It’s been 18 years since I first sat down with my NES and popped the Super Mario Bros 3 cartridge in. I played the absolute hell out of that game, through it multiple times, alone and with others. It was a fantastic game that literally consumed all my freetime for years.

This past week I bought it again for $5 from the online shop for the Nintendo Wii. It’s been 18 years, and the game is as fresh and entertaining as it was when it first came out, which is absolutely extraordinary.

Consider a modern game. Say, Grand Theft Auto IV. A fun game, to be sure. Consider putting it down for 18 years. When you pick it back up, I can almost guarantee that the charm of the old game will only hold you for a matter of hours, perhaps minutes, before you are annoyed with the ancient interface (surely by then we’ll have 30+ buttons on our controllers, and at least 6 analog sticks) and put it down to go back to Halo 8 or something. The story won’t be interesting, the gameplay will be clichéd and dull, and it simply won’t hold your attention.

SMB3, however, maintains the glee. The innocence. The pure joy of jumping through those old levels and making progress. Throwing life after life away on hard levels, breezing through the easier ones.

On the very first level, as I jumped onto a big white block, my first instinct was to duck down for a few seconds so that I could fall behind the scenery. This is an action I did without thought, without planning. It’s shocking the things you remember.