A guide to completing the World 3 Airship in Super Mario Bros 3 for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

How to Clear the World 3 Airship

Jump over the wooden column on the right. Then there will be three Rocky Wrenches popping up from the portholes in the airship. After them, there is a cannon that shoots Bullet Bills.

After that, watch out for the diagonal cannonballs from the right. Make your way down past the first diagonal cannon (which shoots toward the upper left), then go to the right past the other two (which shoot toward the bottom right). Above the final diagonal cannon in this set, there is a ? Block that contains a Super Mushroom or Super Leaf, but watch out for the Bullet Bills from the cannon on the right.

After the horizontal cannon, there are four diagonal cannons, two above and two below. Technically you can reach the upper platform by jumping on cannonballs, but it's tricky, so it's not really any better than just going through the lower platform.

Next, you can see a Jet Engine with a huge flame on the other side of a wooden wall. Above it, there is a Bolt Lift. If you jump on the Bolt Lift, it will rotate, making you fall off, but if you jump up and down on it, you can make the lift move to the right and avoid falling. The lift moves slowly, though, so you'll need to fall down between the flames of the two Jet Engines, then wait for the second flame to temporarily disappear so you can jump on top of the Jet Engine and continue on.

Next, you can either run and jump over the wooden wall at the top of the screen, then stomp on the Rocky Wrenches on the other side of the wall, or you can just use the lower path, where you will have to wait for a Jet Engine flame to temporarily stop so you can jump up through the gap.

From there, go to the right, where you find the pipe to the airship boss.

Wendy O. Koopa

Wendy will shoot a candy ring out of her magic wand. The candy ring will move diagonally and will bounce off of the walls. Meanwhile, Wendy will walk toward you. When you stomp on her or hit her with a certain number of fireballs, she temporarily goes into her shell, which bounces in the air. When she recovers, she will shoot a second candy ring out of the wand, so you'll have to dodge two candy rings as you try to stomp Wendy, who will now jump up and down as she comes toward you. After you stomp/shoot her a second time, her shell will bounce, then she will shoot a third candy ring, and she will jump very high as she moves toward you. After you shoot/stomp her a third time, she will be defeated. Pick up the magic wand and you will clear World 3.

You'll get a letter from the Princess, who gives you a Music Box. If you use the Music Box on the World Map, all Hammer Bros on the map (and certain other World Map enemies in later worlds) will fall asleep until you clear a level or lose two lives.

Now you'll automatically go to World 4. There are two Warp Pipes, but the lower one just leads to a dead end, so go through the upper pipe, and you can enter World 4-1.