Super Mario Land

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.

Personal

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


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.
The Super Ball is no replacement for a fireball. While I like the fact that it can collect coins, and having it bounce up into the sky is frequently useful due to the smaller screen size, it sticks around for way too long if you miss preventing you from throwing another.
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 has some serious flaws. You will find yourself under-jumping and over-jumping a lot, and it's harder to change direction mid-air than it should be.