Super Mario Bros. 3

Super Mario Bros 3 for NES is one of my favourite platforms games because of its level design and challenging gameplay. Therefore, I thought it would be appropriate to look at some of the levels and mechanics for this game and see why they are successful. I have also chosen to look at early Mario games, because I think they are similar to Alice in Wonderland. For example, there is a normal character that is a fantasy world and there is an emphasis on growing and shrinking.

The main reason I preferred to look at the early Mario games as opposed to other early side-scrolling platform games, like Sega’s Alex Kidd and Wonder Boy is due to the fact that its levels are explorative with hidden rooms and items, making the game experience more enriching and encouraging the player to re-play the levels, in order to find all the items and hidden levels.

I particularly like the levels with floating platforms, (such as world 3-6, above) as they are more challenging. The player has to be precise about where they jump, which route to take and which floating platform to use.

I also think they are very dream-like because of how surreal they are (floating platform are obviously very unrealistic). When I think about designing my game, I imagine these kinds of platforms to create a dream-like atmosphere to suit the concepts of the narrative.