Super Mario Land

So theoretically this is going to be a quick review, once I get around to writing it, for a quick game. Haven’t played this before. But it’s a popular game, enough to have its own early 90s dance song about it, so of course I have to. As one of the Game Boy’s launch titles, it interests me to go back to where the Game Boy began, and it interests me more than Tetris. Maybe I just don’t really care for Tetris that much (wow there’s my hot take already), but also you can play that on anything. Super Mario Land is its own experience, and also having a side scrolling platform game really is something when you time travel back to 1989, before I was born, and compare it to a Microvision or a Game & Watch or that sort of thing.

The main thing to be said about this game is that it’s just plain weird, coming from experience with any other Mario game. It makes sense given it was developed by a completely different development team in Nintendo, but I’m not a game historian writer, so I can’t tell you what was going on there. But even if it makes sense for it to be weird, it’s still weird. In all fairness Mario looking weird there is because of the DX hack (that adds colour, as monochrome graphics do not have any special place in my heart because I am too young for that). But Mario’s appearance in the vanilla game (which looks more or less like the SMB1 sprite) is the only normal thing, really.

What is the manual even on about? Where the hell is Sarasaland? That sure never was mentioned ever again. Why do the Koopas explode? Why does Mario throw some kind of cannonball (with great strength to make it travel in a straight line and bounce) instead of a fireball? Why does getting a star play the can-can? Why does Mario say “OH DAISY!”? It does seem un-Mario-like to start off in Ancient Egypt. EXCUSE ME??? Why did these bricks just fall down on me when they look like part of the background? That’s just not something a Mario game ever does. Perhaps a lot of it is due to technical limitations at the time (it’s only a 64KB cart), it’s just sort of unsettling. It breaks all conventions, but also none of the graphics feel… consistent? Nothing wrong with being weird, I guess, but you have to be prepared to remove any pre-existing Mario expectations, or have them unmet.

If I somehow knew about every other Mario game I already knew about but I hadn’t heard of Super Mario Land before, and I ended up playing it without knowing what it’s about, I’d probably just assume it’s a bootleg. Some unlicensed game that could have been licensed if it wasn’t using Mario’s name and design, or some hack of an existing unrelated platform game that adds Mario to it (as is sometimes the case on the NES). But it is, as we know, not those things. Never has been. And I wouldn’t call it bad, if you look at it in a vacuum. It just does not feel like a Mario game at all.

So let’s pretend for the sake of reviewing that I have no expectations of how a Mario game works. First thing is that this is very short. Not necessarily easy, just short, there are only 12 stages. Just that this is 1989 and batteries are still too expensive I guess, so no save for you. And I guess no password for you because… I dunno? They didn’t wanna bother? I guess in all fairness that was just the norm back then, but it’s something to keep in mind. It can be unforgiving since you really don’t want to get sent back to the title screen when you run out of lives, so this ends up being one where you do have to go out of your way to get as many coins as you can.

It’s okay, I still managed to beat this without savestates (other than for taking a break), actually. I guess since I definitely do suck, that should tell you that it’s not terribly hard. Easier than SMB1 for sure, which also doesn’t have any kind of saving. The average time on HowLongToBeat does say it’s about an hour and a bit, and I beat it in… an hour and a bit. So you may want to just set aside an evening or whatever for playing this, no need to keep playing over multiple days.

I dunno if it is just because I suck? But Mario’s physics don’t just seem different from the other games, they also just feel kinda wonky. I found myself slipping off platforms a lot, and also COME ON I TOTALLY LANDED ON TOP OF THAT GUY!!! Not quite a rage inducing game all the time, it just feels unpolished. Not really much to say about the levels themselves. They exist, none of them are really too complicated in all honesty. Maybe that’s a negative point in itself. The graphical designs are nice, they all look fine, but in terms of layout and gameplay none of them are anything special. Other than the shmup levels. I kinda liked those, don’t really do shmups, but they work well enough honestly, everything feels responsive there and they don’t drag on too much.

Everyone talks about the music, and yeah, it’s pretty nice. Good tunes. Even if the enemy designs are all over the place, they do look nice. I guess the overall thing to say about here is that it’s just okay. It’s the most okay game I’ve ever played. Which is good, actually, given the games I’ve reviewed lately are all “really good and then they become shit” or “just kinda garbo to begin with”. I don’t really find too much fault in this game, it gave me something to do for an hour, and that’s what the game was for in the first place, right?