Game Boy #2: Super Mario Land

 Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Release Date: 7-31-89

I suppose if I made any sense I would've started my Game Boy reviews with Super Mario Land. It is a famous launch title for the system after all. Of course the whole point of the blog is to follow my whims, so I started with the obscure Knight Quest instead. The launch of the Game Boy was subdued by todays standards, but not bad for the 80s when it was common to launch with only a couple of games. Tetris was bundled with the system so everybody had that one, but Super Mario Land was the game that most people bought next. It's like how everyone bought Twilight Princess when Wii came out even though it was bundled with Wii Sports. Because of its place in Game Boy history everybody has fond memories of it. I don't quite have the nostalgia because I got a Game Boy a few years later and never played Super Mario Land during the system's life cycle. Maybe because of this I've never been overly impressed by it. It's not a bad game, but when judging it against every other game in existence it just doesn't rate that well.

Moai!

The developers really took the concept of "Super Mario Brothers except tiny" and ran with it. Almost everything about this game is smaller. It is half the length of SMB and the graphics have been shrunk down even beyond what you would expect. I am sure there is a good reason, but those tiny mushrooms and blocks have always annoyed me. Was it really necessary to shrink everything down that much? Mario is a good size on the screen, and playing it on the blurry old Game Boy screen meant bigger was better. It makes items and coins easy to miss, and it has bugged me for twenty years. 

Luckily it does have the classic gameplay, and nothing's more fun than old school Mario. I'm not going to describe it too much, but if you like platform jumping you're probably going to like this game. I especially like the shooter levels and wish there were a few more of them. Of course I wish there was a few more of everything in this game, but it was designed for early 90s car trips so I suppose brevity is to be expected. I also like that they managed to give each world its own identity using background imagery. I enjoy the pyramids and Moai in the background. Any game with Moai in it automatically gets a couple extra points. Who doesn't like Easter Island? 

So what we have here is a tiny game with good gameplay but a few flaws that keep it from the being a true classic. It is too small and too short to rank overly high on the list, and it's not nearly as good as the other Mario Land games. Still it is going in the green section, and it just eases into the top 40 at #37. I am putting it just below another beloved game that disappointed me, Breath of Fire. I liked it more than I expected, but it's still not one of the better Mario games. I have a feeling it won't stay in the top 40 for long.

Game Boy Quality Percentage 2/2 100%

(images are from mobygames.com)