Wednesday, May 11, 2022

Video Game Review #365: TMNT: Fall of the Foot Clan

TMNT: Fall of the Foot Clan
Game Boy




Nostalgia Factor:

Ah, 1990. I was eight years old at the time. George Bush was in the White House. Home Alone was dominating the box office. The Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles were still at the height of their popularity. I had played through most of the TMNT games available to me back then, such as the notoriously challenging NES game and the multiplayer arcade game. One title I was not able to play was TMNT: Fall of the Foot Clan for the Game Boy. This is a well-documented fact that loyal readers of this blog should already know, but I never had a Game Boy as a kid. As a result, I’m just now discovering and playing through some of these games for the first time, here in the 2020s.

Would this game be any good, or now that TMNT fever is over would I find that it leaves something to be desired? Only one way to find out.




Story:

Although they all had different gameplay elements, nearly every TMNT game released back in the late 80s or early 90s had the exact same story: April O’Neill has been captured by Shredder and the Foot Clan and you have to track them down and rescue her. That’s the story of this game. Nothing more, nothing less. Just classic, somewhat clichéd TMNT goodness.


 

Gameplay:

This game bears more similarities to the classic NES TMNT game than to the arcade game. It’s a single player side-scrolling platformer where your goal is to advance through a series of five stages, each one ending in a boss character. You start by selecting the Turtle you want to play as, and then off you go. The control scheme is very simple. Aside from being able to move with the D-pad, you only use two buttons: jump and attack. You start on the left side of the screen and you make your way to the right. When enemies appear, you hit them with your attack. They can come at you either from in front of you our behind you, so you have to remain alert at all times.

There are obstacles to jump over, environmental hazards you will occasionally need to duck under. That’s about it as far as gameplay goes. You walk to the right, you beat enemies, and you make your way through each stage. You have a health meter. Once your health meter runs out, you die and have to select a different Turtle to play as. This won’t happen to you very much, as this game is fairly easy. It is also very generous with its health items.

Bosses are easy too. Their attack patterns are very predictable. All of them basically do the same thing: run left and right across the screen while occasionally stopping to swing at you or fire a projectile in your direction. Using jump kicks and keeping away when it is their turn to attack is the key to victory. But like I said: these fights are easy. Most of the bosses can be defeated in 30 seconds, if that.

All in all, a very easy and simple game.



 
Graphics:

I had anticipated that this game would look like crud, being an early Game Boy release, but I think it has aged pretty well. Take the TMNT arcade game or the NES version of the game and drain its color, and that’s what this game looks like. The characters are all instantly identifiable. The bosses in particular I was impressed with. There are a wide variety of regular enemies to fight as well. The backgrounds, while basic, look really nice.

I have to say that this game did a very good job capturing the look and feel of the Ninja Turtles. 8 year old Dan would have loved this game if I had been able to play it growing up.
 



Sound:

This game’s sound matches its graphics. I’m not going to say the music is phenomenal or anything, but it does a great job capturing that classic feel of the TMNT cartoon. The theme song alone was enough to get me fired up to play this game.




Overall:

Once again, the Game Boy surprises me. Every single time I fire up a Game Boy title I have it in my mind that I’m going to be playing something inferior to what I’d see on the NES. It happened with Batman: The Animated Series. It happened with the Contra games, the Castlevania games, and most recently with Super Mario Land. But this game is good! 

I’m not going to say it is a masterpiece or anything. It’s very short, easy, and simple. Anyone could probably pick this game up and beat it in one day, even people who generally don’t play video games. I think it is just so fun, though. I love how it captures the look and feel of the Ninja Turtles. The graphics, the music, the story, the locations, even the little generic cutscenes in between levels: perfection. It transported me back to the day when I was a carefree kid with nothing on my mind except what Turtles toy I was going to get next, or when I wanted to watch the movie again.

I didn’t know that it was possible to make me feel these things again, but this game pulled it off. If you remove the TMNT skin and replace the Turtles with generic heroes and change the music to something else, I can’t say that I’d like this game nearly as much as I do. And that’s fine. But it does show you that the game itself isn’t anything special. It’s the whole package that makes this game what it is.



THE GRADE:
B-


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Video Game Review #364: Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters
Sega Genesis




Nostalgia Factor:

This is a game that I have wanted to play for a LONG time. As a Genesis owner growing up, I always had my eyes peeled for this game. None of the stores had it. None of the rental places. None of my friends had it. No one. It was like the game didn’t exist. All I had as evidence that this game was real were old video games magazines that talked about it from time to time.

The only Ghostbusters video game I owned was the god awful Atari 2600 version, and that just wasn’t cutting it. The Genesis version looked so cool to me! Unfortunately, I’d never get my hands on it. Until now, when I fired it up on my RetroPie. Would it be worth the 32 year wait? Guess you’re going to have to read the rest of this review and find out!


 

Story:

I’m not sure when this game is supposed to take place. Winston is conspicuously absent (hmm…) and the Ghostbuster team consists only of Ray, Peter, and Egon. The goal of the game is to go around from haunted site to haunted site, clearing each location of ghosts while collecting mysterious stone tablets that the defeated ghosts leave behind. When you have collected all the tablets, a portal to the spirit realm is opened where our heroes must defeat Janna, the evil goddess of death and destruction. Defeat her, and the portal is sealed and her threat to the universe ends once and for all.



 
Gameplay:

At first glance, this is a typical of the era side-scrolling shooter. You start by picking which Ghostbuster you’d like to play as. They each have their own strengths and weaknesses, so pick wisely. I went with Peter, of course.

The goal is to fight your way through each stage, defeating all of the stage’s ghostly mini-bosses (there can be anywhere from one to four in any given stage). Once you have defeated all the mini-bosses in a particular stage, the area to the actual boss character opens up. Fight and defeat the boss character, and you complete the level. What’s different about this game is that you can pick the order in which you play through the levels, almost like a Mega Man game.

When you complete a level, you are brought back to the Ghostbusters headquarters, where you can spend the money that you earned to upgrade your equipment and buy items. You can earn extra money by capturing the spirit of each mini-boss you defeat in one of those foot-activated trap thingies that you see in the movies. If the spirit gets away, you earn less money than you would if you had captured it. Be diligent trying to catch these ghosts, as upgrading your equipment is absolutely essential if you want to beat this game. Why? Because this game is freaking hard and you need all the help you can get.

It’s a little difficult for me to compare this game to anything else. It’s not like other shooters of its time, like Contra or anything like that. It is slower paced and requires you to be cautious and preserve your health and your special items. I almost want to compare this with a Shinobi title. I’m sure that’s the first time in history anyone has ever compared Ghostbusters for the Sega Genesis to Shinobi – but hey I am a trendsetter.

What I found most difficult about this game are the boss battles. The hit boxes for these things are incredibly small and hard to hit. The bosses are constantly moving and constantly firing off attacks that are very difficult to dodge. They all have specific patterns they follow, so trial and error is key here. Expect to die, and expect to die a lot. Just keep in mind that this is normal and if you want to beat this game, you HAVE to figure out the bosses attack patterns. Look at each death as a learning experience. 

The stages themselves are hard, too. Lots of enemies to fight and tough jumps to make. Expect to take a lot of cheap shots, which is annoying because I always wanted to go into each boss fight with as much health on my meter as humanly possible. The game is somewhat generous with health items. Just keep your eyes open for Slimer and the second you see him, blast away at him like there is no tomorrow.

Each stage is also fairly large. You don’t just move from left to right like most games. These stages are like mazes. You can go up, down, left, right. Luckily, there is a map handy to help you navigate.  As I said before, your main goal in each stage is to eradicate the mini-bosses before you take on the main boss. Once the mini-bosses are gone, the location of the main boss will appear on your map – making it fairly easy to find. The first few stages I played I didn’t realize there was a map function. Once I discovered this, it made the game slightly easier. It’s still tough as balls though.




Graphics:

I like this game’s graphics. The big-headed characters immediately caught my attention as a kid and are one of the main reasons I always wanted to play this game. They actually look like their movie counterparts, which is nice to see. In many of these old movie to game adaptions the characters don’t resemble their counterparts at all.

The stages are nothing too remarkable, but there is a nice variety visually among the boss characters. I always looked forward to seeing what the game was going to throw at me next.


 

Sound:

It wouldn’t be a Ghostbusters title without a video game rendition of the movie theme song, and this game definitely delivers. Not that this rendition is particularly good. I’ve read reviews saying that this is the worst version of the Ghostbusters theme to date. I wouldn’t go that far, but it certainly is not very memorable at all. Nor is any of this game’s music, actually. It’s one of those games where you don’t remember anything about its music or sound effects as soon as you are done playing it.


 

Overall:

I wanted to like this game. I really did. It has a nice concept. I like how you have to fight and capture ghosts. I like how you get paid for your efforts. I like how you can use the money you earned to upgrade your equipment and buy new things. This game has good graphics, and is fairly appealing visually. It’s just not any fun to play.

This entire game was a frustrating experience for me. It’s not even that the game was too hard (which it kind of was). I can handle a good challenge, for the most part. But make it a fun challenge. Make it a fair challenge. This game is filled with cheap deaths and moments where you just want to chuck your controller through the wall. Some of these stages are overly long, and making your way through each of these giant mazes begins to feel like a major chore.

There’s no joy in this game. There’s no fun. Come on, this is the Ghostbusters! Where is the sense of humor? Where are the lighthearted moments? This game should not feel like homework. I should WANT to play this game. I’ll admit, about halfway through this game I debated whether I even wanted to continue playing or not.

*sigh*

Sometimes games are better left unplayed. I always had this game built up in my mind as this super fun and exciting Ghostbusters title that would put the Atari 2600 version to shame. It does put that game to shame (which isn’t hard to do), but falls flat in virtually every other category. Now my dreams are ruined. This isn’t a fun game, and I can’t even pretend that it is.

I don’t see any scenario where I come back to play this again in the future.


 
THE GRADE:
D+



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Monday, May 2, 2022

Video Game Review #363: The Revenge of Shinobi

The Revenge of Shinobi
Sega Genesis




Nostalgia Factor:

I've never been a huge fan of the Shinobi series, and I'm not sure why. I had the chance to play two Shinobi games growing up: the original Shinobi for the arcade and Shadow Dancer for the Sega Genesis and I really liked both of them. So why did I never bother to check out the rest of the series?

I can't answer that question, but maybe now is the time to make up for that egregious mistake. Here we go, with my last review for 1989: The Revenge of Shinobi for Sega Genesis.




Story:

This game takes place three years after the original Shinobi. The remnants of the gang from the first Shinobi game have gotten back together, this time even more powerful than before. They decide to take revenge on the first game's protagonist (Joe Musashi) by kidnapping his wife and killing his ninja master. Taking control of Joe, you have to track down this nefarious group and save your wife before it is too late.

The basic setup for this game's story is oddly similar to Double Dragon II: The Revenge, which I just reviewed not too long ago (you can find the link for this review at the bottom of the page). The events of both of these sequels could have been avoided if the main heroes had just shown no mercy and finished off the gang for good in the first game!




Gameplay:

The concept of the game is pretty simple, but being able to master it is quite difficult. This is a 2D platformer. You take control of the ninja Joe Musashi. You can move left and right on the screen, while being able to duck and jump. There is a double jump in the game that can be quite frustrating. You have to jump while holding up and then hit the jump button at JUST the right moment in order to get it to work, and it is very spotty. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Expect to die a lot due to double jumps inexplicably failing you when you need them the most.

Although you have a sword, you will mainly use shurikens - little ninja stars that you throw at your enemies. Shurikens are valuable items, so try not to waste too many of them! In fact, I'd advise you to turn up the number of shurikens you carry on the main menu before you even start playing this game. Normally I like to leave all the settings for games on default, but when I come across something this difficult I don't mind bending the rules from time to time.

There are 8 levels in this game, each of which contains three stages. The first two stages are typical platforming levels while the third generally has you fighting a boss character. The platforming stages are, as I said before, quite difficult. Enemies pop up on the edge of the screen and can often inflict damage to your character before you have much of a chance to react. Other areas are crowded with too many enemies, making it difficult to make it through without taking damage. Certain crates, which usually hold items that help your character out, sometimes contain bombs that blow you up if you aren't paying attention. There are many bottomless pits that will kill you if you fall into them. And as I said before, the double jump is very unreliable and will often lead to many frustrating deaths. Basically: everything in this game is out to kill you.

You can tell this is going to be a tough game very early on. The first few stages aren't too horribly difficult, but quickly you're going to find yourself dying quite often. Boss battles are fun and require certain strategies in order to defeat them. Trial and error is the name of the game here. You're going to die a lot, and that is completely normal and expected. Just make sure to learn from your past mistakes.

This game is filled with all types of copyright infringements. Along the way you'll fight boss characters such as Spider-Man, Godzilla, and the Terminator, among others. None of these characters were used with permission from their creators. There are several revised copies of the game out there where these characters are removed and replaced with original Shinobi villains, but I was fortunate enough to play the original version of the game.

Before I move onto the game's graphics, I have to touch on its magic powers. You start out with a selection of magical powers you can pick from. Using the magic button on your controller, you can unleash these powers at any time. There are some screen-clearing attacks as well as a shield that I found quite useful and an item that makes jumping a lot easier. Normally you can only cast one of these spells until you die, when your magic meter is replenished. But as you play you can collect scrolls that allow you to hang onto multiple magic spells at a time. This came in handy for me, as I was able to hang onto these to use in some particularly troublesome boss battles *cough* Godzilla *cough cough*.




Graphics:

This game looks fantastic, especially considering it was one of the very first games ever released for the Sega Genesis. This came out in 1989. Look at some other games which came out for the NES around the same time: Friday the 13th, Willow, Batman, the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, etc. I never encountered Revenge of Shinobi as a kid, but if I had, I would have immediately tossed my NES aside and demanded to my parents that they buy me a Genesis. This game is light years ahead of anything you'd see on home consoles back then. And you know what? It still holds up. The characters, the backgrounds, the stage design, the big boss fights, all the small atmospheric effects like the waves splashing on the shore stage. It all looks so good. Even the title screen got me pumped to play this game.




Sound:

While I wouldn't say this game necessarily has an all-time great soundtrack, it is very good. Again, a very impressive feat considering this was one of the first Genesis games ever made. Each musical track seems to fit its assigned stage perfectly. I was bumping and grooving as I played through this game. Can I remember any of these tunes now that I'm done with the game, though? Nope.




Overall:

This is a fun game, and I am very glad I finally took the time to play it. I'm certain I would have loved this game as a kid. I can just see myself playing this for hours and hours every single day until I had it mastered. I don't have much free time to dedicate to single video games these days, so admittedly I played through Revenge of Shinobi here in 2022 using save states so I wouldn't lose my progress after burning up all of my extra lives. But back in the day I absolutely would have poured the time and effort into mastering this game.

What does the game do wrong? There are a few things. I already harped on the double jump, but I'll do it again here: it's unpredictable and it sucks. The difficulty level of the game is also just a *tad* too high for my tastes. Like I said, I'm sure I would have been able to master this game as a kid, but it would have taken a lot of trial and error. I feel there are too many cheap deaths in this game. Enemies appearing out of nowhere and hurting you before you can react. Weak platforming sections. And the knockback. Oh man, it is so bad in this game. You know how in old video games when you'd get hit, you'd often get flung back a few feet? That happens in this game, and it is a major pain in the butt. I can't even tell you how many times I'd be killed by knockback when trying to make my way through delicate platforming sections. This is especially bad in the stage where you are trying to make your way across the water, with enemies constantly jumping out and flinging stars at you. Ugh.

While I enjoyed the boss fights (for the most part), many of them are extremely cheap. It is difficult to figure out their patterns until you've already been killed at least two or three times. Obviously this makes subsequent playthroughs slightly easier and slightly easier, but I would have preferred a little less of a trial and error approach.

Now that the nitpicking is out of the way, I can put my foot down and say that I still really enjoyed this game. It has great graphics and great sound. The controls (with the exception of the double jump) are spot on. The levels are well designed. I like the items you can collect and the spells you can use. The plethora of copyright infringement boss battles is hilarious to me - and awesome. You can earn two endings, the good or the bad ending, depending on if you save your wife during the final boss battle or not - which is pretty cool. I don't recall any other games from the 80s that offered multiple endings. More important than any of that stuff: this game is fun. And that's really what it boils down to for me: is the game fun or not? And this is definitely a yes. If I had grown up with this game and I had nostalgic feelings attached to it, I could see this going down as one of my favorite Genesis titles of all time. For now, it has to settle for being just a "very good" Genesis title in my mind - just a tiny notch below Shadow Dancer.

Revenge of Shinobi is another Mop Up Duty success story. I might have never played this game if I wasn't specifically looking for games from 1989 to play through. As we move into the 90s and beyond, I can't wait to see what else I've missed out on over the years.



THE GRADE:
B+



40th Birthday Mop Up Duty Celebration Tour:



1986:


1987:


1988:


1989:
The Revenge of Shinobi (the review you're reading)


Coming up next:
1990's Ghostbusters
for the Sega Genesis



For a complete index of all my past posts and game reviews, click


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Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Video Game Review #362: Blazing Lazers

Blazing Lazers
TurboGrafx-16




Nostalgia Factor:

I first heard of Blazing Lazers about a year ago. Everything I read about the game was positive. Everyone seemed to really like it. Kanye even mentions it in a song of his. It's a game I've wanted to check out ever since, but I kept putting it off and putting it off due to my general disdain of shoot 'em ups.

Now that I'm going through year by year and picking out games to play that I've never played before, it only made sense to finally bite the bullet and play this game. It came out in 1989. I was looking for a 1989 game to play. It all came together perfectly here. Would I enjoy this game or would the curse of the shoot 'em up strike again? Let's find out!




Story:

I'm sure that Blazing Lazers has some kind of storyline to it. The problem is, you have to either own the original instruction manual for the game or look up a recap on Wikipedia if you want to have any idea what that story is. Literally nothing is explained in-game. You fly your little space ship through a series of stages, blowing up everything in sight as you go. At the end of the game you fight the final boss and the credits start to roll. Not really much to go on here if you're looking for some kind of deep story.




Gameplay:

One of the main reasons I generally don't like shoot 'em ups is because of how unforgiving they are. One hit kills you. There's dozens of projectiles on screen at a time. You're constantly on your toes, and one tiny little mistake will kill you. I often feel these games can be cheap, as well. Enemies tend to have predictable patterns but then break those patterns when it is least convenient for the player. You could be playing a perfect game and then get completely screwed by luck of the draw.

Blazing Lazers isn't like that. This may be the most forgiving and accessible shoot 'em up I've ever played. I think I made it through the first three or four levels while only dying once. I started to wonder if the game was just incredibly easy or if I had broken it somehow. Turns out, the game is just incredibly easy... for the first few stages at least. When you get deeper into the game, it starts to get more difficult. But by the time that happens, you've already been afforded the opportunity to "figure out" the game and its controls - making it a tough challenge but not an impossible or frustrating one.

The thing that stood out to me early on was the weapon upgrade system. Power ups are plentiful in this game, so you never have to worry about being stuck with your base "pea shooter" cannon for long. These weapon upgrades are very powerful, almost making you feel like you are overpowered at times. For example, there's this electrical attack that nearly fills the entire screen with its attack radius - and it is super powerful too! All I had to do was avoid getting hit and spam this attack over and over again - and it worked. None of the enemies on the screen could avoid this attack. Like I said, the first few levels of this game were extremely easy to me.

I wish the upgrade system was explained a little bit better, however. I guess that is one of the downsides to not having this game's manual. There are these purple orbs I'd collect - and I to this day have NO idea what those orbs did. But gosh darn it I still went out of my way to collect them. Also, the weapon upgrade power ups simply appear as colored balls with numbers on them. Due to the hectic nature of this game, I could never remember which number represented which upgrade - and I'd often end up accidentally downgrading or picking a weapon I didn't want. A little picture representing the gun, or even a letter (like you'd see in Contra) certainly would have helped here.

Even though Blazing Lazers isn't too horribly difficult, it does have some annoyances. When you die, you have to return to a checkpoint rather than just respawning where you died. You don't have unlimited lives or continues - so if you make it deep into the game and then run out, you have to go back to the beginning of the entire game again. The most annoying thing to me was the "life limit". In one of the later stages, I noticed that while I had accumulated over ten extra lives, the game would send me back to the beginning of the stage after dying three times. I was struggling a bit with a boss, but I thought I'd be able to get in plenty of practice against it due to all the lives in my inventory. But no, it sent me back to the beginning of the entire stage after dying against the boss three times in a row. WTF is that?

Speaking of bosses, I did enjoy the boss battles in this game. The stages themselves are a bit easy, especially with all the screen-filling weapons you can pick up. To me, the bosses represented the real challenge of the game. In a way they reminded me of Star Fox bosses with their hit boxes and the strategy you'd have to deploy to beat them.




Graphics:

This game looks pretty darn good for its time. This could easily be a late stage Super Nintendo game with its bright colors and detailed enemies. Way to go, TurboGrafx-16! The game may not look too exciting when you first start playing it, but just wait for all the enemies, power ups, colorful projectiles, and background graphics to start filling up your screen. This game gets very crazy and colorful very fast.




Sound:

This game has an excellent soundtrack. I love the upbeat tunes, and how they really get you pumped when you're in the heat of battle. The music really fits the action perfectly, and I can't say enough about it. The sound effects are great too. Everything you'd want aurally from a space shoot 'em up, Blazing Lazers provides.




Overall:

I had a surprisingly good time with this game. It may now be my favorite shoot 'em up of all time, not that it had much competition (sorry Thunder Force II and Gradius!). It's accessible, it's fun, it's got great graphics, it's got great music, and at no point does it feel frustrating or impossible - a common complaint I have about this genre of game. I love the weapon power ups, and how they can make you feel like the ultimate badass when things are clicking for you. I can easily see myself coming back to this game in the future. I'm very glad I finally pushed aside my hatred for shoot 'em ups long enough for me to check this game out.

That said... it's still a shoot 'em up. It has no story. There's not much variety to the gameplay. You move around the screen and you shoot stuff and collect power ups while trying to not get hit so you can stay alive. That's all there is to this game. I also feel like the game started to wear out its welcome after a while. Nine stages is a lot, especially when you're doing the same thing over and over again.

I feel like a B is the highest I can possibly go here. I'm sure there are shoot 'em ups out there that I will like more than this one, so I have to leave some room for improvement as far as the grading scale goes.



THE GRADE:
B



40th Birthday Mop Up Duty Celebration Tour:



1986:


1987:


1988:


1989:
Blazing Lazers (the review you're reading)
And coming up next:
The Revenge of Shinobi
for Sega Genesis



For a complete index of all my past posts and game reviews, click


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Monday, April 25, 2022

Video Game Review #361: Super Mario Land

Super Mario Land
Game Boy




Nostalgia Factor:

When scrolling through a Wikipedia list of games that came out in 1989, one of the titles on that list to jump out at me was Super Mario Land. I never owned a Game Boy growing up as a kid, so I’ve never been able to check this game out, despite hearing good things about it. Now that I’ve got a RetroPie, there is nothing keeping me from playing this game. To the top of my list it went, and before you could say “spaghetti” I was giving it a shot. How would it stand up 33 years after its initial release? That’s what I am here to find out!




Story:

Does this game have a story? You basically make your way through a series of stages, looking to save Daisy (in her first video game appearance!) from the forces of evil – similar to when you saved Princess Peach in the original Super Mario Bros. game. Look at Mario with all these lady friends. He’s a playa!




Gameplay:

This game bears many similarities to the original Super Mario Bros. You play through a series of four worlds, each one consisting of three stages. The first two stages tend to be your standard Mario platforming stages, while the third one ends in a boss fight. There are side-scrolling shoot ‘em up types of levels as well.

The controls are pretty much the same as in Super Mario Bros. You have a jump button and a run button. You start out small and grow in size when you collect a mushroom. You run, smash blocks, jump on enemies, avoid piranha plants, and leap across platforms. You can descend certain pipes, which take you to underground areas where you can collect coins. The controls are a little stiffer than Super Mario Bros. Your character's momentum (or lack thereof) also seems to work a little bit differently this time around. This led to several untimely deaths on what seemed like routine jumps, but grappling with the controls was just something I had to learn to deal with.

You’ll occasionally get fire flower upgrades or star power ups, just like the original Mario. The fire flower works a little different here, as you can only fire one shot at a time. When the shot hits the ground, it ricochets into the air and off the screen. If you’re in an enclosed area, your shot will bounce around from wall to wall until it eventually hits an enemy or dies out. Oh yeah! The most exciting thing about the fire flower is how your fireball will collect a coin if it comes into contact with one of them. That comes in handy when trying to nab hard-to-reach coins that you may struggle to collect otherwise.

The shoot ‘em up levels are completely new to this game. Neither of them are very challenging. Basically, you fly around in the air, moving up, down, left, or right, as the screen scrolls to the right. You shoot enemies as they appear. You can also shoot and destroy block obstacles. Both of the shoot ‘em up levels end with pretty easy boss fights that require little strategy.

Other than that, Super Mario Land doesn’t do a whole lot that’s new. You’ll notice a few small tweaks as you play, like hearts taking the place of green one-up mushrooms. When you jump on a turtle, you can’t kick its shell around. Instead it turns into a bomb and blows up after a few seconds. You can jump on boulders and ride them around in a couple levels. That’s pretty fun. Stages can also end with a “roulette” type bonus stages that award you with either extra lives or a fire flower power up for the next level.


 

Graphics:

Game Boy games always look pretty primitive to me, and this game is no exception. The shapes of Mario and his enemies seem smaller than you’d see on the NES. Just look at some of these screenshots. The koopa troopas and the goombas are noticeably smaller in comparison to their appearance in older games. Especially the koopa troopas. They just look flat out weird, like baby turtles. I felt like I had to check if the game was working alright the first time I played it. Other things are really small, too, like the blocks you smash with your head.

I do have to give this game props for introducing some new enemy types, like jumping seahorses that shoot fireballs, or insects that fly above you and try to drop lances on your head. I also have to give this game credit for some of its stage design, particularly as you get deeper into the game. The first couple worlds have a generic Mario 1 feel to them, but some of the latter stages have special themes like an Egyptian and a Japanese theme that really make it unique in comparison to other Mario games.




Sound:

I’m a big fan of this game’s music. Don’t expect to hear very many classic Mario tunes, as I believe this game’s entire soundtrack is original. The first world’s music is so fun and upbeat. The Egyptian area has music that reminds me of the Oil Ocean Zone in Sonic 2. The Japanese area has a nice, classy tune that plays through its stages. There’s a weird rendition of a classical music piece (can’t think of its name) that plays when you collect a star. I love it. I love all the music in this game.

My only complaint in the audio department would be the sound effects. I prefer the classic Mario sound effects to the generic crap we hear in this game. Collecting coins, jumping, shooting a fireball… it just doesn’t sound the same.



 
Overall:

I feel like I say this every single time I review a Game Boy game, but I thought this was a pleasant surprise. I'm always so quick to write off Game Boy games. This was good, though.

One thing I have to complain about is this game's length. With only four worlds and three stages in each world, you can make your way through this pretty quickly. The game isn't much of a challenge either, especially if you manage to earn extra lives through the little minigame after each level. I had double figure extra lives going into the last stage of the game.

Most of the time I died, I was able to chalk it up to the game's stiff controls. Very rarely did I actually feel like a death was deserved. That means this game is very easy. In fact I'd say it is one of the easiest 2D Mario games I have played to date.

That didn't stop me from loving this game, however. Okay, maybe "loving" is too strong. I really liked this game. It's fun. It brings a lot of new Mario ideas to the table. It's got clever level design. A wonderful soundtrack. Definitely worth checking out!

Where does this game rank on my all-time list of greatest Mario games? I can't say for certain, but I think in terms of overall enjoyment I'd put this somewhere in the area of Super Mario World. The only NES classic it comes close to touching is the original Super Mario Bros.

In fact, I've played the original Mario game SO FREAKING MANY times in my life, I don't really have much of a desire to come back and play it anymore. Maybe if I ever get the itch to play it, I'll come check out this instead. A fresh, fun Mario experience that scratches nearly every one of those itches, while still carving out its own unique identity in the process.

That says all you need to know about this game.



THE GRADE:
B+



40th Birthday Mop Up Duty Celebration Tour:



1986:


1987:


1988:


1989:
Super Mario Land (the review you're reading)
And coming up next:
Blazing Lazers for
the TurboGrafx-16!



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