The most underrated Super Mario game, in my opinion, is...well, that probably has to be Donkey Kong on the Game Boy. However, the most underrated Mario game with “Mario” actually in its title, that’s Super Mario 3D Land. The game is super fun, wildly inventive, and strangely enough, it actually made good on Nintendo’s dumb 3D gimmick.

Yes, this is the only game I’ve ever seen make good enough use of a three-dimensional display to justify the 3D. And speaking purely aesthetically, the 3D effect also made the story’s 2D cartoon panels really pop.

While 3D Land was enjoyed at the time of its release, it was quickly overshadowed by its WiiU follow-up, Super Mario 3D World. World seemingly did everything Land could, plus 4-player simultaneous multiplayer, Captain Toad levels, crazy power-ups like the Double Cherry, and that goddamn Cat Suit. So why would anyone bother to play the old 3DS game then? Well, I think it’s actually a better game, for one thing.

In 2011 I moved to Hokkaido, Japan and I would live there for two years. (Read all about it in my book, Shakotan Blue!) During that time, I didn’t have access to a PS3 or Wii like I had enjoyed in Seattle, and so my gaming options were largely limited to emulating classic games on my large-but-weak Toshiba laptop. Eventually though, I went out to the Bic Camera in downtown Sapporo and bought myself a shiny new Nintendo 3DS.

The first two games I picked up were Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D and Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition, both of which I spent many, many hours playing. (Especially Ocarina of Time—because damn that was excellent!) But they weren’t original to the 3DS; Zelda was a remake and SFIV was a port. So when Super Mario 3D Land released in November, I was excited for something fresh. And sure enough, I was instantly smitten. This was the quintessential 3DS experience.

The most amazing aspect of 3D Land is its inventive combination of 2D and 3D Mario game elements. While the game is played in 3D space, the level layouts follow the basic setup of the original Super Mario Bros.—get to the flagpole before time runs out! Levels are pretty short too, breaking up the gameplay into small enough segments to be easily picked up & put down, so it’s no trouble to play this one on the go. Mario’s moveset includes the 3D stuff like butt stomps, long jumps, and side flips. It also includes his 2D staples as well, like holding a button to Run and the Fire Flower being a persistent power-up.

Instead of a free camera you control, like seen in Super Mario 64 and Sunshine, 3D Land displays the action from a static isometric viewpoint. The designers placed the camera exactly where they wanted it to be in each scene—whether that’s a three-quarters down view, a fully side-on profile, or even an overhead camera. It always feels deliberate and generally always feels good, like there’s no need to adjust it.

That said, all levels 3D Land have this “diorama” feel to them, and the ability to shift your view ever so slightly using the stereoscopic 3D effect is a big part of the game’s charm. Some of the platforming challenges almost required you to have the 3D effect on—even just a tiny bit—in order to get the right depth perception. This was legitimately cool, and the only time (in my opinion) that the 3D gimmick was justified in a game.

Ironically this makes 3D World’s platforming suffer somewhat in comparison. The 3DS’s stereoscopic display made accurate depth perception far easier, so the diorama-style levels just worked beautifully. Putting this onto your TV makes that depth surprisingly difficult to judge, and it only gets more challenging when you add multiplayer. But in 3D Land, it was like magic!

Super Mario 3D Land is also the first known example of a Time Limit in a game actually being fun! Thanks to a stopwatch-looking item (apparently called a “+ Clock”), a level’s time limit becomes malleable, extendable. At first this seems like a minor bonus; find the hidden clock and casually stroll your way to flagpole at your leisure. But later levels start the time limit at 30 seconds—or even 10 seconds!—basically forcing you to pick up clocks constantly just to keep alive. That may not sound like a fun challenge, but the brisk pace really shakes up the game in a fun way.

3D Land also marked the triumphant return of the Tanuki Suit from Super Mario Bros. 3! Along with another classic, the Fire Flower, and newcomers like the rad Boomerang Suit and high-flying Propeller Block, the power-up appeal is very strong here. It’s an excellent assortment of unique abilities which opens up some genuinely different gameplay possibilities. And of course this was before New Super Mario Bros. 2 came along and beat Tanuki power-ups’ dead horse corpse into oblivion. (I really don’t care for NSMB2; it had basically no original ideas.)

And there is so, so, sooo much creativity on display in this game! It’s almost like after two NSMB’s and two Mario Galaxy games the devs at Nintendo were just dying to shake things up. Every level has something new to play with, or escalates the difficulty up a notch in a novel way. Then it has an insanely extensive endgame/postgame of Special Worlds to play…which is actually just as long as the main campaign! Once you see the credits in this one, you are only halfway through the adventure.

Now a valid criticism of 3D Land is that the game is really too easy for most of its runtime. Especially in the main levels before you reach the Special Worlds, that is absolutely true. In fact, if you mess up in a level enough times, the game will give you an “Assist Block” containing an Invincibility Leaf. Just like it sounds, this power-up puts Mario in sparkly white Tanuki Suit and makes him invincible for the entity of that stage. And with how easy most of the game is, this assistance probably isn’t necessary.

So perhaps the devs could have pruned some early levels, or smashed ideas together to shorten the game’s length while upping the challenge. But it’s worth noting that near the last quarter of the game—in the Special Worlds, that is—the difficulty ramps up tremendously. The game may be too easy overall, but when the challenge does appear, it is really damn challenging.

Another criticism of 3D Land is that its visuals are a bit grainy, not HD, and maybe don’t look too hot by today standards. But honestly, that’s stupid. This is a first-year 3DS title, with polygonal graphics on a handheld device from literally 10 years ago; obviously it’s not going to age that well. All things considered, I think it still looks great.

The Nintendo 3DS has incredibly diverse library of stellar games, with many of them considered true classics. But even among such tough competition, Super Mario 3D Land stands apart for me as the handheld’s definitive title.

While I am surely biased—the memory of my fellow junior high school teachers coming over to my tiny apartment in Shakotan, passing around the 3DS and taking turns playing Mario levels while drinking beers freshly bought from the convenience store, will warm my heart for all time—it is undeniable that this game managed to make the handheld’s 3D display seem useful for a hot minute. And that’s basically a miracle.