In my deep dive into classic Nintendo games, there has been one particularly crucial discovery I have made: I do not care for the NES catalog. I think the reason for this is that a lot of the games (FOR ME) seem to be a cross between the more fleshed out games that Nintendo would make in the next generation and the more arcadey games that were commonplace in the 80s. I don't really like any of the more fleshed-out games as much as Nintendo's SNES catalog and I think Namco had much much stronger arcade titles personally.

This game, on the other hand, I got the hype here. The first Super Mario (which I've played most of) is good but a very bare-bones platformer. Lost Levels is basically that game but funny due to how rage-inducing it is. And then Mario 2 is just.... not good lol. Mario 3 has a lot of really sticks out for the Mario franchise as distinctly Mario and just generally more surprising/challenging (Lost Levels excluded).

They can say the first Mario game started it all, but this feels like the game that gave us the Mario we know now. Probably not my favorite 2D Mario, but one I had a great time with and one that I respect very much as an NES game I actually felt like completing.