They should have left powering down the same way as the Japanese version. In the JPN version when you were raccoon, frog, tanooki, whatever and got hit, you went right back to being small Mario. In the NA version, iirc, when you were hit as a raccoon, you were still Super Mario and had to get hit again to get small. I guess like with the original Mario 2, or the Lost Levels, Nintendo thought that it would be too difficult and frustrating for us unskilled NA gamers.
I was a big shot and had the Famicom SMB3 almost a year before the North American release.
