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Super Mario Bros. 3: Best Game Ever Made
By Jonathan | January 28, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Yes, I have a Wii. Yes, it’s the first new gaming system that I’ve owned since the N64 in the mid-90s. Yes, I like the Wii a lot. So what’s the problem?
I grew up with Pac Mac, Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, Castle Wolfenstein, and Super Mario Bros. 3. I believe these are some of the best games of all time. Maybe they’re great because I grew up playing them; maybe they’re great because they have excellent gameplay and story lines. Or maybe they’re great just because you don’t see new games like this anymore. Sure, graphics and audio have improved significantly, but I think that has also negatively impacted the complexity of many new games.
It is entirely possible to sit down and play a game like Pac Mac for 15-30 minutes at a time and be completely satisfied to play a few lives, and then walk away. The same applies to Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, and a whole other slew of games from the 80s. Super Mario Bros. 3 requires you to spend a bit more time playing, but it was still possible to beat the entire game in an afternoon. These games are simple. There is little doubt as to where Mario needs to go to save the Princess. He always moves left to right while avoiding bad guys, and always finds the exit after walking and jumping around a while.
You can’t get lost, you don’t have to find the hidden star(s), and you don’t have to beat the same level more than once. In fact, you can’t beat the same level more than once until you beat the game and start over.
Let’s compare Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) to Mario 3 (Nintendo Entertainment System).
WARNING: If you have any intentions of playing this game, there will be spoilers during the next paragraph.
BEGIN Spoiler
There are essentially six different ways to beat Mario Galaxy:
1) After retrieving 60 stars, travel to the Center of the Universe with Mario, defeat Bowser, save the Princess.
2) After retrieving 120 stars, travel to the Center of the Universe with Mario, defeat Bowser, save the Princess. This is exactly the same as #1 except you have collected all the possible stars in the game (or so you think).
3) After retrieving 120 stars and saving the Princess, repeat #1 with Luigi. That’s right, you get a new character and the same exact game to beat again.
4) After retrieving 120 stars with Luigi, travel to the Center of the Universe with Luigi, defeat Bowser, save the Princess.
5) (I’m not actually here yet, but this is what I’ve heard): After performing #2 and #4, a new galaxy will appear. Beat the new galaxy with Mario.
6) Repeat #5 with Luigi.
END Spoiler
How to beat Super Mario Bros. 3
1) Play completely through levels 1-8, defeat Bowser, save the Princess.
2) Play through levels 1 and 2, warp to level 8, defeat Bowser, save the Princess.
It could also be argued that finishing either #1 or #2 that the game has in fact been beaten since the only way to continue is to completely start over. I’m one of those people. You can do that in a couple of hours on a rainy Saturday afternoon. To complete #1 and #2 for Mario Galaxy it has taken me multiple hours for multiple weeks (at this point I neglect stating the actual number of hours). Let’s just say that if you beat Mario Galaxy on a Saturday afternoon you’re probably lying or you don’t have a girlfriend/wife/significant other. Galaxy also requires you to play the same level more than once to find multiple stars, although the level may have changed slightly.
I miss the simplicity of these old school games. Nintendo has made available, for download directly to the Wii, old games from the Nintendo, Super Nintendo, N64, Sega Genesis, TurboGrafx, and Neo Geo. Maybe it’s the nostalgic feel of playing these, or maybe people actually still enjoy playing these games. Either way, people are re-buying games they owned when they were kids.
I don’t know if kids would enjoy a game like Donkey Kong today, because you sure can’t buy it for any of the newer systems on the market. Another problem is the fact that people don’t want to pay $50 for simplicity. I’ll agree with that one…I could have bought Mario 3 for $50 back in 1990, why would I want to pay $50 for something similar to it in 2008? This is another reason I applaud the Wii Virtual Console, these games are as low as $5.
Some of the new complexity is irritating to me. Take another example from Super Mario Galaxy: Mario runs around in a 3D world, just like in the last two versions of Mario World games from Nintendo. A 3D world provides a dynamic camera angle that changes depending on which direction Mario is facing, and depending on whether or not objects disrupt the line of site of the current camera and Mario. This may sound great, and sometimes it is. But what is not great is when the camera angle changes when you’re not expecting it to. This has caused me on numerous occasions to bump into enemies, or to walk right off the edge of a platform to Mario’s death. Poor Mario. There is no option of fixed camera position, which makes numerous areas in the game more difficult than they need to be.
I believe that the phrase ‘less is more’ would fit well here. Now let’s drop the price of these new video games and give me something simple to play with.
Super Mario Bros. 3:
Best
Game
Ever
Topics: video games, Wii | 4 Comments »
February 5th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Just because you’re not as good as you used to be at video games and you can’t “adapt” like the best of us. And just because you can get smoked at Halo 1 2 and 3, doesn’t mean you have to dis the new games. But yes, Super Mario Bros 3 = best game ever.
March 4th, 2008 at 8:37 am
Super Mario Bros. 3 is soooo easy because the controls are simple… Halo 1, 2, and 3 are not as simple, therefore evan is right that you’re not able to “adapt” to video games like us…. but just saying, I OWN you at all three Halos Evan… Yea
March 4th, 2008 at 8:37 am
Ha beat that Evan
November 29th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
‘Adapt’ to video games? Are you kidding me? Play a game long enough and anyone ‘adapts’ to it. The point about NES and other older systems is the simplicity of it. You don’t have to spend an entire afternoon trying to just learn how to play the game.