With both these games on the eShop for about the same price, which is better?
Super Mario Land 1; A Surprisingly Mediocre Mario Game
Something I never understood is how so many people adored the original Super Mario Land despite the fact it's a rather poorly designed and flawed Mario game. Maybe it's because it was at one time the only Mario game on Game Boy and people were so obsessed with Mario that they were willing to praise everything with his name on and eventually played it enough they considered it actually good.
So here's a review of Super Mario Land outlining its strengths and flaws.
Graphics
Er... Yes, I'll let this picture explain it all:
To say it looks basic is the understatement of the century. I admit it was okay for the time about ten or twenty years ago when the game was originally released, but it just doesn't look good for a Game Boy game. Kirby's Dream Land looks ten times better. It's sequel and the Wario Land series does, every Game Boy Zelda game does, every Pokemon game does and pretty much 90% more games do. It seems lazy design and the fact no one seems to call the game out on this bugs me.
That isn't to say the game doesn't have its charms, it does, but for a game that looks like this to be released after Super Mario Bros 2 and 3 on NES is very lazy. So the graphics just don't impress me at all.
Music
Probably the best part of the game, the tracks used for background music in this game are fantastic and really make the game so much better. You've probably already heard one of the game's themes in Super Smash Bros Brawl, the amazing underground theme:
But it's not the only catchy music in this. The main theme is pretty good as is the theme for Muda and Chai Kingdoms and even the boss theme!
As someone who's played the Mario Land games more than the original Super Mario Bros games, I honestly think the music in this game is likely better than that in many of the NES games. So the music in Super Mario Land is excellent.
Gameplay
It's a fun game, to a degree. The level design is decent and the physics work how they mostly should but it has a lot of problems.
For one thing, the physics are not as good as in every other Mario game. Do they generally work? Yes, but they act more like Super Mario Bros 1/the Lost Levels' physics than those in later games and cause you to slide around a bit. The fact this is coupled with nearly pixel perfect jumps across tiny platforms means that some levels are more annoying than anything and the physics are often as much to blame as player skill.
However, this isn't to say it's all bad. One of things I love is how original and interesting the game is character wise. Gone is Bowser, the Koopalings, Peach, Luigi or Toad, in their place are Tatanga, Daisy and well, that's about it. The enemies this time have nothing to do with Bowser's forces at all and hence are more interesting than the standard Koopas, Goombas and Hammer Bros for the millionth time. There are now some interesting Moai like creatures, some sphinx like monsters and the hopping vampire Pionpi, all of which are clever new enemy designs that were sadly never revisited to date. The bosses are also entirely new and are slightly more interesting in design than in many Mario games. Pity the first three basically act as reskinned Super Mario Bros 1 Bowser clones.
What's also interesting is the theme running through the game. What is it you may ask?
Aliens and the paranormal.
Think about it, all four 'regions' are based on places in real life with some connection to either the stars/space or alien activity. Birabuto is basically Egypt (see the theories of aliens building the pyramids), Muda is the Bermuda Triangle (aliens supposedly abducting ships and planes lost in the area) and Easton is Easter Island (people have connected the Moai statues and things to extraterrestial activity via conspiracy theories). And why Chai Kingdom? Well Chinese folklore I think. Something about China being the 'Celestial Kingdom', between the heavens and the earth. Where do you fight Tatanga and Biokinton? The heavens/sky/space.
It's an interesting running theme don't you think?
The other interesting addition is the shoot em up levels. You know, Mario in a submarine or plane. These work pretty well and are an interesting way to add variety to the two levels with this theme in the game.
So how's the gameplay overall? Decent, the game's quite fun. Not as well put together as some of the others in the series but it is generally fun to play.
Replay Value/Length
There isn't much to the game, with only 12 levels total. This isn't as much of a problem as it was in the old days when you had to buy this game as full price, but it's still poor value for a game when many others could be bought on the eShop without much more money that have a significant amount more levels/content in them.
There are a few things that sort of extend the game's replay value like a more difficult mode 'unlocked' after beating it and a level select of sorts after doing that again, but what's the point? You don't have a save feature here, you lose everything the minute you exit the game meaning you can't come back to the game and try hard mode at a later date and the only real difference is some more/different enemies. Don't expect different endings, secret levels or anything else because there are none.
^Hard mode. Probably the only 'walkthrough' in existance. So yes, the game doesn't have much replay value either and hence has nearly no value for money to speak of.
Overall
Super Mario Land is a pretty good game. It's fun to play, the controls and physics are okay and the original ideas the team behind it brought to the Mario series are excellent. However for a Mario game there's much, much better out there. If you want a Mario game but have exhausted all other possibilities bar the Lost Levels or have some spare change on the site you should buy it, just remember that the sequel's better and is far more deserving of your hard earned money.
7/10
Super Mario Land 2; Super Mario Bros 3 Meets World
And as a result, a much improved game compared to the first one with more content, better gameplay and controls, far better graphics and the same sense of originality and charm that the first game did so well, Super Mario Land 2 is an underrated classic that's definitely worthy of your hard earned cash.
Here's why:
Graphics
About a hundred times better than those in Super Mario Land and actually taking advantage of the Game Boy's abilities in some way, the graphics look kind of like Super Mario World's except monochrome. Here's an example:
As you can tell, there's much more detail in the objects and sprites this time around and Mario's not so difficult to see any more. In fact, it looks much more like a SNES game than the original (which looks like a early NES title at best) and is so much better for it.
Music
Good, but not as memorable as in the first game. Some great tunes include the theme from the maze in the second part of the Space Zone, the Pumpkin Zone music and the theme played in Wario's Castle, which can be heard here:
I mean, it's technically much better in that it takes advantage of more instruments and is SNES standard rather than NES standard, but it's slightly less memorable than in the first game, even in respect to the best tracks in the game.
Gameplay
A million miles apart from Super Mario Land 1. It's got more and better world themes. A proper overworld to explore with secret exits in levels and a boss at the end of each as well as the ability to play levels in any order, more power ups, more abilities from Super Mario World like the spin jump and all kinds of neat things that you'd never expect in a Mario game.]
One addition which improves the game is a proper overworld map like in Super Mario World or Super Mario Bros 3. It's arguably the best world map in the entire franchise due to how Mario Land (the place the game's set in) is absolutely nowhere near as generic as the settings in Super Mario Bros 3 or New Super Mario Bros. Have a look:
How it's meant to look
How it actually looked
None, it's the most interesting overworld in the series because you can actually choose where to go and do worlds in any order. For example, want to play the Space Zone or Mario Zone first? No problem. That's something so missing from the likes of even Super Mario World and their one 'true' world order you have to play through.
It also brings over another thing from SMW, secret exits. While they're now secret black doors and not keyholes in this game, they do the same thing and bring you to various secret levels and areas. No switch palaces mind, but who needs 'em?
I also like how after any event, the map changes. When you kill a boss, they 'die' on the map too and vanish from it, like the bird in Tree Zone or witch in Pumpkin Zone. Or how when you find a secret exit in Space Zone, a star smashes into the moon's head and makes it all miserable.
Poor moon...
The other neat touches are good too, like Wario marching up and down the top of his castle, or how after beating all Pumpkin Zone levels a ton of Boos appear on the map and keep dancing around and spinning in circles in time to the music.
The levels here are pretty interesting as are the world themes. No generic areas here, you've got the Space Zone (outer space), Pumpkin Zone (haunted house), Mario Zone (giant robot Mario), Turtle Zone (underwater and inside a whale), Tree Zone (giant tree) and Macro Zone (giant house with large normal objects and bugs) to explore and all kinds of neat things to go with them. I like how this is the first game to make a whole world with nothing but ghost levels for instance. And this game did 'space' years before Super Mario Galaxy was ever thought of. But it's not just world themes here, each level has a theme too. One of the Tree Zone levels has one set in a bee hive (sort of like how Donkey Kong Country 2 did), the Turtle Zone sets levels in submarine and inside of a whale, the space zone has a maze of stars with extremely low gravity and only one of the many Pumpkin Zone levels actually takes place in a haunted mansion. You never experience the same thing twice in a row, which is really good.
As well as interesting level and world themes and gimmicks, the bosses here are neat too. Again there are no koopalings and no Bowser, but this time the bosses have more than just the one attack pattern. The witch boss teleports, the mouse/rat boss warps around via the warp pipes, Tatanga shoots various projectiles and flies about and the three little pigs all fight differently (one rolls, one jumps and one bounces around like on a pogo stick). They're not the fanciest fights on the planet, but they're all at least unique, and Wario is an excellent final boss.
Another change is Mario's power ups and abilities. For instance, now he has a Spin Jump that can be used to break certain blocks and crush weaker enemies, although it doesn't let him bounce across the top of spiky ones any more. And new to the game's items is the Carrot which turns him into Rabbit Mario, letting him fly around by flapping his ears. Well, it's more like gliding, to the point it's pretty much a copy of Super Mario 3d Land's Tanooki Suit just done years earlier. Unfortunately though, his fireballs are now just normal and don't collect any coins they touch any more, so it's not all great on this front.
Some other differences include no lives cap (it goes to 999, and you can win more from a slot machine) no life for every 100 coins (the lives can be won in the slot machine mini game) and a power up system like in Super Mario Bros 3 where getting hit as Fire or Rabbit Mario makes you Super Mario rather than Small Mario. These changes aren't much, but they do make the game just that bit better.
Finally, the game's enemies are more 'traditional'. Not that this is a bad thing, think of it like how Pokemon Black and White 2 mixed Kanto/Johto/Hoenn/Sinnoh Pokemon among the Unova wildlife and you've got the gist of what happened in this title too, with traditional Mario monsters like Koopas, Boos, Cheep Cheeps and Bullet Bills being mixed in with all new bad guys specific to the different areas. Makes for a much better cast list, don't you think?
Replay Value/Length
Much better. Now there are secret levels to unlock, about thirty normal levels rather than the twelve found in the first game and two easily selectable difficulty levels to choose from! Not to mention you can actually save your progress this time around!
However, there's one interesting new 'gimmick' in regards to the game progression you need to keep in mind now, and that's that the coin system works sort of like how the bosses in Majora's Mask work. Once dead, they mostly stay dead... until you get a game over. At which point you lose all the special coins and the bosses are revived, but the levels beaten stay cleared/accessible. It's a nice way to add some challenge to the whole unfair and to let people keep replaying the boss levels if they feel like it.
Not to mention each levels has a fair amount of secrets to find (like lives, money bags with about 100 coins, etc) even if they don't all have secret exits. This makes the levels more interesting to play since all kinds of side paths and bonuses exist to extend the game's replay value.
So it's much better than the original and nearly three times longer.
Overall
Super Mario Land 2 is a classic, a fantastic Game Boy platformer and the best Mario game on a portable console. It's much improved on the original and if you ever need another game to buy from the eShop, it's one you should most definitely consider. Buy it now, you won't regret it!
9.5/10
In other words, Super Mario Land 2 = much better than Super Mario Land, you should buy it immediately if you haven't already.
Super Mario Land 1; A Surprisingly Mediocre Mario Game
Something I never understood is how so many people adored the original Super Mario Land despite the fact it's a rather poorly designed and flawed Mario game. Maybe it's because it was at one time the only Mario game on Game Boy and people were so obsessed with Mario that they were willing to praise everything with his name on and eventually played it enough they considered it actually good.
So here's a review of Super Mario Land outlining its strengths and flaws.
Graphics
Er... Yes, I'll let this picture explain it all:
To say it looks basic is the understatement of the century. I admit it was okay for the time about ten or twenty years ago when the game was originally released, but it just doesn't look good for a Game Boy game. Kirby's Dream Land looks ten times better. It's sequel and the Wario Land series does, every Game Boy Zelda game does, every Pokemon game does and pretty much 90% more games do. It seems lazy design and the fact no one seems to call the game out on this bugs me.
That isn't to say the game doesn't have its charms, it does, but for a game that looks like this to be released after Super Mario Bros 2 and 3 on NES is very lazy. So the graphics just don't impress me at all.
Music
Probably the best part of the game, the tracks used for background music in this game are fantastic and really make the game so much better. You've probably already heard one of the game's themes in Super Smash Bros Brawl, the amazing underground theme:
But it's not the only catchy music in this. The main theme is pretty good as is the theme for Muda and Chai Kingdoms and even the boss theme!
As someone who's played the Mario Land games more than the original Super Mario Bros games, I honestly think the music in this game is likely better than that in many of the NES games. So the music in Super Mario Land is excellent.
Gameplay
It's a fun game, to a degree. The level design is decent and the physics work how they mostly should but it has a lot of problems.
For one thing, the physics are not as good as in every other Mario game. Do they generally work? Yes, but they act more like Super Mario Bros 1/the Lost Levels' physics than those in later games and cause you to slide around a bit. The fact this is coupled with nearly pixel perfect jumps across tiny platforms means that some levels are more annoying than anything and the physics are often as much to blame as player skill.
However, this isn't to say it's all bad. One of things I love is how original and interesting the game is character wise. Gone is Bowser, the Koopalings, Peach, Luigi or Toad, in their place are Tatanga, Daisy and well, that's about it. The enemies this time have nothing to do with Bowser's forces at all and hence are more interesting than the standard Koopas, Goombas and Hammer Bros for the millionth time. There are now some interesting Moai like creatures, some sphinx like monsters and the hopping vampire Pionpi, all of which are clever new enemy designs that were sadly never revisited to date. The bosses are also entirely new and are slightly more interesting in design than in many Mario games. Pity the first three basically act as reskinned Super Mario Bros 1 Bowser clones.
What's also interesting is the theme running through the game. What is it you may ask?
Aliens and the paranormal.
Think about it, all four 'regions' are based on places in real life with some connection to either the stars/space or alien activity. Birabuto is basically Egypt (see the theories of aliens building the pyramids), Muda is the Bermuda Triangle (aliens supposedly abducting ships and planes lost in the area) and Easton is Easter Island (people have connected the Moai statues and things to extraterrestial activity via conspiracy theories). And why Chai Kingdom? Well Chinese folklore I think. Something about China being the 'Celestial Kingdom', between the heavens and the earth. Where do you fight Tatanga and Biokinton? The heavens/sky/space.
It's an interesting running theme don't you think?
The other interesting addition is the shoot em up levels. You know, Mario in a submarine or plane. These work pretty well and are an interesting way to add variety to the two levels with this theme in the game.
So how's the gameplay overall? Decent, the game's quite fun. Not as well put together as some of the others in the series but it is generally fun to play.
Replay Value/Length
There isn't much to the game, with only 12 levels total. This isn't as much of a problem as it was in the old days when you had to buy this game as full price, but it's still poor value for a game when many others could be bought on the eShop without much more money that have a significant amount more levels/content in them.
There are a few things that sort of extend the game's replay value like a more difficult mode 'unlocked' after beating it and a level select of sorts after doing that again, but what's the point? You don't have a save feature here, you lose everything the minute you exit the game meaning you can't come back to the game and try hard mode at a later date and the only real difference is some more/different enemies. Don't expect different endings, secret levels or anything else because there are none.
^Hard mode. Probably the only 'walkthrough' in existance. So yes, the game doesn't have much replay value either and hence has nearly no value for money to speak of.
Overall
Super Mario Land is a pretty good game. It's fun to play, the controls and physics are okay and the original ideas the team behind it brought to the Mario series are excellent. However for a Mario game there's much, much better out there. If you want a Mario game but have exhausted all other possibilities bar the Lost Levels or have some spare change on the site you should buy it, just remember that the sequel's better and is far more deserving of your hard earned money.
7/10
Super Mario Land 2; Super Mario Bros 3 Meets World
And as a result, a much improved game compared to the first one with more content, better gameplay and controls, far better graphics and the same sense of originality and charm that the first game did so well, Super Mario Land 2 is an underrated classic that's definitely worthy of your hard earned cash.
Here's why:
Graphics
About a hundred times better than those in Super Mario Land and actually taking advantage of the Game Boy's abilities in some way, the graphics look kind of like Super Mario World's except monochrome. Here's an example:
As you can tell, there's much more detail in the objects and sprites this time around and Mario's not so difficult to see any more. In fact, it looks much more like a SNES game than the original (which looks like a early NES title at best) and is so much better for it.
Music
Good, but not as memorable as in the first game. Some great tunes include the theme from the maze in the second part of the Space Zone, the Pumpkin Zone music and the theme played in Wario's Castle, which can be heard here:
I mean, it's technically much better in that it takes advantage of more instruments and is SNES standard rather than NES standard, but it's slightly less memorable than in the first game, even in respect to the best tracks in the game.
Gameplay
A million miles apart from Super Mario Land 1. It's got more and better world themes. A proper overworld to explore with secret exits in levels and a boss at the end of each as well as the ability to play levels in any order, more power ups, more abilities from Super Mario World like the spin jump and all kinds of neat things that you'd never expect in a Mario game.]
One addition which improves the game is a proper overworld map like in Super Mario World or Super Mario Bros 3. It's arguably the best world map in the entire franchise due to how Mario Land (the place the game's set in) is absolutely nowhere near as generic as the settings in Super Mario Bros 3 or New Super Mario Bros. Have a look:
How it's meant to look
How it actually looked
None, it's the most interesting overworld in the series because you can actually choose where to go and do worlds in any order. For example, want to play the Space Zone or Mario Zone first? No problem. That's something so missing from the likes of even Super Mario World and their one 'true' world order you have to play through.
It also brings over another thing from SMW, secret exits. While they're now secret black doors and not keyholes in this game, they do the same thing and bring you to various secret levels and areas. No switch palaces mind, but who needs 'em?
I also like how after any event, the map changes. When you kill a boss, they 'die' on the map too and vanish from it, like the bird in Tree Zone or witch in Pumpkin Zone. Or how when you find a secret exit in Space Zone, a star smashes into the moon's head and makes it all miserable.
Poor moon...
The other neat touches are good too, like Wario marching up and down the top of his castle, or how after beating all Pumpkin Zone levels a ton of Boos appear on the map and keep dancing around and spinning in circles in time to the music.
The levels here are pretty interesting as are the world themes. No generic areas here, you've got the Space Zone (outer space), Pumpkin Zone (haunted house), Mario Zone (giant robot Mario), Turtle Zone (underwater and inside a whale), Tree Zone (giant tree) and Macro Zone (giant house with large normal objects and bugs) to explore and all kinds of neat things to go with them. I like how this is the first game to make a whole world with nothing but ghost levels for instance. And this game did 'space' years before Super Mario Galaxy was ever thought of. But it's not just world themes here, each level has a theme too. One of the Tree Zone levels has one set in a bee hive (sort of like how Donkey Kong Country 2 did), the Turtle Zone sets levels in submarine and inside of a whale, the space zone has a maze of stars with extremely low gravity and only one of the many Pumpkin Zone levels actually takes place in a haunted mansion. You never experience the same thing twice in a row, which is really good.
As well as interesting level and world themes and gimmicks, the bosses here are neat too. Again there are no koopalings and no Bowser, but this time the bosses have more than just the one attack pattern. The witch boss teleports, the mouse/rat boss warps around via the warp pipes, Tatanga shoots various projectiles and flies about and the three little pigs all fight differently (one rolls, one jumps and one bounces around like on a pogo stick). They're not the fanciest fights on the planet, but they're all at least unique, and Wario is an excellent final boss.
Another change is Mario's power ups and abilities. For instance, now he has a Spin Jump that can be used to break certain blocks and crush weaker enemies, although it doesn't let him bounce across the top of spiky ones any more. And new to the game's items is the Carrot which turns him into Rabbit Mario, letting him fly around by flapping his ears. Well, it's more like gliding, to the point it's pretty much a copy of Super Mario 3d Land's Tanooki Suit just done years earlier. Unfortunately though, his fireballs are now just normal and don't collect any coins they touch any more, so it's not all great on this front.
Some other differences include no lives cap (it goes to 999, and you can win more from a slot machine) no life for every 100 coins (the lives can be won in the slot machine mini game) and a power up system like in Super Mario Bros 3 where getting hit as Fire or Rabbit Mario makes you Super Mario rather than Small Mario. These changes aren't much, but they do make the game just that bit better.
Finally, the game's enemies are more 'traditional'. Not that this is a bad thing, think of it like how Pokemon Black and White 2 mixed Kanto/Johto/Hoenn/Sinnoh Pokemon among the Unova wildlife and you've got the gist of what happened in this title too, with traditional Mario monsters like Koopas, Boos, Cheep Cheeps and Bullet Bills being mixed in with all new bad guys specific to the different areas. Makes for a much better cast list, don't you think?
Replay Value/Length
Much better. Now there are secret levels to unlock, about thirty normal levels rather than the twelve found in the first game and two easily selectable difficulty levels to choose from! Not to mention you can actually save your progress this time around!
However, there's one interesting new 'gimmick' in regards to the game progression you need to keep in mind now, and that's that the coin system works sort of like how the bosses in Majora's Mask work. Once dead, they mostly stay dead... until you get a game over. At which point you lose all the special coins and the bosses are revived, but the levels beaten stay cleared/accessible. It's a nice way to add some challenge to the whole unfair and to let people keep replaying the boss levels if they feel like it.
Not to mention each levels has a fair amount of secrets to find (like lives, money bags with about 100 coins, etc) even if they don't all have secret exits. This makes the levels more interesting to play since all kinds of side paths and bonuses exist to extend the game's replay value.
So it's much better than the original and nearly three times longer.
Overall
Super Mario Land 2 is a classic, a fantastic Game Boy platformer and the best Mario game on a portable console. It's much improved on the original and if you ever need another game to buy from the eShop, it's one you should most definitely consider. Buy it now, you won't regret it!
9.5/10
In other words, Super Mario Land 2 = much better than Super Mario Land, you should buy it immediately if you haven't already.
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