When the Game Boy went on sale in Japan in April 1989, Mario went with it, but not the Mario players knew. There was no Bowser, no Mushroom Kingdom and no Princess Peach. Super Mario Land sent him to a place called Sarasaland, through Egyptian pyramids guarded by fire-breathing sphinxes and past Moai heads from Easter Island, to rescue a new princess, Daisy, from an alien called Tatanga. Twice he leaves the platforms behind, in a submarine and a plane, for stages that play like a shoot-’em-up.
It was made by the department that built the Game Boy, Nintendo’s R&D1, and its strangeness looked deliberate to Wireframe: “It was as though the team behind Super Mario Land … were hedging their bets a little. If the Game Boy was a failure and nobody bought Super Mario Land, at least it stood at a sufficient distance from the mainline games to avoid sullying the brand.” It was not a failure.
Fast facts
- Developer: Nintendo R&D1. Gunpei Yokoi produced it; Satoru Okada and Hirofumi Matsuoka worked on the design, and Hirokazu “Hip” Tanaka wrote the music.
- Released: Japan, April 1989, as one of the Game Boy’s launch titles; North America later in 1989; officially in Britain with the Game Boy in September 1990, after a year of imports.
- Structure: four kingdoms of three stages each, twelve in all.
- Sequels: Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (1992) and Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 (1994).
A Mario game without Miyamoto
Retro Gamer stressed in 2006 that “the producer and man who oversaw the project was not Shigeru Miyamoto but Gunpei Yokoi”, the designer of the Game Boy itself. Satoru Okada, who had worked on Metroid, and Hirofumi Matsuoka worked on the design, and Tanaka, who had scored Metroid, handled the sound. Wireframe suggested that with Miyamoto “probably busy on Super Mario World at the time”, the team “approached the project with a cheerfully relaxed, anything-goes attitude”. It also noted that Miyamoto had once planned flying, shooting stages for Super Mario Bros. and dropped them, feeling they distracted from the running and jumping. Super Mario Land has them.
Sarasaland
Mario crosses four kingdoms, each ending with a boss guarding the exit. German Club Nintendo explained that a Mario carrying Superballs could shoot the boss down, while a smaller Mario had to jump over it or run underneath. Nintendo Power’s guide said the first took five Superball hits. Public guides name the kingdoms Birabuto, Muda, Easton and Chai. Wireframe listed what is in them: the pyramids and sphinxes, the Moai heads, which gallop or fly on wings, snapping fish skeletons, hopping zombies, and what looks like a bamboo forest. Retro Gamer pointed out the hieroglyphs in the Egyptian backgrounds.
At the end of each kingdom Mario seems to have found the princess, until she turns into a giant insect and hops away. Wireframe called it the “princess is in the other castle” routine of Super Mario Bros. “given a Kafkaesque twist”. Only after Tatanga is beaten does Daisy fly off with Mario in his plane.
The vehicle stages are the game’s surprise. In the underwater kingdom Mario boards a submarine, the Marine Pop, which fires torpedoes, and in the Chai kingdom he takes to the air in a plane, the Sky Pop, watching for kamikaze birds. Nintendo Power described them as a “sleek and speedy Mini-Sub with turbo Torpedoes” and a “one-seat propeller driven Plane”. The final battle with Tatanga and his flying war machine is fought from the plane.
Small sprites, careful design
The Game Boy’s screen showed only 160 by 144 pixels, and R&D1 kept Mario and everything around him tiny. Retro Gamer argued that this was the point: “By not attempting to shoehorn enormous sprites onto the system’s limited 160 by 144 pixel screen, it meant all potential dangers could be seen in advance and there was no need to jump blindly hoping for a platform to appear.”
The familiar items changed to suit the screen. A heart replaced the green 1-Up mushroom, “a different but equally recognisable icon” in Retro Gamer’s words. The flower turns Mario into Superball Mario, and the Superball does not travel along the ground like a fireball: it bounces diagonally off every surface, so it can hit enemies by rebound and pick up coins Mario cannot reach. Koopa shells explode shortly after Mario stomps on them, so there is no time to linger.
The end of each stage offers a choice of two doors. The lower one leads straight on; the upper one, harder to reach, leads to a bonus game in which Mario can win up to three extra lives or a flower.
Reception
Britain met the game as an import. Computer and Video Games reviewed “Marioland” in November 1989, on a Game Boy cartridge that the importer Telegames sold for £24, and made it a C+VG Hit with 93%. Paul Rand thought it “virtually a scaled-down replica” of the console game and summed it up: “A small yet perfectly formed Mario whizzes past equally impressive sprites and backdrops. An arcade machine in your pocket.”
When the Game Boy reached British shops officially in September 1990, Super Mario Land was one of the games named alongside Tetris in its advertising. Later judgements were warmer about the idea than the execution. Retro Gamer said in 2004 that it “lacked much of the precision of the NES game” but was “a superb demonstration of what Nintendo’s new handheld format was capable of”.
It sold in large numbers. A 2015 list of Mario sales in Gizmodo put it at 18.14 million copies.
The sequels
Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (1992) begins with Mario returning “from victory in Sarasaland”, in Nintendo Power’s words, to find the people of his own land “in a brainwashed stupor”. It introduced Wario, the villain Wireframe described as “consciously designed as Mario’s dark mirror image”. In Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 (1994) Wario became the hero. Wireframe records that both sequels were again produced by Yokoi and R&D1.
Sources
- Electronic Gaming Monthly issue 1, 1989: Super Mario Land among the first Game Boy games.
- Nintendo Power issue 6, May/June 1989: games announced for the Game Boy. Issue 8, September/October 1989: the Game Boy feature. Issue 9, November/December 1989: Super Mario Land guide (the Mini-Sub, the plane, twelve stages, the Superball, the 1-Up heart, the first boss). Issue 42, November 1992: Super Mario Land 2 (“victory in Sarasaland”).
- Computer and Video Games issue 96, November 1989, p. 119: Paul Rand’s review of “Marioland” (Telegames, £24, 93%).
- The Games Machine issue 34, September 1990: the British Game Boy launch and its advertising.
- Club Nintendo (Germany), December 1990, Game Boy special: four kingdoms and twelve rounds, Tatanga and Daisy, the Marine Pop and the Sky Pop, Superball Mario, the bosses, the bonus game.
- Retro Gamer issue 1, 2004: the Game Boy retrospective and the history of Mario (Super Mario Land, its sequels and Wario Land).
- Retro Gamer issue 32, 2006, Classic Game: Super Mario Land (Yokoi, Okada, Matsuoka and Tanaka; the screen and sprite size; the heart; the Superball; exploding shells; the hieroglyphs; the Marine Pop).
- Wireframe issue 69, December 2022, pp. 96–97: Super Mario Land (R&D1 and Yokoi; Sarasaland, Daisy and Tatanga; the sphinxes, Moai and bamboo; the false princesses; the UFO; Miyamoto’s dropped flying stages; the sequels and Wario).
- Wikipedia, “Super Mario Land” (web, secondary): the names of the four kingdoms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Land
- James O’Malley, “30 Best-Selling Super Mario Games of All Time”, Gizmodo UK, 11 September 2015 (web, secondary): 18.14 million copies. http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2015/09/30-best-selling-super-mario-games-of-all-time-on-the-plumbers-30th-birthday/