I think I’d have to go with SMW
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It’s a very interesting question. In terms of which game I’d rather play, it’s SMW. But in terms of technical achievement, SMB3 is unquestionably better (in my opinion of course).
SMB1 was a watershed moment for gaming - perhaps the biggest that there ever was. SMB3 was a revolutionary improvement on top of that. In light of that, SMW almost feels like a bland port. This isn’t to say it’s bad by any means, but in terms of the impact that it had on gaming as a whole, it’s not very significant and just feels like an iterative improvement.
SMW is still a great game! And if I could only play one for the rest of my life, I would choose it over SMB3. But in terms of historical impact on gaming, I would say that SMB1, Mario64 and SMB3 were more revolutionary.
Yoshi’s Island is my favorite however.
Don’t feel bad, Yoshi’s Island was always the right answer. It was a trick question.
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World.
I played and beat world with my dad on a rented Super Famicom before Super Nintendo came out.
We didn’t have an instruction booklet and all the tutorial stuff that came up was in Japanese so we went the entire game without knowing you could throw shells upwards. So when we got to Bowser at the end we thought you had to be able to fly so you could dive-bomb the motherfucker. Took us so many tries getting there with a cape and a backup before we eventually each got it. Man, did I feel dumb when SNES came out and I learned the truth, but also a perverse pride, like being one of the few people to beat something before it gets nerfed.
Not really related but this made me think of that for the first time in years.
Super Mario World. More gameplay with better graphics and sound. It was the first video game I ever beat.
Don’t forget its also pretty much the gold standard for secrets in video games!
SMW, easily. Being able to freely use the map to play levels at will and unlock secrets still hasn’t been matched by any other 2D Mario game.
Graphics and music-wise, it’s fair to use the SNES version as a comparison, so that’s mostly a wash.
As much as I love SMB3’s powerups (hammer bro 4 life), I’d go with World because you can replay levels and even castles with L+R. Fuck Tubular, tho
I have played and beaten both games too often to count, and while they’re both excellent the way Mario controls in SMW always throws me off for the first couple of minutes. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but SMB3 just feels better, more weighty I guess.
They should’ve made a sequel to the Wizard that featured SMW
SMW was my very first video game, so that’s my choice. I’ve played both, but definitely prefer SMW because of its better controls, level design and graphics/sound. 3’s levels are a bit too short for my liking, which is probably due to being crammed on an NES cart.
Super Mario world is obviythe better game because that’s the one I have more nostalgia for.
World has everything 3 introduced and more with better visuals. So SMW is the right answer.
Really it comes down to level design. And IMO, the secret star road levels are some of the best even counting later games. Tubular! Gnarly! Radical!
But if Yoshi’s Island was an option…
SMBWorld had a much deeper realm of secrets and challenges, and a much sharper aesthetic, and was tied directly to the new, shining world of 16-bit gaming which it took full advantage of to make better visuals and audio. I would love to be able to relive those weeks of playing SMBWorld for the first time and the feelings of awe and amazement and discovery that went with them.
Can you be a frog tho? Just wondering.
You can hop.
…as a frog? Be honest, now…
World has everything 3 introduced, except you can’t be a frog.
Kek. 🐸
Super Mario World all day long.
SMB3 was an absolute banger and revolutionised the platforming genre while making the hardware run things it had no business doing, so much so that even id Software took inspiration from it.
World just improved the formula in every single way though. Far from ragging on SMB3, World just took an amazing game and polished it up beyond what was expected.
making the hardware run things it had no business doing,
Speaking of hardware limitations, Kirby’s Adventure plays like a mid gen SNES game, I have no idea how they got it running on NES. I need to play through it again
Kirby’s Adventure is the largest NES game ever officially released in terms of ROM size, and has a frankly absurd amount of graphics tiles. Just consider all of those required for the copy abilities thumbnails alone and you’ll see what I mean. It pulled basically every trick the MMC3 mapper is capable of, and was definitely a masterpiece of the system in the original sense, i.e. it displays astonishing mastery of the mechanics of the Famicom/NES.
What I find more amazing is that the MMC3 isn’t one of the mappers that confers any additional sound channels and the American NES didn’t support that capability anyway. So the entirety of the game’s iconic soundtrack fits within the confines of the NES’ two square waves, one triangle wave, one noise channel, and singular PCM channel.
I think ultimately it ran into memory constraints, even with the additional 8 KB provided by the mapper. If you sit back and look at them as a whole, its levels are all quite short. It’s still my favorite NES game bar none, though.
Programming all the copy abilities had to be a nightmare. Not only the graphics but the controls for things like the wheel & hi jump, the pallet swaps for the Freeze abilities, the environment interactions from the Hammer… it’s a ridiculous amount of content by today’s standards and it was made over 30 years ago.
Then add in cutscenes (all in-game engine, but still), between level overworld sections, mini-games… It’s baffling!
Half of that game would be DLC/premium content if it was made today.
They made both games at the same time. In my opinion there isn’t even a competition. Both games are showcases of the best of each console.
Sorry, that’s not correct. SMB3 was released in 1988 in Japan. It was delayed in North America until 1990 and released in the same year as SMW, while Nintendo of America ironed out its Super Nintendo console launch.
Super Mario World, in fact, started development as a port of Super Mario Bros. 3.
SMB3 has better powerups, though.
They’re interesting but aren’t used in novel ways. Leaf is great and Cape expands on it. Frog is entirely optional, Tanooki and Hammer are nice upgrades to Leaf and Fire Flower but don’t meaningfully change how you approach the game, the Shoe exists for a single level gimmick, and the map items are all little shortcuts to play less of the game. SMB3 does not use its unique tools to build new kinds of puzzles or present alternate paths through a level they just make the challenges a little easier.
Cape, P-Balloon, and Yoshi are much better utilized.
SMB3 does not use its unique tools to build new kinds of puzzles or present alternate paths through a level they just make the challenges a little easier.
This is extraordinarily wrong!
There are secrets that you need specific power ups to get to.
- Raccoon/Tanuki are used to fly to secret areas or break blocks with the tail
- Fire is used to melt blocks in the ice world
- Frog can swim against strong currents
- If you start some levels with an invincible star from the map, it will cause some blocks to drop a star instead of a coin, letting you chain invincibility through the whole level
- Tanuki and Hammer aren’t necessary for anything in the main game, but they are for some e-reader levels where they can break blocks that can’t be broken normally
This is almost nothing, though. The secret areas are a handful of coins, or an extra power-up, or a magic whistle. Three sections of a water level or a wall of ice in one world is not a puzzle nor an “alternate path” in a meaningful way. E-reader? The niche peripheral adds a tiny bit of extra content for the GBA release of the NES game and that’s among your best arguments?
SMB3 is very good for what it is and a technical achievement but ranking it above World is pure nostalgia.
OOOOOORRRRRRRRB
I can’t see SMB3 without remembering that once I was playing it with my brother and my dad comes in, saying he hates that game.
Later, we ask him why does he hate the game, he says he’s really got no reasons, but still hates the game.
My dad would routinely come in and see anything we had going on the TV, from cartoons to video games, and express how much he hated that thing, or how he didn’t understand how we could enjoy it.
Parents out there… don’t do this. Stop feeling envious or resentful of children for being able to be happy.
One of my father’s girlfriends did this to my younger brother and I as kids. She legitimately hated it when we experienced any kind of joy or contentment and would immediately try to cut us down or cause a problem to ruin it. She is one of the few people I’ve met in life that I consider a truly bad person.
That sounds like some serious jealousy/resentment/narcissism, I’m sorry you had to go through that.
I would get this kind of weird “what the heck are you watching/playing” criticism and I think it was mainly a weird play to get to the TV so he could watch football or screaming heads cable news. . .
I felt really self conscious about anything I chose to watch myself in full view for a long time. Namely anime. Anime always knew when a parental figure lurked nearby and would choose that moment to get really weird.
SMW for me but that’s not to downplay just how unbelievably good SMB3 was at the time.
Especially coming from the Jank that was smb2.
SMB3 was a revolution. SMW was an evolution.
I personally prefer SMB3 because the controls feel tighter, where SMW sometimes feels “floaty”. But it’s a subtle difference. SMW gives you way more content, but not all of it is as good or as well-designed as the levels from SMB3 (though again, the difference is subtle.)
They are both all-time top games, as is Mario 64.
Yoshi’s Island just casually over here being a revelation…
Mario Sunshine’s level design was not as well structured, but it had a lot of really interesting content. SMB3, SMW, and Mario 64 are my top 3 Mario games, but I can’t decide the order.
Sunshine was rushed and it shows. I played it contemporaneously but never got terribly far.
I played it a couple years ago all the way through when I got my Steam Deck and it had a ton of rough edges. It was a bit of a struggle to get through.
