Retro Corner: Super Mario Land (Game Boy) Review · 11:05pm Sep 15th, 2020
As we continue the 35th Anniversary of Mario, I have one of my early reviews to show from the first year of this site. In 2016, Super Mario Land was among my early reviews posted back when it was just Retro Corner Reviews. The best thing about the Plumber’s first outing on Game Boy was taking the SMB1 formula and making it portable. The game was released in 1989 as a launch title alongside Tetris and the ports of the NES Black Box sports titles. With the combination of Tetris and SML would make this a big hit more so then the Game and Watch Handheld series. Of course, the first to challenge the success of the Game Boy was Atari with their Lynx handheld system. Unlike Nintendo’s monochrome portable, the Lynx was in full color and had better visuals. As we all know that means nothing when the games make the system and not what it could do. That is why the Lynx ended up in bargain bins at Toys R Us, and KB Toys as the Game Boy continued having better games.
For SML itself, it’s not the biggest title in the series as the NES releases held more importance. Even though this was a prelude to SMB3’s massive push in the US, Mario Land gave the system a killer app next to Tetris. In 1989, there weren’t that many titles among the lineup that didn’t include what’s was already listed. Maybe Castlevania: The Adventure is the only other release that could come off as a big title. However, Tetris might have sold more but Mario's latest adventure was still a massive seller that year and even after. That speaks volumes especially when SML2 was out and still sold more copies. Of course, the Player’s Choice where Nintendo reduced the price to $19.99 by then probably played a factor. Now, the theme is about Mario going through the neighboring kingdom of Sarasaland to save Princess Daisy from an alien named Tatanga. That is what made SML unique and instead of saving Peach in the Mushroom Kingdom, he goes someplace else. Has Super Mario Land aged to the point of no return being a launch game on limited hardware?
