Super Mario Land

is a 1989 platform game developed by Nintendo R&D1, the same team that designed the Game Boy. It was published by Nintendo as one of the first four games released for the console. It is the first handheld entry in the ''Super Mario'' series and the first mainline title not designed by series creator Shigeru Miyamoto. Modeled after ''Super Mario Bros.'' (1985), the game adapts side-scrolling gameplay for the Game Boy's smaller screen, with players guiding Mario through 12 levels to rescue Princess Daisy—in her debut appearance—from the alien Tatanga in the new setting of Sarasaland.

Nintendo developed ''Super Mario Land'' under the direction of Game Boy creators Gunpei Yokoi and Satoru Okada, intending it to be the system’s pack-in game. However, during development, ''Tetris'' captured their attention, and they recognized its potential for a handheld platform. Henk Rogers, who held the rights to the game, convinced Nintendo of America that ''Tetris'' would appeal to a broader audience than Mario. As a result, ''Tetris'' was bundled with the Game Boy instead.

''Super Mario Land'' is notable for its distinctive sound effects, minimalist line-art visuals, inconsistent use of familiar Mario elements, and the inclusion of shooting stages inspired by titles such as ''Gradius''. Despite its short length, critics praised the game for successfully adapting the ''Mario'' formula to portable hardware.

The game launched alongside the Game Boy, first in Japan in April 1989, followed by North America later that year, and Europe in 1990. It sold over 25 million copies worldwide, making it the fourth best-selling game on the console, and played a key role in the Game Boy’s commercial success. It was later re-released via the Virtual Console for the Nintendo 3DS in 2011 and on Nintendo Switch Online in 2024.

The game received two sequels: '' Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins'' (1992) and '' Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3'' (1994), the latter of which launched the '' Wario Land'' sub-series. ''Super Mario Land'' has been widely recognized as one of the most influential Game Boy titles and introduced Princess Daisy as a recurring character in the franchise.

Gameplay

As a side-scrolling platform game and the first in the ''Super Mario Land'' series, ''Super Mario Land'' is similar in gameplay to the ''Super Mario Bros.'' series. As Mario, the player advances to the end of the level by moving to the right and jumping across platforms to avoid enemies and pitfalls, the screen only scrolls to the right, as the player advances, but will not scroll back to the left, and sections of a level that have passed off screen cannot be revisited. Mario travels to Sarasaland to save Princess Daisy from Tatanga, an evil spaceman. Two of the game's twelve levels are "forced-scrolling" ''Gradius''-style shooters where Mario helms a submarine or airplane and fires projectiles towards oncoming enemies, destructible blocks and bosses. Levels end with a platforming challenge to reach an alternative exit located above the regular exit, the former leading to a bonus minigame styled after a Ghost Leg lottery that awards 1 to 3 extra lives or a Superball Flower power-up.

Unlike the other ''Mario'' games, which take place in the Mushroom Kingdom, ''Super Mario Land'' is set in Sarasaland and drawn in line art. Mario pursues Princess Daisy, in her debut, rather than the series standard damsel in distress, Princess Peach. When jumped on, Koopa shells explode after a small delay, Mario throws bouncing balls rather than fireballs (referred to as "Superballs" in the manual), 1-Up Mushroom power-ups are depicted as hearts, and the level-end flagpoles are replaced with a platforming challenge. Compared to ''Super Mario Bros.'', which contains 32 levels subdivided into 8 "worlds" with 4 levels each, ''Super Mario Land'' is smaller, with 12 levels subdivided into 4 "worlds" with 3 levels each. There are five unique bosses, one at the end of each of the four worlds, and a fifth and final boss being Tatanga, who appears when the fourth boss is defeated. The first three bosses may be destroyed with projectiles, or the player may move past them to the exit without destroying them first; the last level has no regular exit, and the two bosses at the end of that level must be destroyed with projectiles to complete the level and the game. Some elements recur from the previous ''Mario'' games, such as blocks suspended in midair, moving platforms that must be used to traverse pitfalls, pipes that lead to other areas, collectible coins that grant an extra life when 100 are collected, and Goomba enemies. After the player has completed the game they may play through again on a harder mode, in which the levels are the same apart from enemies being more numerous; if the player completes the harder mode, the game allows the player to start another play on any level in the game.

Development

''Super Mario Land'' was developed by Nintendo R&D1 and published by Nintendo in 1989 as a launch game for its Game Boy handheld console. Nintendo CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi believed that fun games promote console sales, so when the company created the Game Boy, he wanted a fun game featuring Nintendo's mascot, Mario. The task came to Nintendo R&D1, a development team led by Game Boy inventor Gunpei Yokoi. Yokoi had previously created the Game & Watch series and worked with his protégé, Shigeru Miyamoto, on the game that introduced Mario, ''Donkey Kong''. ''Super Mario Land'' is the fourth ''Super Mario'' game, the first portable Mario game, and the first in the series to be made without Miyamoto.

Absent Miyamoto's direction, the development team used elements new and inconsistent with the series as ''Super Mario Land'' shrunk elements of the series to fit the portable device's small screen. Yokoi, the head of R&D1, served as producer, and Satoru Okada served as director. They had previously developed ''Metroid'' (1986) and '' Kid Icarus'' (1986) together, and the two subsequently designed the Game Boy—Yokoi on its industrial design, and Okada on its engineering. Their ''Super Mario Land'' was planned as the portable console's showcase title until Henk Rogers brought ''Tetris'' to Nintendo of America and convinced Minoru Arakawa that the addictive computer game would help Nintendo reach the largest audience. The company subsequently chose to bundle ''Tetris'' with every Game Boy purchase.

The Game Boy was released in Japan in April 1989, North America in July, and Europe in September 1990, and ''Super Mario Land'' became a launch game. Its official first release was on April 21, 1989, in Japan, and its North American release followed in August. About 22 years later, ''Super Mario Land'' was released for the Nintendo 3DS via Virtual Console on June 6, 2011, as one of its first games. Its new features include an increased size (about 60 percent zoom) and an optional "shades of green" color palette to match the effect of the original Game Boy's monochrome. The game was released on the Nintendo Classics service on May 15, 2024.

Reception

Contemporary reviews

Many critics saw ''Super Mario Land'' as a "smaller" and shorter version of ''Super Mario Bros.'' At the time of its release in 1989, reviewers were excited to have a portable ''Mario'' game. Paul Rand of ''Computer and Video Games'' called the game "an arcade machine in your pocket" and the graphics "remarkable" for their size. French games magazine '' Player One'' said that ''Super Mario Land'' adequately compromised where necessary to bring Mario to a portable device. ''Electronic Gaming Monthly''s Steve Harris considered the game "fantastic" and "very fun to play", though short. Ed Semrad and Donn Nauert of the same outlet both declared ''Super Mario Land'' "easily the best Game Boy cart" of the time.

Tony Mott of ''Superplay'' said the game proved that Nintendo's Game Boy "had playability to match" its competitors. Matt Regan of ''Mean Machines'' agreed: "Playability to the nth degree!". British magazines ''Mean Machines'' and ''The Games Machine'' both commented on the many secrets to find. ''Player One'' too complimented the music. ''Player One'' further pronounced ''Super Mario Land'' a "masterpiece", "the pinnacle of portable video gaming".

Retrospective reviews

''IGN''s Lucas Thomas wrote that the protagonist, enemies, and overall game were shorter, and noted that Mario himself was just 12 pixels in height on the Game Boy's small screen. With this in mind, Thomas was concerned about player "eyestrain" in rereleases of the game. Still, ''IGN''s Levi Buchanan thought the game made no compromises in its size reduction. ''Complex''s Gus Turner wrote that the graphics were "simple", and ''Official Nintendo Magazine'' said the game was "ridiculously short". ''Eurogamer'' reported that the game could be finished in under an hour.

''Complex''s Gus Turner wrote that the game had the fun, intuitiveness, and difficulty associated with the series. ''Eurogamer''s Chris Schilling called Hirokazu Tanaka's soundtrack "surely one of the all-time greats", and ''Official Nintendo Magazine'' said it was among the "greatest videogame music ever composed". ''Eurogamer'' and ''Complex'' too complimented the music.

Sales

Following the Game Boy's "overnight success", ''Super Mario Land'' became the second best-selling 1989 release in North America (behind the bundled ''Tetris''). In the United States, the game topped Babbage's Game Boy sales charts for two months in 1992, from August to September.

''Super Mario Land'' went on to sell more than 25 million copies, making it the fourth best-selling game on the console. The game also outsold '' Super Mario Bros. 3'' (1988), the best-selling stand-alone (non-bundled) game on the NES home console.

Legacy

The game began a ''Super Mario Land'' series of portable Mario games. '' Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins'' added a non-linear overworld and introduced villain Wario, an evil version of Mario. The subsequent '' Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3'' began the ''Wario'' franchise. After 19 years, the 2011 game '' Super Mario 3D Land'' for the Nintendo 3DS became Mario's first game in stereoscopic 3D. Audrey Drake of ''IGN'' argued that both ''Wario Land'' and ''Super Mario 3D Land'' are not "legitimate sequels", and wrote that the latter seems more like "''Super Mario Bros. 3'' with '' Mario Galaxy'' influences" than a successor to ''Super Mario Land 2''. The ''Superball Flower'' appears in ''Super Mario Maker 2'' as an unlockable power-up item, usable only in the ''Super Mario Bros.'' style.

''Super Mario Land'' is remembered for its miniaturized ''Super Mario'' elements and "twist on just about every Mario mainstay imaginable". Many of its new elements do not recur later in the series, making ''Super Mario Land'' strange compared to the rest of the series, or what ''IGN''s Thomas described as a "singular oddball". ''IGN''s Marc Nix said retrospectively that ''Super Mario Land'' was the only uninspired ''Mario'' game, with "funky voids of white" and UFOs instead of the "strikingly original" Mushroom Kingdom. ''Mean Machines'' was also put off by the alien theme, easy difficulty, and dot matrix screen blur. ''IGN''s Travis Fahs wrote that the game was comparatively not as "ambitious" as '' Super Mario Bros. 3''. ''Mean Machines'' said it was not "a true ''Mario'' game", not worth its originally high review score, and "in retrospect, not really a classic". Glen Fox of ''Nintendo Life'' agreed, writing that it was an impressive achievement at the time but did not age as well as other ''Mario'' games.

''Eurogamer''s Schilling wrote that Mario felt different—lighter, with more friction—and that the game felt "radical and distinctive" for the risks it took. ''IGN''s Thomas cited "out of place" gameplay elements like the shooter levels, exploding Koopa shells, non-extinguishing fireballs, and non-Princess Peach plot as departures from the series. Thomas attributed this to ''Mario'' creator Miyamoto's lack of involvement in the game's development, which he described as "famously hands-off". Schilling of ''Eurogamer'' instead blamed the Game Boy's technical limitations. But he too was perplexed by the new sphinx, seahorse, and Moai head enemies, and considered the exploding Koopa shells a "cruel trick" disdainful of the series' core gameplay. ''Super Mario Land''s shooter levels, new to the series, were not revisited in subsequent ''Super Mario'' games except the ''Maker'' games. Subsequent series games such as ''Super Mario Land 2'' both dropped the original's tiny scale and chose the classic fire flower fireballs over the first installment's bouncing balls.

The game was included in multiple rankings of top Game Boy games, and ''Official Nintendo Magazine'' listed it at 73 in its top 100 Nintendo games. After her debut in ''Super Mario Land'', Princess Daisy appears in later ''Mario'' series sports and racing games.

Popular music

The song " Supermarioland" (1992) by British group Ambassadors of Funk was inspired by the game and became a novelty hit, appearing in the UK top ten charts. Simon Harris, the mastermind behind Ambassadors of Funk, said that he initially had no intention to create ''Super Mario''-themed compositions, but after his friend introduced him to Nintendo's Game Boy console, he became fond of the theme music from ''Super Mario Land'', composed by Hirokazu Tanaka. He realised that the songs on the game's score had a similar tempo to house music, so he was able to incorporate the samples into "Supermarioland" easily, recruiting Einstein to provide the rap vocals. After Harris created the track, he contacted Nintendo to clear the music samples, and the company, liking what Harris had done, also requested that he and Einstein record an album of ''Super Mario'' material. Nintendo UK quickly began to promote and market "Supermarioland", even providing an actor for the music video, but Nintendo of America was difficult to contact, and the track was never released in the United States. Mario's designer, Shigeru Miyamoto, approved the project, and the album, titled ''Super Mario Compact Disco'', was released in Japan in August 1993, featuring tracks from other Mario games such as '' Super Mario Bros. 3'' and '' Super Mario Kart''.

''New Super Mario Land''

A homebrew for Super Nintendo Entertainment System called ''New Super Mario Land'' came to light in 2019 after a series of posts on Twitter by a user named ChronoMoogle. The remake features enhanced visuals, music and a multiplayer mode for up to 4 players. According to its creator, who gave an interview to ''Nintendo Life'' while asking to remain anonymous, the remake was built totally from scratch (hence, no ROM hacking was performed) using Assembly language, a few tools for graphics and sound and a Super Nintendo emulator for testing. After developing the game, the creator flashed the game in thirty Nintendo Power cartridges and distributed them to his "Nintendo-loving friends" as a Christmas gift to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the original game. The creator no longer has involvement with the game, stating that "the project is terminated already" after sending the gift cartridges.

Notes

References

External links

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1989 video games
Video games about alien invasions
Game Boy games
Nintendo Research & Development 1 games
Nintendo Classics games
Side-scrolling platformers
Single-player video games
Super Mario
Video games developed in Japan
Video games scored by Hirokazu Tanaka
Video games directed by Satoru Okada
Video games produced by Gunpei Yokoi
Virtual Console games
Virtual Console games for Nintendo 3DS