No battery save, how did anyone finish this game? (Super Mario Bros. 3)

Forums > Game Forums > Super Mario Bros. 3 > No battery save, how did anyone finish this game?

BdR (7207) on 9/30/2015 8:17 AM · Permalink · Report

Just recently I was checking out Super Mario Bros 3 for NES, and given the length of the game I was surprised by the lack of any save feature. There's no battery save or password, so after you shut down the console any progress is simply lost. Back in the day the first Mario game I played was Super Mario World on SNES so I kind of expected this to have a battery save too.

With all the praise Super Mario Bros 3 has received from critics and gamers (rightfully so) the lack of any save feature seems to go largely unmentioned. I mean the Legend of Zelda was released two years earlier and it had a battery save option, so technically it was possible.

I'm just curious about anyone who played Mario 3 back in the day when it came out:

did you ever finish this game?

did you keep the console running for days?

did anyone know about warp whistles back then?

did you use Game Genie codes to skip levels?

Terok Nor (42009) on 9/30/2015 8:24 AM · Permalink · Report

[Q --start BdR wrote--] did you keep the console running for days? [/Q --end BdR wrote--]

That's exactly what I did. Took me a few days over a weekend IIRC.

Alaka (106107) on 9/30/2015 9:18 AM · Permalink · Report

I'm pretty sure the warp whistles were well known about at that time.

chirinea (47495) on 9/30/2015 12:15 PM · Permalink · Report

Yes, they were, my friends used it all the time.

The only time I beat this was using an emulator, so I saved from one day to the other while playing.

BdR (7207) on 10/19/2015 1:18 PM · Permalink · Report

Same here, although I played though it one world at a time on the IMBNes emulator (on PS1) using the KKKZSPIU game genie code :D

Adzuken (836) on 11/4/2015 5:13 PM · edited · Permalink · Report

I'm not sure I beat it without warp whistles back in the day, but a few years ago, my brother-in-law and I finished it without skipping any levels, and we did it in an afternoon. It has a lot of levels, but they're typically pretty short.

The warp whistles were fairly well known, even back in the day. Going back to some of my earliest gaming memories, I recall my mother showing me how to get the whistle in the first castle. That whistle in particular and the method to obtain it was even shown off in the movie, The Wizard.