Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

---

A playthrough of Nintendo's 2003 platformer for the Game Boy Advance, Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3.

This video shows the entire "Level Card" mode from the Wii U Virtual Console release of the game that is currently available through the Switch Online subscription service.

Super Mario Advance 4 was essentially an enhanced GBA port of the Super Nintendo remake of Super Mario Bros. 3 (youtu.be/1kdrLp4sUMg). What made this version notable was that it was one of the tiny handful of games that supported Nintendo's e-Reader, an accessory for the GBA and GameCube that could read data from barcodes printed on trading cards. These cards provided a means of delivering new game content post-release, and in the case of SMA4, included new stages and power-ups. Nintendo put out a total of thirty-eight stages on these cards - 32 brand new ones and 6 taken from the original Super Mario Bros. - and they patched all of them into the base game when they rereleased SMA4 on the Wii U Virtual Console in 2016.

And these stages tend to feel pretty wild. The approach to level design is more Mario Maker than Mario 3 in spirit, and a load of stuff from Mario 2 and Mario World has been tossed in, like capes, radishes, and Chargin' Chucks. It all makes for a novel reinterpretation of Mario 3's core gameplay tenets, and it's cool that Nintendo made an effort to preserve it all in such an accessible way.

*Recorded with a Retroarch shader to mimic the look of the original hardware.
_____________
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

NintendoComplete (nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!