Top 10 Misconceptions About Super Mario Bros. 3 

I already knew that as well. Also the card matching mini game has 8 preset patterns.

@@doopness785 yep, those were in there too haha all you had to do was start at the corners and look for stars

Bottom right corner is always a star

That same guide also said hitting the card block at a 45 degree angle is what gives you the star at the end. I mean, I guess they weren't wrong, technically, but now we know it's a loading issue with running full speed :D

The ancient lore!

I actually learned about this very recently from another of Mitch's videos and it blew my mind. I've always been told and read that the "pause forever" thing was a myth but I also have a very clear memory of it actually happening to me and a friend when we played. For literally decades I figured it must be a fake memory until I learned about the game genie thing because I also remember that I loved playing with the "start and stay as hammer bros" cheat and suddenly it all makes sense.

That particular side effect of the Game Genie code was even mentioned in at least later versions of the code manual. (It may not have been in the very first one, but it was in the one my family had.) I believe it was the infinite lives code and it very explicitly stated that you had to stand on the door and hold up or you would be "trapped in Bowser's time warp forever" and have to restart the game with the reset button.

@@jondorthebrinkinator It was not the infinite lives code, and instead it was indeed for the codes that have you start and stay as a particular power up state.

@@SomeGuy712x Ya, i remember it happening to me, being super confused, and then reading about it in the book that it happens when you use the 'start and stay as' codes. Which then lead to all of us holding up at that door.

@@SomeGuy712x Pretty sure it was start and stay as Hammer Mario. I used that code back in the day, and was crestfallen when I couldn't use it to beat the game (I sucked at Mario 3 as a kid, and the hammer suit isn't exactly the easiest power up to keep). I also found a code that was permanent small Mario, but effectively always in tanooki statue mode which was also unwinnable, although that was because the game always considered down being held and wouldn't let you use doors.

I think he forgot he was talking about Mushroom Houses _and_ Spade Tiles.

Yeah fire flowers don't show up till the first fortress

Tall mario = super mario

​@@tntgaming828nah

Hammer Brothers also respawn after you run out of lives, so if you continue a world after death, you can get another hammer. So it would require intentionally dying at key times to farm hammers.

@@IMarvinTPA nes or snes?

@@TurretBot NES, But it is an old memory, so I could be remembering incorrectly.

@@IMarvinTPA I don't think Hammer Bros. on the map actually respawn if you Game Over and continue. The only things that reset are your score and the normal levels of that world that you've cleared. But, special levels that activate automatically when you touch them (such as Hammer Bros., the Piranha Plant levels in world 7, and Bowser's tank, battleship, and airship levels in world 8) will remain beaten.

Yeah, I like doing worlds 5 and 6 out of order this way. But, you can't backwards warp to world 4. I think you can game over on world 2 or 3 and respawn the Hammer Bros. there, getting an extra hammer?

@@hitstun Even if you game over, the Hammer Bros do not respawn.

Yooo I love Yoshi's island. I'm on World 5 right now and I've been going for 100%.

@@CesarTorres61296 On which World are you now?

@@dolahn I completed the GBA version 100%.

It's one of those very secretive things like the Coin Ships. Most people just trigger stuff like that by pure accident.

Mine didn't :( It warned about the pause glitch, but not how to avoid it.

If blocks in SMB3 turned out to secretly always have a perfectly even number of sub-pixels, how would one successfully hit the block "straight in the middle"?

As Mitch said a lot of the Mario games have different rules on which direction the mushroom will go. So for someone who doesn't play a lot of SMB3 you might be looking for so many different consistencies for the mushroom that you miss this one.

@@airjodran im a lil thrown off by mitch’s comment bc mushroom behavior in every mario game works the same except for Mario 3 (and i guess Mario 2 USA if you wanna count that).

As somebody who learned about the direction of the mushroom from Nintendo Power, I was also a little surprised to learn that tidbit wasn't well known.

It made sense to me too at first, but I'm not sure it actually does the more I think about it? Like, if you jumped onto two identical trampolines, one for each leg, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't bounce higher than if you only jumped onto one of them with both legs?

@@Idran Well, in a that sense, since your weight is distributed on both, then the force which each trampoline exerts on would be the same as if you had stepped on one, in the case of noteblocks, they each get depressed the same amount when you land on them, so even though they might seem like springs, it is a different mechanism that is actually pushing Mario up, so in that case both noteblocks would exert each a force upon trying to return to their original state. A bit convoluted but I think that's how it would work. Still It's not as simple as I'd originally imagined.

Was about to make a comment about it. Now I don't need to :)

Another way you can do this is by walljumping on the right side of the wall, get up on top and then jump to grab the wand. This "Offscreen Wand Grab" is a strategy that Mitch always try to do when speedrunning. It's however quite difficult to do, one reason being that the walljump itself is frame perfect if you hit the right pixel alignments, but in some worlds you can't reach high enough up the wall without using the Koopakid to bounce off of. P-Wing is not worth using for it, as it's both better used elsewhere and you are unable to firekill the Koopakid. One strategy is to grab the leaf in 6-Airship and then fly up to the wand. As, depending on the speedrun route you are using, you won't have Fire Mario here anyway. Though that will make the wallclip in 7-1 harder when you have the leaf. Anyway, long answer :D

I guarantee you that’s it. I remembered something about a time trap but couldn’t remember the source but after reading your comment that had to be it.

I've had that happen once. Pretty wild.

And interestingly for me, I HAD to hold up on that door or the game would completely hardlock me by freezing. Multiple times I made it to the end, only for the game to completely freeze. But if I immediately jumped up to the door after bowser died and held up, it worked fine.

​@jake3988 The game freezing almost immediately after the door appears is something that happens if you're using a Game Genie. Specifically, any of the Game Genie codes that force Mario to constantly have a certain power-up will make that glitch happen.

@@CosmicPlatonix I did somewhat regularly use game genie, but only because it for whatever reason made it easier for the game to boot up consistently. I never actually used any codes (at least for this game anyway)

It's because the Bowser door is a sprite. So the code triggers the ending on a condition of "touching the door sprite AND up is pressed". Whereas for normal doors, the code is something like "when an up keypress is read, check to see if Mario is in front of door tiles and if so, move him to the door's exit".

​@bitwize Hey it seems super likely there are sprite doors in 8-fortress? Revealed by p-switch. I noticed they that can flicker out. Oh also world 4 fortress 2 has a p-switch door too.

That’s what I’m thinking.

I believe block is 16 pixels wide, so you can't hit the center.

​@@Pianist203 For what I'm asking, that would depend on whether Mario's sprite is considered to have an even width or an odd width. If his width is even, it could completely align with an even-width block.

@@ZipplyZane You're right, but actually I think sprite size isn't determining, but its hitbox size is. Maybe there's some determining rule even if hitboxes align perfectly, but I don't know.

@@Pianist203 Maybe it's just a matter of how it's checked. Maybe if the left is checked first it will always go right when hit in the middle. I'm thinking this because I can't imagine that Mario's hitbox is 1 pixel wide at any point, let alone at the top. Someone would've noticed that 1 pixel that was higher than all the other pixels in the hitbox :p So, multiple points of the hitbox must be hitting the block at the same time, so it must be possible to hit both sides at the same time and I kind of doubt that the pixels are counted or that there's a left/right sensor about half a mario width from the center. So it's probably something super simple like how the game checks for collisions and that it's not done or maybe not even physically possible to do it everywhere at the same time. If I'm right, you could have one pixel of Mario's hitbox on the left half and all the rest on the right and the mushroom would still go to the right because that one pixel is checked before the other ones. Edit: And if I'm wrong that might still happen for other reasons, but if it doesn't happen I'm definitely wrong and it's just not that.

I wonder if you would fail the jump if you let go of A before the second bounce finishes. Wouldn't you get the full bounce from the first block, but not from the second, and it would gimp your jump? Would be a pretty strict window, though. We're talking a few frames.

@@AutisticGameGuy if they *set* vertical speed vs. adding to it then yes... Guess I'm gonna have to fire up the emulator and test some things.

​@@AutisticGameGuy You don't get the second noteblock jump, just the fist one. When the first noteblock's jump triggers, Mario is at higher Y position because he's at the second noteblock's height. The second noteblock jump doesn't actually trigger.

My theory is that since the blocks don't trigger at the same time, the slight delay with the second block is effectively like hitting a slightly higher Note Block. Jumping on a Note Block probably sets Mario's vertical momentum to a specific value, and it would be set to that value again while Mario is in the air.

in mario 1, it always goes right

No. In SMB1 (and SMM2, for all styles when not in night mode) the mushroom always goes the right.

I only find people citing this rule (about which side you hit the block on) in Super Mario Bros 3. I don't see any talk about Super Mario World or later games, other than a dubious claim that the red mushroom always moves towards you--but which obviously isn't true in SMB3.

There are actually multiple extra coins in 1-4. It depends on how well you do with the two multi-coin blocks in the level. The first one is easy to get the maximum of 11 from, but the second one is so high up from where you're jumping from that you'll typically get only 7-9 coins from it. If you've gotten all other coins in the level and maxed out the first multi-coin block, you need to get at least 7 from the second multi-coin block to hit the 44-coin quota for the white mushroom house.

It does make it faster, yes. Mitch is always going for an Offscreen Wand Grab when speedrunning.