Super Mario Land

"I wouldn’t say it’s a legend, but it still is a decent portable Super Mario game."

Super Mario has been around for a long time, since back in arcade machines in the dawn of the 1980's. It started off as a character called ‘Jumpman' but a developer said that he looks a lot like his landlord, called Mario, so they changed the name to Mario. In the early days of basic computer graphics, a hat was easier to animate than hair, as with a moustache than a mouth.

This version for the Game Boy came out in 1989. The graphics resemble the basic NES graphics minus colour. If you do play it on a Game Boy Colour/Advance, there is some colour. The game is quite basic, the story line could fit on a Game Boy cartridge label and it's just four worlds of 3 levels. To be honest, the game isn't really brilliant, but it is good. Even when I played it when I got it back in 1995, I never thought it was as good as Nintendo console versions. It isn't really. It still has good elements of it, like challenging parts, and yes, this game is very challenging, and the levels are of a reasonable length.

The story is of Princess daisy getting kidnapped by Browser so Mario must go on a quest to save her. That's it. There are 4 worlds, so there is an Egyptian world. The last level is in a pyramid where you fight a lion boss. The second world is by the sea, where you jump on sea platforms without falling in the water, and then in the 3rd level you are in a submarine shooting missiles underwater. The third world is Easter Island and the fourth is what I don't know, with an aircraft shooter at the end.

It's got the basic elements of a platformer right. It's a side scrolling platformer, and when the screen goes right with Mario, you can't turn around to go back. You can collect coins, 100 gives you an extra life. There are mushrooms that can make you into Super Mario, and if you are Super Mario, then you can get a super-flower to become Superball Mario, meaning you get to pelt bullets at enemies. It's possible to get invincibility stars as well. Most items come in boxes with a ‘?' on them. There are many different types of enemies that you can jump on, some need you to pelt bullets at them, others only allow you to jump on them. There are moving platforms, which need good timing to reach. At the end of a world there is a boss. When you get things or kill enemies, you can score points. If you are an expert jumper then you can go to the bonus stage at the end of the level, which needs some jumping to get up to the exit, otherwise take the lower one.

The graphics are pretty lame, everything is small, low resolution and Mario himself is not well drawn at all. He looks the same from the NES versions. He is just a bit more than a pixel blob, and that's bad. The backgrounds are dire-looking, sod all in the background. Animations are okay, but it's just poor. It could have been better, just magnify it a bit, or is this just a conversion of a NES game? A large insult to Game Boy graphics.

Music is slightly better than average on the game, but again it isn't that good. It gets quite repetitive and simply not really that inspiring to listen to it.

The game has quite a bit of replayability to it. It's not really that addictive. I completed it after 6 years of owning it, and I play on it now and then. There are 4 worlds, the game is pretty challenging, so it keeps you going for a while.

Graphics Pixel Mario more like, dull and repetetive. 4/10
Sound Okay, quite repetitive and not that inspiring. 6/10
Game-play Challenging and tests your skills. 8/10
Length You'll complete it eventually. 7/10

Buy or Rent? Not to really bother with, but a little gem for your collection. Buy

So there you have it, it's definitely not Nintendo's best Super Mario effort, and doesn't prove it's potential, but it's still a decent quality Game Boy game. Bad graphics, average sound but a challenging, moderately fun game.

Overall Score 7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/06/04