I found a gem of a video on Entertainment Weekly’s PopWatch blog today. If you loved the Nintendo classic “Super Mario Bros. 3″ as much as I did, you’ll get a serious kick out of this bit of video game nostalgia: Jazz pianist Scott Bradlee actually recorded an acoustic version of Koji Kondo’s famous score and set it to a run-through of the game. I admit that I had no idea what to expect until I hit “play,” but I found the new soundtrack to be really fun and breezy — that is, until it reaches uncharted levels of awesomeness around the 5:40 mark. (You’ll know it when you see it. Or hear it? Hmmm…) In any case, the clip reminded me just how great the game is: I loved the map-like setup; the castle worlds are more over-the-top than I remembered and the battleships are just cool. Like the writer of the PopWatch piece, I also laughed myself silly as I tried to figure out exactly what a raccoon tail has to do with flying. (It’s a cute effect, but it completely defies the laws of physics!) All that aside, you can hear the jazzy new soundtrack and look out for more of the game’s crazy effects here:

I can’t deny it. This clip’s definitely got me feeling nostalgic: Even though I was a straight-up Nintendo junkie back in the day, I can’t really call myself a gamer anymore. I’d love to get back into it again, but I’m more than a little embarrassed by the fact that my little cousin beat me senseless in a game of “Halo” a few Christmases ago. I’m tempted to get a Nintendo system from eBay and dust off my “Mario” skills, but I don’t need to fall on my face trying to beat the ice world again — I still have the battle scars from my first go-round. Maybe I’ll start with a game I know I can beat. “Bubble Bobble,” anyone?