My Favourite Game - NES Edition

The NES is in my opinion the first console to truly have a AAA line-up of games. The technology afforded with this system made things that were previously impossible, possible.
From great looking titles and fun adventures, to even some almost arcade-perfect conversions of games from the 80's.

Then with the addition of mapper chips and the release of the Famicom Disk System, things got even better and bigger in scope. Huge adventures such as Zelda, Zelda II, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy and more... And the game that in my opinion is the pinnacle of NES design:

Super Mario Bros. 3

Released in 1988 in Japan, 1990 in the Americas and 1991 in Europe and developed by Nintendo EAD and with the direction of the legendary Shigery Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka.

It was a natural evolution of the formula set up by the first Super Mario Bros. game; larger levels, a map, more items, more enemies, more bosses, better graphics and better sound, it was how you iterate on a winning formula.

Super Mario Bros 2. (The Lost Levels) felt way too much like a simple expansion for Super Mario Bros. 1 and the difficulty made that game throughly unenjoyable.
SMB 3 on the other hand feels perfectly balanced, not too hard but enough to give players a challenge, a challenge that I beat as a kid and am still proud of doing to this day.

The game was received incrediably well back in the day with Famitsu giving it a score of 35/40 and topped the sales chart for December 1988 and January 1989 in Japan.

And all that is very well deserved.

The game was also remade on the Super Nintendo via the Super Mario Bros All Star cartridge that came with remade versions of SMB 1, 2 (DDP and Lost Levels) and 3 (and some cartridges containing Super Mario World as well.

For modern game design standards, the formula is pretty simple. You go from level to level on a world map, with bonus levels and some hazards sprinkled within. Nintendo has done this formula to death by now, and so have other developers, but this is where it all truly started, at least on a game of such great recognition.

This game's sequel does what Nintendo just did with the announcement of the Switch 2:
Iterate and innovate. Super Mario World was also a masterpiece on the SNES, and its DNA takes root in Super Mario Bros. 3's design.

Just writing about this game makes me want to go play it, luckily I've bought a new emulation device to use on my living room TV so that's what I'm gonna go do right now!

Stay in the loop for I'll be reviewing such device in the following days :)

Thanks for reading!