Title:
  • Super Mario Land

Genre:
  • Platformer

Developer:
  • Nintendo

Publisher:

  • Nintendo

Release Date:
  • April 21 1989 (Japan), July 31 1989 (USA)

On Wikipedia:

System:
  • Game Boy (original release), Nintendo 3DS with homebrew (how I played it)

Miyamoto Involvement:
  • None, as a result was quirky and unique

What I Wrote In Summer 2019...

The weird thing about Super Mario Land, and it's something I first noticed when I popped a Super Mario Land cartridge into my Game Boy Color at a friend's house a long time ago, is it feels like a bootleg Mario game someone programmed on a calculator or an early computer. It isn't just the grayscale graphics, the whole game feels wrong. Nothing is proportioned right, mechanics feel off, fireballs bounce off like superballs (this makes just zooming through levels chucking fireballs impossible). One-ups look like hearts, and getting a star doesn't play the familiar "invincible Mario" music, it plays the Can-Can. The whole thing is kind of explained away as an unfamiliar desert kingdom instead of the regular Mushroom Kingdom, but it still feels incredibly strange. Even if it feels like an inferior rip-off, though, it's decent entertainment and has some of the catchiest music that the Game Boy has ever produced.

FINAL RATING:   

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