Super Mario Land is essentially a Mario game that was made specifically for players who demanded for it. Super Mario Land takes place in Sarasaland where the evil...Tatanga? Yeah Tatanga a small purple impish creature has taken over and has captured Princess Daisy.
The game is basically Super Mario Bros if things were cut in half:
Instead of 8 worlds, Super Mario Land has 4 worlds. Instead of 4 levels per world, Super Mario Land has 3 levels per world.
Super Mario Bros has a total of 32 levels with fluctuating difficulty, while Super Mario Land has 12 which has reasonable difficulty in terms of consistent progression.
What makes Super Mario Land unique is the way it handles power ups and levels.
The game features the Super-Ball Flower which is exclusive only to Super Mario Land 1 and 2, which works like the Fire flower except instead Mario throws a black ball that bounces all over the the walls until it hits an enemy or disappears.
The superstar works the same giving Mario invincibility however instead of playing the typical "SUPER STAR THEME" it plays a 8-bit rendition of Offenbach - CAN CAN, which is weird and surreal to hear, but fun non the less.
The 1 Up is different as instead of it being a mushroom it is instead just a heart, my assumption is that for the Gameboy, since it didn't have color, they couldn't make the mushroom distinguished enough to be different from a regular mushroom so they changed it to a heart to signify 1-UP.
The game takes several leaps forward when it comes to Mario games as it does a lot of improvements compared to SUPER MARIO BROS. As it decides to mix up the levels by having Mario Travel via submarine in one of the levels, along with Mario fighting in a jet plane during the final level to defeat Tatanga.
I think as an experience it's a great addition to the franchise and while not as big as say SUPER MARIO BROS, I think it does a lot of refreshing and original things enough to make it stand on it's own. That and it features things that are unique to it's own like taking place in Sarasaland, SUPER-BALL FLOWER, 🗿 enemies, TATANGA as the villain, and having Daisy as the primary princess of saving.
Highly recommend playing SUPER MARIO LAND, however I will give it 3.5 stars only because I would highly recommend playing the DX COLOR remake instead. But if you want to experience the original GB version, play this black and white version.
The game is basically Super Mario Bros if things were cut in half:
Instead of 8 worlds, Super Mario Land has 4 worlds. Instead of 4 levels per world, Super Mario Land has 3 levels per world.
Super Mario Bros has a total of 32 levels with fluctuating difficulty, while Super Mario Land has 12 which has reasonable difficulty in terms of consistent progression.
What makes Super Mario Land unique is the way it handles power ups and levels.
The game features the Super-Ball Flower which is exclusive only to Super Mario Land 1 and 2, which works like the Fire flower except instead Mario throws a black ball that bounces all over the the walls until it hits an enemy or disappears.
The superstar works the same giving Mario invincibility however instead of playing the typical "SUPER STAR THEME" it plays a 8-bit rendition of Offenbach - CAN CAN, which is weird and surreal to hear, but fun non the less.
The 1 Up is different as instead of it being a mushroom it is instead just a heart, my assumption is that for the Gameboy, since it didn't have color, they couldn't make the mushroom distinguished enough to be different from a regular mushroom so they changed it to a heart to signify 1-UP.
The game takes several leaps forward when it comes to Mario games as it does a lot of improvements compared to SUPER MARIO BROS. As it decides to mix up the levels by having Mario Travel via submarine in one of the levels, along with Mario fighting in a jet plane during the final level to defeat Tatanga.
I think as an experience it's a great addition to the franchise and while not as big as say SUPER MARIO BROS, I think it does a lot of refreshing and original things enough to make it stand on it's own. That and it features things that are unique to it's own like taking place in Sarasaland, SUPER-BALL FLOWER, 🗿 enemies, TATANGA as the villain, and having Daisy as the primary princess of saving.
Highly recommend playing SUPER MARIO LAND, however I will give it 3.5 stars only because I would highly recommend playing the DX COLOR remake instead. But if you want to experience the original GB version, play this black and white version.