Decades later, Super Mario Bros. 3 is still full of surprises

polygon.com:

I still remember unpackaging my purple, slightly iridescent Game Boy Advance SP. My uncle gifted me and my cousin matching ones during the holidays in the early 2000s, along with our first games. I received Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3, a classic I would come to play over and over again — with equal parts love and frustration — as I was pulled inexorably into the spell of platforming.

Though Super Mario Bros. 3 was first released in 1988 for the Nintendo Entertainment System, it was a perfect port for the Game Boy Advance SP. The handheld was the right size for my small hands and fit in the pockets of my favorite frock, making it easy to pull out and play a level whenever adults around me talked about boring adult things. The recent addition of Game Boy and GBA games to Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack has given me an excuse to revisit it. And though the Switch doesn’t fit as well in my pocket, the game has absolutely stood the test of time — I’ve found myself once again toting it around with me everywhere, hellbent on beating the next level.

The reverence that some feel for Dark Souls games, with their accompanying baggage to “git gud,” is close to how I feel about Super Mario Bros. 3 for GBA. The game requires fairly precise platforming, forcing me to memorize the weight of Mario’s jump and skid landings when I played it as a kid. The game taught me to approach its levels like puzzles, each with a best path or strategy, and often with hidden rewards and sections — which is to say that it taught me how to platform, period.

Super Mario Bros. 3’s first level, with its jolly music, is seared into my brain. It introduced me to the basic concepts that govern Mario’s world (which I paid for in Game