Super Mario Brothers 3 - Let's Play

This appears to have run its course, so:

ILX Plays: Castlevania (for the NES)

I got through worlds 1 and 2 over the weekend. I don't remember where any of the whistles/secrets are, but ignorance is bliss -- I don't really want to skip anything anyway.

Incredible game. A little easy by NES standards but still challenging. I love the puzzle aspect of how bricks are set up. Getting that 1up/powerup that seems right out in the open can be subtly tricky.

my boo and i have been taking advantage of the NES Mini's save-states to play this through in bite-size chunks. such a wonderful game. really really fun to replay with someone else who grew up with it because basically every new level it's like "what's this one gonna be..... oh fuck, THIS one, oh god, the big fish!!" etc. genuinely challenging but not frustratingly so, and just stuffed with riches.

Yep it’s a gorgeous game. Still love world 5 (the sky?) the best, but fuck world 7 forever.

5 is tower-to-the-sky, yup! We stopped after arriving there last night... about one world per sitting feels like the right amount although I suspect with 5 and 6 we might break 'em up. I can't remember how big 7 is - just all the pipes and floating arrow-platforms... never my favorite.

one thing that's kind of nice about social media is finding out there's a shared trauma among people my age relating to the sun level

imo the appropriate SMB3 playtime per sitting is 1 entire SMB3 game per sitting

xp the angry sun is how I perceive summer every year

lol, that's amazing

that rules

and yeah in principle i'm all in favor of the chill day wiled away playing straight through this game --- it resonates with me --- but right now our attention spans and especially endurance for looking at screens is completely shot, so taking this one in chunks is feeling surprisingly good. we did Yoshi's Island and SMW together this way a couple years ago, and maybe they're slightly more natural fits for that format (tho i'm with the "SMW is mostly a fancy re-do of SMB3" crowd) just because of the idea of replaying levels to find secrets and bonus areas.

i was only kidding about poopsocking it being the only appropriate way to play smb3. it definitely is appropriate, but it's also a lot of fun to just dive in, get the first couple warp whistles, and skip straight to your faves. there's no wrong way to smb3

Yeah you can probably 'finish' it in under 30 min with the warp whistles trick, but it would be fun to play it again with the idea of actually seeing all the levels.

yeah as a kid i think the desire to visit levels 4 5 and 6 again predominated. but sometimes warpin' makes you feel cool.

dr casino has inspired me to play SMB3!

I have a new twitch pseudonym: https://www.twitch.tv/zach_tbd

starting up my sesh now. I think I got my streaming settings fixed, for once, so the choppy/terrible experience of the last several years should hopefully be improved. i am so old and bad

i just did the angry sun level

it was fine

We started playing this today but it was abandoned when someone got frustrated with the controls, alas. Still great fun.

just hopped on to watch, this is great! but also so strange to see the All Star color scheme, it makes everything look like a fan level in Mario Maker.

watching this after playing some Castlevania III this morning reminds me of another badly needed design fix for both games: if you get a powerup the old one should pop out next to you so you can swap back if you mistakenly pick up some trash.

there are SMM levels designed entirely around avoiding the "bad powerup". It is part of the game imo.