An excellent an often overlooked mainline Mario game (indeed, it was the last one I hadn't beaten—took me a while to even find the cartridge anywhere).
It's a very creative platformer, and a unique entry in the Mario franchise. The giant tree, the space levels and the giant toy levels make me feel like this game is a lot closer to Super Mario Galaxy than any other classic Mario game. If you are a fan of Galaxy's grandiose aesthetics and enjoy ambiance in Mario levels, this is a must-play for you. Indeed, I think a lot of latter Mario games, intentionally or not, took direct inspiration from this game.
We also must appreciate the fact that this was released on the very same hardware as the first Super Mario Land. Here, we have triple the amount of levels, more power ups, incredible graphics (almost on par with SMB3), saving and significant graphical differences between each level. For this era of short crunchy handheld games, it's really incredible. It's better than a vast majority of NES sidescrollers.
Also, this is the only mainline Mario game (other than SMB2, but that one's an outlier) that features another final boss than Bowser. It paved the way for everything Wario-related and has one of the coolest and most tense final boss battles I've seen in a Mario game.
This game deserves a whole lot more attention and it will likely get that attention thanks to its re-release on the Switch virtual GameBoy. I'm still of the opinion that it's better to play this on a GBA (which colorizes the game and gives it a whole new life) or on a big screen via a Super GameBoy, but playing this game through any means is essential for Mario fans. Check it out.
(Now that I've completed Mario, I'll have to move on to Zelda or smth...)
It's a very creative platformer, and a unique entry in the Mario franchise. The giant tree, the space levels and the giant toy levels make me feel like this game is a lot closer to Super Mario Galaxy than any other classic Mario game. If you are a fan of Galaxy's grandiose aesthetics and enjoy ambiance in Mario levels, this is a must-play for you. Indeed, I think a lot of latter Mario games, intentionally or not, took direct inspiration from this game.
We also must appreciate the fact that this was released on the very same hardware as the first Super Mario Land. Here, we have triple the amount of levels, more power ups, incredible graphics (almost on par with SMB3), saving and significant graphical differences between each level. For this era of short crunchy handheld games, it's really incredible. It's better than a vast majority of NES sidescrollers.
Also, this is the only mainline Mario game (other than SMB2, but that one's an outlier) that features another final boss than Bowser. It paved the way for everything Wario-related and has one of the coolest and most tense final boss battles I've seen in a Mario game.
This game deserves a whole lot more attention and it will likely get that attention thanks to its re-release on the Switch virtual GameBoy. I'm still of the opinion that it's better to play this on a GBA (which colorizes the game and gives it a whole new life) or on a big screen via a Super GameBoy, but playing this game through any means is essential for Mario fans. Check it out.
(Now that I've completed Mario, I'll have to move on to Zelda or smth...)