Maybe I am jumping ahead by posting about the whole game, though if you aren't already spoiled on SMB3 I can't help you. (actually I can, talk to me
)
SMB3 was a game my family got brand new, pretty much as soon as it was available at a Toys R Us. I still have it, all nice and CIB and everything. Seems like when the game was released it was advertised at $70, I think we got it for $60 though, or maybe it was 60 and 50, can't remember for sure. Anyways I was always amazed my dad was excited to get it at that price. My dad was not a big spender. As kids we played the NES and loved it, but my dad was always better than us, at least for the first couple years. We would ask him to play so we could watch him, keep in mind I wasn't a little kid, my dad was just good.
Our Nintendo Power subscription yielded this:
[img width=700 height=635]https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1623/23616085483_a2d5b1a2cf_b.jpg[/img]
It is worn because of the love we put into this game, not because we were careless with it.
Often I, or one of my younger siblings, would sit and guide my dad through levels, just like we did with Metroid. Sometimes he would get us to a particular point and let us take over, not that we couldn't have gotten to whatever point ourselves, it was just quicker to let dad do it.
When I went to go sit down to play SMB3 for the playthrough, I started looking for the cart. It wasn't sitting next to the NES like it normally is (because I play it often) so I looked in the main NES cabinet. Not there either. Where was it when I finally found it? In the NES of course. It still gets played a bit
While I think I've watched and helped my dad play through every level (two and a half decades ago) I don't think I've done it myself before. I tend to stick to certain parts of the game. For the playthrough though, I wanted to do it all.
Along the way I found this guy:
[img width=700 height=525]https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1641/24242914965_8bf7e70e6e_b.jpg[/img]
With Michael Bay camera flair, I took this picture:
[img width=700 height=462]https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1701/23614676804_2a18248834_b.jpg[/img]
Afterwards, I went back to get one of these:
[img width=700 height=449]https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1610/24160370811_0032eb7945_b.jpg[/img]
Wife took a picture of that five-year-old that is here a lot, watching me play. Notice the MLP figures:
[img width=700 height=525]https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1476/24160366011_e8a335a2b2_b.jpg[/img]
I've always liked making Mario say "HELP"
[img width=700 height=459]https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1621/23614678004_4653ff5b80_b.jpg[/img]
Though I took pictures of my wholly filled item inventory, I figured this post only needed so many images. One way to get it full is to find one of these (every 80,000 points(?)):
[img width=700 height=540]https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1524/24160367501_55c7516a42_b.jpg[/img]
There are only 8 patterns to this game. At one point I had this chart memorized. If you choose the left card in the center row first, you can easily figure out the rest of it with no mistakes. Pretty quickly I had to start burning off powerups I didn't need. Music boxes, warp whistles, and those cloud-skip-level things all had to go. Mushrooms and starmans were used often. By the end of the game my inventory was filled with p-wings, hammer suits, tanooki suits, leafs and fire flowers. More fire flowers than I wanted actually, I like leafs better.
[img width=700 height=525]https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1709/24242913935_f367189ae4_b.jpg[/img]
This image took some work to put together, not sure why I bothered
I beat pretty much every level, except 6-5. I kept messing up on it for some reason, decided to come back to it (since you can go around it) and never did. I might go back and finish it this weekend.
[img width=700 height=934]https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1645/23947316500_e5600f50da_b.jpg[/img]
The image isn't perfect, you'll have to believe me I finished the castles/airships
and I didn't get pictures of
every part of the map.
If you wanted to see the sort of thing that guide from the first picture shows you, here is a random image from it:
[img width=700 height=476]https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1718/23947317100_305ef60e35_b.jpg[/img]
World eight I had to leave for the second day. I did 1-7 one evening, bedtime occurred, and I left the NES on 'till the next evening. Believe me, I was having so much fun, it was nipp'n at me all night.
I played world eight pretty straight, didn't shortcut much. Not even that ship level you can swim under. I did use one of my P-wings on the airship level after a few tries.
Bowsers Castle I enjoy. I like how it's different than the rest of the game in some ways. It's not particularly hard, but it is interesting. It actually took me several attempts that night. I think it was my sore thumb, lately Steam has been making me use a mouse/keyboard and all. I must be getting soft.
[img width=700 height=525]https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1449/23616080093_24f7a70783_b.jpg[/img]
I like the cards they show at the end, bowsers fireballs are pretty neat looking, in the game I mean:
[img width=700 height=514]https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1464/24216788776_4dde6344d6_b.jpg[/img]
I might go back and do a few more things, get a white mushroom house and finish level 6-5. No one has said they've played as Luigi yet....
Also, I wonder, if you make a pun about a rare item, do you point it out? Or just leave it hangin?
Author
