Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros 3 100% playthrough comments

On my 2nd playthrough of this GBA port, I played through every level with Luigi, and getting the "white mushroom house" secret in each world. The GBA version actually puts a coin counter on the level with the mushroom house secret (only after you beat the game), so you can see how close you are to getting it.

wow... I actually found a secret passage in 5-1 that I never knew about before... you have to use a star to kill the chain chomps, then fly up with the tail at the beginning to get to a pipe... after that point I explored more found a bunch more bonus rooms in this level that I either never knew about or forgot...

Then I started playing through all the e-Reader levels, called "World e", using a save that had all of them unlocked. This save even included the Japan-only e-reader levels... 36 levels in total.

These levels are surprisingly good... first there were some SMB1 level remakes, that's nothing exciting... then a bunch of gimmick levels using stuff like note blocks etc... there was sky world levels, a really complex world 7 style maze level, an ice level where you had to use fire flower to get some of the A coins... this world also had a "get all the coins in the level" challenge, it was a level filled with bob-ombs that kept screwing up my maxing out the 10-coin blocks... I managed to beat it eventually.

Then even more surprisingly, it also started using stuff from SMB2 and SMW.
- some levels had vegetables you could pick up out of the ground...
- it had the cape powerup, with the same flying ability from SMW and everything..
- there was also a level where you had to use the boot to hop off thwomps, just like spin jumping in SMW
- triangle blocks that let you run up walls, were used a lot for flying and timed switches
- had a bunch of enemies from SMW like flying hammer bro, wiggler, round goomba, etc...
- this one level was really easy to beat, but really hard to get all the A coins on... it had a bunch of doors on a mountain, most of those doors were exit-only.. you had to fly up to some of them... and inside the doors were puzzle/action rooms with an A coin and/or connecting rooms between doors.. however some rooms had invisible walls/floors all over the place.. I found out you had to find the tanooki suit in the level and use its power to see the invisible walls.
- there was even a SMW-style ghost house level with a Big Boo battle at the end.
- then there was a desert level where you had to go inside a pyramid and dig through sand...
- got to this one really hard Bowser Castle level... seems to be based off SMB3's Bowser Castle, but also has a bunch of stuff from SMW like dry beetle, falling spikes, magikoopa, jumping bowser statues... also a choice of 3 rooms at the beginning, each of them has the 1st of 4 A coins. I beat all 3 rooms while getting their coin... the part that gave me the most trouble was the Bowser battle at the end. the blocks were arranged differently making it take longer, and making it harder to dodge flames.

and... done... completed every E level with Mario... that was really fun. It felt like a SMBX game with everything about SMB1, 2, 3, and World rolled into one.