Graphicially the game looks great and, as expected, is the best looking Mario title on a handheld  to date. The art style is almost one part Super mario 64, another part Super Mario Galaxy and a little Super Mario Bros 3 for good measures. A casual Mario fan may say “what the hell is the difference”? Maybe they are right, or, maybe they need to go back to playing Halo where I will see them later this week, but true fans will see the differences. Everything runs smoothly and looks colourful and bright. The audio is also top notch and even surpasses Star Fox 64 3DS in term of sounds and music.

The 3D effects are what brought us to the party, and even early in, they don’t disappoint at all.  This is not the first title to have great 3D. Zelda and Star Fox have some very nice 3D effects and Zelda has a lot of very subtle 3D, much like the movie Avatar did. But there is a noticeable difference and improvement in the 3D effect when playing Super Mario 3D land. It flat out will be the reason to justify buying a 3DS for most people. I do not suffer from any eye issues, and thus can play with the 3D effect on full for long time periods, but for those that can only play for short bursts such as my wife, the ability to “tone down” the 3D in Super Mario 3D Land  seems to work better than other titles have so far. Playing it in 2D is difficult as the 3D effect is important for much of the platforming.