To an extent, perhaps. But I don't think that's the only reason. For one thing, it isn't the only one I played as a child. I also had Super Mario Bros 2. That's arguably a Boss Fight subject more because of its interesting development history than because of the greatness of the final product, but what matters here is that it's a game I played and loved as a kid and don't feel especially fond of today. It's a competent platformer with some neat features, but I don't think anyone would grant it much of a place in history if it had stayed in its own skin. (Which raises another question-- would any Mario game be as highly regarded if you stripped away the series' trappings?-- but let's leave that for another time.) I could list more titles I don't love the way I used to, but that kind of evidence is hardly conclusive. The only other thing I want to mention is that I'm a little too young to have the particular history with SMB 3 of many gamers around my age.
I was born at the tail end of 1985, a couple months after the NES was released in North America, and I don't remember a time when we didn't have one. I've worked out that it must have been the Action Set bundle, which came out in 1988 and had two controllers, the Zapper, and a Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt cartridge, but in my earliest memories we already had a large library. The two Zelda games, Mickey Mousecapade. Bugs Bunny's Crazy Castle. Mega Man 3. Dr. Mario. Super Mario Bros. 2. And Super Mario Bros. 3. There were no new NES games in my childhood, as there would be new games for every other system. So I didn't experience the anticipation for SMB 3 (I've never even seen The Wizard), or the appreciation of how it expanded the series' formula. It was just there, always. And I don't know that it was even a particular favorite. It was a little too hard for a kid my age, and I was always frustrated by losing progress with a game over. I was more comfortable with the original Zelda, Mega Man 3, and the cartoon-branded games.
So. Granting for the sake of argument that I'm not primarily nostalgic for a childhood experience, why do I regard SMB 3 so highly? For me it's a strong contender for the best Mario game ever. Knorr explores a number of the game's virtues: meticulous level design that, among other achievements, teaches the game's controls without the need for an overt tutorial; technical wizardry that got the most out of an aging system; art and enemy design that are engagingly quirky and playful; and music that melds perfectly with gameplay. Knorr's discussion of the latter is particularly good, capturing how the soundtrack works in terms accessible to those who don't think much about music.
The part of Knorr's argument that interests me most, though, involves exploration. She quotes the popular science writer Steven Johnson on how video games reward a "desire to see the next thing," and games scholar Henry Jenkins on the specialized form of topophilia that children experience as they explore, map, and lay claim to the neighborhoods in which they live, a form that is easily translated into the virtual world of video games. The themed worlds and the interactive (and lively) map screen, Knorr observes, are vital to how SMB 3 scratches that itch. This, I think, is vital, not just to the greatness of SMB 3, but to the successes and failures of subsequent Mario games, and the question of where the series ought to go next.
All Mario platformers allow for some degree of exploration. Even in the original Super Mario Bros. there are secrets and alternate routes to discover: hidden 1-Ups, pipe shortcuts, beanstalks. But the inability to move backward within a level and the lack of a map screen frustrate the sense of ownership that is the reward for thorough exploration, and the overall brevity of the game means that there's little room for branching paths and the choices they allow. Part of the power of exploration is deciding for yourself where to go next, and SMB 1 offers only the option to skip a bunch of levels within the fixed order. SMB 3 has that via the Warp Whistles (which also make the process feel much cooler-- you're flying!), and it ups the ante with non-linear world structures that give players the choice to move forward by completing, for example, World 1-3 or World 1-4. Or both, if they're completists. Which is the other benefit of branching: doing both of an either/or feels like even more of an accomplishment, a fun form of extra credit. Beating a game isn't true mastery anymore; now you have to clear all the levels, and maybe trigger a Treasure Ship or two along the way.
Getting a Treasure Ship was a great pleasure when I played SMB 3 as a child, in part because I wasn't quite sure why it was happening. I knew it had something to do with how many coins you collected, but the other variables were beyond me. I knew a lot of the game's other secrets, though: dropping behind the scenery in World 1-3, getting the Warp Whistle in the first fortress, how to run at the goal box just right to get a star card. Tips and tricks like these, and getting the hang of the concentration and slot machine mini-games, offered a lot more room for mastery than memorizing the locations of 1-Ups and beanstalks. And a map screen where every completed level has the hero's calling card makes it a lot easier to track your progress: a trail of breadcrumbs through the virtual forest.
Super Mario World carries forward this joy of mapping, and extends it with the ability to backtrack not just within a level but between levels, and indeed between worlds: total replayability is the final ingredient in a topophile's sense of true ownership. Branching paths and secret exits are so common that the vast majority of the game is technically optional. Dragon Coins, Star World, and the Special Zone offer new ways to demonstrate skill. The coins spelling out "YOU ARE A SUPER PLAYER" at the end of Funky, and the count of cleared exits on the title screen, with that exciting star for getting all 96, are the series' first in-game acknowledgement that people were counting things beyond mere completion. (You may be wondering why, given these enhancements, I don't think SMW is the greatest Mario game. We'll come to that in time.)
Super Mario 64 echoes its predecessors in tracking progress and rewarding 100% completion, in offering secrets to the dedicated wanderer, and in having an interactive hub area with secrets of its own. But it engages with the power of exploration more fundamentally, by moving from a large number of linear levels to a small number of vast, open ones. Twenty years on, it's easy to forget how much of a change this was. You aren't just running to the right, and while some courses do have an obvious end-zone, a point as far away from the starting area as possible, it isn't always about getting there in time. For that matter, there isn't even a timer. (Though as fans of Course 14 will remember, there is a ticking clock.) The absence of a countdown is significant. Now there's nothing to prevent the player from exploring to his or her heart's content, and in fact the game requires exploration to a much greater degree than its predecessors. When the objective isn't obvious, you have to go looking for it. Coin collecting, once rewarded only with the occasional 1-Up, is now required, with each course granting a star for the finesse needed to find and reach eight red coins, and another for the stamina needed to find 100 regular ones.
The genius beyond the move to courses is the recognition that linearity just isn't satisfying in a 3D environment. 3D gaming represents the basic shape of the world much more accurately than 2D, and our experience of the actual world isn't linear. We may talk about going from Point A to Point B, but we know there are really a million other points along the way to be seen and, if we want, visited. This is, I think, why the drift in gaming as a whole has been toward open worlds and optional quests: it's the ultimate manifestation of that topophilic desire to explore.
SM 64 is, of course, not an open world game. Progress is gated by the star doors, especially early on, as the game forces you to learn the controls by completing specific challenges. But, although reaching the final level requires completion of a higher percentage of the game than in Super Mario World, the ways to reach that percentage allow for even more player choice than in the earlier game. Past a certain point you can tackle the courses in any order. They're still numbered to give a sense of progression, but you can go right to the highest number in each area if you want. And while you don't have total freedom within a course-- sometimes you can get a star other than the one the game means you to be working on, but not always-- there are easily enough options to satisfy any set of preferences, and to reward multiple playthroughs. Plus the eerie emptiness of Peach's castle makes for the best hub world in any Mario game to date.
I've never quite loved the next major Mario game, Super Mario Sunshine, and for a long time I wasn't quite sure why. I came close to figuring it out when I suggested to a friend that it seemed like the worlds were smaller than those in Super Mario 64. I'm not sure if that's actually true, but it feels like it is. The graphics are more refined, but the sense of something vast and strange waiting to be explored is gone. In part this is because Isle Delfino's worlds lack the variety and purity of other games. Most of them play too heavily on the tropical island/vacation paradise motif. That works pretty well for the hub world, but it gets monotonous. Broad themes like fire, ice, desert, and sky may be less realistic than amusement parks and sandy beaches, but Mario's not about realism. It's about imagination, about worlds that are actually as wondrous as children imagine their neighborhoods to be.
It doesn't help that the water cannon, while it allows some limited new gameplay, expands Mario's moveset too far. The Super Mario 64 moveset was just large enough to give the player options for many challenges while requiring them to master particular maneuvers for others. The water cannon's Hover mode, by contrast, allows them to do whatever jump they want and float for a few seconds to make up any slack. It's death to precision platforming. And while platforming isn't as important in 3D Mario games as in 2D ones, because exploration has stolen its thunder and because 3D platforming is almost never as satisfying as the 2D equivalent, it's still pretty darn important.
The biggest problem, though, is that where SM 64 brought the joy of moving in 3D, all Sunshine has to offer for novelty is cleaning up paint. Someone (I can't remember who) once described the game as "Super Mario 64 2 with a water cannon." They didn't mean it as an insult, and neither do I, but certainly the game lacks the sense of evolution from their predecessors you feel in the best installments: Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario 64, and our next topic, Super Mario Galaxy.
It doesn't help that the water cannon, while it allows some limited new gameplay, expands Mario's moveset too far. The Super Mario 64 moveset was just large enough to give the player options for many challenges while requiring them to master particular maneuvers for others. The water cannon's Hover mode, by contrast, allows them to do whatever jump they want and float for a few seconds to make up any slack. It's death to precision platforming. And while platforming isn't as important in 3D Mario games as in 2D ones, because exploration has stolen its thunder and because 3D platforming is almost never as satisfying as the 2D equivalent, it's still pretty darn important.
The biggest problem, though, is that where SM 64 brought the joy of moving in 3D, all Sunshine has to offer for novelty is cleaning up paint. Someone (I can't remember who) once described the game as "Super Mario 64 2 with a water cannon." They didn't mean it as an insult, and neither do I, but certainly the game lacks the sense of evolution from their predecessors you feel in the best installments: Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario 64, and our next topic, Super Mario Galaxy.
If the player of SM 64 and Super Mario Sunshine was, like Alexander the Great in the famous (mis)quotation, left weeping because there were no more worlds to conquer, Super Mario Galaxy opened up a new frontier: outer space. Taking its cue from the Sunshine levels where the water cannon is stolen and Mario must use his traditional moveset to traverse linear sequences of platforms floating in space. This dash of pure platforming provides a nice contrast to the main exploratory modes and, for me at least, was the highlight of a game that, for all its virtues, lacked that certain something.
Super Mario Galaxy, on the other hand, had it in spades. When I bought myself a Wii in 2008, it came in a bundle with Galaxy and four other games. Galaxy was, of course, the first one I tried, and about five minutes after starting it I went on a message board I shared with some friends and wrote "OH MY GOD THE WII IS AWESOME". A friend, not sure what I'd been playing, replied "That about covers my initial reaction. If you don't have it yet, your very next game purchase should be Super Mario Galaxy."
I said earlier that I think Super Mario Bros. 3 was a strong contender for the best Mario game ever. The only real competition is the Galaxy games. Leaving solid ground behind allowed for a freeform approach to level design that mixed the best of 2D and 3D, exploration and platforming. And flying between planets is, well, "AWESOME." If there's a power children want as much as mastery of their neighborhoods, it's the power of flight. Tying that power to motion controls makes the fantasy truly immersive. And the sight of icy landscapes and haunted houses floating in space is as entertainingly bonkers as the anything-goes level design of SMB 3. For me, the most memorable levels in that game were the ones that left behind solid ground in favor of platforms mysteriously floating in mid-air, and the scattered planets of Galaxy are a natural extension of that. They also allow the developers to pursue whatever gameplay concept they want in the moment. Sudden turn to 2D? Abrupt sequence of narrow platforms? Upside-down sequences? Why not? It's that sort of openness that marks the true Mario classics. Even Super Mario World and Super Mario 64 feel a little too literally and figuratively grounded by comparison.
Unlike Sunshine, Galaxy brings a lot of new ideas to the gameplay. The motion controls are perfectly executed, enhancing and flavoring play rather than unnecessarily taking it over. It's true that the spin jump, like the Hover Cannon, gives Mario a little too much room to maneuver, but the platforming seems to have been designed with that in mind. The very imprecision of the pointer controls is integrated into the challenge of collecting Star Bits and moving between Pull Stars. Another echo of SMB3 is the goofy new suits. You have to credit the developers for coming up with suit concepts that feel original both in concept and in gameplay, and in tailoring levels to the suits' capacities. The spacing of platforms in the Honeyhive galaxy, for example, is perfect for the duration and movement of Bee Mario's hover gauge.
Given the rapturous critical reception of Galaxy, Nintendo had no reason not to offer up more of the same with Galaxy 2. There's not much to say about the sequel. That another full game of consistently high quality was possible is a reflection of the excellence of the basic design. The bump in difficulty was also a nice touch. I'm not a difficulty fetishist-- some people have fun exploring games rather than battling them, and that's fine-- but the integration of Hint TVs that show how to proceed, and the Super Guide, which takes over and finishes the level at the cost of a cosmetic difference in the Power Star received, allow all types of player to have a satisfying experience. Completing The Perfect Run, the game's final level, which forces you to complete several demanding sequences without taking a single hit, is one of my proudest gaming moments, matched, I think, only by getting the Gold Crown in Kingdom Hearts II.
One bump in the road in Galaxy 2 is the movement from a large hub world to an odd hybrid of hub world and world map. It doesn't mean much on its own, but it does point to some of the larger problems of recent Mario games. Since Galaxy 2, the series hasn't so much innovated as moved backward, mixing elements from older games into the 3D era. The resulting games are enjoyable enough, but they don't reach the heights of titles that have more novelty up their sleeves.
The trouble began with New Super Mario Bros. for the DS. There was nothing wrong with doing a new 2D game, but this one misunderstood what made the earlier Bros. games great. The move to 3D character models and a more subdued color scheme reduces the cartoon charm of the setting, but the problems are more than cosmetic. There's not much about this New game that's actually new, and what there is is underwhelming. The Mega Mushroom feels empowering the first five or six times, but it's not so much a fresh gameplay idea as a visually distinctive way to walk through a level. The Mini Mushroom is better-- slightly different physics, alternate routes to take-- but it lacks the sense of true transformation you get from suits, and dying after a single hit makes it feel more like a power-down than a power-up. And the blue Koopa Shell... well, maybe I'm alone here, but I don't recall using it beyond the level where it was introduced. It just wasn't fun.
The later New games are better. The suits are generally excellent. The coin collecting in the sequel is cute, and I'm sure the multiplayer in the console versions is great for people who like couch co-op. But the minimal integration of the consoles' distinct features is a shame, and the controllers are a distraction. The Wiimote and especially the GamePad simply aren't designed for 2D platformers. (To be honest, I'm not sure what type of game the GamePad is designed for.) The biggest problem, though, is the dullness of the level designs. Very little whimsy, and very little variety. Across all four games there are perhaps two levels that stick out in my mind: the finale to the Wii title, which is very good, and the Buzzy Beetles in World 7-6 of the same game, which sound neat but end up feeling like any other moving-platforms-in-space level. The spark just isn't there.
Nor can it be found in the recent 3D games, which move toward short, linear levels linked by a world map. Linearity in 3D doesn't feel rewarding because the joy of exploration is lost, and it doesn't help that the camera can't really handle it; useful angles are frequently locked out. Moving away from courses toward discrete levels ought to allow for more design innovation, but it's hard to escape the feeling that you've seen most of this before. Jumping between random levels limits the sense of progression; you're doing one thing and then another, not exploring a world. The power-ups have their charm and allow for some individual challenges that captivate. But overall, I have to wonder if SM64 and Galaxy between them have simply done all there is to do in 3D Mario.
I'm aware that my mixed opinion of the latest 3D titles isn't shared by most gamers. The reviews for 3D Land and 3D World are as 9-studded as for any other Mario game. And up to a point, that's fair. There's never going to be a bad Mario platformer. Nintendo has too much riding on the franchise to release a game that isn't polished, balanced, and basically rewarding to play. But the question is, what happens when the novelty wears off? I think it's fair to suggest that Sunshine, for example, is no longer quite as well-regarded as it was on release. (This is why the argument for the blurring effect of nostalgia is problematic; some games just don't generate that kind of after-the-fact enthusiasm.) I wouldn't go so far as to suggest that will happen with the recent titles, but it's a possibility.
Either way, there's room to debate where Mario games will go next. They might get another game or two out of linear 3D, but what could come after that? The competition is inching toward virtual reality; could Nintendo move in that direction? It would certainly be the next step in this exploration motif I've been harping on. But would a character as improbably athletic as Mario work in that mode? Answers are difficult, especially with a company as unpredictable as Nintendo. And yet that unpredictability so often works in their favor. That's why I'm confident that sooner or later they'll find a new approach to Mario that not only succeeds, but redefines the franchise in the way that Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario Galaxy did. Give it a few more years, and there might well be a new contender for best Mario game ever, something for my children to debate the nostalgia-fogged merits of twenty or thirty years from now.
