Review
Release Date: 10.21.2003
Platform:
Game Boy AdvanceDeveloper:
Nintendo Co., Ltd.Publisher:
Nintendo of America, Inc.Reviewed by
Luke Campbell on 10.20.2003
| Review Rating: 10/10 | User Rating: 8.94/10 |
The
Super Mario Advance series is home to ports of what are arguably the best platformers of all time, but until now, there was one glaring omission:
Super Mario Bros. 3. Thankfully, that problem is remedied with the release of (inhale)
Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 (
SMA4), which brings the classic NES game to the GBA with all of its original greatness, as well as tacking on a handful of cool new features.
In case you have not played the original, here's the pulse: Bowser and his seven Koopa Kids have stolen seven magic wands from each country in the Mushroom World and used them to turn the kings into animals. As Mario Mario or Luigi Mario, your job is to hop and bop your way across each of the game's worlds in order to retrieve the wands and restore order. It is a long trip from start to finish, as
SMB3 throws
ninety levels at you across the eight different game worlds. The worlds themselves showcase a great deal of variety; while the prerequisite ice world and desert world are present, there is also a world where everything is giant-sized except you, and another world is overrun with confusing pipe mazes. The game stays fresh from beginning to end, with new challenges being thrown at you even on the final level, so there's always an incentive to keep playing.
The gameplay is standard fare: hop on enemies, jump across chasms, and collect power-ups. To help you along in
SMB3, new power-ups are introduced, such as the Super Leaf that allows you to fly, the Frog Suit that enhances swimming capabilities, the Tanooki Suit that lets you fly and turn into a statue to avoid damage, and the Hammer Bros Suit, which lets you serve up enemy ass with a barrage of the infamous flying hammers. An inventory system lets you collect items for later use, and additional power-ups can be collected via mini-games such as the Mushroom House and the Match Game. This was also the first
SMB to feature now-staple items of the series, such as an overworld map and P-switches, which temporarily turn blocks into coins and vice versa.
SMB3 introduced many new ideas to the genre at the time, blew gamers away with its sheer amount of levels, and became the best-selling game of all time as a result.
In porting this game to the GBA, Nintendo has not watered down the brilliance of the original
SMB3's presentation at all.
SMA4 is an enhanced port of the
SMB3 found on the SNES compliation cart,
Super Mario All-Stars, which had graphics with more colors and background layers, and a more detailed appearance overall. The game has shifted to the smaller GBA screen very well, with no visual sacrifices being made; characters still animate well, and field of vision is the same as the original, so the game never causes a cheap death due to an enemy being off-screen. The sound and music are also top-notch, though some may gripe over the use of voices in the
SMA series (such as Mario saying "Just what I needed!" whenever a power-up is nabbed), but it doesn't detract from the enjoyment of the game at all. The music appears unchanged from the SNES version, and the tunes that had players whistling in 1989 will have you whistling in 2003.
If the original
SMB3 had one fault, it had to be the lack of a save option, because playing through the game (without the hidden Warp Whistles) took a good amount of time, and not being able to save along the way made the game become a larger undertaking than some players could handle. In
SMA4, a save option is presented after clearing Fortress levels, as well as after the Airship levels at the end of each world, so it is easy to pick up where you left off later, or save at the end of a lunch break.
Luckily, Nintendo is not content to rest on old laurels, and
SMA4 proves that you can teach an old dog a few new tricks.
SMA4 e-Cards are available for Nintendo's e-Reader peripheral, and these cards not only grant you power-ups found in the regular game, they also unlock items from other
SMA titles (such as the Super Cape from
Super Mario Advance 2: Super Mario World and the large vegetables found in
Super Mario Advance: Super Mario Bros. 2), as well as a handful of unlockable new levels found only on
SMA4 e-Cards.
But what if you have no access to an e-Reader? Fear not, there are still newer features in the game that you can access. Successful completion of the Spade mini-game (where you attempt to earn extra lives by lining up scrolling portions of power-up icons) will open a new Heart, Club, and Diamond mini-games, which all give you a shot at winning even more extra men than the 5-up offered in the Spade game. Also, upon clearing
SMB3, a new challenge opens on certain levels, in which a coin meter clicks down to zero as you collect coins within that level. If the meter reaches zero, a special blue Mushroom House will appear with one special item, such as a P-Wing. It is possible to revisit every level in the game once you have successfully cleared all nintey levels, and exploring each level as you see fit with the power-up of your choice is also possible.
SMA4 packs quite a bit of great gameplay into a very small cartridge. It's the same
SMB3 you know and love, but has enough new features to keep
SMB3 vets entertained (including an ever-so-slightly altered ending which may make some purists cry foul). As with every installment of
SMA, the original
Mario Bros. game is packed in for some multiplayer mayhem, so this one is bursting at the seams with fun. Younger players will enjoy their first trip through this game, and older players will smile as they revisit the world of
SMB3. This is one of, if not the best platformer ever created, so do yourself a favor and buy this one. You won't be sorry.
