Luckily I've been doing pretty good about hitting stars at the end of each stage so my life count is pretty healthy.

I do manage to make it through the zone, though not at the cost of a few lives. Quicksand, jumping fire, fake blocks, angry suns, boomerang bros. It's like, every possible annoying threat is able to somehow culminate here. I don't know, it's something about desert stages in video games that just doesn't click with me. Nice and easy, which I would soon learn wasn't going to be a trend. Just so we're clear, I'm not using the flutes, but I still want to get them for the sake of completion! At least, I did, until I spent three lives in the first fortress trying to get the second one, at which point I just said screw it and moved on to the first airship. Friend of mine says I won't be able to beat this one in a single night. I think I'll be able to beat this one, which would be nice considering my current track record with NES Mario games. I remember world 1-4 and 8, so, I'll be making my attempt without warp pipes. Actually, one of my more vivid memories of this game was from the end of The Wizard, which at the time I thought was AMAZING!

I think I may have beaten it once, I definitely remember World 8, but it's blurry. Another defining game of my childhood, though I probably never really gave it the attention it deserved at the time.

Super mario bros 3 world 5 airship