Our Favorite Games: Super Mario Bros. 3

Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System Released: 1990

Raise your hand if you packed into a movie theater to catch the Fred Savage movie The Wizard just to see a glimpse of SMB3. Or do you remember chants of "Mario! Mario!" coming from your TV? It doesn't matter how you were introduced to its 8 bits of glory, because the game speaks for itself. Fantastic graphics, gameplay and sound make this, in my opinion, the greatest original NES title ever. And there must be some people who agree with me, since SMB3 is the biggest selling game of all-time not originally bundled with a console (18 million copies sold). The game featured the same storyline - Bowser kidnapped the princess, so go get him - and yet so much more. There were world maps to explore, mushroom houses and new power-ups, oh, the number of power-ups. My personal favorite was always the Tanooki suit, even though the Hammer Bros. suit kicked serious butt, too. Eight worlds, each packing more than the four standard levels each, awaited you on your quest. There were some world-specific items (remember Kuribo's Shoe?), and each world was completely different from any other. In a nutshell, this game is fantastic. And it set the stage for another epic 2D Mario game, Super Mario World, which helped launch the Super NES. Many of SMB3's innovations (power-ups, world maps) were transferred to Mario's 16-bit quest, a testament to how groundbreaking this game was.