tommy_lop's Full Review: Super Mario Land for Game Boy Color
I remember when I was around 6 years old seeing commercials of a black and white Mario sitting on top of a car with the princess while alien attacked. Then the words popped up now your playing with power portable power popped up on the screen. It was an ad for Super Mario Land for the new portable Game Boy. Well it was several years before I picked up a Gameboy and after buying a couple of other games I decided to buy this one. This is one of the best black and white gameboy games made.
Story.
The peaceful kingdom of Sharshaland has been attack by alien’s lead by the vile Topanga. He has enslaved the population of the 4 different lands in the kingdom and imprison Princess Daisy. Since Bowser has taken a Princess kidnapping holiday everyone’s favorite heroic plumber has decided to use his free time to help out the people of Shrashaland and rescue Daisy.
Graphics.
These are in the beginning of the game boy roots so the graphics aren't great. The color is meant to be black and white, but played in my Super Gameboy the color appears more red . The has Mario keeping a color that remotely resembles that of the original Super Mario Bros. Mario sprites looks like a shrunken version of Super Mario Bros, the enemies however are smaller and less detailed. While these are no by any means comparing to the GBA games of today but since this is light years beyond the LSD screen portable games that where before it.
Sound.
I am giving the sound a huge break since it is such an old game, but it's not bad when your taken in to account how old this game is. The sound is beepy but even so there is actual music in this. You have a cave setting that actually is more complicated then the cave music that you got in the original SMB. You also have a marine pop and sky pop music, an outdoor music, and an a somewhat Asian sound track for stage 4. There is also the can can dance for invisibility. The sound effects are the same from the SMB only squashed down to the GB hardware.
Gameplay.
The game for the most part follows the SMB platformer style. Get to point A to B while squashing enemies and gaining coins. Mario can grab mushrooms to make him super Mario, and then fire flowers to make Mario fire Mario. While the game is a basic Mario Bros game they did change a few thing.
First off while there is fire Mario but he can only throw one fireball at a time. This one will ricochet off what ever is thrown at it and fly off. If it's in a room it will ricochet around like a pinball and in till it runs out or hits something. The fireball can also collect coins, in fact there are some coins room Mario can collect some quick one ups if he has the fire balls.
The next thing they add is the Sky Pop and Marine Pop. In world 2-3 and 4-3 Mario gets to pilot either a submarine of an airplane in a gradius shooter level. You scroll while shooting enemies and boxes, mushrooms appear to give you power up's. You also have unlimited amount of bullets. These worlds are pretty fun and are a nice break from the usual platform action you expect in a Mario game.
If there is any bad point to the game is that like most early game boy games it's extremely short. Only 12 stages and while there is some challenge curve, level 1 is easy while Level 4 has Mario getting the crapped kicked out of him by a bunch of Asian school girls (yes I know there supposed to be zombies but they look like Asian school girls). Sill it's short chances are an experience gamer will beat it in less then a few tries and have it conquer in a few days.
final recommendation.
It's a fun game despite being short and it's the only Mario game that has Mario flying by conventional mechanical means. It's also the only game where the princess turns into a giant spider.
4 big worlds 2 different vehicles for Mario to commandeer Collect power-ups including the new Super Ball Compatible with all Game Boy systems, Platfor...More at Amazon Marketplace
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