A launch title for the Nintendo Gameboy in Japan, US and Europe, this game started the trend for handheld Super Mario games ending in "Land" (a trend borrowed later for the handheld ports of the Donkey Kong Country series). Super Mario Land is essentially the same beast as we'd known from the NES, however it was not a direct facsimile of those games.
Designed by Gunpei Yokoi (who had been instrumental in the creation of the Gameboy itself, and is credited with inventing the now-ubiquitous D-Pad for the earlier Game & Watch LCD games) rather than series creator Shigeru Miyamoto, the game borrowed elements from the home versions of the games whilst maintaining a strong sense of itself.
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| This is where your adventure begins! |
New gameplay elements included two shoot-'em-up (shmup if you prefer) inspired levels. One has you take a submarine to the seas, and the final level (4-3 - this isn't a long game by any stretch) has you take to the skies in an aeroplane as you shoot your way to the final boss, ultimately saving damsel-in-distress, Daisy.
Otherwise the levels follow the platform-by-numbers model familiar to everyone by now. Mario jumps over bottomless pits, across moving platforms, collecting coins and bopping Goombas and Koopas on the head to dispatch them. A slew of new enemy types stand between you and your goal, matching the level themes which include Egypt- Aztec- and China-based worlds (replete with Chinese Vampires no less) and even stages where it appears Mario has been beamed to the world from a UFO... Koopas in other Mario games pop into their shells when stomped; their shells can then be kicked along the ground, killing any enemy they run into (or Mario if he stands in the way as it rebounds off a block). In Super Mario Land however, Koopas turn into bombs and explode a second later.
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| World 1's boss is a nice twist on Super Mario Bros' Bowser encounters. |
Secret areas are, as is standard in the series, found at the bottom of drain pipes. These contain a single screen with a number of coins to collect, with a simple puzzle to solve in order to collect them all.
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| Small Mario can't get all the coins at the top. Super Mario can't get all the coins at the bottom. Or can he? |
Power-ups follow much the same path as in the NES classic. Mario starts off a few pixels high, before collecting a Super Mushroom which transforms him into Super Mario, granting him the ability to smash blocks with his head and serves as an extra hit point - if hit as Super Mario, our hero will shrink back to his vulnerable, smaller self. A second power-up comes in the form of the Fire Flower, which allows Mario to shoot fireballs. These operate in a manner unlike in the NES games: Only one fireball can be on screen at any time, and rather than bouncing along the ground until it hits an enemy or disappears off-screen, the fireballs bounce off any surface they hit at a 45-degree angle. They can also be used to collect out-of-reach coins, a tactic that comes in useful for your compulsive collection of shiny things during some sections of the game. A final power-up is the invincibility star - collect this and Mario becomes invulnerable, killing enemies on touch whilst the Can-Can plays. This alone is a great example of the humour at play here.
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| The Fire Flower imbues our hero with the ability to throw fireballs at his enemies. |
At the end of each stage you will see two doors, one up high and one down low. Walk (or run) to the bottom door and the stage ends and you move on to the next. Perform a series of tricky jumps up to the top door however, and you are rewarded with a bonus stage and a chance for 1, 2, or 3 extra lives or a Fire Flower.
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| The ladder moves one way, Mario moves the other. Time it right to get three extra lives! |
The game is quite easy, and short. It can be completed in half an hour or so, but this fits with the early ethos of handheld games designed for short play sessions. I tend to finish the game with 20 or so lives in the bank, which sounds like a lot but compared to more recent games in the series is quite low! Upon completion you get to enjoy one of the best pieces of end-game music ever conceived before restarting with a more difficult adventure. More enemies appear on-screen at any one time, making each level a little trickier than before.
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| Daisy eludes rescue, at least until the end of 4-3. |
These harder levels do show the one technical flaw in the game; It can suffer from a little slow-down during busier moments, seemingly when too many sprites are on the screen. During the first play through this only becomes apparent when you reach the final boss who throws a large number of missiles your way, but if you play a second time you will notice it more often. It never breaks the game, but can't be entirely ignored.
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| Mario shrugs off a probing. |
The music is especially worthy of note. Catchy, happy tunes that surpass even the joy of the NES games' soundtracks, the main theme of World 1 stuck in the head of fans for years to come, and even found itself remixed by Ambassadors of Funk & MC Mario, hitting number 8 in the UK music chart in 1992. The other tunes in the game may not have had the same impact but every one is great and fits the game well. As mentioned above, the end-game music is great - one of my favourite pieces of videogame music in fact.
When playing on a compatible system with colour capabilities (Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, Gameboy Player), Super Mario Land is one of a few games that benefit from a custom colour palette, built into the system software itself. Mario is red, the backgrounds are blue. It adds a nice element to the game, certainly a lot better looking than the original, blurry shades of green. It's a little known fact that you can adjust the colour palettes on the colour Gameboy editions when using a monochrome classic game - holding B + Left as the game boots switches to a grey palette used for these screenshots, and is reminiscent of playing on the Gameboy Pocket.
Screenshots for this review were taken using Openemu on OSX, but for the purposes of review the game was played on the original hardware.
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