Super Mario Land Review

Super Mario Land was one of the launch titles for the original Game Boy back in 1989, and now lives a second life as a launch title for the eShop Virtual Console on 3DS. Is it still worth your money though?

 As you could have guessed the story is very familiar, the princess has been kidnapped and Mario must set about rescuing her, but this time Mario is not in the familiar Mushroom Kingdom and takes a break from rescuing Peach to save Princess Daisy who has been kidnapped by Tatanga, a mysterious alien who hypnotises residents of the kingdom to make them fight for him.

The game plays exactly how you would expect if you have ever played a Mario game, the side scrolling formula and all of the classic elements are there, Goombas to stomp, floating blocks to hit and warp pipes that lead you to underground coins are all present. Mario is controlled in the same fashion as always with the ‘A’ button making him jump and ‘B’ increasing Mario’s speed. Fans of the NES classic may find the physics slightly awkward at first as there is next to no forward momentum and a release of the D-Pad in mid air can easily see you plummeting to your death, but it doesn’t take much to get used to. Once you have gotten past the initial similarities to Super Mario Bros. You soon realise that the game holds its own and that many mechanics have been changed and tweaked, this becomes even more apparent as Mario jumps into a submarine and even a plane.

The levels that use the submarine and plane mechanics feature an auto scrolling screen as you move Mario up down left and right while firing at enemies in a shoot ‘em up style fashion and are defiantly the main highlight of the game, making for and exciting departure from the side scrolling levels, but unfortunately there are only two of them across the whole game. The games length is the only thing that hinders it slightly as it contains just 12 levels in four themed worlds, which to a seasoned player can easily be beaten in about half an hour.

The music takes nothing from the acclaimed melodies by Koji Kondo and features its own fully fledged soundtrack composed by Hirokazu Tanaka, which isn’t at all a bad thing as his work gives the whole game a slightly more exotic tone that fits the style of the four worlds perfectly. The music is one of the games strongest points and although not exactly in the style set by most Mario games is probably my favourite of the series.

I have yet to get the virtual console version on the 3DS but I have read that it adds a new feature thats allows you to create save states at any point during the game. I can see this being incredible helpful if you don’t want to play through the whole game in one sitting but also hold the potential to remove what little challenge the game, which is already fairly easy holds.

Overall I think the game is worth the asking price of the eShop and even the cartridge is easy to find and fairly cheap. The game is great if you have yet to play what is undoubtedly a classic game even if it has dated a bit, as long as you don't expect hours of gameplay. If you’re looking for a challenge or a game with lots of replay value you may want to look elsewhere.


7/10