#51: Super Mario Bros. 3 (Nintendo, NES, 1988/1991) 

Such is the richness of the setting that despite the game foregrounding its performativity, it still feels like it contains a more fully realised world than anything we’ve encountered. Zelda II had its range and map/level split, but stretched things with the repeat dialogue and all; Super Mario Bros. 3 includes just as much as it needs to, and some smart changes besides. Even the fact that Mario and Luigi now exist in the same world in two-player, rather than identical parallel ones, makes it feel more like a real place.

Perhaps it’s a conclusion that’s easier to come to in a post-Super Mario Maker world, but the brilliance of Super Mario Bros. 3 as sequel and as theatre is in taking the solid and dependable gameplay and mechanics of the original and using those as building blocks, the platforms of its stageset, then rearranging them throughout. Each world rejigs and relights them and makes them interact with new props and characters for a set of dramatically different scenes. Water levels get turned from brief distractions to an entire world, the desert and its own idyllic grassland (predating Sonic‘s, if not in the UK) emerge. World 7 turns off all of the lights to interact with the bare mechanics of pipes. The transitions between feel like curtains down and a chance to move things round.