#509: Solar Jetman (1990, NES)

I don't know what happened to Rare in high school, but for a development house that would eventually turn out the Banjo, Donkey Kong Country, and Perfect Dark games, they seemed hellbent on showing everyone that western developers could clobber the Japanese when it came to making the most impossibly frustrating games imaginable. Now, I could just as easily have been setting up a review for Battletoads there, but at least Battletoads has an easy first level - Solar Jetman is stupid-hard from the get-go.

The shame here is that, if one were to just tweak the difficulty here, you would have a rather excellent sort of space sim/shooter here. The idea is that you, Sol "-ar" Jetman (I'm making that name up), have to travel from planet to planet exploring and collecting spaceship parts (the titular Golden 'Warp'-ship) in your little pod. Along the way you fight robots and aliens, and also have to make sure you don't run out of fuel and such. Sounds a lot like Pikmin, which was awesome, right? The problem begins when it was decided that there would also be super-realistic physics modeling at play.

This sounds good - gravity will behave like real gravity, momentum must be considered and factored into movement, but the thing is they went much to far with this. In the earliest levels it is a rather large problem, especially whenever you're trying to tow something. By the end of the game, when the gravity is something like 6 times Jupiter, it becomes ridiculous, taking minutes to move vertically. Compounding this is that any contact with anything (including the swarms of enemies which are seemingly unaffected by gravity) pretty near instantly kills you. Basically, the fun exploration game goes out of its way to make this exploration as frustrating as possible.

The cruelest joke is the final-final level - after completing the most difficult planet yet, the player is instantly sent into a poor Gradius clone where a death (quite likely since this stage is also pretty hard, and importantly, completely unlike anything the player has just spent the last several hours playing) sends you back to the beginning of the previous planet. It's like the final bosses of Ninja Gaiden, if those last bosses consisted of dirtbike racing or Burgertime or something.



Luckily for all of us (or at least those of us that kind of like Rare, like myself) Rare would eventually learn the value of applying their gifts for making good looking games with good concepts to gameplay that actually worked (as opposed to say, Battletoads, which was literally impossible to complete in 2-player).

Solar Jetman: Hunt for the Golden Warpship
Publisher: Tradewest
Developer: Rare
Released: September 1990
Obtained: March 2008

6.0/10

#508: Guerrilla War (1988, NES)

The idea of difficulty in video games has come a long way from the 1980s. Then, it was pretty hard to find a game where you didn't have a shitload of stuff flying at you at absolutely all times, in addition to having relatively weak attacks, limited life (or no life), and a very limited set of lives - the net result being that without either cheating, or a lot of patience and practice, you'd typically never see anything beyond the second level of most games. Later, as the idea of playability was emphasized and the idea of challenge was deemphasized, these tropes have fallen by the wayside. Good luck finding a game that expects you to play the whole thing in one sitting with one set of lives, for example. Hell, good luck finding games that still use lives at all.

So what makes Guerrilla War interesting is its surprisingly liberal approach to difficulty (or as surprisingly liberal anything in a game about Che Guevara can be). It is, basically, the same game as either Ikari Warriors or Commando - a straight forward top down shooter where you (the hero) shoot down hordes of enemies. Maybe you'll throw a grenade or something. These games are very hard, and so is Guerrilla War. But whereas those games will kick your ass back to the title screen when you've died enough, Guerrilla War lets you keep going without so much as making you start the level over. Literally the only thing stopping you from slugging your way to the end is whether you get bored halfway (luckily, it's pretty fun - and pretty short).

The idea of unlimited continues was pretty unheard of at that time, which is what makes it so refreshing to come back to this now. We, in these modern times, have little patience for things like lives or punishing difficulty, we want to play a game for as long as it takes for us to get bored of it, then toss it to the side. By removing the impediments to this approach, Guerrilla War feels almost like it was designed with the modern gamer in mind - down to the Cuban Revolution backdrop which is sure to please anyone in search of ironic entertainment.



Now, the game itself? Infinite continues aside, I still prefer Iron Tank in the world of top-down shooters, mostly due to Iron Tank's sense of scale and its boss fights, but when it comes to looking for some quick NES fun (with 2-player co-op, no less)? It's hard to find much to fault here.

Guerrilla War
Publisher: SNK
Developer: SNK
Released: 1988
Obtained: March 2008

7.0/10

#160: Team Fortress Classic (1999, PC)

I imagine it must be pretty hard to make a online-multiplayer title that can be fun to play even when you're completely and utterly overmatched by your opponents. Take something like Gears of War, which is excellent, and consider how boring it can get when one finds themselves completely overwhelmed by the opponents - I know I tend to feel a bit flustered in this situation and cease to enjoy myself. Yet I can play Team Fortress Classic, die roughly 30 times for every kill I make, and have a pretty good time doing it. My theory as to why this is I think lies in the relative amount of responsibility placed onto the player - Gears has small teams and lacks specialization, as such I know that I am supposed to be taking down my opponents at a roughly 1:1 pace, and I also know that if I don't, that puts a lot of pressure on my teammates (being at most 4 on 4). By comparison, in a 10 on 10 TFC match where I, being a Pyro or a Medic (as I usually am), have a pretty specific role or task I suddenly feel a lot less guilty if I do poorly. Suddenly I'm in a position where I know there are a lot more guys to cover my ass, and I'm in a role where I know my primary task is not to rack up kills, but rather to wreck havoc (pyro) or help out others (medic).

I'm not sure which of these two factors contributes the most to this feeling of liberation from the usual responsibilities of a team-shooter. On the one hand, I'm sure that the crowd factor is big, since I also enjoy playing Counter-Strike, where I consider my role as being that of a meat shield for my more talented teammates. On the other hand, the presence of roles, with the expectations for performance or style that come with them provide me with an excellent way to style my play in a somewhat guided fashion.

TFC also promotes a fast and imprecise style of play that makes it rather well suited for casual play. Unfortunately, it also boasts a number of quirks and glitches that lends itself just as well for obsessive and hardcore play - the exact kind that tends to intimidate novice players and discourage casual play. These same hardcore players insistence on limiting themselves to a single map (the relatively boring 2fort) which lends itself the best to these glitches also tends to discourage casual play.



Complaints about the hardcore TFC crowd should carry the caveat, however, that it is this same crowd that has kept the game relevant through the years, essentially keeping it alive for its exposure to new blood. Also, like I said at the start, I manage to enjoy myself pretty well in spite of the huge talent gulf - the core game itself is simply a fun way to waste some time.

Team Fortress Classic
Publisher: Sierra
Developer: Valve
Released: 5/30/1999
Obtained: Early 2002

8.5/10

#110: Mario Tennis (2000, N64)

The Shining Force series was a fairly prolific tactical RPG series released across several Sega systems in the early to mid 1990s. The developer behind all of them was a Camelot Software Planning, they did do a sports game (Hot Shots Golf), but it still strikes me as odd that Nintendo would seek them out to head up their entire Mario-sports series, rather then handling them in house or something. Even more incredible is that Camelot would wind up doing a far better job then Nintendo themselves probably would have managed (well, there isn't much to back this up, since Nintendo has passes off all their sports games).

What's most remarkable is that Camelot, an RPG developer, understands perfectly the need for rock solid control in a game like this - as a result, Mario Tennis winds up being incredibly easy to pick up and play while remaining really precise, resulting in gameplay that can stand up to hours upon hours of playtime. Mario Tennis quickly became a N64 multiplayer staple, alongside greats like Bomberman 64, Mario Kart 64, GoldenEye 007/Perfect Dark, Super Smash Bros. and uh... I suppose that was the list (there really weren't a lot of games for it, you know).

I find there to be something ingenious about the swing mechanics here - A for topspin, B for slice, A+B for smash - with A then B for lob and B then A for a drop shot - or maybe I have those backwards - the point is, that is the list of shots, and basically then the extent to which you can actually do anything in the game. It is because of this simplicity that the games can then be more about things like movement and rhythm than an exercise in control - you can even survive pretty well just using the slice or the topspin, turning Mario Tennis into essentially a one button game.

It's remarkable how well suited for multiplayer tennis is, by the way. Both sides are always more or less equally involved in the proceedings - or more specifically, the time spent on 'defense' (waiting for the ball) is so short as to be unnoticeable - by the time you've seen your shot through, you get to set up for the next. Compare this to football where the defensive time can be interminable, or even to something like basketball where it is short but noticeable. And another big plus is that even when the score may be lopsided, the losing team never really feels out of it, especially in something like Mario Tennis where the learning curve is low enough that there will never be that huge of a gulf between the experienced and the novice.

The Mario Tennis series, because of its engaging simplicity are probably my favorite sports games out there in terms of actually enjoying the game itself (Tecmo Super Bowl notwithstanding) - I may enjoy the hell out of a Madden, but this is because of the things that I bring into the proceedings - my love of sports statistics and my desire to manipulate rosters - when I play Madden itself, I'm mostly concerned with wanting to put up crazy numbers with the roster of guys I've spent time assembling. With Mario Tennis, however, its a simple case of picking a character I like to play as (aka Yoshi) and playing.



Fun fact, this game is not called Mario Tennis 64 - shocking only because that makes it one of about maybe 10 games ever released on the N64 without the number '64' in the title. I also would be remiss to not mention how shockingly crisp the texturing is in this game - spend time with basically any other N64 game - texturing was not its strong suit.

Mario Tennis
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Camelot Software Planning
Released: 8/28/2000
Obtained: Fall 2000

9.0/10

#60: SimCity (1989, PC)

Funny how much an opinion of a game can be shaped by how experienced one is with other games. In this case, I happened to play SimCity sometime after I had been exposed to SimCity 2000 - no offense to SimCity but this really isn't a comparison. Furthermore, I first played SimCity sometime after I had played it's sibling on the SNES which was basically the same game, with an overlay of Nintendo polish (although the SNES control pad couldn't hold a candle to a mouse for this kind of game).

What's funny is that, insofar as I actually play SimCity games (i.e. building a city as suggested by the rules outlined by the game), SimCity is probably my favorite - the same complexity that makes the sequels better sandboxes also makes them less accessible. As I've said before, I enjoy complexity only so long as I can get a really good grasp of the entire system and thus exploit it to fit my will - the gold standard here, for me, is Final Fantasy V, whose job system has depth and complexity, but is straightforward enough that I could enjoy the hell out of exploiting it to suit my whims. Here, exploiting SimCity for maximum efficiency is just as straightforward. Rails solve traffic and pollution problems, police and fire departments don't require road access to be effective, and thus can have zones built around them to maximize the use of space. There isn't elevation to contend with, water pipes or sanitation to worry about, zones are all the same size. This simplicity makes for boring looking cities, but for a better game from a casual perspective.

But! Even while SimCity may make for a better game, that simply isn't what I look for when I come into these titles, instead I'm looking to make something cool (especially since, even when playing the 'game', there isn't a real objective anyway). Those tools and features that make SimCity 2000 harder to play - terrain adjustments, adjustable zone sizes, etc. also allow for one to make a much more interesting cityscape. Do I find myself needing to use money cheats to make the city I want to make? Sure, but I'm having a really good time while I'm doing it, so I hardly see much to fault in that approach. Additionally, because I know there are specific things one can do in SimCity to make a city efficient (at the expense of aesthetics), I find it hard to avoid doing those things (like following set block patterns when laying zones, or especially in using rails in place of any and all roads). Because SimCity 2000 closes these loopholes, I find myself feeling freer to experiment in city design, even if this means also operating without a net in terms of trying to get the city to operate within the game rules.



Comparing SimCity here to the SNES version also exposes another rather large flaw in the original, its lack of dynamism. No music, not terribly dynamic graphics (the SNES version adds seasonal effects as a nice flourish), no Dr. Wright to help advise the mayor, less flashy disasters. SimCity really works best when seen as the seed for later titles that it really was.

SimCity
Publisher: Maxis
Developer: Maxis
Released: 1989
Obtained: Early 1996

7.5/10

#10: American Gladiators (1991, NES)

American Gladiators sucks (this game, not the wonderful show, of course). It's pretty much a perfect storm of bad graphics, terrible control, terrible design, and unbalanced difficulty. An American Gladiators game should be pretty easy to pull off. I would expect some 2-player alternating game built around some minigames inspired by events in the show. Such a game has been pulled off 'successfully' many times, like with Nickelodeon GUTS which, while far from good, at least wasn't this broken (well, it sort of was).

The whole structure is goofy - for being based on a competition show, there is very little competition here. Just a series of events set up like stages - imagine a basketball game where the score is kept, but instead you proceed to another court after every made basket. If you somehow manage to complete the game, you get a quick congratulations, then are sent off to repeat everything again on a harder difficulty. I could extend some sort of break on account of the NES being pretty rudimentary from a hardware perspective, but Tecmo managed to fit stat tracking and a 16 game NFL schedule into Tecmo Super Bowl around the same time and on the same hardware - the American Gladiator developers (all 4 of them) just didn't seem to care (not that I would blame them).

We haven't even touched on the gameplay, which can be pretty well summarized as broken. That may be slightly harsh, many of these games are functional, after all, but I have a hard time spotting where in them any sense of pleasure may be derived. Human Canonball is built exclusively on timing without giving the player opportunity to learn from his mistakes (short of dying and starting over) - bad design. The Wall is ludicrously unbalanced, expecting the player to navigate a maze while hitting a & b as fast as possible, but never so fast to be more than half as fast as the scores of gladiators swarming around you. Joust seems to do whatever it wants regardless of what buttons you press, provided you do so fast enough. Assault could have been ok, but like with most of the other events you are made to repeat the same act over and over, progressively harder, until you can't actually complete it (and it isn't fun). Why not use the more difficult mode unlocked on completing the game to unleash such horrors? Powerball is probably the closest things get to decent, owing mostly to it being the only event where you can't die, thus providing the means to learn and adapt to the everything going on. The Eliminator I've never seen, but I'm sure it sucks too.



Everything is built on the idea that the best way to extend game length is to make the player do everything in successively harder waves, which I thought had gone out of fashion by the time the Legend of Zelda came out, not something I would expect to see in a NES game released early in the 16-bit era. Granted, I'm maybe being a bit too hard on it, but seeing as it was my first exposure to a truly crappy game as a child, it's always held a special spot of contempt in my heart.

American Gladiators
Publisher: GameTek
Developer: Incredible Technologies
Released: October 1991
Obtained: Sometime from 1991-1992

2.5/10

#251: Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls (2004, GBA)

It's hard to pinpoint exactly what is so appealing about the Final Fantasy series - many would say story and characters, and that may well work as an explanation for the more modern entries, or for Final Fantasy's IV and VI, but the NES titles were pretty damn popular as well, and they sure as hell weren't so thanks to a rich plot or characters (witness Final Fantasy I's nameless avatars, or its bizarre and confusing time traveling villain conceit).

The appeal lies, I think, in how the gameplay provides the player with the ability to customize a team of characters, while keeping this customization restrained enough to remain accessible. Remember, being able to select and equip a party of 4 characters from 6 classes is pretty restrictive for the RPG genre - more directly Dungeons and Dragons influenced titles (like Ultima or Wizardry - really any western RPG) pretty handily blew Final Fantasy out of the water on that front. But none of those other titles was as easily picked up and played. And none of those titles allowed for the sort of character based storytelling that these early Final Fantasy titles would attempt and which later Final Fantasy titles would achieve. These simplified mechanics also mean that there is none of the intimidation factor that I feel undercuts modern RPGs, although in this instance, things may be a bit oversimplified - the SNES-era Final Fantasy's struck the best balance of having something complex enough so as to be interesting, yet simple enough as to be readily understandable.

It should also be said that level grinding, though often criticized as being lazy game design (because, let's be honest, it is) can still a pretty compelling force, appealing in the same sort of 'killing time' fashion of a good puzzle game. There is a palatable sense of reward in fighting a boss and knowing that because you put in that time earlier, you're having an easier go of things now. It's the sort of thing that doesn't quite work on a console since it can't quite hold one's attention for the length of time it demands (at least it can't hold my attention), but works perfectly on a handheld where it can be done simultaneously with other semi-passive activities, like watching TV.



The version present on the GBA here pretty dramatically simplifies much of the gameplay mechanics here - gone are spell uses, replaced with magic points, for example. These changes have been pretty roundly criticized for dumbing things down, but I look at how stilted and awkward the mechanics were in the original, and how much grinding was required, and I have a hard time getting that upset. Taking something that is pretty obtuse and inaccessible and making it more playable is a pretty noble pursuit in my book.

---

Final Fantasy II gets beaten like a red-headed stepchild because it pretty much deserves it. Should we give some credit to Square for changing things up so dramatically here? Sure, I suppose, but what little brownie points they earned there is offset by the fact that the new system kinda sucks.

For the uninformed, Final Fantasy II changes things up by ditching experience points entirely for a system that doles out attribute and skill points based on how much you use those skills or attributes? Want to build up strength? Attack more. Want to build up magic? Use magic. Sounds like a cool idea, right? Well how bout, want to build defense? Get attacked. Want to build up hit-points? Lose hit-points. The version on the GBA here at least managed to make this system more tolerable than in the original - no longer can you lose your skill points through under-use, but the core problem still remains - that being that the style of play this system encourages feels so unnatural.

Take building magic skill here: the general Final Fantasy style encourages the player to conserve their magic - magic points are more difficult to recover, after all - leading players to have their mages mostly stand aside (by defending, or using some ineffectual, but free attack) for regular battles. Magic points are saved for difficult enemies, bosses, and general healing. That style doesn't fly here - do that and your mages will become so underdeveloped as to become useless. So instead one has to go about casting spells for every generic encounter. The whole system just feels very restrictive - because every in-battle action directly affects how your characters develop, the player begins to obsess over their every move in battle.



Ironically, the rest of the game is a pretty strong improvement over the original - the story is much stronger, featuring real and defined characters rather than the avatars of the original. Also the plotline isn't derailed by the dumb time travel premise. An interesting keyword system acts to liven up dialog and quests in general - yes, this is little more than taking the 'talk to this person' quest and turning it into a 'say this keyword to this person' quest, but for a 8-bit RPG? That's a pretty big change, furthermore, one not really ever duplicated again in the series.

Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Square-Enix
Released: 11/29/2004
Obtained: Christmas 2004 (Gift)

7.5/10

#220: Metroid: Zero Mission (2004, GBA)

I can't think of another game remake I approve of more heartily than Metroid: Zero Mission. The reason for this lies in looking at the title it is remaking, the original Metroid. To put it simply, when compared with every other title in the Metroid series, the original Metroid kind of sucks. Like, really sucks. Whereas every other Metroid has displayed tight control, interesting and varied environments, and exploration based gameplay that veers closely towards being aimless and arbitrary without actually being so, the original eschews all of these. The environments are ludicrously repetitive, objectives are obscure and inscrutable enough to make Simon's Quest blush, the controls are loose, and the way enemies spawn endlessly must have been a big inspiration to Ninja Gaiden. Now, all is not all bad there, Metroid did more for establishing atmosphere as a tenet of game design than any other 8-bit title I can think of, it established the wonderful Metroid formula, and as far as NES titles go its problems aren't especially damaging. Still, in the grand scheme of Metroid, the original had been relegated to the not really worth going back and playing pile.

So along comes Metroid: Zero Mission, which does a brilliant job of merging the excellent gameplay of Super Metroid with the general world and plot of Metroid (well, plot-wise it merges in the story built around the original, seeing as the original did not really have a plot in-game). The result is a pretty much perfect blend of of nostalgia (such as when one recognizes moments from the original) and fresh new ideas (like the excellent stealth sequence near the end of the game).

It's not a 1:1 remake, the order one acquires items has been jumbled around, the player is provided general waypoints to help overcome some of the more arbitrarily hidden tasks of the original, the level layouts have been pretty totally overhauled - the general structure is kept, but now individual areas actually look unique as opposed to the originals ludicrous repetitiveness. Now, this makes things feel somewhat smaller, but this works to its benefit - what good is a large world when each hallway is identical to that before it?

Metroid's excellent sound design loses some of its charm in the move to the GBA - the tracks are mostly the same, but they just don't feel quite right being orchestrated over being 8-bit - some of the sense of atmosphere is left behind in the transition from sparse to lush. The graphics, while obviously being a hell of a lot more detailed likewise undermine that sense of atmosphere - again, there is something to be said for sparseness over lushness. Also not helping things on the graphical front is the GBA's seeming inability to produce graphics that don't feel washed out (actually, it can produce them, it's just the original's lack of a light source forced developers to use a washed out style). One could actually make a strong case that Zero Mission here has the weakest atmosphere in the series.



Luckily for it, atmosphere isn't what makes Metroid great, gameplay is, and Zero Mission - despite the inclusion of waypoint assistance - does about the best job of letting the player loose to explore and discover since Super Metroid (well, discounting the Prime series).

Metroid: Zero Mission
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo R&D1
Released: 2/9/2004
Obtained: February 2004

9.0/10

#366: Star Fox Command (2006, NDS)

So, you know, all-range mode being probably the worst part of Star Fox 64 (it's either that or the sub and its sucky lasers), the natural answer to how to properly reinvigorate the series (after the dreadful Star Fox Assault) was obvious - make a Star Fox game that is nothing but all-range battles! And not the boss fights that actually worked, but the fights against dozens of targets, all spread out and hard to find. That's a brilliant idea, isn't it?

The funny thing is Star Fox Command, despite doing exactly this for some inexplicable reason, actually damn near succeeds. Yes, it's nowhere near as good as Star Fox 64, but it at least controls really well (stylus-only, in fact), which one certainly couldn't say about any time Assault left the damn Arwing.

What is so wrong, though, with going all-all-range? The answer lies, in level design. In short, Star Fox Command doesn't really have any. Yes, the 'strategy' sessions in between missions are well, levels that have been ostensibly designed, but the missions themselves? All variations on a single theme - shoot down enough enemies (and collect their delicious, delicious stars) to proceed. Occasionally there'll be a mothership or something, which means you shoot down enough enemies, then basically fly through some rings. Hoo-ray.

The strategy sessions deserve more discussion, basically the campaign is broken down into a series of 'worlds', basically maps where you dispatch your arwings (and missiles and the great fox &c) to attack bases and enemy fighters. It's turn based and it, while decent enough, just doesn't fit well with what I imagine anyone wanted out of a Star Fox game (I think people wanted like, levels). There's also a time limit for some reason, putting in a arcade racer style checkpoint/added time system that, again, doesn't fit.

Story-wise, someone decided that what Star Fox fans wanted, as opposed to say, Star Fox 64 style gameplay, was a hell of a lot more background on these beloved characters. So now we get, between every 'world', lengthy Golden Sun style blathering between our main characters. Also Slippy gets a love interest. Again, Hoo-ray (though I'm sure furries are ecstatic).



I'm being a bit hard on it here, again, it really does kind of work - it just doesn't work in any way one would expect a Star Fox game to work. Some credit must be given for reinventing the series into something pretty good, it's just such a development isn't that exciting when the original style had been so under-used to begin with.

Star Fox Command
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Q-Games
Released: 8/28/2006
Obtained: October 2006 (Gift)

7.5/10

#196: Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990, NES)

It feels odd to follow up my love letter to Super Mario World with a piece that sort of slams Super Mario Bros. 3 over some complaints that I'm sure I'm going to have problems properly explaining, other than saying that it just doesn't inspire the same sense of awe and love in me that a Super Mario World did. So, before I get to those complaints, I'll start with what is so incredibly good about Mario 3.

The big plus is this - no other NES title is as much of a technical feat, no other NES title packs in as varied a gameplay experience, no other NES title sports as wildly diverse a set of environments, no other NES title this side of Capcom's work has as strong an overall sound production, and no other title sports control as precise and accessible. Yet, when I make my list of my favorite NES games, I have to leave it below both River City Ransom and Tecmo Super Bowl because, as great as Mario 3 is, it also happens to have a follow up that manages to out-do basically every respect. Some would say that later games shouldn't be held against earlier ones, but how can they not? I can't go and give an A for effort, nor can I travel back in time to the 80s and grade it then.

Back (again) to the good: Mario 3, more so than either of its predecessors, established the true heart of what a Mario game was. Mario 1 may have established the control and the emphasis on the environment being the obstacle (versus the enemies), and Mario 2 may have established the role of exploration (I could also mention The Lost Levels as establishing how not to do a difficulty curve), but Mario 3 introduced the concept of variety as a foundation of the series. Mario 3 is filled with tricks and mechanics which see a limited use maybe once or twice before being tossed away. This is hardly unique - Mega Man had different powerups, Kirby would later take this idea to the extreme through the presence of dozens of powers, but what Mario did was devote to all of these toss-away mechanics and moments the same attention to detail and precision as it did to the act of jumping.

In short, all of these moments were as fun as the rest of the game (more-or-less, what with the swimming), not put there solely as some way to change up the pacing. No better example can be seen than in Kuribo's Shoe, present in only one level fairly late in a game with no means of starting from the middle or even replaying a level that has already been passed. Using Kuribo's shoe meant at least the half-hour commitment it would take to get some warp whistles and work over there, yet there may not be a better item in the entire series.



This isn't the only toss-away mechanic, the tanooki, hammer, and frog suits are difficult to find and can be lost with one hit like any other item - in other words, they're pretty impractical, yet you feel compelled to track them down anyway because they're too cool and fun to do otherwise. That these flourishes are built on top of an already rock-solid foundation is why the Mario series is in another stratosphere of quality and fun.

Incredibly, I must have been the about only Mario fan in the world who never actually had Mario 3 as a child, instead I borrowed it from my uncle for what was probably a year and a half. So, sure, I played the hell out of it, but it was never actually mine, despite how much I enjoyed it - not that this was all that unusual, I mostly rented back then, my actual collection was pretty pitiful (highlights being Mega Man 3, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game, and the packed-in Mario 1). Another favorite of mine that I didn't actually own: EarthBound.

Just as incredible now that I see it - Mario 3 was released in the U.S. nearly 15 months after it was released in Japan. Imagine if Mario Galaxy had been scheduled for release in March 2009, fans would have burned Nintendo of America to the ground in protest (not even a preview in The Wizard would placate them), hell, I'd bring some of the gasoline.

So what is there not to like here? As I said earlier, my complaints are fairly hard to verbalize, centering mostly on some things I feel are off. Chief amongst these is probably the difficulty, namely the inconsistency of the difficulty as the game swings between being easy, being hard because of the sheer number of things out there trying to kill you (projectiles and the like), and being hard due to obscure restrictions or tasks - an excellent example here is the level in world 6 where to exit one must have a raccoon tail and be carrying an ice block, if you run out of either you'll become stuck and be forced to either let time expire or suicide out of the level. That sort of design should never happen in a Mario game, and near as I can recall has never happened since (sometimes a secret exit will be subject to such a restriction, but never the only exit). My other complaint centers around the inconsistency in the length of levels, with some being quite long (the pyramid comes to mind), and most being over well too soon (especially when one plays in the reckless, full-speed style I prefer).



Are these big problems? In the grand scheme of video games, no (Mario 3 is still probably the best game on the NES - insofar as one can designate a title the best in some objective sense), but in the world of Mario, they sort of are - the standards are so high.

Special note: Super Mario World occupies numbers 196 (NES), 214 (GBA), and 489 (Virtual Console) in my collection.

Super Mario Bros. 3
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Released: February 1990
Obtained: October 2003 (eBay!)

9.0/10