July 2019 Playthrough - Super Mario Land & Super Mario Land 2

[Duke.Togo]

I played up the the final castle in SML2 tonight. I gave it a couple tries and decided to come back later. The difficulty spike is kind of nuts, but I have 40-something lives, so I guess it's just keeping at it.

So far, I've enjoyed the first game more. It's not that SML2 is bad, it's just that I think I've had my fill of it. The first game was short enough for me to just enjoy it, and not really experience any frustration.

[singlebanana]

I played up the the final castle in SML2 tonight. I gave it a couple tries and decided to come back later. The difficulty spike is kind of nuts, but I have 40-something lives, so I guess it's just keeping at it.

So far, I've enjoyed the first game more. It's not that SML2 is bad, it's just that I think I've had my fill of it. The first game was short enough for me to just enjoy it, and not really experience any frustration.

[img width=480 height=360]https://0x00sec.s3.amazonaws.com/original/2X/0/02e0c4e455677819785c22cfbef080ea64be7c5f.jpeg[/img]

[Duke.Togo]

Got gud.

[img width=700 height=525]https://i.imgur.com/3nL6Yf1.jpg[/img]

The physics still don’t feel right to me, and that made the jumps trickier for me. No clue why they decided to make the final level so much more difficult than the rest of the game. I’d still rather play the original SML, but I really liked the rabbit suit. I’d take that over fireballs anytime.

[bombatomba]

[img width=545 height=491]https://i.ibb.co/KKwNhDK/Super-Mario-Land-2-2019-07-21-14-58-35.png[/img]

Just finished and it was a blast.  I don't remember when I first played this, but I am sure it was on my Super Game Boy, and it just felt...  right to me somehow.  Maybe it was because I was so gung-ho about not liking the first Mario Land, I don't know.  Playing this game again was very nice, but I am surprised I loved it as much as I once did.  Don't get me wrong, I still think it is a wonderful game, but my nostalgia places this game on the same level as Super Mario World, which I think is a little misplaced.  It is a little short, and I had more issues with the boss in the Space level than Wario.  Super fun, just not as much as fun as I once had.  Maybe I need to do it right next time, and play it on a Super Game Boy.

[TurnAroundAndRun]

I mean to post a few days ago to say I wrapped SML2. Initially I did not think I liked the 2 as much as 1, but after playing for a while and beating 2, I think 2 is equally as good as 1. It's crazy, as everyone mentioned, how much the difficulty level spiked going into the final castle. Overall it took me a good amount of times to beat the castle and Wario. However, as soon as I decided it might be beneficial to play the final castle with the carrot/flying power - I was able to beat the castle in two attempts.

I vividly remember playing 1 a ton as a kid, but somehow I never got 2 as a kid. I think I maybe have moved on to playing NES before I knew about or purchases SML2. Glad I played it now 25 years later, but I wish I would have played this as a kid!

[Mr_Stubbes]

After playing the other Super Mario Land games for the community playthrough I figured I’d need to finish this one as well. After playing it for a couple weeks I have finally beat it. I liked the game a good bit but if you were to compare to the first two games of the series it is very different. The core gameplay is the same in the sense that there are levels you have to go through and complete before a time limit runs out or you run out of lives, and that each are is made up of a number of levels before you make it to the boss level. Outside of that there are a lot of differences. For one Wario cannot run. He has a charge ability that can only be used when he is big Wario, however the distance is limited and it cannot be used if he’s small. Also jumping on top of an enemy doesn’t kill them, it stuns them to where they can be picked up and thrown and killed by colliding with a wall, enemy, or lava pit. Wario also has three hat power ups he can find, similar to the fire flower, feather, etc. These hats are the bull horns, which allows Wario to charge for longer distances and his charge ability is more powerful. It gives him a ground pound ability that can stun enemies. The horns also give him the ability to stick to ceilings and kill enemies from underneath them. The Dragon Hat swaps out Wario’s charge attach with a flame thrower ability. This ability can kill enemies as well as break blocks. The blocks and enemies can even be hit through non destructible objects too, provided the attack reaches. Lastly is the rabbit hat that allows wario to propel himself forward a very long distance, this hat basically lets him fly straight forward until slowly falling back to the ground in exchange of his normal charge ability. Another big difference is the objective of the game. In Mario games the end goal is ultimately to save the kingdom and princess, while in Wario Land the objective is to find golden treasures and collect as many coins as possible in order to get the biggest and best castle, due to Wario’s previous castle being taken by Mario in SML2. This makes coin collecting very important as well as level exploration to find the keys that unlock the treasure rooms. It’s also interesting to know that the treasure chest in these rooms cannot be opened by little Wario. The charge, or other hat ability, is needed to open the chest. Since coins are the collecting objective a different method had to be used for wario to gain lives. Enter here the heart counters. These counters can be found in bricks granting 10 hearts at a time or 1 heart for every enemy you kill. Once 100 are obtained a life is gained and the hearts reset to zero, or the remainder after the 100 is earned.

There are also some interesting level elements. Check points are pay to use and cost 10 coins. If you don’t have enough they cannot be used. Also some level exits also require payment to open too. Like the checkpoints they’re 10 coins and can’t be opened unless you have enough coins. By doing this it kind of forces the player to not just rush through a level and to actually spend some time collecting coins. At the end of each level is the opportunity to play a mini game for more coins or hearts and lives. The coin mini game is easy enough. There are two buckets with ropes attached that can be pulled to reveal either a coin bag, that doubles your current coins, or a 10 ton weight that halves your current coins. You have three chances to pull the ropes after that the level is fully complete and your coin total is added to all the coins you’ve collected so far in the game. The heart mini game is a little bit different. For starters there are 3 different courses an A, B, and C course that cost different amounts of coins. A cost the most but has better rewards for lives where as C course is cheapest but has less access to lives and focuses on heart amounts. The games are the same with each course. Wario has 5 chances to hit an enemy with a bomb. If the enemy is hit Mario gets a hit for that round if he misses he gets a miss. At the end of the game the hits are totaled and the prize for that number of hits is rewarded. It is possible to get no hits and win nothing.

The worlds are varied and offer different backgrounds and hazards. While the enemies tend to be world specific only until there first encounter after that they can appear in any level after. The sounds and music sound nice and vary. The graphics are great for the time and still look great today for a handheld game. The difficulty was fair and it did not have any unreasonable spikes on the fine level/boss, however, the final boss did take six hits to defeat while all others were the standard 3 hits to defeat that a lot of games tend to utilize.

[singlebanana]

I'm glad you gave Wario Land a spin Mr_Stubbs.  I also played it a bit last month.  I did a brief segment on it in the podcast recording.