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Super Mario Bros. 3 (スーパーマリオブラザーズ3) is a platform video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) video game console. The sequel to the 1988 video game Super Mario Bros. 2, it is the fourth installment in the Super Mario Bros. series. It was first released in Japan on October 23, 1988 and later in North America on February 12, 1990. The game's development was handled by Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development, led by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka. Enhanced remakes were later released on the Super NES in 1993 and the Game Boy Advance in 2003. The game was re-released as a Virtual Console title on the Wii on November 5, 2007 and then it got ported on the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U Virtual Consoles on April 17, 2014.

Super Mario Bros. 3 centers on plumbers Mario and Luigi who embark on a quest to save Princess Toadstool and the rulers of seven different kingdoms from the antagonist Bowser and his children, the Koopalings. The player, as Mario or Luigi, is able to defeat enemies by stomping them or using items that bestow magical powers. Mario and Luigi are given a wider range of abilities than in previous Super Mario games, including flying or sliding down slopes. In addition, Super Mario Bros. 3 introduces numerous elements, such as new enemy characters and the use of a world map to transition between levels, that have reappeared in or have influenced subsequent Mario games.

Super Mario Bros. 3 is acclaimed by many critics as one of the greatest video games of all time. It was a commercial success upon release, which was partly influenced by its promotion in the 1989 film The Wizard. Super Mario Bros. 3 is the second-best selling NES game, having sold 18 million copies worldwide. The popularity of the game also inspired a short-lived animated television series.

Gameplay
Super Mario Bros. 3 is a two-dimensional platform game in which the player controls the on-screen protagonist (either Mario or Luigi) from a third-person perspective. The game shares similar game mechanics with previous titles in the series—Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, and Super Mario Bros. 2—but introduces several new elements. In addition to the running and jumping moves found in past games, the player can fly and float with the aid of special items, slide down slopes, and execute new types of jumps. Each kingdom serves as a game world that is divided into stage levels, and an eighth region is included as the final world, Dark Land. The eight worlds feature distinct visual themes; for example, the second world, "Desert Land", contains sand-covered levels with pyramids, while the levels in the fourth world, "Giant Land", are populated with obstacles and enemies four times as large as those in other worlds.

The player navigates through the game via two game screens: an overworld map and a level playfield. The overworld map displays an overhead representation of the current world and has several paths leading from the world's entrance to a castle. Paths connect to action panels, fortresses and other map icons, and allow players to take different routes to reach the world's goal. Moving the on-screen character to an action panel or fortress will allow access to that level's playfield, a linear stage populated with obstacles and enemies. The majority of the game takes place in these levels, with the player traversing the stage by running, jumping, flying, swimming, and dodging or defeating enemies.

Completing stages allows the player to progress through the overworld map and to succeeding worlds. Each world features a final stage with a boss to defeat; the first seven worlds feature an airship controlled by one of the Koopalings, while the player battles Bowser in his castle in the eighth world. Other map icons include large boulders and locked doors that impede paths, and special minigames that provide the player a chance to obtain special power-ups. A new feature is the player's option to save power-up items obtained in minigames for later use via a menu accessible at the overworld screen.

In addition to special items from previous games like the "Super Mushroom" and the "Fire Flower", new power-ups are introduced that provide the player with new options. The "Super Leaf" and "Tanooki Suit" give Mario raccoon and tanuki appearances respectively and allow him to fly or turn into stone to avoid enemies for a short period of time. Changing into a Tanooki statue while jumping results in Mario pounding the ground and killing whatever enemies are directly under him; this marks the first appearance of the "ground pound" move in a Mario game, a move that was later given to Yoshi in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island and that later became part of Mario's standard move set in Super Mario 64 and subsequent games. Other suits include the "Frog Suit", which increases the character's underwater speed and agility and improves jumping height on land, and the "Hammer Suit", which gives Mario the appearance of the Hammer Bro. enemy and allows him to throw hammers at enemies and resist fire attacks.

Super Mario Bros. 3 includes a multiplayer option which allows two players to cooperatively play the game by taking turns at navigating the overworld map and accessing stage levels; the first player controls Mario, while the other controls Luigi. Through this mode, players can also access several minigames, including a remake of the original Mario Bros. arcade game, in which one player has the opportunity to steal the cards of another but may lose their turn if they lose the minigame.

Plot and characters
The plot of Super Mario Bros. 3 is described in the instruction booklet. The Mushroom World, the setting of the game, is invaded by the Koopalings, Bowser's seven children. The Koopalings conquer each of the seven kingdoms by stealing its king's magical wand and using it to transform him into an animal. Princess Toadstool sends Mario and Luigi to travel to each kingdom, retrieve the stolen wand, and restore its king to normal.

During the course of the game, Bowser kidnaps Toadstool and holds her captive in his castle at his own kingdom, Dark Land. The brothers travel through Dark Land, enter his castle, and defeat Bowser in a battle. The game ends with Toadstool being freed from the castle.

Development
Super Mario Bros. 3 was developed by Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development, a team that consisted of over ten people, and took more than two years to complete. Developer Shigeru Miyamoto served as director. He worked closely with the designers and programmers during the conceptual and final stages, encouraging a free interchange of ideas. Miyamoto considered intriguing and original ideas to be key to creating a successful game.

The game was designed to appeal to players of varying skill levels. To assist less skilled players, bonus coins and 1-ups are more abundant in earlier worlds, while later worlds present more complex challenges for more experienced players. In the two-player mode, the players alternate turns to balance play time. The development team introduced new power-ups and concepts that would give Mario the appearance of different creatures as a means of providing him with new abilities. An early idea changed Mario into a centaur, but was dropped in favor of a raccoon tail that allows limited flying ability. Other costumes with different abilities were added to his repertoire, and levels were designed to take advantage of these abilities. New enemies were included to add diversity to the game, along with variants of previous enemies, such as Goombas, Hammer Bros., and Koopa Troopas.

Some of the enemies designed for Super Mario Bros. 3 were inspired by the team's personal life experiences. For example, Miyamoto stated that the Chain Chomp enemy, a tethered ball and chain creature that lunges at the player when in close proximity, was based on a "bad [childhood] experience" he had with a dog. Bowser's children, the Koopalings, were designed to be unique in appearance and personality; Miyamoto based the characters on seven of his programmers as a tribute to their work and efforts. Nintendo of America named the Koopalings after well-known musicians; for example the characters "Ludwig von Koopa" and "Roy Koopa" are named after Ludwig van Beethoven and Roy Orbison respectively.

The character graphics were created with a special graphics machine ("Character Generator Computer Aided Design") that generated a collection of all the graphical shapes used in the game. Shapes in the collection were assigned numbers that the game's code uses to access, and are combined to form complete images on the screen in real time. The Super Mario Bros. 3 cartridge uses Nintendo's custom MMC3 (memory management controller) ASIC to enhance the NES capabilities. The MMC3 chip allows for animated tiles, extra RAM for diagonal scrolling, and a scanline timer to split the screen. The game uses these functions to split the game screen into two portions, a playfield on the top and a status bar on the bottom, allowing the top portion to scroll as the character navigates the stage while the bottom portion remains static to display text and other information.

During 1988, a shortage of ROM chips, along with Nintendo of America's preparation of a version of Super Mario Bros. 2 for Western gamers, prevented Nintendo from performing various North American game releases according to their original schedules. The delayed products included Super Mario Bros. 3 and, according to Nintendo Power, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. The delay, however, presented Nintendo with an opportunity to promote the game in a feature film. In 1989, Tom Pollack of Universal Studios approached Nintendo of America's marketing department about a video game movie; inspired by Nintendo video game competitions, Pollack envisioned a video game version of Tommy for younger audiences. Nintendo licensed its products for inclusion in what would become the film The Wizard. During the movie's production, the filmmakers requested and were granted approval from Nintendo regarding the script and portrayal of the company's games. Super Mario Bros. 3 was one of the products shown in the film, and was used in a final scene involving a video game competition. The film was released in December 1989, between the Japanese and English versions of the game.

Reception
Upon release, the game was lauded by the video game press. It was considered to be the best game released for the NES and one of the best games of all time. Computer and Video Games editors Paul Rand, Tim Boone and Frank O'Connor awarded the game a 98, praising it for its gameplay, replayability, sound and graphics. Boone commented that the game is nearly flawless in its utterly "stupendous incredibility and absolutely impossible to put down for anything less than a fire alarm - and even then you find yourself weighting down the odds." Rand called Super Mario Bros. 3 the best video game ever, labeling it "the Mona Lisa of gaming" and stating that it is "astoundingly brilliant in every way, shape and form." O'Connor stated that the game "makes Sonic the Hedgehog look like a wet Sunday morning and even gives the [Super] Famicom's Mario 4 a run for its money."

Julian Rignall of Mean Machines referred to Super Mario Bros. 3 as the "finest video game" he had ever played, citing its addictiveness, depth, and challenge. A second Mean Machines reviewer, Matt Regan, anticipated the game would be a top-selling title in the United Kingdom, and echoed Rignall's praise calling it a "truly brilliant game". Regan further stated that the game offered elements which tested the player's "brains and reflexes", and that though the graphics were simple, they were "incredibly varied". In a preview of the game, Nintendo Power gave it high marks in graphics, audio, challenge, gameplay, and enjoyability.

Super Mario Bros. 3 has received universal acclaim from modern critics who also considered the title to be one of the best games of all time. Edge magazine considered Super Mario Bros. 3 Nintendo's standout title of 1989, and commented that its success outshone the first Super Mario Bros.'s sales milestone; the first title sold 40 million copies, but was bundled with the NES. They lauded the overworld map as an elegant alternative to a menu to select levels. Allgame's Skyler Miller praised the game's level design, graphics, music, and nonlinearity. Dengeki referred to the game as a popular title and expressed excitement over its rerelease on the Game Boy Advance system. The items hidden in the game's levels, such as the warp whistles, were well-received: Rignall regarded them as part of the game's addictiveness; and Sheff stated that finding them provided a sense of satisfaction. Both Screw Attack and GamesRadar ranked it the best NES game ever made. GamesRadar claimed that while Super Mario Bros. defined its genre, Super Mario Bros. 3 perfected it.

Criticism focused on particular aspects of the game. Miller considered the inability to save progress a drawback, since gamers will have to play the entire game in one sitting if they wish to complete it. Rignall described the audio and visuals as being outdated in comparison to games on the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo Entertainment System systems. The game's difficulty was also criticized by some critics.

Sales
Super Mario Bros. 3 was a commercial success and became one of the video game industry's best-selling games. Its inclusion in The Wizard served as a preview and generated a high level of anticipation in the United States prior to its release. Levi Buchanan of IGN considered Super Mario Bros. 3's appearance in the film as a show-stealing element, and referred to the movie as a "90-minute commercial" for the game. By 1993, the game had sold 4 and 7 million units in Japan and the United States respectively. In the United States alone, the game generated over US$500 million in revenue for Nintendo. Author David Sheff commented that, in music industry terms, the game went platinum 11 times. In 2008, Guinness World Records listed the game as the best-selling video game to be sold separately from a system, and reported worldwide sales of over 18 million copies, including the ports. Game Informer reported in their October 2009 issue that the Virtual Console version had sold one million copies. As of 2011, Super Mario Bros. 3 remains the highest-grossing non-bundled home video game to date, having grossed $1.7 billion, adjusted for inflation.

Legacy
Super Mario Bros. 3 introduced several elements which were carried over to subsequent Mario titles. A similar overworld map is used in Super Mario World and New Super Mario Bros., and Mario's ability to fly has been a feature in such games as Super Mario World, Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Galaxy. The game's 'Super Leaf' item has returned in more recent Mario titles for the Nintendo 3DS, like Super Mario 3D Land, Mario Kart 7 and  New Super Mario Bros. 2. Bowser's red hair was first popularized in the game, and has since become a part of his standard appearance.

Through a collaboration between NBC and Nintendo of America, an animated television series titled The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 was created in 1990 by DIC Entertainment. The show aired weekly and featured numerous characters, enemies, and settings from the video game; the original seven Koopalings are given different names based on their given personalities and are also given a new age order. Other Nintendo products have included various elements from the game as well. Music from Super Mario Bros. 3 appears as a track on Nintendo Sound Selection Koopa, a collection of songs from Nintendo games. The game's stages and graphics comprise a background theme in the 2006 Nintendo DS game Tetris DS. The Koopalings are also world bosses in Super Mario World, Mario is Missing!, Yoshi's Safari, Hotel Mario and all New Super Mario Bros. games except New Super Mario Bros.. Boom Boom, another boss from this game, additionally reappears in Super Mario 3D Land and Super Mario 3D World, alongside a boomerang-wielding female counterpart named Pom Pom.

Super Mario Bros. 3 has appeared on numerous top video game lists. The game debuted on Nintendo Power's Top 30 best games ever list at number 20 in September 1989. It entered the list's top 10 a few months later and reached number one in May 1990. Super Mario Bros. 3 remained within the top 20 for more than five years. More than a decade later, the magazine ranked the game number six on their list of 200 Greatest Nintendo Games. In August 2008, Nintendo Power listed Super Mario Bros. 3 as the second best Nintendo Entertainment System video game, praising it for making the series more complex and introducing new abilities that have since become signature abilities in the series. The game placed 11th, behind Super Mario Bros., in Official Nintendo Magazine's "100 greatest Nintendo games of all time". In 2007, ScrewAttack called Super Mario Bros. 3 the best Mario game in the series as well as the best game on the NES, citing the graphics, power-ups, secrets, and popularity, summing it up as "just incredible" and stating, "If you haven't experienced this greatness, we pity you". In a poll conducted by Dengeki, the game tied with Super Mario World as the number three video game their readers first played.

The game has been ranked on several of IGN's lists of "top games". In 2005, they rated it 23rd among their Top 100 Games, and praised the precise and intuitive controls. IGN editors from the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia ranked Super Mario Bros. 3 number 39 in their 2007 Top 100 Games, citing Miyamoto's "ingenious" designs. They further commented that the game improved on the "already-brilliant concepts" of the previous titles with new power-ups and enemies. Users and readers of the website placed the game high on similar lists: 32nd in 2005 and 21st in 2006. In 2007, the game was included in the "game canon", a list of the ten most important video games selected for preservation by the Library of Congress. In 2009, Game Informer put Super Mario Bros. 3 9th on their list of "The Top 200 Games of All Time", saying that it is "a game with incredible lasting power that we won't soon forget". This is down one place from Game Informer's previous ranking in 2001. Edge ranked the game #20 on its list of "The 100 Best Games To Play Today", calling it "the one 8-bit game that still shines today, no caveats required." UGO listed Super Mario Bros. 3 on their list of the "Top 50 Games That Belong On the 3DS", calling it "Arguably the greatest Mario game ever made." GameSpot placed the game in their list of the greatest games of all time.

Super Mario Bros. 3 is well-known for spawning the Commander Keen series, which all started when the video game developer John Carmack at Softdisk developed the Adaptive tile refresh in the early 1990s that would perform smooth, side-scrolling graphics in side-scrolling games on EGA cards. He and his Softdisk colleague Tom Hall kept this technology from Softdisk as a secret as they used their spare time late at night to put together a clone of the first level of Super Mario Bros. 3, with the hero replaced with the one in Dangerous Dave, a game developed by Softdisk, while calling it Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement. When John Romero saw their work in action, he and the project chief at Softdisk Jay Wilbur suggested that they finish the PC port of Super Mario Bros. 3, which was later taken to Nintendo, who denied to sell PC copies of Super Mario Bros. 3, for they "were only made exclusively for their Nintendo consoles". Around that time, Scott Miller, the founder of Apogee Software Ltd., appreciated the id Software team for the use of spare time and for their efforts, and that he would distribute games that the team had developed - that was, after a discussion, when Apogee decided to stop distributing id's games after self-publishing Doom. As a result, the first Mario-style, side-scrolling episode of Commander Keen was made, which was once again made by "borrowing" Softdisk's computers at odd hours. Shortly afterwards, Softdisk suggested that the team form a company itself, while making games for Softdisk every two months, thus formed id Software in February 1, 1991.

Remakes
The game has been ported or remade on several other Nintendo consoles. It was included in the 1993 Super Nintendo game Super Mario All-Stars, a compilation of remakes of NES Super Mario games featuring updated graphics and sound, which was also later released on the Wii in 2010. A Game Boy Advance version, Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3, was released in 2003. This version features support for the Nintendo e-Reader peripheral, which allows the player to access additional levels stored on e-Reader cards, in addition to updated graphics and sound.

Super Mario Bros. 3 was re-released as a downloadable Virtual Console title in 2007 for the Wii and in 2014 for both the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U consoles. These versions support multiple console-specific controllers, such as the Wii Remote or the Wii U GamePad, and allow players to save progress with the use of save states.