Let's begin with what I actually liked about this game:
The overall presentation is pretty stellar, the simple sprites and the very catchy music create a charm which never really was captured anymore.
Many inventive environments and enemies make this game feel much fresher and more unique than modern iderations of the 2D Mario platformers, even staples like Koopas got reworked (even though it's probably just due to the gameboys limitations)
However, the fact that this is an early Gameboy game comes to this games detriment.
This game is very hard, which in itself is probably more a positive than a negative but it's hard not because of well crafted challenging level design but because the controls and physics just don't work or are completely counter intuitive.
I know it may seem unfair to critique this game based on its controls considering it was the first gameboy platformer but Nintendo proved that they are able to create timeless controls when breaking new grounds as we saw in Super Mario Bros. or in Super Mario 64, their first attempt at creating a 3D platformer.
But what in particular about the controls and physics is so bad that I would rate this game so low?
Turning mid-air sometimes is just not possible for no apparent reason, you gain immediate moment when jumping which you completely lose after just a couple of frames, Mario sometimes just stops moving mid-air and compared to the moon gravity falling physics after you perform a jump you sink like a huge rock when you just walk of a cliff which let me to fall into the abyss on multiple occasions because I just wanted to walk down onto the platform below.
You can't collect mushrooms for some frames and they are often placed next to pits so you just jump through them and they fall into the void.
These all seem like very minor and nit-picky complaints but if you add them up you end up with a very frustrating experience, you die not because you as a player failed but because the game failed you.
The number one job of a platformer should be to ensure that the player feels in control of the character, which this game fails completely.
The level-design is what I would consider fairly decent but I also had some gripes with that:
Moving platforms have no indicator where they start or end so you have to wait a cycle until you can jump which grinds the game to a hold.
I died two times of unavoidable obstacles (boulder appearing right in front of my face and in a level where all spikes on top don't do anything one just does damage (and it's one where you would want to jump high to avoid having to jump onto a miniscule platform))
Overall, fun presentation, frustrating unresponsive everything else
The overall presentation is pretty stellar, the simple sprites and the very catchy music create a charm which never really was captured anymore.
Many inventive environments and enemies make this game feel much fresher and more unique than modern iderations of the 2D Mario platformers, even staples like Koopas got reworked (even though it's probably just due to the gameboys limitations)
However, the fact that this is an early Gameboy game comes to this games detriment.
This game is very hard, which in itself is probably more a positive than a negative but it's hard not because of well crafted challenging level design but because the controls and physics just don't work or are completely counter intuitive.
I know it may seem unfair to critique this game based on its controls considering it was the first gameboy platformer but Nintendo proved that they are able to create timeless controls when breaking new grounds as we saw in Super Mario Bros. or in Super Mario 64, their first attempt at creating a 3D platformer.
But what in particular about the controls and physics is so bad that I would rate this game so low?
Turning mid-air sometimes is just not possible for no apparent reason, you gain immediate moment when jumping which you completely lose after just a couple of frames, Mario sometimes just stops moving mid-air and compared to the moon gravity falling physics after you perform a jump you sink like a huge rock when you just walk of a cliff which let me to fall into the abyss on multiple occasions because I just wanted to walk down onto the platform below.
You can't collect mushrooms for some frames and they are often placed next to pits so you just jump through them and they fall into the void.
These all seem like very minor and nit-picky complaints but if you add them up you end up with a very frustrating experience, you die not because you as a player failed but because the game failed you.
The number one job of a platformer should be to ensure that the player feels in control of the character, which this game fails completely.
The level-design is what I would consider fairly decent but I also had some gripes with that:
Moving platforms have no indicator where they start or end so you have to wait a cycle until you can jump which grinds the game to a hold.
I died two times of unavoidable obstacles (boulder appearing right in front of my face and in a level where all spikes on top don't do anything one just does damage (and it's one where you would want to jump high to avoid having to jump onto a miniscule platform))
Overall, fun presentation, frustrating unresponsive everything else