Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Hard to describe"

The Good: Nice variety in environments and gameplay.

The Bad: It's not a Mario game.

Being released in the early Game Boy days, Super Mario Land suffers from the same issues every game at the time did--namely some less-than-predictable physics and (even more so) tiny objects/characters sprites. But actually those can't even be considered problems since the game stands fairly nice among his contemporaries; what bugs me hard here is the fact it doesn't really make sense as a Mario game.

At first sight you'll recognize the basic elements of the series: Mario himself with his mushrooms and fire flowers, breaking blocks, entering pipes, gathering coins (that lend you a pleasure only matched by smashing louses since they're so tiny and feel like doing so), etc. But as you progress you'll see one "?" block after another poping up inside your head.

You stomp a turtle and its shell EXPLODES. Explodes? OK. A HEART for a 1-UP? Why?! It could have been... a white mushroom, for instance. (If it's the case of the color palette--or the lack of one--being the limitation behind this.) Then you pick a Fire Flower power-up and shoot your first fireball... just to see it ricochet all around the screen up to the sky as if it was Breakout, not Mario. Well, it was supposed to BOUNCE, wasn't it? (My bet here is they simply couldn't have figured out how to actually make it work at the time.) And what, where's the awesome theme music for Starman?! Why did they take that to replace it with French CAN-CAN?! o.o It's just impossible to find a decent reason for that...

Wait, there's more. You beat the first boss (not Bowser/Koopa or something related) and a brunette (?) girl appears. Then Mario says: "Oh! DAISY". -.- Who the hell is Daisy?! If Mario got tired of the blonde one he should have headed back to Pauline (the girl he used to save from the evil claws of Donkey Kong a couple years before). lol
After that battle Mario arrives at World 2... by an UFO. o.o An UFO?! ~.~ Hmm. The final level of this world is a SUBMARINE SHOOTING section. SHOOTING?! With sunken UFOs at the backgroung. Oh my.

That's enough, I guess. You already got the drill, don't you?
Well, I not saying the game is bad at all--the already mentioned variety in the gameplay makes it for a good action-platform time despite the game being short--but it's just not a Mario game. I know I should expect anything after Super Mario Bros. 2 for the NES, but that was a completely diverse case. (Go for the history behind this release and you'll find out why.)

If Nintendo decided to release this as an entirely new franchise I would be fine with the title. But the way it is it's just a nonsensical entry in the series. That's all.