Comment by toast0

Mario games have reduced the difficulty a lot, although you should probably compare Mario Wonder with SMB 1-3. Odyssey is more comparable with Mario 64.

One of the things though is when most peopley play SMB 1-3 today, they're playing with input lag. Mario Wonder was designed with input lag in mind, SMB 1 was not and it increases the difficulty.

Mario Wonder lets you choose to use invulnerable characters, etc. There was only one level I remember needing to try many times to beat. OTOH, there's lots of difficult levels in smb 1...