While Nintendo was never afraid of experimenting with Mario's identity, providing numerous detours in aesthetic and thematic imagery just by jumping from SMB1 to SMB3, Super Mario Land definitely earns its distinction of being "the weird one".

It interprets the plumber's magical landscape as one filled with ancient history and sci-fi cultural artifacts from our own planet that somehow feel more alien than what the Mushroom World has accustomed us to. There is definitely something very otherwordly and dreamlike about starting a level with the implication that Mario arrived on a UFO and that the enemies you will be facing are Easter Island face fellas, and the changes made to accomodate the limitations of the hardware, such as the exploding turtles and the bouncing ball power up, further elevate Super Mario Land's odd quirky vibe.

What I love the most about it though is its brevity. Low of difficulty and brisk paced, Super Mario Land is beatable under 30 minutes with little chance for game overs and with enough variety sprinkled inbetween that makes picking it up for a high score attempt highly leasurable and absolve it of the settling monotony that plagues the repeating assets and levels from SMB1. Add to that the beautifuly simplistic monochrome sprite line work and eternal earworm tunes that will never leave your head for all of your life and I'm very tempted to call it a perfect game, despite its lackluster platforming physics. A priveledged Mario that preceeds its own brand, that's pretty neat.

Try not to feel joy while listening to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f1I1i_t94E&ab_channel=GilvaSunner%3AArchive

So for a long time I kind of refused to play the GB games because, I'm gonna be so real, the idea of a platforming game on a GameBoy sounded miserable to me. I mean, the GB is already on par with the NES, and I only like one platforming game on NES, Super Mario Bros. 3. Note how that means I don't like Super Mario Bros. or Super Mario Bros. 2.

That being said, recently I decided, why not? I'll try it out a bit. I didn't expect to finish the game, much less actually enjoy it. My preconceived notions were wrong. Don't get me wrong, I still wouldn't prefer to play this game, especially not in 2024 where I can not only play Super Mario Bros. 3 in three different forms on multiple handhelds, but I can play Super Mario Bros. Wonder on the go. But for what this game is, its fun. The controls are surprisingly good, the gamefeel is even more surprisingly good. This honestly feels better to me than the first two Super Mario Bros. games on the NES. Really, there's nothing to fault it that isn't just a symptom of it being a GameBoy game.

To be clear, it isn't joining the ranks of Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario Bros. Wonder as "the 2D Mario games I actually like", but I did not have a bad time playing it.

Klein, aber fein – sogar die Blöcke und Gegner sind auf Miniaturgröße!

Dennoch erstaunlich, wie gut sich das Gameplay anfühlt, nur manche Sprünge lassen sich schwer einschätzen. Interessant waren zudem die wenigen Shoot-’em-up-Level, weil man sowas gar nicht erwarten würde.

Alleine aufgrund des sehr guten Soundtracks und der trotz Schwarz-Weiß-Grafik vielfältigen Level-Themen – es gibt ein Japan-Level mit Bambus – lohnt sich das ziemlich schnelle Durchspielen!

Ich habe übrigens erst ab Welt 4 Savestates benutzt, meine Zeit ist mir da doch zu kostbar, als dass ich das Spiel bei fehleingeschätzten Sprüngen ganz von vorne beginnen würde.

Achievements: 38 %

_Mario... Mas bem esquisito _

O jogo conta que o menino Mario foi tirar aquelas férias merecidas em Sarasaland mas no meio das férias do bigode um cara lá chamado Tatanga sequestrou a princesa Daisy e agora ele tem que salvar a mesma.

Esse jogo é bem esquisito mas ele é bem competente no que se propõe por ser apenas um plataformer comum. esse jogo foi o primeiro jogo do bigode em algum portátil (o que já lhe dá um mérito) e também o game é bem curtinho, é tipo um fast food, come e termina rápido. Vale uma jogada. 6/10

This game is very cute and it's short and sweet. The enemies are hilarious.

There are:

Sphynx
Potatos running at full speed.
Moai statues with wings
Fire breathing snakes
Skeleton fish
Ninjas that don't die

The music is the best part about the game.
I made up lyrics to the Egypt level's song:

"Mario beware!
Theres tons of sphynx in there
It's not a lie
if you jump on them they'll die."

this side series of Land games is SMALL but overall really good and surprising how much Nintendo even still prioritized for not just porting levels here and there for a quick buck, they always look to the little brooklyn bitch with a quality check thermometer in his ass and I think its impressive how only for a glimmer and glare that thermometer cracks...

oh right we were talking about a video game, yea its good, i prefer the 2nd one but Daisy is awesome and she actually Should get a central role again, she should even show up in another Land game but at this point Im not so sure if the franchise could even stomach having another with the 3DS and 3D Land being old news.. sad!

Curiosamente eu joguei esse aqui por causa do Nando Moura, o anão tava certo quando disse que as músicas são lindas. Pra minha surpresa também achei a jogatina bem divertida depois que você se acostuma, é um jogo muito sólido considerando que saiu nos primórdios do Game Boy e se mantém um Mario competente até hoje com tudo no lugar certo dentro das bases da franquia, mesmo que ainda rústico e com alguns elementos claramente estranhos na composição entre as fases, tais como os inimigos e os cenários, o que ao menos lhe trouxe certa identidade

Vale a pena dar algumas chances, mesmo que não clique logo de cara. Sem dúvidas um baita expoente do Game Boy clássico

👽👽👽 MARIO ALIENÍGENA 👽👽👽

The jankiest official Mario game.

You walk off a cliff, Mario zips right down at maximum velocity, different from jumping fall speed.

Enemies and power ups are tiny. Collision detection is inconsistent. Whether you get a power up or not seemingly depends on which frame you land jump over it.

It’s only 12 levels long and already begins to overstay its welcome towards the end. Some bopping music however.

[Played on Retron 5 with original cartidge]

Super Mario Land is super interesting considering its North American release. prior to Super Mario Land we had only Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2. Super Mario Bros. 3 had been released in Japan but hadn't made its way to North America yet. I this makes Super Mario Land more interesting, because as of then, there was no clear formula for Super Mario. You had running and jumping but usually there was something unique and strange about each entry. Super Mario Land follows up on this, with gameplay far more in line with Super Mario Bros. but placed in a strange foreign land filled with unusual enemies, setpieces and level types. the general style pointed the series more towards Super Mario Bros. than Super Mario Bros. 2, but you still had a feeling that a Super Mario game could be pretty much anything.

Viewing this game as an attempt to convert Super Mario Bros. to a handheld console tells me that this game is a good attempt. It's certainly flawed, especially in the fast and jerky controls, but you do get the general feel of Super Mario Bros., and that alone is pretty amazing considering what else was out at the time in terms of handheld experiences.

However, I can't really say this game ages nearly as well and Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2 did. As previously noted, the controls are really uncomfortable. I found myself running straight off of ledges because there was 0 momentum or acceleration in Mario's running. You hold B and Mario goes from 0 to 60 and when you stop holding a direction, you stop moving instantly. Coming off of the 2 NES titles, this is really strange and hard to get used to. Ultimately, I found the game far more approachable when you're taking it super slow, but it still felt pretty wrong. Additionally, the graphics are rather poor, though that's mainly in comparison to later Game Boy titles. Games were able to work with much larger a more detailed sprites in exchange for less visibility, but games were often always built around that trade-off. Super Mario Land works to show the same amount of playing space as the NES titles, and to achieve this, pretty much all the sprites are tiny and super simplistic. It ends up looking kind of ugly up against those later titles.

Overall, Super Mario Land today is a flawed and rather dated game. It's not anything you'll hate, but it's not going to capture the same amounts of fun the NES titles do. Though at the time of the game's release, this was a big deal and a major breakthrough for handheld gaming. I know we do not live in the past, but it's always worth acknowledging and retrospecting on the history so you can better understand titles.

6/10 - Okay

Nintendo has always been overly protective of its franchises, but in a year where they made more than a billion dollars with a film that attempts little more than a barrage of "hey, recognize this from that game?"-moments for ninety minutes straight, they seem to be more occupied than ever with the recognizability of their most lucrative brand. Playing Super Mario Land against this backdrop in 2023, it feels refreshing to discover how little regard a Mario game could have had for aesthetic continuity with the rest of the series more than thirty years ago. The adventure takes place in a different kingdom after all, and that is all the justification the game needs to throw some of the weirdest combinations of settings and characters at you. In only twelve levels, Mario faces a roster of enemies that includes skeleton fish, robots, aliens, hopping tarantulas, running moai heads and zombies from Chinese folklore. What’s more, the few returning enemies like Goombas and Koopas have been considerably shrunk down in size, as if to demonstrate their diminished relevance. The fact that Koopas turn into time bombs when jumped upon could almost be seen as an act of anarchic rebellion against the conformity that most other Mario games have unfortunately succumbed to over the decades. Tellingly, the only element from Super Mario Land that stuck with the franchise is princess Daisy, but only years later in her revised form as Peach in a different flavor. Apart from that, the entirety of Sarasaland has been banned to the realm of lore that is merely mentioned in future games to give an extra talking point to the "did you know?"-gamers.

However, I would be cautious not to overestimate the audiovisual idiosyncrasy on display here. One of the core strengths of the Mario series has always been how little sense its world made. There is almost nothing tying together its different components, they simply have been shown in the same combination so frequently that it has become the most natural thing to see an Italian plumber jump against floating blocks to pick up flowers that let him shoot fire balls at walking mushrooms. And while most spin-off titles content themselves with repeating the same formular over and over again, the main series has never shied away from introducing the most outlandish new elements into the mix without ever jumping the shark. Remember the initial outcry provoked by the reveal that regular sized human beings were to be a part of Super Mario Odyssey? Somehow this appeared to be the most jarring decision in a game that later advertised itself with a literal T-Rex out of nowhere. Yet upon release, the human world New Donk City quickly became one of the most beloved levels in the whole series. Nintendo has simply gotten extraordinarily good at integrating the most disparate pieces into a coherent experience. In comparison, Super Mario Land seems less like an act of aesthetic defiance than a mixture of lack of experience with the new hardware and poor game design.

I never thought I would finish a 2D-Mario game without ever using the run button. You never need it and the change in speed is so devoid of any sense of momentum that if feels more like you accidentally pressed the speed-up button instead. The game’s version of the Fire Flower also manages to always shoot its projectile at the least useful angle. It still technically works as a platformer, but there is nothing to get excited about. Levels tend to loop the same sequence of obstacles multiple times in a row before moving on, with only minimal variation between iterations. The only "original" ideas are two of the blandest Shoot 'em up levels I have ever played. In the end, Super Mario Land neither succeeds at adapting the elements it tries to carry over from previous games, nor does it establish an interesting identity of its own.

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More Super Mario reviews
Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros. Deluxe
Super Mario Bros. 3

I've had a hankering to try the Wario Land games, and figured I'd build towards the "Super Mario Land 3" aspect of that first Wario Land by replaying its predecessors. Crazy to think that this deranged little thing was all the Super Mario there was on a handheld for a while. It resembles Super Mario Bros. enough that you think you know how it works, but everything's just a bit off... Play it and you'll see what I mean. It took me about 45-minutes to beat and it's not exactly mind-blowing, but it's got a personality all its own, so I'd say that's 45-minutes well-spent.

Look, this is no masterpiece by any strech, but you gotta give it a little credit. It's (pretty much) Mario, in 1989, on Game Boy. It's playable. They managed. It's short, it's easy, it's off-model as all hell, but I was there back when this came out and I had it for my big gray brick Game Boy, and you know what, it did the trick. I mean, I was like six, so I was pretty easy to please, but whatever.

I will say, the one thing in here worthy of the Mario name is the music, which incidentally has been stuck in my head for thirty years. Also this is where I first met my true love and future wife, Princess Daisy. So.

O melhor: Boa variedade de inimigos e cenários pela curta duração
O pior: Lamentável o downgrade de apenas um tiro por tela com a Fire Flower Superball
Covardes: Tragam as fases Shmup de volta!

Como o primeiro jogo da série para o Game Boy, é notável o quão cedo Super Mario Land deixa de ser tão familiar ao primeiro jogo de NES. Talvez no momento em que uma música "Can Can" começa a tocar quando se obtém a estrela de invencibilidade, ou quando um Koopa simplesmente explode quando se pula em cima dele. O melhor desse jogo pra mim é o quanto ele não se prendeu tanto assim aos temas daquele que é um dos jogos mais importantes da história.

É um jogo bem curto, apenas 12 fases divididas em 4 mundos, mas cada mundo traz cenários e inimigos únicos, além de uma música que combina bem com o tema da fase. Algumas fases apresentam um level design mais interessante até do que o SMB original, mas infelizmente o jogo acaba cedo demais para explorar algo realmente marcante. De todo modo, é uma recomendação fácil pelo tanto de coisa que ele apresenta em 1 hora, em um cartucho de Game Boy de 1989.

The original Super Mario Land was revolutionary for the time in portable gaming, I always thought it was cool to play a game on a screen wherever you go. The game itself is not good and doesn’t have too much going for it. I would much rather play Mario Land 2 or any other games in comparison to this one. The controls are awful and unresponsive where you can undershoot your jumps if you aren’t already running. Then it’s also kind of short and there just isn’t that much to do. The funnest part for me is the airplane levels, then I enjoy the music but not enough.

I got introduced to Super Mario Land through the Nintendo 3DS's virtual console. Growing up, I never had an original Gameboy, so when I first played this game, I was impressed that something like this existed. I feel like the Mario formula translates well to portable systems.
The game is a lot of fun. The music is beautiful and nostalgic and the character sprites and backgrounds are nice (although the sprites are a bit small).
After replaying the game in 2024, a couple of things jumped at me:
1) Mario feels weird to control.
This is especially noticeable when playing Super Mario Land side by side with one of the home console entries. Nintendo has been on a journey to perfect Mario's movement for some time now, and this game is a noticeable outlier. Mario feels too slippery and weird for my taste.
2) The level design is not great.
This game lacks the refinement of other Mario games, where the levels have one surprise after another. Even the first Super Mario Bros. has better levels than this (despite the fact that most of them look the same). In Super Mario Land, many of the levels have sections that repeat over and over again, making some parts feel like filler and making the game feel a little rushed.
Still, this is a Mario game and it certainly has a lot of that platforming fun. Plus some innovations like the famous shooting sections and some new enemies. The game is enjoyable as a short and sweet experience that can be replayed from time to time.

100% positive this was my first:

- Mario game
- handheld game
- just 1st in general with all probability, so-

...so a part of me needs to defend this. Sure, it's a very short experience with only 12 levels you can finish in half an hour if you take your time.
It's a Mario game alright that feels more alien-ish since it was made by Metroid creator. It introduced a land only and always mentioned but never returned and, ofc, Daisy.