Super Mario Advance 4
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Super Mario Advance 4 is Nintendo’s 2003 Game Boy Advance re-release of Super Mario Bros. 3. Super Mario Bros. 3 was originally released in 1990 in the states and I remember countless hours playing it on our NES growing up. As evidenced by some of the lists I have linked here such as the NES Top 100 List and Some of the Best Levels of All Time I am far from being the only person with fond memories of the game. I finally decided to play all the way through the game and finished it last week at some point and thought I would post my experiences since I finish console games so rarely these days. In fact the only other game I have beaten since getting a DS Lite back in August was the DS native New Super Mario Bros. (NSMB). Anyway, on to the review. |
General Gameplay: Even though I am sure most of you have played this game at least once, here are the basics. Like most of the Mario games, Super Mario Bros. 3 is a 2D side scroller. Unlike the Super Mario Bros. before it, a mechanism for saving items for later use by collecting them from a variety of different sources such as Toad Houses, “N-SpadeS”, letters from the princess after beating worlds 1-6 and from defeating wandering hammer brothers and other short mini-levels. You can play with either Mario or Mario & Luigi with each brother having an inventory of up to 32 items.
The World: The game has a total of 90 levels and is split into eight worlds of roughly increasing difficulty: Grass Land, Desert Hill, Ocean Side, Big Island, The Sky, Iced Land, Pipe Maze and Bowser’s Castle. Each world has its levels follow in the theme of the world like Ocean Side has a lot of water levels with mean fishies, The Sky has lots of difficult jumps to be executed with no safety net below and Iced Land is very slippery requiring extra stopping room. Each world also has at least one fortress with Boom-Boom guarding the end and a castle containing a king that has been transformed by one of Bowser’s offspring where you have to board their airship and liberate their magic wand to restore the king to his original form.
Powerups: Super Mario Bros. 3 had some of the best powerups in the Mario series to date and all of the standards as well. Here are some of the powerups unique to the game. The Super Leaf which turns Mario into a raccoon and allows him to fly if he fills up his power meter. The Frog Suit allows for easier swimming. The Tanooki suit works like the leaf and you can turn into a statue which can kill additional enemies and grant temporary invulnerability. The Hammer suit has a much more powerful, albeit harder to aim attack (I killed Bowser in roughly five hits) and allows you to hide from fire. The P-Wing is one of my favorites, though it is only available in short supply, it turns Mario into a raccoon and allows him to fly through an entire level mostly free from danger. There are also some map-only items such as the Jugem’s Cloud, Magic Whistle, Anchor, Music Box and Hammer which I barely used but can provide shortcuts for defeating the game.
Saving: Super Mario Advance 4 in my opinion had the best save game system I have ever seen in a Mario game. Like NSMB, you get the opportunity to save the game every time you defeat a fortress or a level. Unlike NSMB, you also get the opportunity to “save & quit” at any time on the map. Even though you can only continue from “save & quit” saves once, it allows you to play a few levels and turn the handheld off or switch to another game. Not having my DS Lite tied up in between save points was very nice as it easily took me two weeks of very inconsistent play to get through this game.
Resources: The most recent post from the GameFAQs Super Mario Bros.3 section proved very useful and thorough most notably for solving the N-Spade guessing puzzles but also remembering how to complete some of the more puzzle oriented maps.
Conclusions: This is my all-time favorite game in the Mario series. The wide plethora of power-ups the variety and large size of the world keep it very fresh. I found it more difficult this time around partially from not having played it in so long and partially because I was hoarding items a bit too much. Since you cannot repeat levels, I was worried I wouldn’t have enough in reserve to finish world 8. So unlike NSMB where I would always enter a level powered up with fire power, I was generally entering levels small. If you haven’t had the opportunity to play this in this or another form, I heartily recommend it.
