Super Mario 3D World: an obsession reborn after a decade away

http://media.edge-online.com/wp-cont..._3-610x343.jpgMy love affair with Mario began in December 1993. All-Stars rarely left the hatch of my Super Nintendo, muscled out only by certain special cases like Yoshi’s Island or Super Star Wars. Or Star Wing. Or anything that pushed my SNES to the limits and further towards Lawnmower Man-style vicarious visions.Similarly, Mario 64 was hard to dethrone from my N64. Only Turok’s £74.99 price-tag (a whopping £100 when you factored in the memory card you needed to save the thing) could oust it some weeks post-launch.The cycle of Mario’s supremacy wasn’t to repeat in my life, however, as Sunshine began the cruel new Nintendo regime where Mario titles wouldn’t necessarily spearhead a hardware launch. Mario was no longer the first impression made on my new console, my new Gamecube, new Wii, new 3DS, new Wii U. Luigi stepped in admirably to bat first innings for Gamecube in 2002 and while Luigi’s Mansion was a wonderful whirlwind of a game, the cycle had been broken. Mario was no longer the chauffeur to a Nintendo console’s new features, showing off the early promise and potential. Instead, he was being rolled out as the console’s second wind for consumers on the fence. Unsure about a new Nintendo console adding to your yarn of wires? Allow us to introduce a certain moustachioed gentleman. Mario had become more tactical – he wasn’t a day-one killer app (Nintendo console features would become the killer app themselves with Wii’s motion control, Wii U’s gamepad and 3DS’… 3D), he was a day-120 emergency sales storm in a red hat.And so I walked away from Mario. He was always in my peripheral vision, sometimes wandering temporarily back into my life in more bite-size adventures such as New Super Mario Bros and 3D Land. But he was never my focus of attention in the way he had been before. Even Galaxy and its sequel, outstanding as I knew them to be, couldn’t pull me away from other commitments. I had new friends. I had Drake for leaps and bounds and Master Chief for flights and fights beyond the stars.http://media.edge-online.com/wp-cont..._4-610x343.jpgThen I saw the trailer for 3D World. Cat suits. Four players. Bedlam. It was silly, slapstick and – after years of other trivial pursuits – it was refreshing. It was as colourful as a carnival and deranged as a drunken night at a funhouse. Having been away so long, eating nothing but steak and eggs, here was candy canes and sherbet dips.Then I came across someone playing it. Sat next to me on a sofa playing it off the Gamepad screen. The pixels popped, the characters careered around the screen. Having sustained my portable diet with iOS, Android and Vita for so long, this was a whole new place, dimension. It was a colouring book compared to a stencil. And then I picked up a Wii Remote and dived in for a co-op dragon ride. Over half a dozen free-wheeling, free-falling river rapid rides we learned to co-ordinate jumps, turns and unify our objective.The next stage had us battling Koopas, dodging shells, sharing pick-ups, launching each-other at flagpoles. We flipped it to the big-screen and Mario’s 3D World exploded like a firework.Then it was onto Bowser, scuttling behind his motor volleying bombs back at him on a castle wall.Then it was the peril of an earlier-than-usual sand world. Pecking birds, sinking sands…

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