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Super Mario Bros 3 was perhaps the crowning achievement of the NES library. It expanded upon the Mario universe in an unparalleled fashion adding more content than you could shake a raccoon tail at. But now, three decades later, you know all the secrets and have many of the levels memorized...What's left to experience?

How about 8 BRAND NEW worlds never seen before?! Stunning colors stand out in every world of The Rainbow Realms while the balanced and interesting level design solidify this custom level set as one of the best for SMB3.

If I strained to say anything negative it would be that the puzzle levels were sometimes unreasonable. Needing complex and/or obscure solutions in the middle of what's otherwise an entirely platformer-centric design stuck out and was the only remarkable lowlight.

5/5 Stars for me. Full playthrough available on YouTube @ The Fireorb Mod Museum

My review is based on a play-through of worlds 1 to 3.

Super Mario Bros 3 hacks are a dime a dozen these days. This is not on the lower end of the totem pole, this is absolute gold. This hack stays true to the original Super Mario Bros 3, while incorporating very interesting, fun and challenging level designs. The unique use of different color palettes make the game that much more interesting and beautiful, while not taking away from aspects of the original game. The mild, quirky humor added to the mushroom huts, castles and Princess letters is also a nice touch.

I've just recently discovered both SMB3 hacks by Bluecrush. Hoping to see more, I love them!

I played through this some time ago, but I remember it well and fondly. The main draw of this hack is that it seeks to imitate the original Super Mario Bros. 3 in two important ways: difficulty curve and themed worlds.

The difficulty curve is fair, challenging, and fun. There are no cheap jumps or kaizo nonsense here; when I died, I deserved it and learned from it.

Even more importantly, bluecrush made it a point to center on a theme for each world. Even if certain stages only matched that theme via their color scheme, that little bit went a long way to differentiate each world from the others. I think SMB3 hackers should take note of this and employ this element more often. It gives the game as a whole a fresh coat of paint that matches the level editing under the hood.

Overall, an excellent hack that uses obvious and important design choices to exemplify what Mario hacking can and should be.

I feel like this hack was made just for me, with its theme being centered around color. Each world has its own central color, and most of its palettes revolve around that. It's all done in a way that makes it feel more natural, though, so it's very well implemented. Really, the mastery of color usage here is pretty consistent; my favorite was World 2, where everything is pink! Sprites aren't altered in any way, and that's fine; if nothing else, it gives the game a consistent aesthetic. All text was changed, and is pretty humorous, especially the bonus games.

The level design is often clever both in the stages and on the overworld map. Stages often make you think about what you're doing without really putting you through the ringer. Yes, there are a couple of bombs here and there, but for a full 8-world hack, that's both understandable and forgivable. It also had some neat aesthetic moments just because of how things were put together; my favorite example of this is World 4-3, which has you swim down into a big block and into a pipe, putting you into a cozy little shelter. If you like color, or are just looking for a solid hack that isn't going to put you through agony, give this a try!

Blue Crush has an amazing sense of aesthetics, and a solid design philosophy and does a great job of bringing that to bear in this hack. It is well-conceived and well-executed. It is fun and it is challenging. It is familiar and it is new. GREAT work. THIS is what rom-hacking was made for!

This is coming from a very casual Mario player. I actually consider my skill very high in video games, but very low in Mario games. We've always been bad at the legacy Mario games, but that won't stop me from remaining objective, and hopefully this encourages other casual Mario players to check it out.

I stream on Twitch and a buddy and I recently blind raced this. To put a time stamp on it, it took me just under six hours to beat blind with no save states and very little Mario experience - a bulk of that time in world 7 and 8. He cleared it in about 3 and a half hours (he normally runs Mario games). There's a few graphical glitches/glitches, one I can't remember, but two (non-gamebreaking ones as of version 1.3) are:

• In the puzzle state with the fire flower/leaf, the doughnut blocks at the top of the stage turn into weird enemies if you let them unbalance and fall.
• In world 8 you can walk into part of the overworld (doesn't cause any harm.)

There was one more, but I forget what Byrdman said.

Anyway, overall, this is very polished and felt pretty fair.

Pros: + Good pacing. + Partially good difficulty curve. + Good level design. Somewhat non-linear as well, as even though it is Mario and yes, hold right to progress, in some levels there was branching paths. + Clever logical puzzles, although some of the solutions require non-logical and spacial thinking (e.g - the feather/fire flower one mentioned above.) + Very rarely I felt the game killed me because it was being cheap. For the most part, I always felt it was my fault minus two exceptions: a door with thwomps and a stage with falling Goombas - although the latter was easy to avoid if I took my time. + Very aesthetically pleasing.

Cons:

• Difficulty ramps up in level 7/8 and feels unbalanced compared to the rest of the game. I feel worlds 1-6 are more "casual" and I didn't really suffer much going through them, but I saw tons of game overs getting through world 7 and 8. This isn't really a con, as they are beatable without save states, but a lot of the levels in both those worlds require a lot of deaths to learn how to properly go through them.

+/- = Power-ups are rare when it comes to casual play. In-game and in mushroom houses, I constantly found myself with nothing in reserve. I actually think this is also a pro, as it makes the game more challenging, but it's also the reason in later levels you die so much as well. You'll find yourself literally as small Mario and a handful of lives left.

Overall, try this out if you're versed enough in Mario.

I suck at Mario, enjoyed it and beat it.

Take care creator. Thanks for the hack. :)

It's no Mario Adventure or 3mix. There isn't really much new stuff, but as far as levels go, this hack is top notch. I'm halfway through world 2 and I plan on finishing this - the difficulty is really fair and the level design is interesting. Any complaints I could have with this hack are complaints I already have about the base game Mario 3.

If you're looking for loads of fun levels to play, try out this hack.