[played on real 2DS hardware]

A series I’ve really started appreciating more over the past few years is Mario. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I ever hated Mario or anything, but I didn’t understand what made the mainline titles so revered and iconic until fairly recently. Learning about the design mentalities and how each game tackled them has given me a newfound love for the series, and it’s been fun replaying the entries I’ve played through this new lens, as well as the ones I hadn’t played before, such is the case with Mario 3D Land. I did give it a go last year but couldn’t really get into it. It just felt so… bland and uninspired, but readjusting my lens and trying to appreciate all the things it did first made it properly click, and I had a blast running through it recently! And like usual, I’m gonna talk about it!


Instead of being a collectathon like every 3D Mario since the Nintendo 64, 3D Land takes a different approach. It goes back to the roots, being a more direct adaptation of the gameplay from the 2D titles that made Mario a household name; there’s no hub worlds or stars/shines to collect here, you’ve got 8 worlds with 4-5 linear stages to complete. It doesn’t sound all that innovative, but 3D Land takes full advantage of the premise to deliver some really fun design! Enemies like Chain Chomps, Bullet Bills and Rocky Wrenches are completely recontextualized to fit the new perspective, and seeing all the ways the developers adapted these elements was part of the fun for me!

A very good example of this is with the power-ups. The Fire Flower’s a fairly obvious choice, but the returning Tanooki Suit is a genius inclusion; the tail swipe’s a very effective way of defeating enemies, whilst the hover allows you to line up jumps easier. There’s only one fully new power-up in the form of the Boomerang Flower, which also fits the game design of 3D Land really well! It just doesn’t get used very much, and feels overshadowed by the Tanooki Suit.

With all these unique elements, you’d hope the level design is good enough to support them… and fortunately, it is! In my opinion, Nintendo really started to perfect their design philosophy for Mario levels during this era, which involves introducing a new gimmick (whether that be an enemy or specific type of platform) and constantly iterating upon it throughout the stage, before finishing it off with one final send-off and moving onto something else for the next level. 3D Land adheres to this philosophy very well, and does an incredibly good job with it! They also play around with camera angles a lot to really make things feel unique, whether that’s giving you a top-down view like the old Zeldas, a side-scrolling view like 2D Mario, or fixed angles that really help to give the stages a sense of scale. It’s all fantastic stuff, and really takes advantage of this being a regular 2D Mario game but in 3D!

I don’t really have much to say in regards to presentation, it’s about what you’d expect from a 2010s Mario game. The graphics are very saturated and colourful, which means they really pop on the 3DS’ tiny screen. They do play it a little safe in regards to world/level themes, but I don’t really mind too much when they all look so good. I have even less to say on the soundtrack but it was good too, there’s a few remixes of SMB3 tracks with some originals sprinkled in, and it’s all good stuff!


In all honesty, I wasn’t expecting to love Mario 3D Land as much as I did! It’s such a charming little entry in the series, and while there isn’t much of a reason to return to it when 3D World exists and basically perfected the “2D Mario in 3D” formula, there’s still plenty of uniqueness here if you know where to look.

Super Mario 3D Land is, in my opinion, easily the most underrated and underappreciated 3D mario game. People have recently been praising Super Mario 3D World, but many of its creative ideas came from this game. This game is just so cozy, I can’t describe it. The gross plastic aesthetic from 3D World is completely absent. Most of the soundtrack was once again stolen later from 3D World. The game is generally easy, but that is okay with me. The level environments in mario games are typically grouped into worlds. This can easily make the player feel tired of them. However, in Super Mario 3D Land, the level environments are randomized with each level being different from the last. Unless a game is trying to make a full, complete world, I much prefer this way. The gameplay while being in 3D takes more from 2D mario than 3D by featuring distinct linear levels. The tunici leaf from Super Mario Bros. 3 returns, but you can’t fly this time. This makes sense as it would break the game, yet it’s still disappointing. Even though I like different environments from each level, the environments themselves aren’t interesting at all. They are just generic mario themes for the most part, but the clock level was fun. Another complaint I have is that the movement is very mid. The sideflip, crouch jump, and long jump all feel underpowered, like they just don’t quite provide enough of a boost to use. And sometimes the run button doesn't work for me. In general, this is a cozy must play on the 3DS that I hope gets a Switch port soon (side note, how did Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon get a Switch port before this game, Animal Crossing New Leaf, and Kid Icarus Uprising? It is a little frustrating).

Love to bask in the warmth of a great platformer, but Mario has never done much for me. The sterilizing Nintendo touch saps joy and I have no nostalgia for anything associated.

I like the subtle weirdness of this one. It's quick and to the point and there's an enjoyable simplicity. Bosses are never interesting in Mario so that the ones here are basically all the same feels more like a concession to that fact rather than a misstep.

Also, the way this game plays with perspective is more interesting than anything Wonder did.

It's not my favorite Mario game, but it's pretty good.
The gameplay is pretty good, and simplifying it was a good thing, since if they had kept the gameplay of games like Super Mario 64, they would have made the game even easier.
Its graphics are beautiful for a game released in the first year of the 3DS.
The levels are well designed, but they are too easy.
In general that is a problem, its difficulty, which becomes very easy when you have already beaten the game.

Good game overall, and very enjoyable.

Surprisingly, this one was a lot better than I expected. This one isn't really talked about much, and while I understand why, I think it's a shame because it plays pretty well. It feels like more of a level pack rather than having cohesive themed worlds, and while that doesn't bother me much, it makes sense as to why it's more forgettable over titles that have level themes or full worlds. Now, I don't mind this because it means less desert levels or water levels, and instead each level usually revolves around a gimmick,. However, because of this, these levels are typically pretty short, and the only way they could pad out the game is by making you collect a certain amount of Star Coins to unlock certain levels. I don't mind this for extra content, but I don't like when this is used for main content. Luckily though, levels are usually like two minutes long on average so it's not that much of a hassle, but it is a little annoying not having enough. Still though, the gimmicks are pretty fun to work with and I would say it's a great casual game to wind down to. Overall, solid game with great gimmicks but has a couple things that I'm not too keen on.