Super Mario Land

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North American box art.

Super Mario Land is a platformer video game with scrolling shooter levels developed by Nintendo R&D1 and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy on 1989-04-21. Although part of the Super Mario series, it has several notable differences from the earlier games.

Not owning a Game Boy, I remember watching some friends play it at school and wanting to play it really badly, but, unfortunately, Game Boys were banned in the school before I got a chance. Since I didn't own a Game Boy myself, I only ever got a few chances to play when I was younger, but I remember the game feeling a bit cheap. It wasn't until many years later that I decided to make a serious attempt at the game, and the beat it after a couple hours.

Status

I do not own the game, but I have beaten it.

Review

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5 4 6 7 5

Best Version: Game Boy

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

  • The game is pretty fun, and the designers did a good job of adding new aspects to the game while still keeping with the Super Mario theme.
  • I like how each world has a unique theme to it: Egyptian crypts, Easter Island statues, etc.
  • The scrolling shooter stages are actually a refreshing change of pace that keeps the game from getting stale.
  • I like that the bosses are all unique.
  • Even on the weaker audio hardware, Hirokazu Tanaka's music is quite catchy.
  • The entire game fits into a shockingly small 64 KB!

Bad

  • The game is too short. Even for a Game Boy game, 12 levels isn't enough.
  • The game is also too easy. Thankfully, you unlock a hard mode upon beating it to give a slightly more reasonable challenge.
  • There is too much repetition in the levels. Nearly every level in the game repeats a section or two.
  • It's not obvious which block Mario is going to hit due to the size difference between his sprite and the blocks. This causes a fair amount of re-jumping to finally hit the block you intended to hit.
  • Why did the designers create a new princess? Why create Princess Daisy when Peach already existed? Is Mario meant to be a professional princess rescuer?

Ugly

  • The player controls are pretty bad. Nintendo usually polishes player control really well, but this game is not very good. It is common to under-jump and over-jump in this game and a lot harder to change direction mid-air than it should be.

Media

Documentation

Maps

Videos

Titles

Language Native Transliteration Translation
English Super Mario Land
Japanese スーパーマリオランド Supa Mario Rando Super Mario Land

Links

Link-MobyGames.png  Link-Wikipedia.png