Super Mario Land

Development and release

Development of Super Mario Land began in the second half of 1988 and lasted six to nine months. It was created by Nintendo R&D1, the team led by Game Boy inventor Gunpei Yokoi, who served as producer, with Satoru Okada as director. Nintendo CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi wanted a fun game featuring Mario to promote the Game Boy. The development team, working without series creator Shigeru Miyamoto, used elements new and inconsistent with the series to adapt the game for the small screen.

Super Mario Land was initially planned as the Game Boy's pack-in title, but after Henk Rogers brought Tetris to Nintendo of America and convinced Minoru Arakawa of its broader appeal, Tetris was bundled with the console instead. The game was released as a launch title: in Japan on April 21, 1989, in North America on August 1, 1989, and in Europe and Australia in 1990. It was later re-released on the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console on June 6, 2011, with an increased size and an optional shades-of-green color palette, and on the Nintendo Classics service for Nintendo Switch on May 15, 2024.

Reception

Critics generally viewed Super Mario Land as a smaller, shorter version of Super Mario Bros. Reviewers at the time were excited to have a portable Mario game. Paul Rand of Computer and Video Games called it an arcade machine in a pocket and praised the graphics for their size. French magazine Player One said the game adequately compromised to bring Mario to a portable device. Electronic Gaming Monthly's Steve Harris found it fantastic and very fun to play, though short, while Ed Semrad and Donn Nauert declared it the best Game Boy cart of the time.

Famitsu reviewers considered it the best of the first Game Boy games. Tony Mott of Superplay said the game proved the Game Boy had playability to match competitors, and Matt Regan of Mean Machines agreed. Mean Machines and The Games Machine noted many secrets to find. Player One complimented the music and called the game a masterpiece and the pinnacle of portable gaming.

IGN's Lucas Thomas noted the protagonist, enemies, and overall game were shorter, and expressed concern about eyestrain in rereleases. Brett Alan Weiss of AllGame found the gameplay fittingly super but the graphics too small even for a Game Boy title.

Legacy

Super Mario Land began a series of portable Mario games. Its sequel, Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, introduced a non-linear overworld and the villain Wario, who later starred in Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, which launched the Wario franchise. The 2011 game Super Mario 3D Land for the Nintendo 3DS became Mario's first stereoscopic 3D game. The Superball Flower appears as an unlockable power-up in Super Mario Maker 2.

The game is remembered for its miniaturized Super Mario elements and twists on series mainstays, though many of its new elements did not recur. IGN's Marc Nix retrospectively called it the only uninspired Mario game, with funky voids of white and UFOs instead of the Mushroom Kingdom. Mean Machines said it was not a true Mario game and not worth its original high review score, while Glen Fox of Nintendo Life wrote that it was impressive at the time but did not age as well as other Mario games.