Super Mario Bros. 3 is one of the best Mario games around but what makes the game so great?
Number 3- Item Inventory
Mario 3 raised the bar in so many ways, one of which being to hold on to your power-ups and use them later in the game. Mario 1 only allowed you to use what you grabbed along the way and Mario 2 only had the Starman and other “picked-up” items. Mario 3 added different power-ups so Nintendo had to give you some way to hold all of them. Their idea was the inventory system. Another idea borrowed from Zelda but hadn’t gotten into a Mario game until now. You get to a tough fortress to get through and you die. Then you remember Princess Toadstool left you that jewel in her letter after world one and you remember you saved it, just for something like this. Mario games were all about running from point A to point B. It wasn’t about thinking ahead until Mario 3. You didn’t have to worry about how to handle your items before Mario 3 because you only had a Fire Flower. The only thing you cared about was not losing the power-up in that level. That all changed with Mario 3. Number 3- Inventory System
