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Captain Wii's Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)
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| [January 19, 2007 03:25:11 AM]
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Super Mario Brothers 3! The return, second post!
After a break to write the first log and do some other stuff, I picked Mario 3 back up. This time, I had several of my friends watching. As it turns out, I do not game well under peer pressure (and mocking), and lost to the first stage again. After they wandered off though, I beat the first three stages without incident, and got both the warp whistle in 1-3 and the castle, skipping ahead to the eighth and final world.
The first level of the eighth world is a scrolling stage, unlike 1-1 through 1-3, which means I could not blaze along at my own pace. It also is swarming with enemies, be they bob-ombs from cannons, or crazy ninja wrench throwing moles. As well, there are heaps of cannons that appear slowly from the side of the screen, trying to catch you off guard with their cannonballs. It is a tough stage. Unfortunately, beyond my skill level, and thus I lost. Twice.
After deciding that I could not adequately explore the game and its features with only a single stage on the final level, I restarted instead of continuing, and warp whistled to world four: giant world. This world is incredibly interesting from an aesthetic standpoint, with enemy sprites, tubes, even blocks and clouds at four times the size. This massive size actually allows for some shading, and the giant piranha plant almost appeared to be an enlarged sixteen bit sprite. The blocks, from a game play standpoint, were so large and powerful that raccoon-Mario could not break them with his tail, and required a koopa shell in order to accomplish this feet. When destroyed, they split into four “regular” blocks when breaking, something I considered aesthetically humorous, but incredibly fitting. It may just be a minor point, but I enjoyed the makeup of these giant-world blocks.
Wishing to further test the game, I warp whistled to world 6, the ice world. Immediately off the bat, I noticed Mario sliding on the frigid surface. The lack of traction (as Mario only took a short distance to stop after running before) added an immediate changeup to the game play. The player (me) now has to worry about running into enemies or off of edges completely by accident. Despite this, it is not unbeatable and provides an interesting challenge. These new themes each world make it more and more difficult, yet interesting for the player. After beating the first level, I skipped ahead thanks to a group of hammer bros. to the first sub-castle. It goes to show that there are interesting secret paths and tricks, even on the world map. However, in the sub-castle, I proceeded to repeatedly lose to a tight series of required jumps on a moving platform, and by the time I ran out of lives, I had already played for quite some time.
But, despite its oft-frustrating eight-bit level of game play, Super Mario Bros. 3 is superbly designed, and well deserving of its status as a classic in the annals of gaming history.
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| [January 19, 2007 02:26:42 AM]
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Ah, Mario 3... It has been a long, long time since I had last played you...
Today, I picked up Mario 3 for the first time in years. I could not have been more than a few years old back when I played it on my brother's NES. Which is why I'm so disappointed in myself now. I had played this game in my youth, and as with every other child who had, I remembered all the secrets. Yet, I got a game over on the very first stage.
I do not know if my skills have deteriorated, or I am simply tired, but I do know that older games have much more brutal difficulty. No life bars, no halfway points in stages.
Then, of course, I got myself together and beat the first three stages, got the first warp whistle and then proceeded to lose the rest of my lives in the first sub-castle.
But enough about my play experience; let's talk about what makes this game a classic: the game play. Each of the first three stages all have hidden sections to explore, often by flying at the proper time while using raccoon-mario, or by dropping behind a white block, or even by uncovering hidden blocks. What I'm trying to say is: the level designs are ingenious. There are multiple ways to go through them and, unless you, like me, have played this game since childhood, there are so many secrets to discover.
The game play is simple. There's the four-directional D-Pad and two buttons, run and jump. For the most part, this makes for easy to pick up, low learning curve game play. Despite this, I find now that I get frustrated by there only being two buttons, as run is also everything else except for jump. You want to shoot a fireball? Press the run button. Spin with the raccoon suit? Run button. This makes it at least a little frustrating when trying to run and attack at the same time, as one is forced to stop running to use any of the other abilities. This, however, is a fault of the hardware, not the game, and is something the programmers were likely forced to do to accommodate these things into the NES controller. Modern Mario games like Super Mario Sunshine do not have the same button for shoot and run, although my memory does not recall if Super Mario World and its SNES four button controller had the same fault or not. What I'm trying to say is: it's something that needed to be improved and was improved in later games.
And what about the story? It's an NES game. It did not have the storage capacity for a detailed story. Yet, despite the lack of an overarching plot (aside from save the kings who were transformed and rescue the princess), does not detract from it when compared to other older, similarly impaired games. As such, its superb game play and level design make it a great game.
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Captain Wii's Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Thursday 18 January, 2007
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