Game:

Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988)

Duration: 2:13:27

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We beat the game this session, starting at the beginning of World 8. I enjoyed my time playing it. It's designed thoughtfully based on what a player might do. It has some ridiculous setups like the Pitooie/Fire Plant/Nibbler one that I'm kind of crazy about, and it gives the player lots of powerful tools to help with any potential personal roadblocks in the game. A solid time, gotta say.
Regarding this session: I was pretty discouraged when I finally got past the airship-style levels, as they had taken a while to beat, and the first thing I see is "1," implying a slew of levels. Levels 1 and 2 being themed vaguely after Worlds 1 and 2 seemed to agree with this, but the trend was cut short with just a castle before the final level. And what a castle it is! I got lost in there on a couple of occasions, and managed to find myself in rooms deep into the castle having traveled very different routes. I took so long in finding the solution (a door appearing after hitting a P-Switch, which also happens earlier in the same castle) that I inadvertently took a sweeping tour of the place. It uses some recycled ideas from earlier levels, such as farming powerups in one spot to get a leaf for carving a path, and some new ideas like the weird strafing Thwomps. A solid castle which I wouldn't have experienced fully if I'd gotten the memo sooner about the P-Switch.
As an aside, I grinded a bunch of lives in a castle in World 7, and lost them all pretty fast in the airship-style levels. The result was basically the same exact experience but with a little more running back involved. The lack of lives saw me playing the "get abducted by a hand" stages a bunch of times, which came in clutch for both beating the nearby airship and for taking the easier route in 8-1.
The castle was easy. I took a bunch of tries, but it was mostly due to impatience, or learning that two fast fullhops was not a valid way of dealing with the consistent Bowser Fire leading to the boss room. I only initially stumbled into the bizarre room with an annoying background to look at, and died, so I didn't get the memo that the level had multiple paths until I missed the elevator again several attempts later, despite making it to the Bowser Fire section. The boss is familiar since I've played SMM2, so it wasn't too tough, though I did spend a few lives on it. I only beat Bowser by the skin of my teeth, as Bowser seemed to have a deceptively small hitbox. We take those. Between the Donut Block room being easier as Small Mario, and the inability to simply run past the first set of Bowser Statues while tall, I decided to go in as Small Mario for most attempts, which probably lead to more deaths than was necessary. The final level presented new ideas right at the end of the game, rather than being a check for mastery by reusing old obstacles in interesting ways. It feels like its own level, separate from most of the rest of the game, and its difficulty doesn't live up to being the final level. Or does it? Most of the rest of the game isn't all that tough, barring World 7 and the World 8 airships, and those levels are only so difficult because of interesting setups as mentioned before, such as advancing Bob-omb lobbers as an isolated system, or Rocky Wrenches in general.
Regardless, I had a good time. This is good game; it designed well.

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