One of the reasons I wanted Super Mario All-Stars was simply to play this game. Nowadays, I can breeze through any of the other Mario games with minimal difficulty (aside from Yoshi's Island, haven't played that one too many times). It retained the feel of the original classic, but with several new twists, such as poison mushrooms, wind, powerful spring boards, "maze" effects in open air levels (i.e. 7-3, C-3), and in one case, a goal that's on a different plane than the level's starting point. It took me probably over 20 times to beat level 8-4 (Mario 3 blatantly rips off the "jump off a ledge and angle yourself left into a pirahna plant to avoid falling into a pit" situation), but I managed to beat that, the "secret" world 9, and the greater challenges of levels A-D (although D-4 doesn't have the same sting as 8-4). The only problem is that the save feature on the Super Nintendo is essentially unlimited lives, as it allows you to save after each individual level. Still, very much worth playing if you like Mario games and miss the old days of 2-D sidescrolling platform games.
