4/5 ★ – ItsNeon2401's review of Super Mario Bros. 3.

GAMERS! I have another confession. I've never beaten SMB3 without emulation help before... Until today that is. Super Mario Bros 3 has always been one of those games I've never understood the hype around. As a kid, this was one of those games where I could never get past a certain point, no matter how many times I tried. And getting a game over and having to get through so much just to try one or two more times at something I was struggling with was so demoralizing. Even as a mid-teen to adult until now, I had exclusively used savestates to beat the game, likely because I had been so put off as a kid. But over the last few days I've been on a bit of a retro kick, as shown by me doing the same with SMB1, and finally powered through this game. And wow, this game has aged INCREDIBLY well. Since I'm better at games now than I was as a kid, as well as better understand the importance and value of coins and lives, I'm able to see just how well the lives system is balanced in regards to aiming for a higher difficulty. I didn't game-over, but that can be accredited to my efforts to go for coins and lives, which so rewarding to get. And the levels themselves, there's a few stinkers here and there, but most of em can be cheesed with the P-wings provided throughout the game. There are a bit too many Boom Boom fights, but the koopalings scale in difficulty pretty well despite Boom Boom being easy the whole way through. And the amount of items is really nice. I also gotta say, I much prefer how Mario controls here to World. While I wouldn't go as far as to say its a perfect game or anything, as its harshness for game overs is definitely not kind to newcomers, and things like some of the map obstacles can be annoying, this for sure deserves the title as best 8-bit Mario.