Yeah, I remember. Nowadays they’re only treated as ways to sell lots of T-shirts and hats.

As much as I like the game, Super Mario Bros. 3 was the beginning of the end for 1UP value.* Assuming you don’t use the two warp whistles to go straight to World 8, the game showers you with 1UP opportunities throughout. You get 1UPs from collecting three cards from the numbered stages, and a run and jump at the goal with the right momentum and timing is usually an ensured Starman card for a potential 5UP. You can win 1UPs from the scrolling picture games (if you don’t suck at them). You can earn a 1UP from the card matching game you get to play every few levels, as well as coins. There’s plenty of coin and 1UP opportunities throughout the stages, especially for power-up savvy players. You might even spawn the coin ship if you’re lucky.

When games like Super Mario World, Yoshi’s Island, and the 3D Marios had 1UPs alongside save data, they attempted to give 1UPs more value by not saving 1UP totals, but it’s really a forced, artificial value. While SMW would take away any stage progress since your last save if you got Game Over, you could just rush through a Ghost House or (if you know the code) an old fortress to save the game, or seek out generous 1UP opportunities elsewhere. While you do lose checkpoint progress, death in the 3D Marios is more an annoyance than a punishment, especially in Super Mario 64 where only a select few stages have checkpoints at all.

More recently, given New Super Mario Bros. 2 hands out enough coins to make Wario and Scrooge McDuck combined green with envy, it makes me wonder why the game designers even bothered locking away the (permanent) saving option at all.

* While Super Mario Bros. 2 (The Doki Doki one) did have the slots, it took luck and timing to get anything of worth from it and not all stages are as generous with produce patches for coins for slot attempts as the likes of 1-2 and 7-1 were.

I was thinking, for some reason, that the non-pulleyed motionless platforms didn’t accelerate smoothly. It’s probably the only object in the game that moves in such an abrupt manner, but even then, it’s in reaction to what the player does – certainly a far cry better-conceived than the erratic enemy patterns and janky physics of so many other NES platformers.