Super Mario Brothers 3

I’m not very good at finishing video games.

But! Last Christmas I got an NES Classic as a present, and since then I’ve finished Super Mario Brothers, Legend of Zelda, Castlevania, and Castlevania 2.

I played all those games back in the 80s and the 90s, but I never had a chance to finish them because they didn’t have good options for saving progress (Zelda and Castlevania 2 did, but they were quite limited). But the NES Classic has Save States, which is handy. It’s also useful when playing something like Super Mario Brothers. I would save right before Mario had to make a difficult jump, and reload the save state until I got it right.

A few people were horrified at that – they said it only counts if you play the games without Save States and restart every time you run out of lives. But let’s be realistic. I don’t have time for that – I’m an adult with actual work to do. I have to issue contractor tax forms at the end of the year, for heaven’s sake. Am I going to say “Sorry, DRAGONTIARNA: GATES isn’t coming out until February because I want to beat Super Mario Brothers 3, and purists say that using the Save State feature is cheating!” I mean, if there had been a Save State feature in the 90s, I would have used it outrageously.

I think the next game I want to finish is Super Mario Brothers 3. I did play it back in the 90s, but I never had the chance to finish.

Also, the Mario games are fun to play in winter when everything is essentially stark black and white outside – the Mario games bright and colorful and bubbly by contrast.

As if this writing, I’m at the start of World 3, which is actually farther than I ever got back in the 90s. Looking forward to seeing the rest of the game’s worlds!

-JM