Super Mario Bros. 3

“Find a warp, dude, find a warp! If he finds a warp he can jump points.” -Corey

Super Mario Bros. 3

Nintendo had something huge planned. With the success of the previous two ‘Mario’ games, there was no doubt that a third installment would be on its way. As we know, it did, and the game may have conspired into the most hype a video game has ever gotten.

Near the end of The Wizard, in Video Armageddon, Jimmy Woods goes up against his rival Lucas (oh yeah…that nerdy, googly-type girl, too, but no one cares about herrrr). After all of Corey’s and Haley’s hard work of improving Jimmy’s gaming skills with the help of friendly Nintendo Power counselors (nice plug there, Nintendo), a new game was announced to be played on the gigantic wall screens. It was a game no one had ever seen before or played then.It was to be called… ‘SUPER MARIO BROTHERS 3‘!

There’s a lot of complaints among NES fans when it comes to the film’s poor script during the scenes that played out in these Mario 3 scenes. Haley somehow knew about whistle warps even though the game had just been introduced to the mass a few moments prior. Other than that small qualm, I believe Nintendo successfully made some of the biggest waves in hype the video game industry has yet attempted to conjure. I guess this was our treat for watching, what some may call, a “90-minute commercial.”

When ‘SMB3′ was finally released soon after the movie hit theaters, a mad scramble was made for the game shelves. As soon as shipments came in they were sold clean. In fact, Nintendo couldn’t meet such high demand until many months afterwards. For the lucky stores that did have copies, the companies took note of the rarity and raised their prices to as high as $70+ for more profit of their own from the juggernaut.

After all the confetti and balloons fell to the grown and deflated, respectively, game marketing charts showed the game had sold more than 7 million copies, for a record high.