And so the first Virtual Console title for the Nintendo 3DS is starting to sell! The game is… Super Mario Land!
This videogame classic was the first Mario adventure on the old-school Gameboy. You know, the fat, AA battery powered, black-and-white screen (which was actually a greenish LCD) and had over a thousand accessories that ranged from having light, looking through a magnifying glass and even pumping the volume up.
But you know what? That “little” piece of videogame history was extremely successful, and with it, so was the first Super Mario Land title. I still find it funny that some friends asked me to play the tunes from this game on the piano a couple of times… It has no resemblance whatsoever to any of the Super Mario franchise music!
But then again, Super Mario Land is anything but conventional.
It still plays like a classic Mario game (unlike the weird Super Mario Bros. 2) but it’s clear that the Mario universe had not yet been established, with this being a game from 1989.
For one, Mario doesn’t go to the rescue of Princess Peach, but instead some other completely random girl named Daisy (now she has appeared in other Mario games, mostly the sport, Mario Party and Mario Kart series). Mario doesn’t shoot fireballs, instead he shoots powerballs that bounce around the screen and can collect coins. Oh, and the best known of the differences: koopa shells don’t bounce around when touched, instead they explode after a while (WHAT?).
To add to the weirdness, Mario even drives a submarine and flies an airplane while he fights an alien in a spaceship!
Still, the game became incredibly successful and even nowadays is still a nice little gem, even if its controls are not as precise as other entries in the Mario series. So those of you with a Nintendo 3DS should definitely give it a go and download it from the Virtual Console.
Oh, and as a bonus here is a picture of a Gameboy full of accessories and a music video based on Super Mario Land!
Good old Gameboy and its huge array of accessories…