fire flower, starman. And maybe even the music box & jugem cloud along with hammer brothers, Toad's house and card games on the map). And throw in the levels from other SMB1 styled games such as Super Mario Bros Special, Japanese SMB2, and VS SMB into the mix. And lastly, an option to play 2 players either simultaneously (there's a rom hack for this already) or alternating after stages like Mario 3 where progress is shared. This would make such as refreshing change for veterans to play SMB1 again and also make it more friendly to newcomers. I think all of that fits nicely with SMB1 while still being SMB1. If I knew how to code, I'd start this immediately as my new passion project for both the NES and SNES.
I never saw The Wizard in my country and thus missed that part of the hype. Still, even young me back in the day understood Mario 3 was something special.
6:48 as someone with a younger brother that died 10 seconds into the level leaving me to complete the level, only for him to steal the power ups from the toad houses and other bonus stages, I really hated the "take turns" thing. THOSE WERE MY POWER UPS! YOU DIDN'T EARN THEM! I DID!
You clearly wanted to talk about some aspects of mario 3 that you found interesting things to say about, but the introduction to the video gives the impression you want to convince us why mario 3 was a pivotal moment in gaming history. You explain well how your facets are an improvement to the mario franchise, but they don't get very far in supporting the main point of the introduction. Also, praising mario 3 has been done to death. I think your channel shines when you go into obscure debugging finds that other's do not. Looking forward to more.
You also get inventory items and extra lives from the card matching memory game. Yeah, I didn't realize it was adding those to my inventory for many years. ;) Of course, you also get 28 Magic Wing items added to your inventory if you finish the game and start over, so there's that. ;) Adding items with the e-Reader on the GBA version was kinda cheap since they were infinite but it did exist. I would have liked to see something that throttled you, like an in-game item you have to spend every time you swipe an item card... like maybe three hidden gold coins in each level like the ones they added to Super Mario Advance. Also, maybe they shouldn't let you use the same card over and over... like maybe the triple 1-Up card should only work once per level so you might use your single 1-Up card. Of course, they have to fix the game's save function that makes extra lives pointless too. Speaking of extra lives, another way to get extra lives in the original Super Mario Bros is to kick a turtle shell through 8 enemies, like at the beginning of 5-1. Anyway, I've long espoused the unpopular opinion that Super Mario Bros. 3 was more polished than Super Mario World and, thus, SMW seems a little rushed in comparison. People like to point to the lack of a save feature to argue the opposite but they are really just proving my point, since SMB3 was designed to let you jump straight to any world from the first world without a save feature and is better off for it. They told you about one Warp Whistle with a Nintendo Power subscription card included with the game and, of course, knowledge of the other whistles would filter through to most players by the time they started to bemoan playing through earlier world's to reach later ones. It was a genius way to resume at a later world without turning the earlier worlds into a slog. Since most players finished the game by skipping difficult worlds, it ended up keeping them fresh since there was still a lot to explore after you finished the game. Since players rarely just played through everything, there were always some parts of the game that were relatively unexplored for most players and worth re-playing. I really hate that the GBA version let's you swipe e-cards for infinite items... especially infinite lives since they are pointless anyway. I mean, you start with more lives (5), the second enemy on the first screen of the first stage no longer shoots fireballs which sets the tone for the rest of the game (gimped), and getting Game Over doesn't really set you back when you can just reset and resume from a save point with a fresh set of 5 lives whenever you want. I mean, my copy literally came with a 1-Up card and a 3-Up card... as if I couldn't just swipe the 1-Up card more times if I somehow needed more of these pointless lives. If it isn't clear by now: I feel that the ability to save broke the game and made lives pointless while eliminating an aspect that kept much of the game fresh and replayable, since you can just pick a previous world after saving and have less reason to skip any. Having map screen doors pave the way if you progressed enough before getting Game Over is a much better mechanic and even that is ruined by the ability to save anywhere in the GBA version. IIRC, Super Mario All*Stars did this a bit better by saving whether or not you had cleared a door/Mini Fortress on the map without saving the individual levels... so resuming a world was the same as getting Game Over in a world except you would still have your saved item inventory. The original SMB3 is still one of my favorite games of all time. I don't feel that it suffers at all without save since it had the polish to embrace that aspect and turn it into a good thing.
Idk if you mentioned or know this, but if you're playing as, say, Luigi and it's Mario's turn on the map you can spam the A button and trap them in the mini-game as they pass over you.
There was multiple revisions of SMB3 released. I know I have 2 that call the 8 worlds at the end by different names in the closing credits. Wonder what other changes there are in the revisions... (Thought for a future ep)?
Great video. I'm curious what effect was used at 1:08 to morph the 2 images. At first I thought it was datamoshing mixed with some sort of embossing but I'm not sure.
Y'know, growing up through the Atari and Commodore eras, I was so utterly sick of Nintendo platformers. I would play literally anything else. I learned to love RPGs because of it, even fishing RPGs. Your video here reminded me that Super Mario 3 was the first platformer that I really, really enjoyed. For all the reasons you listed. No platformer ever sufficed after that until well into the most recent years with dynamic roguelikes which offered random levels in short pacing. ... Anyway. Thanks for this video.
There is just one flaw in my opinion that is both obvious and serious: That you can't re-play finished levels. (But that was quite standard back in the day, so maybe this is only obvious now.)
It wouldn't surprise me if they made a hack that lets you do it now. It's seriously crazy how advanced the hacking scene has gotten since the original days of simple pallet swaps. For instance, they've got a version of the original SMB where you can play both Mario and Luigi at the same time, as well as one where you play as the Princess to save Mario and she can float like she did in SMB2. They've even added 2 player simultaneous support for more obscure titles like P.O.W., and allow a 2 player Duck Tales where the 2nd player is Darkwing Duck. It's really cool to watch these geniuses change the entire mechanics of a game like that. And that was before the recent leaks where a lot of the source code came out. Now that that happened I think we're going to see even more amazing developments.
Man, you were able to cooperate with your sibling? Every 2-player game I ever played devolved into playing maybe three scenes before just doing the minigame over and over for an hour straight.
Excuse me, the NORTH-AMERICAN CONSOLE GAME crash of 1983; not only did the rest of the world; Europe/Japan for the most part back then, not have a crash, we had a BOOM! And games on computers did okay in the North America as well; the first on-line game services, adventure games, RPGs, strategy games, etc., they were all doing quite well. Legendary studios and developers wore born during that era, man.
While The turn based system was a definite improvement over Mario 1, I would argue that its fatal flaw was the ability to "steal" the turn from the other player on the map screen by defeating them at the "battle game" which recreates the very problem the turn based system was supposed to solve. I remember spending a very unhappy afternoon not play Super Mario Bros. 3 when I was a kid because the friend I was playing with would constantly take my turn by beating me at that battle game, which I was not any good at. It placed weaker players at the mercy of better ones in a much more antagonistic way.
That doesn't make any sense - You only do the Battle Scenes when the active player chooses to do so on the world map. You can't have your turn "stolen" unless you initiate the battle mode.
@@Alakadoof that's not true, either player can initiate the battle mode. I was never fast enough on the controller to select the level before my friend would bump us into battle mode.
mario 3 was a somewhat mediocre game with needlessly hard difficulty, 1-2 hits = dead. And somewhat monotonous. The only thing it exceled at was showing the world just how far a game can go by piggybacking entirely on marketing. Similar to apple. Most nes game developers didn't had a fraction of the experienced devs or budget of mario 3.
That was a great look at some of the less obvious things that make this a classic.
After playing this game as a child since it came out, I actually did find this refreshing. Very impressed
My favorite benefit of the two player mode was the way it allowed players with different skill sets to contribute to the common goal. My brothers were better at precise plat high-speed forming, while I was better at more methodical levels like the pirate ships. Unlike Mario 1, where it quickly becomes obvious which player is better and which one is worse, Mario 3 allowed players to complement each other and both contribute in different ways.
Exactly!
Yes, but you can just hand the player one controller to your brother or friend. We never bothered with the 2 player mode, just took turns. 1 player mode - You gotta shit or get a snack, let your friend take a couple stabs at the same level he cant seem to beat. ... no problem. 2 player mode, now hes going back and forth on 2 controllers... while you drop a duece.
"plat high-speed forming," I like that
The little dancing hills on the map screens are so cute. I always loved them.
Mario 3 is a masterpiece that still hold's up, as of this writing in 2020
On the topic of Mario Vs. Luigi, whichever player gets to rest can also "catch" the active player if they move over the square in which they are found resting. So, not only Mario can engage Luigi during his turn, but Luigi himself can try to "steal" Mario's turn, if Mario, for some reason, wanted to backtrack, or had to pass over Luigi's resting square on the way to a minigame or bonus stage.
Yep. There's also a trick to prevent it-by holding the d-pad direction to move continuously.
@@adamp9553 That doesn't prevent it entirely, just makes it more difficult to catch.
Mario 3 invented the idea that each level should have a unique mechanic/gimmick, concept that is used in platformer design to this day.
Actually, that's probably a really hard thing to measure. The same could be said about Popeye, and that's probably not the first game that did it either.
@Taiga's Tunes Not really what I meant though. OP said that Mario 3 invented the idea that each level should have a gimmick. I was just saying that Popeye the arcade did the same thing a decade earlier.
@Taiga's Tunes Gotcha. ;)
@@bluetintedchromee3881 It was preemptive. I knew you were going to say that. The prophecy has been fulfilled. It is now in your hands, chosen one.
@@thedude5295 wat
Nice one! I don't know if anyone besides me did this, but the VS-mode provides another option for unskilled players. When one player loses all his lives during a two player game he is able to continue but all the levels cleared by him become uncleared again and can't be passed by either player until one of the contestants clears it again.
When one of us was down to his last life during a two player game, we "played" several round of the VS-battle in order to switch a level cleared by Luigi over to Mario before Luigi lost his last life. I can't remember the specifics but I think the player about to lose, went to a level already cleared by him and left it again. Then the other player could engage the battle by choosing the same field on the map and had to win to take over the level. Once we did this for every level owned by this player, he ran into an enemy to start with a new set of lifes.
Really appreciate your looks at these old classics, shining a light on what makes them classic. Keep it up, man.
Will do!
One of the best designed games to date.
The map screen and the generous offering of extra lives also represented the franchise moving away more or less completely from Mario's arcade roots in Donkey Kong (although it still maintained some vestiges such as numerical scoring). The original Super Mario Bros. already allowed players with even a little bit of skill to enjoy far more gameplay than you could usually get for a quarter, but Super Mario Bros. 3 really took advantage of the possibilities available to a console platformer.
Great video. I never thought about the big 2 player mode enhancement, I mean it felt so natural, so logical that you just go with it. My friends and I had a lot of fun stealing cards from each other and waiting for the toad house to be opened by the other player completing a level
How about that teleportation so you can grind out the last level whenever you want. God that game was good.
Meh. SMB1 had that, too, with the Warp Zones. So t's not really an improvement.
There's one detail about the 2-player battle game that I really love but have never heard anyone else talk about: *either player* has the option of initiating the battle game, regardless of who happens to be in control of the map at the moment.
If it's Mario's turn, but he happens to pass over the spot on the map where Luigi happens to currently be, then Luigi can press the A button on his controller to "catch" Mario as he passes over that space. It's sort of like the hand trap stages in world 8.
If you really want to be a jerk, you can play all the stages along the "main" paths of the map that the other player will have to follow behind you, and then just force him into the battle game as he tries to pass you, bullying him into never getting a full turn if you want.
Yes. Understanding the nuances of initiating battle were important, but not always fully appreciated by players who usually played alone. And also caused a lot of fights between my siblings and I.
That was fascinating cause you notice the little changes that show a stepping stone to Super Mario World
SMB3 is so ahead of its time that a save game feature that would've been very beneficial hasn't been invented yet.
The warp whistle system pretty much took care of that problem. The most you'd have to replay before warping to wherever you left off would be the first several stages in world 1. No big deal.
Mario 3 was a great game, when I was child, it was more atractive than 16 bits games at this time. Many memories.
I agree. When I first saw Super Mario World, I thought it looked worse that mario 3 graphically. Like I could tell there were more colors and backgrounds, but I thought mario and the enemies looked goofy compared to Mario 3.
The ability to fly was amazing
I feel like the best change they made in SMB3, compared to SMB, is that you can change your horizontal velocity mid-air more easily. It makes you feel more in control of the character.
thank you, well produced, good music, good pace, hello from a random stranger on the internet, keep up the great work
Oh damn... I have never noticed all of the film/movie symbology in Mario 3 until now...
If you loved Space Invaders on the 2600, you owe it to yourself to play the 5200 version. My first console was the 5200 and for games like Pac-Man, Frogger, Centipede, Moon Patrol and Popeye, it was so cool having a system that was this close to the arcade experience at home.
Space Invaders for the 5200 was really something special though. To this day it is still the best version of the game ever made. And when you get to the "special" aliens it was really beautiful for the time. What a cool color changing effect that was unmatched in the early 80s.
Its a shame about those controllers though, and if you want to build a 5200 library and have good controls you're going to have to put a lot more effort into it than you would setting up most other emulators. But trust me, it's worth looking into. :)
One thing to keep in mind is that Super Mario Bros was a launch title for the NES and by the time Super Mario Bros 3 came out, the developers had approximately 3 more years to learn how to work and get more out of the console. It definitely shows.
This channel is awesome. Keep up the great work.
0:30 "a switch from chaos to control"
A fellow Sonic Fan, I see.
Good joke but from one who lived through the Atari 2600 era we know he is referring to the absolute horror of rush games and poor quality control from Atari it was the control of quality from Nintendo that saved the gamer market during the 80s. Examples Pacman and E.T. for the 2600. The pain...
Believe it or not I still love ❤ this game like the first day I bought it 26 years ago
Some games have graphics.
Some games have gameplay.
Mario 3 had both.
Just discovered this channel from that ps dithering vid, but all your vids are great!
Thanks!
Your videos are fantastic! Can't believe ur channel's subscribers aren't higher cuz of how great the content is.
The 2 player mode is why I’m so close with my brother
As much as I love this one I think I enjoyed Super Mario Bros 2 better. I can just clearly remember seeing a demo at Toys R Us and playing briefly. There was some magic in the second game for me ;)
Luigi can press A when they go over the "L" tag on a beaten level and drag mario into a vs
Miguel Flagstaff Yeap, and the winner gets the cards of the other
Haha, I remember being a jerk with that as a kid
The presentation was the key. The overworld map was what made it so magical.
The UK gaming timeline is almost completely different. We didn't get a crash, rather we had a boom in bedroom coders in the early 80s which made the microcomputers of the time the most popular systems to have. The ZX Spectrum, C64, BBC Micro, and Amstrad CPC were all far bigger than any console here, and this rolled over to the 16-Bit Atari ST and Commodore Amiga.
As for Mario, it's hype was almost akin to the first Batman movie, and it deserves all the praise it gets.
I think that might apply to Europe as well.
I'd add on to the first one with continues: not just hidden behind a special button combination, but up front and center, asking if you want to continue, putting less emphasis on lives And you keep your acquired power ups, as well as unlocked portions of the map.
Still misses what SMW and further had--the ability to go back and revisit levels and even pick up lost powerups or additional lives--something carried on in every Mario platformer to this day.
Another good episode, real shame you don't have more subs you put in some good work making them
Brilliant work my friend. Having loved this game since it came out when we were 7 and watched so many takes on the subject, you hit on new aspects and qualities often overlooked. Even by life long fans.
another great video! please keep them coming
Great channel. Subscribed!
Just came across this now but a very nice video! Sorry I hadn’t seen it before 🍃
I've just discovered your channel today and have already watched 3 of your videos. Great work! Emphatic new sub!
Funny how Mario Bros 3 was "more accessible" while being one of the hardest Mario game to beat. I never managed to do it on the NES.
You've never played Japanese Mario 2, clearly. That game was the Dark Souls of Mario games.
😂😂
Blame the change in level design philosophy and lack of saves as well as your own lack of skill in your youth.
@@MarkMcDaniel They said "one of the hardest", not just "the hardest".
You know, your explanation as to how Mario 3 improved on Mario 1 makes me think that a rom hack of Mario 1 can be made. Complete with an over world map (from Super Mario Bros Deluxe or the super obscure BS Super Mario Collection Dai-1-Shuu), an over world inventory sub screen (with mushroom,, fire flower, starman. And maybe even the music box & jugem cloud along with hammer brothers, Toad's house and card games on the map). And throw in the levels from other SMB1 styled games such as Super Mario Bros Special, Japanese SMB2, and VS SMB into the mix. And lastly, an option to play 2 players either simultaneously (there's a rom hack for this already) or alternating after stages like Mario 3 where progress is shared.
This would make such as refreshing change for veterans to play SMB1 again and also make it more friendly to newcomers. I think all of that fits nicely with SMB1 while still being SMB1. If I knew how to code, I'd start this immediately as my new passion project for both the NES and SNES.
I never saw The Wizard in my country and thus missed that part of the hype. Still, even young me back in the day understood Mario 3 was something special.
Underrated channel. Great job.
Memories maaaan thank you fro making this video
Well put together video. Thank you!
Great video!!!
I've never seen the classic Mario Bros stage in my life, I can't believe this already enormous game still has things I've never found.
Thia was the first video game I played. Truly a masterpiece and waayyy ahead of it's time.
This was a good video, nice!
I’m glad to see mario 3 getting some love, it’s personally my favorite out of 1,USA,2(jp), and world
Excellent.
6:48 as someone with a younger brother that died 10 seconds into the level leaving me to complete the level, only for him to steal the power ups from the toad houses and other bonus stages, I really hated the "take turns" thing. THOSE WERE MY POWER UPS! YOU DIDN'T EARN THEM! I DID!
You clearly wanted to talk about some aspects of mario 3 that you found interesting things to say about, but the introduction to the video gives the impression you want to convince us why mario 3 was a pivotal moment in gaming history. You explain well how your facets are an improvement to the mario franchise, but they don't get very far in supporting the main point of the introduction.
Also, praising mario 3 has been done to death. I think your channel shines when you go into obscure debugging finds that other's do not. Looking forward to more.
You also get inventory items and extra lives from the card matching memory game. Yeah, I didn't realize it was adding those to my inventory for many years. ;) Of course, you also get 28 Magic Wing items added to your inventory if you finish the game and start over, so there's that. ;) Adding items with the e-Reader on the GBA version was kinda cheap since they were infinite but it did exist. I would have liked to see something that throttled you, like an in-game item you have to spend every time you swipe an item card... like maybe three hidden gold coins in each level like the ones they added to Super Mario Advance. Also, maybe they shouldn't let you use the same card over and over... like maybe the triple 1-Up card should only work once per level so you might use your single 1-Up card. Of course, they have to fix the game's save function that makes extra lives pointless too.
Speaking of extra lives, another way to get extra lives in the original Super Mario Bros is to kick a turtle shell through 8 enemies, like at the beginning of 5-1.
Anyway, I've long espoused the unpopular opinion that Super Mario Bros. 3 was more polished than Super Mario World and, thus, SMW seems a little rushed in comparison. People like to point to the lack of a save feature to argue the opposite but they are really just proving my point, since SMB3 was designed to let you jump straight to any world from the first world without a save feature and is better off for it. They told you about one Warp Whistle with a Nintendo Power subscription card included with the game and, of course, knowledge of the other whistles would filter through to most players by the time they started to bemoan playing through earlier world's to reach later ones. It was a genius way to resume at a later world without turning the earlier worlds into a slog. Since most players finished the game by skipping difficult worlds, it ended up keeping them fresh since there was still a lot to explore after you finished the game. Since players rarely just played through everything, there were always some parts of the game that were relatively unexplored for most players and worth re-playing.
I really hate that the GBA version let's you swipe e-cards for infinite items... especially infinite lives since they are pointless anyway. I mean, you start with more lives (5), the second enemy on the first screen of the first stage no longer shoots fireballs which sets the tone for the rest of the game (gimped), and getting Game Over doesn't really set you back when you can just reset and resume from a save point with a fresh set of 5 lives whenever you want. I mean, my copy literally came with a 1-Up card and a 3-Up card... as if I couldn't just swipe the 1-Up card more times if I somehow needed more of these pointless lives. If it isn't clear by now: I feel that the ability to save broke the game and made lives pointless while eliminating an aspect that kept much of the game fresh and replayable, since you can just pick a previous world after saving and have less reason to skip any.
Having map screen doors pave the way if you progressed enough before getting Game Over is a much better mechanic and even that is ruined by the ability to save anywhere in the GBA version. IIRC, Super Mario All*Stars did this a bit better by saving whether or not you had cleared a door/Mini Fortress on the map without saving the individual levels... so resuming a world was the same as getting Game Over in a world except you would still have your saved item inventory.
The original SMB3 is still one of my favorite games of all time. I don't feel that it suffers at all without save since it had the polish to embrace that aspect and turn it into a good thing.
Who else would leave their nes on and just turn the tv off due to no save or password?
Ah yes, i love this!
Mario 3's battlemode caused more fistfights in my house than all other causes combined.
Idk if you mentioned or know this, but if you're playing as, say, Luigi and it's Mario's turn on the map you can spam the A button and trap them in the mini-game as they pass over you.
There was multiple revisions of SMB3 released. I know I have 2 that call the 8 worlds at the end by different names in the closing credits. Wonder what other changes there are in the revisions... (Thought for a future ep)?
To this day, still my favourite videogame.
Mario: "I need more Marios"
Soooo gooooood game!! :D
Great video. I'm curious what effect was used at 1:08 to morph the 2 images. At first I thought it was datamoshing mixed with some sort of embossing but I'm not sure.
Just a built-in morph cut (Premiere Pro) to a photo that was in the middle of a zoom.
I was today years old when I learned that you can play against each other by selecting the other player from the map 😮🤯
Mario 3 2-player: where you force your friend to play all the hard levels by dying on purpose
Y'know, growing up through the Atari and Commodore eras, I was so utterly sick of Nintendo platformers. I would play literally anything else. I learned to love RPGs because of it, even fishing RPGs.
Your video here reminded me that Super Mario 3 was the first platformer that I really, really enjoyed. For all the reasons you listed.
No platformer ever sufficed after that until well into the most recent years with dynamic roguelikes which offered random levels in short pacing.
... Anyway. Thanks for this video.
Giant world is so much fun
Still the best Mario game.
There is just one flaw in my opinion that is both obvious and serious: That you can't re-play finished levels. (But that was quite standard back in the day, so maybe this is only obvious now.)
It wouldn't surprise me if they made a hack that lets you do it now. It's seriously crazy how advanced the hacking scene has gotten since the original days of simple pallet swaps. For instance, they've got a version of the original SMB where you can play both Mario and Luigi at the same time, as well as one where you play as the Princess to save Mario and she can float like she did in SMB2. They've even added 2 player simultaneous support for more obscure titles like P.O.W., and allow a 2 player Duck Tales where the 2nd player is Darkwing Duck. It's really cool to watch these geniuses change the entire mechanics of a game like that. And that was before the recent leaks where a lot of the source code came out. Now that that happened I think we're going to see even more amazing developments.
2:03 You can live right there actually if you jump at the precise moment from when you grabbed that mushroom at that spot Mario Gets a double jump :p
8:55 - Miyamoto confirmed in an interview that the game was meant to signify a stage play. You're spot on in your assumptions.
My only knock against the game really is the lack of saving. That's why I prefer World.
Man, you were able to cooperate with your sibling? Every 2-player game I ever played devolved into playing maybe three scenes before just doing the minigame over and over for an hour straight.
3:57 the lining up minigame is actually rigged, such that it requires rng and doesn't exclusively rely on skill
I hated the battle mode in two player games, because my brother was ALWAYS an a-hole who sucked me into that EVERY SINGLE TIME and never let me play.
I still think Super Mario Bros 3 is the best game for the system it was made for!
what do u mean by saying that i could play mario and luigi at the same screen? please say that this was not posisble in usper mario allstars,,, please
I believe it's the original mario bros minigame that's being referred to.
Excuse me, the NORTH-AMERICAN CONSOLE GAME crash of 1983; not only did the rest of the world; Europe/Japan for the most part back then, not have a crash, we had a BOOM! And games on computers did okay in the North America as well; the first on-line game services, adventure games, RPGs, strategy games, etc., they were all doing quite well.
Legendary studios and developers wore born during that era, man.
He said in America
@@jr2904 Whut????????
I'm not in America.
Today I realized that I never beated this game.
I still remember when this came out couldn't find it anywhere I ended up by "borrowing" from a friend lol
Grassland Desert Forest Jungle Ice-world Fire-world Boss uhn tiss uhn tiss uhn tiss
The famicom came out in 1983... So when the US was failing Japan got Nintendo poppye
While The turn based system was a definite improvement over Mario 1, I would argue that its fatal flaw was the ability to "steal" the turn from the other player on the map screen by defeating them at the "battle game" which recreates the very problem the turn based system was supposed to solve. I remember spending a very unhappy afternoon not play Super Mario Bros. 3 when I was a kid because the friend I was playing with would constantly take my turn by beating me at that battle game, which I was not any good at. It placed weaker players at the mercy of better ones in a much more antagonistic way.
That doesn't make any sense - You only do the Battle Scenes when the active player chooses to do so on the world map. You can't have your turn "stolen" unless you initiate the battle mode.
@@Alakadoof that's not true, either player can initiate the battle mode. I was never fast enough on the controller to select the level before my friend would bump us into battle mode.
It's just a great game. Everything else is twoddle.
Hang on... The last. Major event of the 90s was the release of SMB3?? Ahhhhh how about the launch of the original PS?
Great game, I personally thought the stage production stylistics were pretty tacky and lazy looking though.
mario 3 was a somewhat mediocre game with needlessly hard difficulty, 1-2 hits = dead. And somewhat monotonous. The only thing it exceled at was showing the world just how far a game can go by piggybacking entirely on marketing. Similar to apple. Most nes game developers didn't had a fraction of the experienced devs or budget of mario 3.