Good Game Get! Super Mario 3D Land

If I told you that Super Mario 3D Land was the truest 3D Mario game you’d think that I was making a joke about the stereoscopic “3D” emphasis of the title or you’d think I was being insane because the most awesome 3D Mario game came out in 1996.

The truth is that back in 1996 when you and I were fumbling our hands around that Nintendo 64 controller while trying to play Super Mario 64 that we were not in fact playing Mario. We were in fact playing a new type of 3D game that was essentially Tomb Raider with Mario instead of Lara.

I’m not hating - because let’s be real - Super Mario 64 is by far one of the fondest memories of my childhood, but lookin’ back - it wasn’t really a Mario Game you know?

The platforming was weak, the secrets were weak, and the whole going into the same stage multiple times to get different stars while participating in slightly different scenarios was pretty weak too. The game was awesome but - again - not really what a Mario game had came to be in the 90s.

I think everyone overlooked that though because Super Mario 64 was so mind-blowingly incredible, and it was. It really was - or rather is, because the game truly still stands as a technical and artistic achievement for the history of gaming.

Super Mario 3D Land takes a portable approach to Mario, and it really does ask the question, “What is Mario like in stereoscopic 3D, and polygonal 3D?”

It answers it beautifully, by saying that the camera would primarily be top-down and that the 3D be deep and meaningful. It feels right, it feels difficult (in the later special stages), and it feels pure. This wasn’t a cake walk for Nintendo to slap another Mario game together.

It’s obvious.

This could’ve been Super Mario Galaxy 3DS and executively speaking the name would’ve been great given the sequence of the Galaxy series (if it even continues?), and the simple fact that Nintendo already knew how to make Galaxy.

What they didn’t know how to do was to make a 3D portable version of Mario that wasn’t a sidescroller, but FEELS like a side-scroller.

And that is it - that’s the magic right there, it is a 3D Mario game that doesn’t feel like a 3D Mario game even though it’s the absolute most 3D Mario game ever designed.

I kind of love it.

- Kyle