One of the hard ironies about being young is that you have all the time in the world to play all the videogames you want, but your budget is so limited that you can't play many of them. Such was the case for me and this game. It was a game I was very interested in, but it just fell through the cracks. I finally got to play it in college when my sister got it for Christmas, but I didn't have a lot of time to put into it. When it became available on the 3DS e-shop for $3.99 I went ahead and downloaded it. Now of course, I suffer from the reverse problem. I can get any game I want, but I have no time to play them. So a year after I downloaded it, I finally got around to giving it a try and was immediately transported back to the early 90's.
Super Mario Brothers 3 and Super Mario World are universally loved, and deservedly so, but I'd argue this game is almost criminally overlooked. It does a lot of the same things those games did. It has an overworld map, it has secret exits and hidden levels. And it does a lot of things not done in a Mario game either before or since. It feels simultaneously old school and fresh.
The game just does so many things right. The first is the big, beautiful sprites. Nintendo was clearly conscious they were making a game on a tiny screen, so Mario is proportionately larger than he is in his console games and it works very well for it. The game adds strategies I've never had to consider in a Mario game before. For instance, fireballs now destroy blocks, there was one area where there was a block that I had to destroy in a wall blocking a path to a secret area, but once I did, I was too large to get through the hole I created, so I then had to go let my character get hit to become small and then I fit through the hole and received my reward. Similarily Mushroom Mario and fireball Mario can do a spinning jump that destroys the blocks below them, but for whatever reason, Rabbit Mario can't do that. I found myself in a situation where I was Rabbit Mario standing over some breakable blocks hiding a secret path. I again had to let myself get hit once and then was able to spin jump and get through it.
Speaking of Rabbit Mario, he represents the lone new power up to the game, and was relatively un-interesting. It's the equivilant of the raccoon tail except you can't fly or act as an offensive weapon. It is purely used for floating. Stages can be played in any order, I didn't even find the second world until I completed all the other worlds. There was also a bubble that you could get in and fly with that I kind of wish had shown up in more levels.
There aren't even a standard number of levels per world. The Tree Zone has 6 levels while the Space Zone only has 3, and one of those is a hidden level. This is particularly disappointing, because the space level is very unique and fun to play. I would have loved more space levels. Plus Mario looks awesome in his space suit!
Without a doubt the game's biggest contribution to Mario lore is that it marks the introduction of Wario, who would go on to appropriately steal the series from Mario and take it over for himself. Although he's hardly the Wario we know and love. The game just begins. No cut scenes at all. You have no real idea why you're playing until the end when you kick Wario out of his castle and it becomes Mario's Castle. But Wario doesn't get any scenes where we get to meet him, and he looks so bizarre in his first appearance, he's freakishly large.
This is not a long game, maybe that's a reflection of the amount of memory the Gameboy cartridges had. My total time on the 3DS says I spent 3 hours and 45 minutes with the game. I'd like to know how much of that time was spent on the last level. Like most Mario games, this game isn't particularly difficult. It has checkpoints halfway through the levels which have become a 2D staple. But the last level, storming Wario's Castle is absurdly difficult. I lost 45 lives before I finally finished it! The level is very difficult and once you clear it you have to go through THREE boss battles before it's all over. And a death at any point forces you to start the entire level over. It was almost enough to tempt me to using the save states on the 3DS, but I refused to do that. I don't think you've really completed the game if you used save states. By the time I finally finished it though, I was really good at that last level. I felt like if I played that level 10 more times (which I would never do because I don't hate myself) I would probably beat it 8 times since I had really learned how to navigate the level (and boss fights) by that point.
I believe this game is an absolute classic, and is probably one of the least-played Mario titles, but it absolutely should be played by anyone who loves the 80's and early 90's Mario games.
Completed: 1.4.2014
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