Super Mario 3D Land/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Best Boss Ever: The Final Bowser Battle, which has Bowser relentlessly attacking and chasing you through an enormous obstacle course that puts your platforming skills to the test, accompanied by some of the best music in the franchise. Search your feelings, you know it to be true!
  • Best Level Ever: 1-4.
    • 2-3 and S1-3 as well. Also, the Final Bowser Castle which also has the Best Boss Ever!
    • If you're a Zelda fan, you will enjoy 5-2.
  • Demonic Spiders: Cosmic Clones are back, and they're as annoying as ever! Thankfully you only have one chasing you around, but they tend to appear in levels where you NEED to be careful about navigating through, which is really bad since they'll ram right into you if you hesitate too much. Not to mention that there's a giant variant which starts chasing you later on in the Special worlds.
  • 8.8: Gamespot slapped it with a meager 8.0, while other outlets such as IGN, Game Informer and GamePro gave it higher scores. While other reviews had arguably legitimate reasons for lowering the score in the game being unoriginal or being overly easy for much of the game, Gamespot's written justification? "[Super Mario 3D Land has] limited StreetPass and gyrometer features." In the words of the site's very own user-created magazine System Wars Monthly:

This is true, Super Mario 3D Land only has limited use of motion control and StreetPass, which is very disapointing. Much to blame is the game's genre, a platformer. Seriously, how are you going to use StreetPass and motion controls on a handheld platformer? This is clearly a big mistake on Nintendo's part.

  • It's Easy, So It Sucks: Many fans - and even Cinemassacre - complained that the White Tanooki Suit made the game way too easy, never considering that they could play the game and avoid this Trope entirely simply by not using it.
  • Fake Longevity: Too many examples to mention, but chief among them are: having to complete a stage again if you just want a power up, which becomes a problem if you're in a level that requires the Super Leaf to get a Star Medal, and the level doesn't have any (it's either that or Save Scumming), having to essentially complete the entire game all over again with Luigi just to get one of the five stars[1] and unlock Special World "8-crown".
  • Game Breaker: Once you get your hands on a Statue Leaf, you possess the power to destroy most of the game's seemingly indestructible obstacles by letting them collide into you after transforming. Spiked balls? Gone. Spiked rollers? Scrap metal. Banzai Bills? They explode, leaving you unscathed. You can even go on the offensive with this by jumping over your obstacle in question then transforming.
  • Internet Backdraft: Not towards the developers or reviewers, but towards PETA, who attacked the game on the grounds that the Tanooki Suit promotes wearing fur. (They even made a parody flash game, Mario Kills Tanooki.) After realizing how much of a hornet's nest they stirred, they tried to claim a "Just Joking" Justification, but not everyone's buying it.
    • Brental Floss put it best in his "RANTAlfloss" about MKT, after showing how Mario gets his suit 3D Land, and then asking PETA if they saw Mario skinning a raccoon alive.

Brentalfloss: "No! It's a MAGICAL... FUCKING... LEAF!"

  • Memetic Mutation: Mario being accused of being a furry is a recurring joke.
  • Most Annoying Sound: "dododo, DA-DA, DA-DA, DA, DA, DA, do, do-do!"[2]
    • "WAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!"[3]
      • "WAHHHHH-HA-HA-HA-HO!!!!!"[4]
    • Any sound that Cosmic Mario makes.
  • Most Wonderful Sound: Get your lives over 999 with the W 1-2 trick. Happens again when you hit 1,110.
    • The Zelda puzzle solving noise in 5-2.
  • Ruined FOREVER: A good chunk of fan reactions to the Tanooki Suit having none of the abilities it's known for (although it can still slow your fall and you can still do the tail spin attack; the ability to turn into stone is only available with a special leaf that you can get starting in the Special Worlds).
  • Scrappy Mechanic: Nintendo has been pretty good with recent Mario games on setting aside special areas you can repeatedly visit just for power-ups to help with replayability... Except this game. Once you unpack an item from any of the Toad Houses and leave, it's gone for good. Nothing will bring the houses back except getting a Game Over, and you'll be hard pressed to encounter one with the plethora of 1-Ups the game gives you. As mentioned above in Fake Longevity, you can also nab power-ups from stages, but if you want to leave the stage with the power-ups in question, you have to complete the level, as exiting the course does not save your progress.
    • On the other hand, getting Street Pass connections to other players does bring back the Mushroom Houses, so just carry around your 3DS in sleep mode and you'll do all right.
  • Tear Jerker: It's not the first time Mario gets to see Peach getting kidnapped right before his eyes, but this is the only time this hit him...hard. To clarify, at the end of that level (World 8, first Bowser castle), Mario doesn't even do his happy dance. Though he did seem determined more than shell shocked, meaning he's about to get dangerous.
  • That One Level: Special 3-5 is a version of the normally manageable World 6-4 turned into a complete and utter nightmare. The Beat Blocks only materialize for a second before disappearing meaning that you need to be really quick on your feet, which is far easier said than done thanks to the plethora of fireballs and grinders at the end of the level which can trip you up. If you don't have a Tanooki Suit backing you up, be ready to hurt.
    • Special 7-2 reverts the Beat Blocks to where they behave like they did in 6-4, but with one nasty caveat: there's a Cosmic Clone hounding you the whole way. Have fun.
    • Special 7-4 has a rather hellish level where you're pursued by an enormous Cosmic Clone while you have to navigate a complicated network of Flip-Swap platforms that flip when you jump.
    • Then there's Special 8-5, which has a giant Cosmic Clone chase you through a series of fast-moving rotating platforms that can easily drop you into the bottomless abyss if you aren't careful.
  1. ↑ Luckily, you don't have to get the Star Medals or gold flags again
  2. ↑ TOO BAD!
  3. ↑ A voice clip recycled from Super Mario 64.
  4. ↑ A voice clip recycled from Super Mario Galaxy.
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