One of my favorite games of all time is Super Mario Bros. 3. I remember freaking out when I saw it showcased on the movie The Wizard. I remember playing it before it’s release date on a PlayChoice-10, and I remember buying it when it was released at my local drug store as it was the only store within walking distance that sold NES games.
To breath new life into this game, I thought it’d be fun to try to beat the first level blindfolded. I’ve played it enough times, it couldn’t be that hard, right?
I was wrong. I relied far more on seeing what was coming up than just knowing where I was at any given time. Still, I knew it could be done.
At first, I tried the General Custer method. That proved fatal.
I tried to have my wife help by acting as my eyes. Not too successful, either.
I even tried to have my kids help and suffered the same results.
Giving up for 9 months, I was playing this title just for fun when I was reminded of this challenge. I decided to revisit it. After I tried my old method, I thought if I could find a timing to the jumping and just keep moving and jumping as needed, that’d work. That way it wouldn’t matter where I am, I just had to keep moving and jumping as timed.
I tried counting out my jumps. It seemed to work fine, but the timing would never be accurate, I learned. There had to be another way. That’s when I noticed I started jumping to the tune of the music. Since the music will be the same every time, I decided to time out my jumps accordingly and, after a few attempted, I knew I could get it to work.
Turning my back to the screen, it did take a few tries but, after a while, I got it! See if you can match what I did and have it work for you.