I played this game at four years old when I was incredibly sick with pneumonia, and I've played it since, and I can confidently call this one of the best platformers on the NES, it's only rated four stars for the gripe of having played it most when I was on death's door, and the rarity of the power ups.

The Tanuki and Hammer Bros. suits are two power-ups that generally rank high on my rankings due to the interesting nature of them. The Tanuki suit being an upgraded version of the leaf variant, it adds defense (and offense, if you decide to smush people), by allowing you to turn into a stone statue. While the Hammer Bros. suit allows you to fire hammers at a slow arc, and these hammers allow you to kill most the opposition in your path, including Bowser himself if you can aim well enough. These power-ups have a reason to be rare, they're strict upgrades of the two main power-ups of the game. But they are quite hard to find, despite being one of the most interesting parts of the game, which is a travesty! The frog suit isn't an upgrade necessarily, but it felt incredibly useless after World 3, which is sad! It was a cute design that was under utilized because they realized water levels controlled poorly.

All and all, for my first introduction to gaming, I'll be damned if it wasn't a high note.

Focussing on keeping my thoughts based on the hardware at the time, and what a game this must’ve been.

Much more variety in the worlds, levels, platforming and enemies. Thank god we are back to jumping on enemies heads to kill them, I hated that you couldn’t do that in SMB2. Talking of SMB 2, this is a massive step up in every way. Colour, sound, mechanics, everything.

I found it very difficult at the end, but really enjoyed the challenge.

My one gripe is the boss variety. I tired of defeating the exact same bowser minion 96 times.

What can I say about Super Mario Bros. 3 that everyone hasn't said a million times over. If i’m being honest with y’all I’m not a huge fan of platformers, Mario Odyssey was fun and Banjo-Kazooie is cool but those games were nowhere near their contemporaries in my head. It just didn’t click. The actual gameplay of ‘platforming’ wasn’t my favorite, that was until Super Mario Bros. 3. Recently I've been playing a ton of older NES games just because I want to go back and play through all the console generations and somehow I landed on playing Mario 3. Truth is, I played this game all the way through World 4, and just like most platformers, it didn’t click. I used the switch save states. I thought it was so dated, “How are there no save points, the fuck?” “This shit is not fair at all”. But this time, I decided to change it a little, I didn’t use save states and I immersed myself into the world and what I found was amazing. The atmosphere is bursting through the seams. From the minigames through the toad-houses this game fulfills this sense of adventure I was looking for in these platformers. There's this sense of exploration, especially on World 3, 5 & 7. The game is pretty long, especially for its time. I know some people can bang this game out in 2 hours or something’ but for me, I had like 20 hours before I reached the credits. The controls are just perfect, as I explore more games in the NES library I have more and more appreciation for how this game controls. It is smooth and running at break-neck speeds or making precision jumps has never been easier, especially for the time. The actual platform challenges are great as well, from running away from a mad sun, to the airship auto scrollers & puzzle levels. This game thrives within’ its’ variety and is constantly throwing new ideas, enemies & platforming challenges at you. The actual platforms feel like they are a part of the world and the graphics are easily some of the best on the console, especially the sprite work which is just fantastic. The Music is so good, cursed kings is genuinely beautiful and might be one of my favorite compositions i’ve seen on the console to date. OK enough glazing, what does it do wrong? If i’m being honest, the difficulty at first felt perfect, not too easy but not frustrating and mind numbing, until world 7. Which just blatantly sucks. Filled with long, boring levels that are incredibly hard and irritating to get through, visually it’s the least interesting and the concept of a “pipe” world doesn’t really sound appealing in retrospect, World 8 although a huge improvement still is ridiculously hard compared to the rest of the game but at least that makes more sense since it’s the final world. In totality this game is legendary and an achievement. People wonder if humans could’ve made the pyramids, but I wonder if humans could’ve made Super Mario Bros. 3, gotta be some alien shit cuz this is amazing.

94/100

Gostei desse jogo, achei bem legal
Tem umas fases que trola você kkkk
Isso é bem legal pq deixa vc pensativo
Pra pode resolver certas partes pra ver
Oq vc tem que fazer pra passar, ótimo jogo

got about halfway through world 7 and it's starting to hit that point of being too difficult to be fun so i figure it's best to tap out before I stop enjoying it, even as far in as i am. maybe i'll go back and finish it someday, who knows.

it's a classic platformer, it's good. most likely one of the hardest 2d marios we're ever going to get, which isn't always a good thing, but it makes the levels generally feel much more fulfilling to complete than some modern offerings like Wonder. just about as much as you could really squeeze out of a platformer on the NES but a lot of the levels still end up blending together, sadly. obviously plenty good for the time but also a part of that era where progress was so rapid that World was only about 2 years down the line when this came out lol

The best NES game? Probably. There is only one other game I can think of that comes close, and I'll reserve judgement on that when I eventually get to my replay (at which point, I'll be sure to update this review with my definitive answer to this question).

There is basically a second NES hidden away inside the cart of this game, one of the benefits of being a late NES release. That extra power is used to expand the formula of the first Super Mario Bros in all the right ways. A world map, a selection of different powerups to discover, 8 unique worlds with different themes, and a fresh coat of paint which still holds up to this day. SMB3 is one of the few NES games that is still just as good to play today as it was to play when it released over 30 years ago. Easily in the top 10 platformers ever made.

Do I need to say more? Play this game if you haven't. It's "required playing" in the video game cannon.

É engraçado pensar que toda vez que eu tava jogando isso, eu ficava pensando no quão bom é Super Mario World, eles realmente pegaram tudo que tem aqui e melhoraram depois.
Ah é, Super Mario Bros. 3, é um clássico do gênero de plataforma, doidera pensar como isso saiu no próprio NES mesmo com as capacidades dele. Apesar de aparecer que eu zerei no NES, eu zerei na versão do All Stars de SNES então era um remaster, mas olhando a versão original não deixa de ser impressionante.
Gostei bastante das fases, um mundo ou outro pode dar uma dor de cabeça (SIm, estou falando do 3) por conta da gameplay, seja na água ou no gelo, ou por inimigo que são game over instantâneo tipo o tucunaré de água doce na fase 3 do mundo 3, mas nada impossível.
Trilha sonora impecável como sempre na franquia, algumas ainda estão frescas porque eu acabei de zerar e estou escrevendo isso.
Estranho como apesar de todos os desafios do jogo, eu achei esse Bowser o mais fácil de ser derrotado, até alguns mini-bosses dos navios eram um pouco mais difíceis.

While I find SMB1 to be pretty good and Lost Levels/USA to be the standard messy sequel, SMB3 feels like the proper upgrade to the original SMB1 in everything possible.
More upgrades for Mario, tighter level design, one of the most beautiful soundtracks for a game of this time, a bunch of minigames and a ton of freedom for the player to do whatever they want to do.
Maybe my only grasp with this one is the obscene amount of scrollers in this bad boy.... doesn't help that every final stage in the world is pretty much one, too.
The difficulty in some spots can be borderline trial and error, too. Which is fine, the game hands you extra lives like a madman, but I'm not too fond of it. Possibly these two things are what push this game a bit back for me at least.
Still, this game was my absolute childhood, alongside SMW! It's definitely a gold standard when it comes to difficult platform games.

Shigeru Miyamoto's masterpiece. This game took everything from the first title, and a few things from its peculiar sequel and just turned them up to 11 here. This was a time when Nintendo's games excelled at showing, not telling, you what to do. Every level would either introduce some new design, or a unique play on one of your powerups, or subvert your expectations like the first time a regular looking block grows legs and jumps at you!

The fact that it managed to keep this level of creativity going all the way through the end is nothing short of spectacular. When you combine the crisp sprites, colorful visuals, and wide-ranging soundtrack with that level of creative gameplay, you get nothing short of legend.