YMMV / Super Mario 3D Land

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• Awesome Bosses: The Final Boss against Bowser is surprisingly epic. The first half involves Mario chasing Bowser up the crumbling remains of the castle while Bowser, among other things, spits fireballs, throws spike balls, and at one point takes a page out of Donkey Kong by throwing dozens of barrels, concluding with the usual switch press to send him down into the lava old-school style. Afterwards, Mario gets to climb through the second half of his crumbling castle, but then, Bowser jumps back up and this time HE'S CHASING YOU! Managing to climb up to the top while avoiding his magical fireballs leads to a chase scene where Mario has to book it to a second switch before Bowser smashes him with his gargantuan claws. A great way to end the main story of this game.
• Awesome Levels:
  • For those who prefer the more open-world 3D Mario games, 3-1 is a standout level. It takes place in a massive desert to explore filled with hidden secrets and optional content.
  • If you're a Zelda fan, you will enjoy 5-2. The level is played from a top down perspective, emulating the dungeons from A Link to the Past. It also has flame puzzles, which produce the iconic Zelda jingle when you solve them.
  • S8-Crown follows in the footsteps of Super Mario Galaxy 2 by giving the player a difficult final challenge that serves as a culmination of all their skills and everything they've learned. Granted, it's easier than Grandmaster Galaxy and even "Champion's Road" from its own sequel, but S8-Crown is still a fantastic level in its own right.
• Awesome Music:
  • The Beach theme, a catchy theme that perfectly encapsulates the feeling of being in a beach and relaxing in it, while also perfectly blending in with the action encountered there. It's widely considered one of the best Underwater themes in Mario games, maybe even the best. A shame that it didn't return in Super Mario 3D World, though it did however return in Super Smash Bros. for 3DS and Ultimate.
  • The Castle theme. An epic foreboding theme that perfectly fits the fearful atmosphere of castle levels. It even got remastered and rearranged with an orchestra for Super Mario 3D World with and is even better there.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: After beating the first castle in World 8, Bowser shows up and reveals he still has the princess, jumps off the castle... and just flies away like he has creative mode on. There's absolutely no explanation for Bowser's ability to do that and Mario doesn't find anything unusual about it, and the game just continues normally.
• Breather Level:
  • An unintentional example. In 7-1, if you have the Super Leaf power up, you can get to the end of the level by jumping against the wall to your left after you jump from the ledge, then flutter your way over the fence to the flagpole.
  • Special 1-1 is this after the second half of World 8, not exactly easy but fairly basic platforming compared to what you'd just been through. Actually, most of Special 1 is this compared to the second half of World 8. But then you have Special 2.
  • Special 4-4 is just 1-3 with a 30 second time limit where you have to kill Goombas to add time. There's an abundance of Goombas so this serves as a nice break from the brutality that is special levels.
• Contested Sequel: A common criticism of the game is how it's seen as taking a step backward from the lauded Super Mario Galaxy 3D games formula to return to the Super Mario Bros./New Super Mario Bros. 2D games formula, in order to take the 3D one and merge it with the 2D one in a Hybrid game, with a thin Excuse Plot and an overall simplistic structure. 3D Land is still an acclaimed game in its own right, however, with its level design and innovative use of 3D being praised, and with many fans appreciating it precisely for its concept of taking the mechanics of the 2D games and putting them into 3D.
• Difficulty Spike:
  • Officially acknowledged by Shigeru Miyamoto to start at the beginning of World 8.
  • There's another difficulty spike that starts near the end of Special World 7. You know those speed run levels? You know those levels where Cosmic Mario is following you? Guess what? Nearly every level starting from S7-Castle is now a combination of both.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: This game introduces Pom Pom, a Cute Monster Girl who endeared enough fans to warrant becoming a Recurring Extra in subsequent games.
• Fan Nickname: Some people call the Tail Goombas "Tanoombas."
• Fridge Brilliance: The letter you receive after clearing World 4 shows Peach being ambushed by Goombas. The letter trying to fly out of Mario's reach wasn't being mischievous, it doesn't want Mario to see that.
• Game-Breaker: Because every single level is meant to be able to be cleared with small Mario, the Super Leaf in general is a massive Game-Breaker because of its hovering allowing the player to skip enormous amounts of the more difficult platforming segments. The Fire Flower and Boomerang Flower are more useful for collecting certain Star Medals, but almost every level is made drastically easier with the Super Leaf. Using the Super Leaf with the boomerang in inventory can make you unstoppable.
• Gateway Series: Director Koichi Hayashida has stated that 3D Land is meant to serve as an entry point into the series for consumers, explaining the easier difficulty compared to other 3D Mario games.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • Getting your lives over 999 grants you an awesome jingle. Happens again when you hit 1,110.
  • The Zelda puzzle solving noise in 5-2.
• Older Than They Think: New Super Mario Bros. introduced elements from the 3D Mario games into 2D Mario games years before Super Mario 3D Land did. Adding Wall Jumps, Triple Jumps and Ground Pounds first introduced in Super Mario 64 to the 2D games. What 3D Land did and deserves credit for is also adding Long Jumps and Backward Somersaults, as well as its main feature of putting them in a fully 3D environment instead of a 2D one.
• Once Original, Now Common: It was hugely acclaimed at launch for managing to take the 2D Mario formula and make it work in 3D, not to mention showing off just how powerful the 3DS really was. Its use of the 3DS's stereoscopic 3D was seen as proving the feature was more than just a dumb gimmick. It's even been argued that, as a Killer App along with Mario Kart 7, it was instrumental in letting the 3DS survive and thrive after a rough early period, which 3DS sales after their release back up. Years later, it's rarely discussed—the pitch of "2D Mario in 3D" was done on a much larger scale with many more new ideas in Super Mario 3D World, there are countless 3DS games that outclass it graphically, and the stereoscopic 3D is really a pretty minor aspect and the game in no way needs to be played with it on, other than for helping identifying some Puzzles. Consequently, it instead gets knocked for being easy besides certain difficulty spikes and lacking much of an identity, not unlike most mainline Mario games of that era (a derivative Mario plot and levels only set apart by a gimmick taken from an older game). Overall, it's seen as alright on its own merits and for starting the Hybrid "3D game that plays like a 2D game" series of Mario games, it's just that Super Mario 3D World is vastly considered to be an Even Better Sequel that surpassed it in every aspect.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Just like in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, triggering the assist block's appearance will lock you out of shining completion stars on your save file, even if you don't actually use the block. It's even toned up compared to that game, as you only need to die 5 times instead of 8 to cause it to appear. While the game is not particularly hard other than certain difficulty spikes, this was nearly unanimously seen as too harsh, as it's very easy to trigger even when you are careful. This would eventually be addressed in both New Super Mario Bros. U and Super Mario 3D World, where you'll only lose the shining stars if you actually use the block and even then you can recover them if the same course is cleared without using it.
  • 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. You can 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. You can replenish the Toad Houses through StreetPass tags, but that may be easier said than done.
  • Cosmic Mario chasing after you basically forces you to keep moving. Then there's stages where you have 30 seconds to start and you have to find ways (usually stomping on Goombas) to get more time. Now try stages with both!
• Self-Imposed Challenge: To add a final cruel twist of difficulty in S8-Crown, it's possible to complete the last section (the "Thank you!!" message) by jumping across the flipping platforms. Since each letter only lasts for around a couple of seconds before disappearing, you'll need to move and jump extremely quickly to avoid falling into the Bottomless Pit below.
• Spiritual Successor: To Super Mario Bros. 3, both in gameplay (the primary focus is the use of the Tanooki Suit) and in visuals (many of the levels' assets are modeled after those of the 2D levels in the 1988 game). The name is also a reference to Super Mario Land and its sequel, which were Mario's first portable adventures.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The World 3 map theme sounds kinda like Tijuana Taxi.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The end of the first Bowser castle in World 8. It's not the first time Mario gets to see Peach getting kidnapped right before his eyes, but it hits him especially hard here. When Mario touches the flagpole at the end, he doesn't even do his happy dance. Though he seems more determined than shell shocked, meaning he's about to get dangerous.
  • The Special World 8 music can seem like this. It makes it apparent that your journey is almost over.
• That One Level: Most of the Special worlds are a Brutal Bonus Level, but S7-Castle is insane. It's W5-Castle, but on a 30 second time limit requiring you to keep collecting +Clocks on the way to add 10 seconds for each clock collected. Also, there's a giant Cosmic Clone chasing you. The level is already full of platforms that sink into lava, and one Star Medal requires you to ride one of these until the very last second. There's also a few points where you have to let the Cosmic Clone break walls in your path, wasting your precious time.

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