2003 video game

Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 is a 2003 platform game developed and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy Advance. It was released in Japan, and later released in Europe, North America, and Australia. It is an enhanced remake of the NES video game Super Mario Bros. 3, and is based on the remake found in Super Mario All-Stars for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Players control either Mario or Luigi as they travel through the eight kingdoms of the Mushroom World to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser. The game was revealed at Nintendo's conference at the E3 2003 convention. It contains several enhancements, including the addition of Mario and Luigi's voices by Charles Martinet, the ability to scan e-Cards into Nintendo's e-Reader to add certain content, and a multiplayer mode based on the original arcade game Mario Bros.. The game also allows players to save replays of their gameplay.

The e-Reader compatibility received some interest from critics before the game's release; however, the e-Reader itself proved to be a failure. This led to two of the four e-Reader card series to only be released in Japan, and for the game to get a new version that does not market e-Reader capability. Critics generally felt that the e-Reader connectivity was sub-optimal, but that the content offered through it was high quality. Super Mario Advance 4 was critically acclaimed, and the game sold 2.88 million copies in North America. This version was eventually re-released on the Wii U's eShop and later on the Nintendo Switch's Nintendo Classics service. Both versions featured all e-Reader levels, including levels originally only available in Japan.