When you think of 2D platforming at its best, chances are you're thinking about Super Mario Bros. 3.

Super Mario Bros. 3 has the unfortunate distinction of being associated with The Wizard, a rather dreadful Fred Savage vehicle that cast the Wonder Years star as the brother of Luke Edwards, who played...The Wizard. The Wizard's a savant of sorts, at least when it comes to playing video games. Anyway, the two trek across the country, the Power Glove makes an unfortunate appearance, and then--there it is: Super Mario Bros. 3 (well before its release in the US). The power of that scene alone drove a lot of game fans in to the theaters. The game came off looking much better than Savage did. Maybe Mario had a better agent.

SMB3 would go on to become the best-selling non-pack-in game of all time, clocking in at just under 18 million units sold, with around seven million of these units selling in 1990 alone. How much of this meteoric success had to do with The Wizard? More than we'd care to think about, that's for sure.

The game's power-ups really added a lot of variety to the game.

When you think about the way the Super Mario Bros. series has played out, you can really break it down into two eras. There's the era before Super Mario Bros. 3 was released and the era after Super Mario Bros. 3 was released. Prior to SMB3, Mario games were pretty straightforward. You moved from level to level in a linear fashion, doing your Mario thing as only you and Mario can do.

Super Mario Bros. 3 expanded on this formula in several important ways. It added an overworld map to the game that let you move from place to place like a board game. This gave you a few opportunities to choose your path through a world, though the game was still pretty linear. The power-ups also added a great deal of variety to the game. No longer content to just shoot fireballs, Mario could now dress up in all sorts of ridiculous suits. The most useful was the leaf, which, of course, gave you raccoon ears, a tail, and the ability to fly. But you could also score a tanooki suit, which let you turn into a wicked, invincible statue. Then there was the frog suit, which was weak on land but gave you great swimming abilities. There was also the Hammer Brothers suit. And the list goes on and on.

Adding another thin layer of strategy to the game was the ability to earn power-ups and other items on the overworld map. You could store these in your inventory and use them before entering a level. This meant that you could usually store up a cool suit to wear for those extradifficult levels.

One could go on and on about the mechanical reasons for Super Mario Bros. 3's success, but the game's greatest strength is that it simply feels good. Your control over Mario is as tight as ever, and the game's sometimes-expansive levels give you a lot of room to move, which is good, considering that the ability to fly wouldn't be much fun if there weren't any alternate paths or other hidden secrets awaiting you up in the clouds. It also felt like a true sequel to the original game, rather than the "take out the genies and the lamps and put in Mario characters" treatment that lead to the US version of Super Mario 2. The basics of the platforming action were roughly the same as those found in the original game, but everything was done on a much larger, much more impressive scale.

The game would go on to sell insanely well (see sidebar)--and with good reason. Super Mario Bros. 3 was an instant classic, and it's most definitely one of the greatest games of all time.

Oh boy! Super Mario Bros. 3! This was essentially the game that I had been waiting for my entire life. The original Super Mario Bros. changed my whole perspective on what video games could be, but I actually felt a little betrayed by Super Mario Bros. 2 because it was just too much of a departure from the original game. Super Mario Bros. 3 brought the action back to the Mushroom Kingdom, which was now a fully realized place. The scope of the world was bigger, the technical and artistic qualities of the presentation were some of the best to be seen and heard, and the gameplay, while still reminiscent of the original SMB, offered so much more depth and variety. I can respect the argument that Super Mario World is a better game, but there's a charm and a personal nostalgia surrounding SMB3 that has kept it my favorite Mario game for the past 15 years.