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More importantly, even with all of the Super Mario titles that have come since, 3D World’s particular blending of styles remains distinct. It doesn’t exactly look like a modern game, but the bright, colorful visuals hold up well. This was all true eight years ago, and the game remains a delight today.

(The former even spawned its own spinoff which, like 3D World, eventually made the transition from the Wii U to the Switch.) Perhaps the most notable are the cat suit, which lets Mario scamper up walls and slice at goombas with his claws, and the puzzle-oriented side missions starring Captain Toad. 3D World also introduced several important ideas to the series.

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While it’s full of short levels with a distinct beginning and end, it plays around with the formula with so many interesting ideas, whether that’s stages where you have to track shadows across the walls or chase down Bowser in a fireball-spewing convertible. The game strikes a nearly perfect balance between structure and creativity.

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Instead, the experience consists of a series of discrete, smaller levels that you access from an overworld map, much like if you were playing Super Mario World on the SNES. While it’s a 3D game, it doesn’t take place in one large world. When Super Mario 3D World first launched it was something of a contradiction: it was both a departure and a return to the series’ roots. Put these in the same collection and you end up with the best of both worlds.

It takes many of the same ideas as 3D World but puts them in a new kind of open world, one filled with constant danger thanks to a kaiju-sized Bowser roaming around. The base game remains identical to the original, but Nintendo has packaged it with a brand-new, expansion pack-like adventure called Bowser’s Fury. But this week’s rerelease of 3D World is more than just a simple port. Inevitably, the game is now launching on the Switch. Plus, it let Mario dress up as an adorable cat for the first time. It took the familiar level-based gameplay of classic two-dimensional Super Mario games and fused it with the more expansive 3D gameplay, building off of the portable-only Super Mario 3D Land. That’s part of what made Super Mario 3D World so beloved when it launched on the Wii U in 2013. Mario’s side-scrolling adventures largely all worked the same, but in 3D, players never knew what to expect. From the bite-sized planetoids of Galaxy to the hakoniwa-inspired worlds of Odyssey, the Kyoto game maker has never settled on just one formula. Ever since the open green fields of Super Mario 64, Nintendo has experimented with the best way to transport Mario into three dimensions.

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