Super Mario Land

[JaySevenZero]

Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for Super Mario Land for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

A friendly reminder that where the feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but keeping it brief is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mostly reading out essays. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.

[BearFishPie]

Super Mario Land holds the distinction of being the first Game Boy game I bought (discounting the incredible pack-in that was Tetris), was my formative Mario experience and something I played the absolute hell out of. At the time I didn't pick up that it was a weird off-shoot of the core Mario games, and indeed this game formed my concept of baseline 'Mario' for quite some time, which made for a period of adjustment when I eventually picked up Super Mario All Stars. The use of dinky sprites was a smart move - sacrificing a bit of character in favour of a sense of space and easy readability within each level, and I consider the music to be an all-time classic (shout out to my favourite piece, the World 2-1 theme).

TWR: My First Mario

[Alex79]

I properly played through this for the first time relatively recently. I can imagine that back in the day it was really exciting to be able to play Mario on a handheld, and functionally the game plays just fine, but in 2024 I can't think of many reasons to go back to it other than to have played through it for the sake of it. The game wasn't particularly exciting or interesting to play, in my view. That music will be forever burned in to my mind though thanks to the 90s chart pop remix.

THREE WORD REVIEW: Nostalgia probably required.

[Jobobonobo]

I remembered playing this as a young lad on my cousin’s Game Boy and struggling to get far due to me not being used to the lime green screen of the Game Boy. It was a game I vaguely remembered but did not ever fully tackle until recently for this show. I was incredibly surprised when I finished the game in about 40 minutes! I took longer to finish the original Kirby’s Dreamland! I understand that handheld titles especially back then were way more of the pick up and play in short bursts variety so a short playtime makes sense but still. This game does make itself pretty distinctive from console Mario however, due to its weird locales and various tweaks such as the Koopas exploding after you jump on them making them a double threat. The little shmup sections were also unexpected but made for a nice change of pace. In fact I appreciate how this game aimed to do some different things with the plumber; something I wished the sequels to New Super Mario Bros attempted instead of playing it so safe. One thing I do not get though is why at the end of every third stage when you think you have rescued Daisy does it say “Thank you Mario! Oh? Daisy!” When it clearly was not Daisy and was some enemy winding you up. Who is saying Daisy? Why would they say just Daisy? I was a little under the weather playing this so maybe my illness messed with my brain but I do not understand what was going on with that dialogue.

Anyways, to sum up, a nice mini adventure for Mario to check out and a good reminder that he does not need Peach and Bowser to get him in interesting scenarios. Far from the plumber’s best outing but it is so short that you might as well give it a go if you want to see everything Mario has to offer and it is also a good example of how weird Mario can get when Nintendo allows him.

TWR: A quirky sidestory

[Mr Ixolite]

Technically the first games I ever owned were Tetris and formula 1 for the game boy, but I will always think of Super Mario Land as my first "proper" videogame. I still remember staring intently at the yellowish screen, trying to figure out how this game worked. I eventually figured out how to move Mario, and discerned that moving left was apparently not an option. Moving right led me to the games first Goomba, which must've killed poor Mario countless times as my kid self tried figuring out how to bypass it. When I eventually jumped over that Goomba it was huge to me, and I would excitedly try and show my parents my great accomplishment. Of course then I would die to the first pit of the game, but still, baby steps.

Super Mario Land taught me the basic ropes of platforming games, as well as the patience to keep up with astronomical death counts in order to see them through to the end, including when they would suddenly throw non-platforming vehicle detours at you. Eventually I lost the game as my cousin had it stolen while on vacation, but this may be just as well as I doubt it would set my world on fire nowadays. In my mind I still consider it a good effort though, and being exposed to its weirdo theming early on has made me less lenient towards some of the more samey-looking Mario games that came after it.
I can still conjure up the level 1 theme of the game in my head, and must ultimately tip my hat to Super Mario Land for cracking this hobby of mine wide open, and for quickly establishing platformers as my go-to genre of choice.

[AndrewElmore]

I just want to say that this is the first game I beat entirely on a TI-89 Titanium graphing calculator in the back of geometry class.

[Alex79]

I just want to say that this is the first game I beat entirely on a TI-89 Titanium graphing calculator in the back of geometry class.

Well this needs more info! Were you running emulators on your calculator? That's pretty cool. Wonder if it could run Doom...

[Buskalilly]

The first games I ever owned were a hand-me-down game boy and a collection of carts - including this. I could tell at the time it was a cut above a lot of the rest, but at 6 years old it was a while before I really came to appreciate Mario.

My main childhood memory of this game comes a couple of years later when, eagerly awaiting my birthday and a copy of Pokémon Blue, I replayed Mario Land over and over and edited the instruction manual so Mario was Ash, the monsters were Pokémon and the fireballs were a new kind of Pokéball.

I finally actually beat the game on 3DS, and then in 2020 when I replayed the whole Mario platformer series, I beat an actual Game Boy cart without save states or any of that CHEATING.

[AndrewElmore]

I just want to say that this is the first game I beat entirely on a TI-89 Titanium graphing calculator in the back of geometry class.

Well this needs more info! Were you running emulators on your calculator? That's pretty cool. Wonder if it could run Doom...

Not emulators, people were just making a lot of ports of various (simple) game boy games to the calculator at the time. The other ones I played most were Tetris, and a very simplified version of GTA 1. There was something of a Doom conversion, but it was even more simplistic than Faceball 2000 and I wouldn't really have called it Doom.