Super Mario Bros. 3 Two-Player Playthrough (Actual NES Capture) - World 1

This is part 1 of my capture of me and a friend playing through all of Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES without using any Warp Zones. This is not an emulator and was not played on the Wii or Wii U Virtual Console. This footage was captured directly from my front-loading NES using a real Super Mario Bros. 3 cartridge. I'm player one (Mario) and Michael is player two (Luigi).

Some of you have asked for it, so here it is: Super Mario Bros. 3 in 60 fps. In this playthrough I once again completed every single level in the game with the help of a friend. Since the original Super Mario Bros. 3 doesn't have a save feature, this had to be done in a single sitting, which is quite an undertaking. A huge thanks goes out to Michael for helping me with this.

Even though I grew up with the NES and owned Super Mario Bros. 1 and 2, I did not own the third game as a kid. Instead, all of my friends and outside family members did, so I would just play their copies when I was visiting. I would typically use a warp whistle no later than World 4, so I wasn't very familiar with Worlds 5, 6 and 7 back then. I definitely remember trying World 8, but it was too difficult for me to complete.

When I was in junior high school in the mid '90s, I continued to have a strong interest in the NES and Super Mario Bros. especially, so I asked another friend, Drew, to do a game trade with an old friend that I no longer talked to. I gave Drew my copy of Jaws on the NES (I never really liked it) and Drew asked my old friend if he would trade it for his copy of Super Mario Bros. 3. Surprisingly, my old friend agreed to the trade, and I wound up with a free copy of the best game on the NES.

Right after that I also acquired the official Strategy Guide for this game from Nintendo Power (it's technically Volume 13. An entire issue of Nintendo Power was dedicated to Super Mario Bros. 3 alone.). So at a time when other people were moving on to the PlayStation, Saturn and Nintendo 64, I jumped into an old game and went exploring like crazy. There were so many things I didn't know about the game, and the Strategy Guide explained it all. It was an incredible experience - probably as good as what others experienced back in 1990 when the game was released.

Super Mario Bros. 3 is without a doubt my favorite Super Mario game. As far as I'm concerned, nothing beats it. And even though the Super Mario All-Stars version is excellent because of the save feature especially, I'm not a big fan of the altered music and graphics. I love the original in all its 8-bit glory, so that's the only version I play.

For this playthrough Michael and I once again relied on the same Nintendo Power Strategy Guide to find as many secrets as possible. That's also how we managed to match the cards in the mini-game each time - the guide told us the combinations (there are eight variations of the card patterns).

Lastly, none of the deaths were edited out of this playthrough. I think we managed to minimize the deaths fairly well, so they shouldn't drag the playthrough down. Enjoy the new footage.

In this first part Michael and I completed all of World 1: Grass Land.

Recorded with the Hauppauge HD PVR and a composite connection at 60 frames per second. I used a Toshiba model D-R550 DVD Recorder to upconvert the NES's native 240p signal to 480i so that the Hauppauge could capture the console's audio/video signal.

We're using standard NES controllers.