What is Pipe Land?

[VinnyVideo]

As you know, there are eight worlds in Super Mario Bros. 3. It's pretty obvious what most of them are, even if a couple of them are a bit zany! World 1 is a general-purpose grassy/hilly world, World 2 is obviously a desert, World 3 is a watery world full of islands and canals, and so forth.

However, I've always wondered what Pipe Land is supposed to be. This world boasts a wide range of ecosystems - grassy/hilly areas, deserts, Piranha Plant fields, an underwater level, and the usual fortresses and airships. The king wears a Viking hat, which is also interesting! I've speculated that Pipe Land might be an abandoned oil pipeline, but maybe someone just built a lot of pipes to serve as the ultimate Piranha Plant habitat!

Vinny thinks about important things sometimes.

[DustinVG]

It's pipes

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[SuperSledgeBro]

Maybe that's where the whole kingdom's pipe systems connect to.

Spoiler

[HylianDev]

Maybe that's where the whole kingdom's pipe systems connect to.

i second this

the mushroom kingdom seems to have a robust plumbing system; no matter where you go, there are pipes everywhere interconnecting rooms, leading to sewers, etc

this must be the great big central main, where all pipes interconnect

which is extremely convenient, because if the real Pipe Land is as pleasant as it is in smb3, you will be looking for a route to anywhere else on earth, including World 8: Bad Placeo

Hylian's day job, little did we know, was saying controversial things on the internet.

you fool!!!! you fixed it wrong!!!!

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[Q-Nova]

This is a good topic -- I never really thought deeply of the theme of Pipe Land until I saw this topic. Before that I thought it was just pipes, as @DustinVG said.

Maybe Pipe Land is supposed to represent the whole world? In other words, you're traveling to all sorts of locations, some of which you have already visited. Due to technical limitations, however, these diverse locations need to be very simplified on the world map, becoming unrecognizable in the surface. In such case, the island with level 1 could be Grass Land and the island with level 2 could be Desert Land! Or maybe the level icons are actually pipes that take you to these different locations. In that case, as soon as you enter level 1, you're taking a pipe to Grass Land and then, in the end, you take a pipe back to Pipe Land! I like @SuperSledgeBro's idea where Pipe Land is the place all pipes connect to.

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[King Piranha Plant]

Pipe Land is nasty and unsanitary

It is where the Mushroom Kingdom's sewage goes to get incinerated

However in the Mario 3 cartoon it looks like a wacky amusement park

[Q-Nova]

@King Piranha Plant I like both of those ideas! I never thought to check how the SMB3 cartoon represents Pipe Land! Your idea of a gross, unsanitary land where all sewage goes (probably to get eaten by Piranha Plants, I should say) makes a nice step towards the fear-inducing Dark Land and fits the music rather well! The idea of an amusement park is also really great! I think that one really fits in the spirit of SMB3, and even the Mario series in general!

EDIT: There's a somewhat-recently submitted tileset that has some pretty good interpretations of what Pipe Land could be: https://mfgg.net/index.php?act=resdb&par...1&id=38422

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[King Piranha Plant]

@Q-Nova Ohhh I love those little windy pipes in the background. It actually blows my mind how many awesome sprites and tilesets get submitted to MFGG these days that people barely give feedback on or take notice of!

Speaking of pipe land the piranha plants dancing to that smooth catchy tune was always the best part of it. I always felt like that world map deserved some big freaky piranha plant boss like Yoshi's Island's world 3.

Now I wanna make some dark weird fangame in which Mario is just helplessly lost in a gargantuan pipe land, struggling to get out of the filthy labyrinth alive

[GeneSu730]

Pipe Land is the only way for the Super Mario team to showcase the several new features in the Super Mario algorithm such as same-stage pipe transport as well as push the technical limitation of the NES. If I was in charge of the Super Mario team in 1988, I would have asked them to develop an Industrial World instead with conveyer belts and mechanical enemies.