Super Mario Land 1 & 2 (GB)

[B - Mark]

I´d likes Super Mario Land 2 because for his graphics are better than Super Mario Land 1, and the same graphics remeber me Super Mario Bros. 3 for NES.

Other Super Mario Land 2 atracctions are:
- Wario´s debut. The Mario´s evil version.
Later, Wario stars his own game called Wario Land - Super Mario Land 3 and begins his carrer as Nintendo´s Bad Boy.

- New clothes. The rabbit and astronaut clothes.

[boatofcar]

I played through SML 1 before i slept last nite. But damn, the controllers kinda sux actually. I lost a few lifes missing some jumps.

Or maybe it's just harder?


SML 1 has always felt different to me...very interesting to find out that SM was not behind it. SML 2 is probably my favorite original GB game. The hidden levels are very reminiscent of SMW.

[MrRoboto19XX]

Id just like to say that since stumbling upon this topic, Ive gone out and bought Super Mario Land for the first time, and will buy 2 as soon as I find it.

[Sosage]

Anyone remember the commercial? It was cool, with the footage of the people and I think I remember people running from things like a UFO. I used to have it on my comp.

This one?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5KuMop65F0

Damn...I remember receiving this game along with the original Gameboy for Christmas. I can't comment on the gameplay...it has just been so damn long since I last played it (plus I lost most of my GB carts...so I can't just bust it out and play).

[Bloodreign]

Played some SML awhile back (must get the cart soon, already own SML 2 for years now), didn't know it wasn't made by Miyamoto, learn something new everyday.

Favorite song on the soundtrack of SML, the Chinese theme song.

[delafro]

SML was fun and all, but the real masterpiece is SML 2. I really liked how they tried to put Mario in semi-real environments (ex. a sub, shrinking inside of the house, etc.) In fact, the environments as a whole had a lot of imagination behind them- who can forget the wind-up Mario doll level? The secret levels were a nice bonus and well-implemented. Add on top of that great graphics, tight control, and catchy music, and you've got a winner.

[THATinkjar]

SML 1 has always felt different to me...very interesting to find out that SM was not behind it. SML 2 is probably my favorite original GB game. The hidden levels are very reminiscent of SMW.

I am starting to think that Super Mario Land felt so very different to the Mario offerings on the NES and SNES because of the technical limitations of the GameBoy. Gunpei Yokoi was again at the helm for Super Mario Land 2, which was a lot closer in feel and look to the Mario games we all know and love - as they were pushing the hardware a little bit more.

But damn, Super Mario Land 2 is one heck of a glitchy game. And the slowdown really drove me nuts, and the music - in my opinion - isn't a patch on Super Mario Land!

[Jorpho]

I wouldn't be surprised if the first Super Mario Land originally wasn't supposed to be a Mario game at all, and if the Mario bits were tacked on sometime near the end of development when Nintendo decided they needed a launch title... Pure speculation, of course.

Without the Mario name, though, this game probably would be just as lost and forgotten as some many other Game Boy launch titles. (The Game Boy Batman game comes to mind right now for some reason.)

MSL 2 had hidden levels, didn't it. I remember my save screen showing 31 levels. I'm sure there was 32 though, but I could never find that last one, if it exists.

The completion of the final castle level does not increment the save file, so technically there are indeed 32 levels.

It's fairly easy to increment the number on the save screen arbitrarily, though - just reset your Game Boy (that is, A+B+Select+Start) when the screen fades out just after completing a level, and the save file number will increase but you'll still have to complete the level again.

The game had some great concepts and nifty graphics, but I agree that it really was much, much too easy most of the time.

Anyone else play that beta version where only some levels of the Tree Zone were available, and the Koopas were replaced by snails? I saw that at Ontario Place way, way back in the day.

I think I liked SML3 (Wario Land) even better - that was just great fun. But then they ruined it for Wario Land 2 + 3 and all that - they just made it completely dumb, with all those stupid getting squished and no more bullhorn suits or dragon suits and other sorts of crap. It wasn't any fun at all.

SML3 was a little bit rough around the edges, but was indeed an excellent game. And I also enjoyed its sequels (Wario Land 3 is probably the closest we'll ever come to a 2D version of Super Mario 64), though I can easily see how they might not be everybody's cup of tea. Much like Kirby's Dream Land 3, they're more like elaborate action-puzzle games at times than a strict platformer. Great production values, though!

[MrRoboto19XX]

Alright, I purchased this game as stated earlier last night along with alleyway. However by the time I got settled I was too tired to actually play the thing, so I played it today while watching saved by the bell.

I kid you not. I felt so period-perfect!

Anyway, my opinion of the game is largely the same opinion I remember having circa 1993 or so when I really got into gameboy gaming. "Eh, alright".

Back then it was the little things; koopas that blew up (such a pain), the way that a star made you invincible (odd) and the fact that I was fighting a sphinx (uh...). All of these things made my opinion of the game shaky.

Today, with the kowledge I have of this game, as well as games in general I think that the game is similar to an early build of a smb game, much like someone said earlier.

But the thing that Im currently pondering; was Yokoi trying to do mario his way (i.e. what were some little things he wanted to change) or was he trying to imitate miyamoto, with fair results?

The world may never know.

[Perkar]

I prefer Mario Land 1 to the second game, i think its the massive scale of the first game i like better. Mario is tiny and the levels are huge. In the second game mario takes up half the screen and the levels are much more claustrophobic.

i agree with that statement 100%

myself, i had a gameboy just about from launch, but strangely enough i never had any of the mario games for it. last year at CGE i picked up a minty complete copy of Super Mario Land for $7 (in fact it was the only thing i purchased at CGE), and i played through it on the airplane back to detroit. loved it.

i had picked up mario land 2 a few months earlier and played through it as well, but i really didn't care for that one, and i think it's because of what playgeneration stated.

[§ Gideon §]

This game raised me.

[cmislin]

yeah those two games were great now if I could only find where they are hhmmmm somewhere in the house doh

[Aussie2B]

As much as it pains me to say it, seeing as I practically worship the tragically lost Gunpei Yokoi, I don't think Super Mario Land is all that great of a game. Sure, it can be a bit of mindless fun now and then, and the music is downright terrific (the main reason you'll ever see me playing the game). However, everything being so extremely tiny makes you have to squint just to discern anything and also makes precise targeting for landing on enemies or platforms unnecessarily difficult. The controls are also rather sloppy and slippery, which doesn't help matters. Probably the clincher is that it's so mindnumbingly easy (sorry, but having to play through it twice just to experience the difficulty it should've been at from the get-go doesn't cut it) and there's not even enough creativity and variety to the level design to make up for it. It's just lacking in any real meat and thus degrades to standard platformer fare. Fun sometimes? Yes, for sure, but anything remarkable? Nah.

As for Super Mario Land 2, it was certainly an improvement in nearly all regards (not music, though), but it too suffered from being too easy and possessing somewhat sloppy movement. Now Wario Land, THAT is when things started to get really good. The controls finally got tight (although they functioned in an entirely new way, of course) and there was loads of depth and variety.

[Jake2215]

What is all this "mind-numbingly easy" talk? I first owned the game about 8 or 9 years ago, and I thought it was super-effing hard. WOW was it hard. Honestly, I don't know what it was, but I had a much, much easier time with the other Marios, outside of Lost Levels.

Maybe it was the slightly sloppier controls. It's just filthy wrong for Mario not to control like an absolute dream. I think it's one of those things you take for granted, and then miss when it's gone. Sort of like charming levels.

[Push Upstairs]

The game is sorta easy if you have played alot of Mario games...but then i'm refering to when i owned this game when i was like 12/13 and nearly walked through this game.

I do know it is insanely easy to rack up lives in this game, much much easier than in Mario 3.

[Jorpho]

Oh yes, it's not quite what I'd call an easy game, the first SML. It's still on the short side, though. (At 12 levels, it's the shortest Mario game ever.)

[gamescanner.org]

Hello. I posted another topic here:

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/view...502&highlight=

Can anyone help???

[Jorpho]

By the way, seems someone made a remake for the recent Retro Remakes competition.
http://www.remakes.org/comp2006/screenshots.php?page=9

[Roi]

Wonderfull game! Now I think it's a easy game but when I was young I couldn't finish it !

[rbudrick]

It's intersting that some found this game hard. It was one of those games I beat the first day on the 2nd or 3rd time. But, I spent a crapload of time finding all the secrets!

THere were no warps, though, so I can see how some might think it was hard, but there were only 4 levels, though...

-Rob