It was 2015. The Nintendo 3DS was in its absolute prime, and GungHo Online Entertainment was printing money with a mobile game that most Westerners hadn’t even touched yet. Then, out of nowhere, Mario showed up. But he wasn't jumping on Goombas in a 2D plane or racing karts. He was sitting inside a twin-pack physical release called Puzzle and Dragons Z Super Mario Bros Edition.
Honestly? It was a bizarre move.
Combining a hardcore, math-heavy "match-three" RPG with the most recognizable face in gaming history felt like mixing aged balsamic vinegar with a strawberry milkshake. It shouldn't have worked. Yet, for a specific niche of handheld gamers, it became a massive time sink that offered a level of difficulty most Mario games wouldn't dare touch.
The Identity Crisis of a Puzzle Hybrid
When you boot up the Mario half of this cartridge, you’re greeted by the familiar sights of the Mushroom Kingdom. Peach is kidnapped (again), Bowser is smug, and the music is exactly what you’d expect. But the gameplay is pure Puzzle & Dragons. Instead of moving one orb at a time like Bejeweled, you grab an orb and drag it anywhere on the board within a limited timeframe, rearranging the entire layout to create massive cascades.
The "Z" side of the cart is a full-blown fantasy RPG with a story about a world-eating dragon and a protagonist who joins a special ranger force. It feels like a mid-tier Shonen anime. Then you swap over to the Mario side, and suddenly you’re recruiting Cheep Cheeps and Goombas into your party.
It’s weird.
The Mario Edition isn't just a reskin. GungHo actually rebuilt the mechanics to fit the Mario universe’s logic. Instead of "monsters," you have "allies." Instead of "evolution," you have "transformation" using items like Fire Flowers or Super Leafs. But don’t let the bright colors fool you. This game is brutally hard. While Super Mario Odyssey or Wonder might hold your hand through the main campaign, Puzzle and Dragons Z Super Mario Bros Edition expects you to understand elemental weaknesses and damage multipliers by the third world. If you don't, you die. Fast.
Why the Mario Side is Actually the Harder Game
Most people assumed the Mario version was the "lite" version for kids. They were wrong.
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In Puzzle & Dragons Z, you have a lot of safety nets. You have skills that can heal you or delay enemy attacks quite easily. In the Mario Edition, the skill point (SP) system is shared across the whole team and regenerates slowly. You have to be incredibly stingy with your moves.
Think about the boss fights. If you go into a fight with Larry Koopa or Iggy without a team that can generate enough heart orbs or burst damage, you are basically toast. You’ll find yourself grinding World 4-2 just to level up a Red Yoshi because your current Fire-elemental damage output is pathetic.
It forces a level of strategic depth that usually only exists in the mobile version of P&D. You’re looking at your DS screen, calculating the probability of a light-elemental orb dropping from the top of the screen so your Gold Mario leader skill can trigger a 3.5x attack boost. It’s a math game disguised as a platformer spin-off.
The lack of microtransactions is the best part. On the mobile version of P&D, if you run out of stamina, you pay or wait. Here? You just play. It’s the purest version of the GungHo formula, stripped of the "predatory" mobile mechanics and replaced with a one-time purchase price.
The Team Building Trap
You can’t just throw your favorite characters together. Every character has a "Cost," and your team has a maximum capacity. You might want a team of Bowser, Rosalina, and a Winged Yoshi, but the game won't let you.
- Leader Skills: These are the bread and butter. If your leader doesn't provide a massive stat boost to your specific team type, you're playing on "impossible" mode.
- Elemental RPS: Fire beats Wood, Wood beats Water, Water beats Fire. Light and Dark just hate each other.
- Awakenings: Hidden stats that only trigger when you feed a character a duplicate or a specific item.
It’s a lot to manage. You’ll spend more time in the "Toad House" menus optimizing your team than you will actually matching orbs. This is where the game loses some people—the friction between the "pick up and play" nature of Mario and the "spreadsheets and planning" nature of P&D.
The Visuals and That Weirdly Good Soundtrack
Graphically, the game holds up surprisingly well on the 3DS's aging hardware. The 2D sprites are crisp, and the animations when a character performs a "Skill" are flashy enough to keep you engaged. But the music is where it gets interesting.
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The soundtrack for Puzzle and Dragons Z Super Mario Bros Edition features arrangements of classic Koji Kondo themes, but they've been given a rhythmic, driving beat to match the puzzle-solving energy. It’s catchy. It’s the kind of music that gets stuck in your head while you’re staring at a grid of orbs trying to figure out how to move a Green Orb from the bottom left to the top right in under four seconds.
There is a certain "Nintendo Polish" here that GungHo clearly benefited from. The UI is cleaner than the standard P&D interface. The menus feel tactile. Even the sound effects of the orbs popping have that satisfying "ding" that reminds you of collecting coins in Super Mario World.
What Most People Get Wrong About This Game
There’s a common misconception that this was a "cash-in."
Actually, the development was a heavy collaboration. Nintendo didn’t just license the characters; they oversaw the implementation of the Mario mechanics. That's why the "Transformation" system feels so integrated. When you use a Penguin Wing on a Toad to turn him into Penguin Toad, it feels like a legitimate progression, not just a stat bump.
Another mistake is thinking the game is dead because it's on a "legacy" console.
Because the 3DS eShop has closed, the physical cartridges of this game have become weirdly collectible. It’s one of the few ways to play a high-quality version of Puzzle & Dragons without an internet connection or a "Stamina" bar. It’s a "frozen in time" snapshot of what mobile gaming could have been if it stayed on consoles.
The Strategy for Survival in the Late Game
If you're digging out your 3DS to play this now, you need a plan. The difficulty spike at World 6 is legendary.
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- Don't ignore the "Z" side. Even if you only bought it for Mario, the Puzzle & Dragons Z side teaches you the core mechanics in a much more forgiving environment. Use it as a tutorial.
- Focus on "Multiplier" Leaders. Small 1.5x boosts won't cut it. You need leaders like "Super Saiyan" style Mario variants that offer 3x or 4x damage for matching specific colors.
- The "Delay" Meta. Characters that can stall the enemy's turn are god-tier. In the Mario edition, this is often Bowser or certain Koopalings. If an enemy is about to hit you for 15,000 damage and you only have 12,000 HP, your only choice is to make sure they never get a turn.
The game eventually turns into a "glass cannon" simulator. You either kill the boss in one turn, or they wipe you out. It's high-stakes, stressful, and incredibly rewarding when a 12-combo chain finally falls into place.
Why We Won't See a Sequel
We probably aren't getting a Switch version.
Mobile gaming has moved on, and Nintendo has found more success with their own mobile titles like Fire Emblem Heroes. The partnership with GungHo was a specific moment in time when Nintendo was experimenting with how to bring their IP to the "Puzzle" genre without just making another Dr. Mario.
Also, the dual-screen setup of the 3DS was perfect for this. You had the action on the top and the touch-screen manipulation on the bottom. Porting that to a single-screen Switch would lose that tactile "drag" feeling that made the 3DS version so special. You could play it in vertical mode, sure, but it wouldn't be the same.
Puzzle and Dragons Z Super Mario Bros Edition remains a weird, difficult, and strangely addictive outlier in the Mario catalog. It's a game for people who love the Mario aesthetic but want the soul-crushing difficulty of a Japanese math-puzzler.
Actionable Steps for Modern Players
If you want to experience this today, skip the digital hunt since the eShop is gone. Find a used physical copy—they are usually pretty cheap at local game stores or online marketplaces because people often overlook the "Z" on the box art.
Before you start, decide if you want the "RPG experience" or the "Mario experience."
Start with the Mario side if you want familiarity, but jump to the Z side the moment you feel stuck. The Z side allows for more "Monster" customization and can help you wrap your head around the elemental combos without the strict limitations of the Mushroom Kingdom's team costs. Once you master the "L-shape" and "Cross" clears in Z, go back to the Mario side and show Bowser why he should have stayed in a platformer.
The learning curve is a vertical wall, but once you're over it, you'll realize this is one of the deepest puzzle games ever released on a Nintendo handheld. Just don't expect it to be a walk in the park. It’s a grind, but it’s a Mario grind, and that makes all the difference.