Mario 3 is a game I’ve played a ton of across various methods and platforms, but I’d never gotten around to enjoying the e-Reader exclusive content that the GBA port got until now. It had always been on my Wii U eShop wish list, as that version came bundled with all of the e-Reader content as well, but I just never got around to it. But now that it’s a part of the Switch Online GBA service, it felt like the perfect time to give it a try~. It took me probably about 7 or 8 hours in total to play through all the levels via the Japanese version, collecting all of the A and e+ coins as Mario with heavy save state and rewind use.

There isn’t really any story to this, being that it was just extra levels distributed via e-Reader cards that you could feed into your Super Mario Advance 4 game. It’s just a bunch of levels that you can play in any order if you so choose that is completely separate from the normal Mario 3 content in SMA4. The levels have a very Mario Maker feel to them, despite being put together so many years before Mario Maker was created. Using mechanics, enemies, and even power ups from Super Mario Bros. 1 all the way to Yoshi’s Island, this does a really cool job of making a ton of totally unique mechanics and animations to SMB3. If only it were any fun ^^;

That’s honestly the biggest problem with World e+, as the game calls it. They’re special challenge levels, sure, but they have such a different design philosophy behind them, you can tell that they were made in a totally different design environment from the normal SMB3 levels. Lacking any checkpoints (as this IS SMB3, after all), it just feels mean an not fun as you trudge your way to the same nearly impossible jump again and again or comb over levels again and again looking for that one A coin or extra collectible you missed. Sure, going for the collectibles makes them even harder, but given how many of the stages are mazes of some kind, going for all of them seems like a pretty clear intention of its design to me. I cannot imagine how frustrating this must’ve been on an original GBA with no save states or rewinds, because good gods are so many of these levels overly demanding and unfair towards the player. It’s not quite the hardest Kaizo Mario hacks you’ve ever seen in terms of difficulty, but it’s certainly close enough to that that it’ll keep you from having much fun a lot of the time.

The presentation is very SMA4, but the new bespoke assets (like how Mario uses the cape from Mario World but as his SMB3 self) do look very nice and pretty. Other than the cape, though, most assets haven’t had new versions made. They’ve just had the sprite imported wholesale, so there’s not a ton of visual cohesion between SMA4 and, for example, the little blue penguin fellas from Yoshi’s Island you run into. The music is good, but it’s just all stuff originally from SMB3 anyhow, so nothing really special to report on that front.

Verdict: Not Recommended. I said it best when I said it earlier: This game mode just fails to be much fun. The comparison to Mario Maker earlier was absolutely every bit as much praise for the concept as it was criticism of the design. It’s not literally unplayable, but it’ll certainly make you wish you were playing a different, better Mario game (like Mario 3!) a lot of the time you’re playing it. I’m glad I didn’t actually pay money for this, as I would’ve ended up feeling quite cheated at the quality of these levels. They’re something neat to check out if you’ve already got the Switch Online’s Expansion Pak service, but your time is ultimately better spent elsewhere with other platformers.

I played this game mainly to refresh my memory on mario 3. In general, it was an incredible 2d mario with some really unique ideas that were only bested by mario wonder just recently. I also like the idea of short but fairly challenging levels without checkpoints. However, the difficulty Spike in world 7 actually made me rage a little, so I'm putting it down for now. Also it comes with a remake of mario bros and that's awesome. I think I'm starting to get into archaic games, (hence why I prefer the linear castlevanias over the metroidvanias) so that was a nice treat and good time waster.

We all know Mario Bros 3 is a masterpiece landmark in gaming so I will mostly just talk about my impression of the e-reader levels. Some of them are absurdly difficult and others are really creatively challenging, really cool to be able to experience them. Lots of cool moments with combining different elements from the different 2D Mario games like pulling turnips with the cape and fighting airships. All pretty cool stuff. Also has levels centered around the Tanuki suit, Hammer Bros suit, and Frog suit which were sorely missing in SMB3.

I was enjoying this game, I felt that the short but challenging nature of the stages was fun. But then the stage design started getting a bit sketchy around World 6.

I was not prepared for World 7.

Every level was a slog, each one threw so much stuff at me that there wasn't any chance for me to stop and process what is going on. It got to the point that I was dredding staring another level, not helped by getting a Game Over every other stage. It may not effect progress but it sure was demoralising.

If this game had ended at World 6 I probably would have marked it down as good but not my favourite.