Way back in the olden days, before there were 3D graphics and analog sticks and 5-point surround sound, there was the good old NES. While there were certainly A-list titles back then, games kind of arrived sporadically, and rarely did any have any significant buzz before their release. Of course, all that changed with Super Mario Bros. 3. Not only magazine previews and lots of buzz surrounding the release, there was even a movie that featured it released several months before the game’s release. (Anyone else remember The Wizard, starring Fred Savage?) Of course, this was also before stores took pre-orders; for several weeks following the game’s release, my father was on waiting lists all over the state, hoping to snag a copy for me. It’s easy to take Super Mario Bros. 3 for granted, since it’s such a classic today, but it’s easy to forget the frenzy that it caused back in 1990.
The frenzy was well-deserved, after all. Super Mario Bros. 3 was the first platform game that allowed you to choose which stages to tackle next. Along with a world that was significantly bigger than any other platform game available at the time, an unprecedented array of enemies and challenges to overcome, and all of it coupled with the classic Super Mario Bros. gameplay that any kid worth his gaming salt knew like the back of his or her hand, SMB 3 was a game the likes of which none had ever seen before. It was, and still is, a groundbreaking milestone in the history of gaming.
And now, almost fifteen years later, Nintendo has seen fit to introduce a new generation of gamers to this classic game by releasing it for the GBA as Super Mario Advance 4. Don’t let the “Advance” part fool you, however; this is an almost exact port of the original NES game, with just enough changed to fix the problems that kept the original from being the perfect game.
The general premise of Super Mario Bros. 3, for those who either don’t remember or (gasp) never played it, is that King Koopa now has seven children. These offspring have traveled to the various lands of the Mushroom Kingdom and turned the rulers into various animals, and it’s up to Mario (and possibly Luigi) to get them back. To help him, Mario has his trusty super mushroom and fire flower, along with the leaf that turns him into a raccoon who can swipe his tail at enemies and fly, given an adequate running start. Less common are various suits scattered around the land, including the frog suit which allows Mario to swim with ease, the Tanooki suit which turns Mario into a full raccoon with the added ability to temporarily turn into an invulnerable stone statue, and the Hammer Brother suit which allows Mario to toss hammers like, well, a Hammer Brother.
Each of the eight worlds is divided up into various stages, most (but not all) of which need to be completed in order to proceed to the next. There are standard stages, as well as fortresses (the predecessors to Super Mario World’s ghost houses) and the boss battle aboard the Koopa Kid’s airship. Additionally, there are Toad Houses, where you can obtain items like mushrooms, fire flowers, leaves, and starmen to use later, games of chance where you try to line up three pictures in order to earn extra lives, and wandering Hammer Brothers to fight along the way. The game itself is absolutely huge; it really amazes me, playing it today on the GBA, that I used to play the game through in a single sitting in my youth.
Of course, we all know that Super Mario Bros. 3 is an excellent game. The question with Super Mario Advance 4 is less, “Is the game good?” than it is “Did the game translate well to the GBA?” The answer to the latter question is an emphatic yes. The game is almost identical to the NES version, and all the changes to the game are very much for the better.
The biggest and most noticeable change in the Super Mario Advance 4 version is that you can now save your game. This is a great addition, as I remember having to use the warp whistles to reach the end of the game on the NES, not because I couldn’t go through the game in its entirety, but because playing through every level would have taken way too long. The reason I played through in a single sitting when I was younger was because it was a necessity, not because I wanted to prove I was hardcore. Not only does this version allow you to save the game after each fortress or airship battle, but it also allows a one-time save anywhere, which is great for the GBA, since you never know when you will need to shut it off suddenly. This feature alone makes the game twice as much fun as the original, simply because now there is no excuse not to experience every level.
The other new feature which adds a new dimension to the game is that Luigi controls as he did in Super Mario Bros. 2, which is to say that he jumps higher, kicks uncontrollably in the air, and is a bit looser to control. (He was simply a palette swap of Mario in the NES version.) This adds a new twist on an old favorite for those who want it, because Luigi is undoubtedly more difficult to handle, and he can kick the difficulty level up a notch for masters of the original game. Unfortunately, he is only available as a replica of the two-player hot-seat mode where one person plays as Mario and the other as Luigi, and there is no option to play as Luigi alone.
There are some other minor changes, like a second version of the games of chance which are worth more lives, but those are small and fairly unobtrusive. Owners of two GBAs, a link cable, and an eReader can also swipe cards that unlock extra items and bonus levels. This might be a cool feature, but not having all that hardware, and not willing to spend the money on an extra leaf or two, I really couldn’t say. It was a good idea to add that kind of expandability, but I just wish that you didn’t have to spend a small fortune in order to take advantage of it.
The game controls just as one would expect, given that the GBA controls are basically the same as the NES controller was. The only real change was that L, not select, brings up the item select menu. Other than that, picking up Super Mario Advance 4 was like putting on an old glove (a Power Glove, perhaps?); everything just fit perfectly.
Graphically, the game is recreated perfectly with only a few improvements. The most noticeable of those is the parallax scrolling that is inserted into the backgrounds of the levels, and the occasional fog effects that were present in Super Mario World’s ghost houses. Other than that, every pixel looks just as I remembered it, and it still looks good after all these years.
The sound is also recreated faithfully. All the classic Super Mario Bros. 3 songs are back, and sound great even on the tinny GBA speaker. The only addition here is that of some voice clips like those that appear in every other Super Mario Advance game. They’re mostly limited to getting power-ups and reaching the end of levels, so they’re not too bad, but they still cold have just as easily been left out and they probably would not have been missed.
So is Super Mario Advance 4 worth your gaming dollar? If you’re looking for a relatively inexpensive dose of nostalgia, or you’ve never played Super Mario Bros. 3, then this is an easy choice. If you’re expecting remixed levels or sweeping improvements on the game, however, you’ll likely be disappointed, because Super Mario Bros. 3 did not get the same treatment as Super Mario Bros. 2 got in the first Super Mario Advance game. That aside, though, for less than $30, you really can’t go wrong with this title. They just don’t make games like this any more, and this particular game really shows us how far we’ve come and that you don’t need flashy graphics and surrond sound to have a mind-blowing game.
