Super Mario Bros. 3

• 1. Introduction

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  Super Mario Bros. 3, a platform game for the Nintendo Entertainment System, was more than thirty years old on the 20th of November 2020. That day, a sealed copy sold for 156,000 dollars. At the time, nobody had ever paid more for a video game. What made that copy unusual was its cover. The word Bros. sat on the left side of the box instead of the center. Why would a cartridge from 1988 command that kind of money? The answer starts in a Nintendo team of just over ten people, who spent more than two years on it. It runs through a raccoon tail, a movie about children and video game contests, and a demo that Nintendo declined to publish.

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• 2. A Stage Play

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  On the title screen of Super Mario Bros. 3, a stage curtain is drawn open. Shigeru Miyamoto said the game was conceived as a stage play. In the original NES version, objects hang from catwalks above the screen, sit bolted to the backdrop, or cast shadows on the skyline. When Mario finishes a level, he walks off the stage.

  The team behind the show was Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development, led by Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka. Work began shortly after the Famicom Disk System's Super Mario Bros. 2 was completed, in the spring of 1986. Miyamoto directed and worked closely with designers and programmers at the start and the end. He believed that original, intriguing ideas were the key to a successful game, so he encouraged a free exchange of them. Converted to US dollars, the development budget came to roughly 800,000 to 1.3 million.

  The first plan used an isometric perspective. Developers found it too hard to position jumps, so they went back to the flat side view of earlier games. A trace of the idea survives in the checkered floor on the title screen. The team also kept adding features, and the release planned for early 1988 slipped by six months.

  The tools were ordinary business machines. All the pixel art was drawn on Fujitsu FM R-50 HD computers. Code was written and tested on HP 64000 mainframes fitted with a 6502 processor card. Character graphics came from a special graphics machine that generated a collection of shapes. Each shape had a number, and the game code used those numbers to assemble images on screen in real time.

  Inside the cartridge sat Nintendo's custom MMC3 chip, which stretched what the NES could do. It allowed animated tiles, extra memory for diagonal scrolling, and a timer that could split the screen along a scan line. Programmers used that split to scroll the playfield on top while a status bar stayed fixed below. On the map, that bar doubles as an inventory.

  The score fell to Koji Kondo, who had also written the first Super Mario Bros. music. He called this the hardest game he ever scored. People had told him the earlier music sounded like Latin or fusion, which left him unsure what to write next. He tried several genres and wrote many melodies before choosing the final tunes. The curtain on the title screen rises in silence, because the team judged a title tune unnecessary.

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• 3. Costumes and Flight

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  An early version of Mario was a centaur. The team wanted to give him new abilities by changing his appearance into different creatures. The centaur lost out to a raccoon tail that allowed limited flying. More costumes followed, and designers built levels to take advantage of each one.

  The Super Leaf gives Mario raccoon ears and a tail, and he can fly for a short stretch. The Tanooki Suit gives him a tanooki look, with the same short flight. It adds a trick as well. He can turn into a statue to avoid enemies for a short time. If he changes into the statue while jumping, he pounds the ground and kills whatever lies directly beneath him. That was the first appearance of the ground pound, now a standard move in the series.

  The Frog Suit sharply raises his speed and agility underwater, and it boosts his jumping on land. The Hammer Suit makes him look like a Hammer Bro., the enemy, and lets him throw hammers. The suit also lets him resist fire attacks while crouching.

  These costumes joined the Super Mushroom, Super Star, and Fire Flower from earlier games. Even without a suit, Mario gained new moves. He could slide down slopes, pick up and throw certain items, and climb vines freely. To keep enemies fresh, the team added new ones and invented variants of Goombas, Hammer Bros., and Koopa Troopas.

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• 4. The Map

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  The fourth kingdom, called Giant Land and also known in Japan as Big Island, is full of obstacles and enemies twice their normal height and width. It is one of eight worlds, each with its own look. The first is grass. The second, Desert Land, has sand-covered levels with pyramids. Earlier versions in Japan and North America call that world Desert Hill.

  Between levels, the player sees an overhead map of the current kingdom. Several paths lead from the world's entrance to a castle, and they connect to action panels, fortresses, and other icons. Players choose routes. Boulders and locked doors can block the way. Mini-games and bonus screens on the map offer special power-ups and extra lives. Items won there go into a reserve and can be used from the map screen.

  The design also bends to the player's skill. In the early worlds, bonus coins and 1-ups are more plentiful. Later worlds hold more complex challenges for experienced players. Lives can be gained from green spotted 1-Up mushrooms hidden in bricks, or by collecting 100 coins.

  When all lives are lost, the player can choose Continue and restart from the beginning of the world where the last life went. Completed fortresses and enemy courses stay completed. So do the tank and ship levels of the eighth world, and any doors already unlocked. The player keeps the inventory of items as well.

  Two people can play by taking turns on the map. One controls Mario, and the other controls Luigi, who is a palette swap of Mario. The mode includes mini-games, one of them a remake of the original Mario Bros. arcade game. A winner can steal the other player's cards, while a loser risks losing a turn.

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• 5. Faces From Life

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  When Miyamoto was young, a dog once lunged at him and was yanked back by its chain. That memory became the Chain Chomp, a barking ball and chain with eyes and teeth that lunges whenever the player gets close.

  Bowser's seven children, the Koopalings, came from people. Each was designed to look and act differently. Miyamoto based them on seven of his programmers as a tribute to their effort. Nintendo of America later named them after famous musicians. Ludwig von Koopa honors Ludwig van Beethoven, and Roy Koopa honors Roy Orbison.

  The story appears in the instruction booklet rather than in the game. In the Mushroom World, Bowser sends each of his seven children to conquer one kingdom. A Koopaling steals the king's magical wand and uses it to transform him into an animal. Princess Toadstool hears the news and sends Mario and Luigi to every kingdom to recover the wands. At the end of each of the first seven worlds, an airship commanded by a Koopaling waits.

  After the first six kings are rescued, the brothers get notes and special items from the Princess. Rescuing the seventh king brings a different note, this one from Bowser himself. He boasts that he has kidnapped Toadstool and locked her in the castle of his own realm, Dark Land.

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• 6. The Wizard Effect

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  In 1988, a shortage of ROM chips kept Nintendo from releasing games in North America on schedule. Nintendo was also busy preparing Super Mario Bros. 2. Super Mario Bros. 3 was delayed, and according to Nintendo Power, so was Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.

  The delay gave the company an opening. In 1989, Tom Pollack of Universal Studios approached Nintendo of America's marketing department about a video game film. Nintendo's competitions inspired him to imagine a version of Tommy for younger audiences. Nintendo licensed its products for the project, which became The Wizard. The filmmakers asked for and received Nintendo's approval of the script and of how its games were shown. Super Mario Bros. 3 appeared in a final scene built around a game competition.

  The film arrived in December 1989. That placed it between the Japanese release on the 23rd of October 1988 and the North American release on the 12th of February 1990. Europe followed on the 29th of August 1991. Levi Buchanan later described The Wizard as a 90-minute commercial for the game. Nintendo spent 25 million US dollars on marketing.

  The anticipation paid off. A Nintendo spokeswoman said the game sold 250,000 copies in its first two days. It stayed the top seller in the United States in April 1990 and from June through September. Over the whole of 1990, it sold more than 8 million units.

  Japan had already embraced it. The game topped the Famitsu sales charts in December 1988 and January 1989, and it was the second best-selling game of 1988, behind Dragon Quest III. In 1989, it became the best-selling game of the year, just above Tetris. By 1993, it had sold 4 million cartridges in Japan.

  The revenue numbers kept growing. By 1993, author David Sheff said it had sold 11 million unbundled units in Japan and the United States. By early 1992, it had earned 595 million dollars in the United States alone. That exceeds the gross of the films E.T., Batman, and Jurassic Park. It sold 14 million by 1995-15 million by 1998, and more than 17 million worldwide by 2000. As of 2011, it was the highest-grossing non-bundled home video game, at 1.7 billion dollars adjusted for inflation.

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• 7. Reviews and Rankings

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  Computer and Video Games gave Super Mario Bros. 3 a score of 98 percent. Its editors Paul Rand, Tim Boone, and Frank O'Connor praised its gameplay, replayability, sound, and graphics. Rand called it the best video game ever and labeled it "the Mona Lisa of gaming." O'Connor said it "makes Sonic the Hedgehog look like a wet Sunday morning and even gives the Super Famicom's Super Mario World a run for its money."

  In Japan, all four Famitsu reviewers praised it. One said it borrowed from earlier Mario games yet stayed full of diversity and challenge. Another found its gameplay slightly dated. Famitsu gave it the second-highest scores that year. In Famicom Hisshoubon, one reviewer said it pushed the limits of side-scrolling action. Both reviewers objected to the price of 6500 yen, and they feared the difficulty might be too much for a broad audience.

  Julian Rignall of Mean Machines called it the finest game he had ever played, citing its addictiveness, depth, and challenge. Matt Regan, a second reviewer there, called it a truly brilliant game and predicted it would be a bestseller in the United Kingdom. Rignall still noted that the audio and visuals looked dated beside games on the Mega Drive and the SNES. By the time of the European release, the SNES had already launched in other regions.

  Honors piled up. Famitsu named it Best Action Game in its 1988 Best Hit Game Awards. In 1989, the magazine gave it the award for best action game since 1983. Nintendo Power's list of the top 30 games placed it at number 20 in September 1989. It reached number one in May 1990 and stayed within the top 20 for more than five years.

  Edge called it Nintendo's standout game of 1989 and said its success outshone the sales milestone of the first Super Mario Bros. That game sold 40 million copies, but it came bundled with the NES. Edge also praised the overworld map as an elegant alternative to a menu. GamesRadar said Super Mario Bros. defined its genre while Super Mario Bros. 3 perfected it. A statistical analysis of 44 top games lists published between 1995 and 2016 ranked it 34th.

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• 8. Afterlives

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  In 1993, the game returned on the Super NES inside Super Mario All-Stars, a compilation with updated graphics and sound. A Game Boy Advance version, Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3, followed in 2003. It supports the Nintendo e-Reader, which unlocks new levels and power-ups stored on cards. The Wii received the original through the Virtual Console in 2007, and the 3DS and Wii U received it in 2014. It is one of thirty pre-installed games on the NES Classic Edition. In 2018, it came to the Switch on Nintendo Classics, with added netplay.

  The unofficial version was less kind. Super Mario 3 Special, a Game Boy Color bootleg built in Hong Kong in 2000, was cut down to five levels. Former 1Up.com journalist Ray Barnholt called it a "horrible, awful, rank piece of software" and compared Mario's movement to "a drunken Sonic."

  The game's ideas spread through the series. The map layout returned in Super Mario World, and Mario's flight returned in Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Galaxy. The Super Leaf came back in Super Mario 3D Land, Mario Kart 7, and New Super Mario Bros. 2. Bowser's red hair began here. Koopalings serve as world bosses in Super Mario World and all New Super Mario Bros. games except the first. In fall 1990, DIC Entertainment made an animated series, The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3, for NBC. It ran 26 episodes on Saturday mornings and gave the Koopalings new names matching their personalities.

  In April 1993, Famitsu awarded the game a world record for the most strategy guide books, 20 in all. At the 2007 Game Developers Conference, a panel that included Stanford curator Henry Lowood and designer Warren Spector named it one of the 10 most important video games of all time. Their list was submitted to the Library of Congress. Christopher Grant said its nonlinear play had become a mainstay of contemporary games.

  In the early 1990s, John Carmack and Tom Hall built a PC clone of the game using their adaptive tile refresh software, which scrolled smoothly on EGA cards. Nintendo leaders were impressed but chose exclusivity over cloning. Carmack and Hall went on to found id Software and make Commander Keen. A working copy of that demo was found in July 2021 and preserved at the Museum of Play.

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