Sûpâ Mario rando 2: 6tsu no kinka

A few years back, I had a bit of nostalgic fun and played through some of the earlier entries in Nintendo's iconic and beloved 'Super Mario' franchise, intent on reliving childhood thrills. And I had a bit of an odd revelation regarding the first entry in the spin-off hand-held franchise "Super Mario Land"... That being that the original game basically just didn't hold up all that well. Don't get me wrong. It was solid enough and provided about twenty minutes of reasonably entertaining gameplay. But it didn't have all that much variety and suffered clunky hit detection, in addition to lacking some of the classic iconography that defined the series up until that point. It wasn't a bad game... but rather a troubled one.

But where that game fell short, it's sequel "Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins" more than made up. And I'm happy to report that despite coming out well over twenty years ago, this is one Mario game that's well worth revisiting over and over again! It's well structured and well paced with improved graphics and gameplay, and also significantly truer to the franchise than its immediate predecessor. And in my humble opinion, it's the definitive Gameboy-era Mario.

While Mario is away, a new nemesis called Wario, a sort-of evil version of the heroic plumber, takes over the castle at the heart of the magical Mushroom Kingdom and seals it shut, making entry impossible. Taking a cue from the 16-bit 1990 release "Super Mario World", the game follows Mario as he travels around an over-world map to six different "levels", each comprised of several stages to conquer. And only be conquering the six areas and attaining six magical golden coins, one of which is concealed within each level, will Mario be able to enter the castle and face off against this new threat.

As I mentioned above, the game is very much an attempt at emulating the style and structure of the home-console release "Super Mario World." And I do think for the most part, it succeeds. While it was never going to be quite as big or quite as pretty a game, "Super Mario Land 2" does an admirable job at closely approximating the concepts first introduced in "World", and even expanding on them slightly. It has a great variety of locales to explore, including levels based around Space, the Halloween holiday, Water and even a giant mechanical clockwork version of Mario himself. And this helps the game retain a freshness that I found lacking in the previous title. It also has some nice fan- service and call-backs to previous games, helping it feel more in- line with the franchise at large. And I definitely appreciated the fact that the game has a save feature, because on top of all that- it's also quite a bit longer than the last game!

In terms of gameplay, this is classic Mario in every way, and it thankfully even fixes some of the issues with control and hit detection that plagued the first entry in the "Mario Land" series as well! Everything is tight and concise and well-programmed, and the game flows beautifully in virtually every stage. I also found that on the whole, the level design, while linear, is very well-accomplished and there are plenty of secrets to look for through the six levels that add a lot of replay-value. In addition, the game gets a major aesthetic face-lift in terms of graphics and sound. Despite being limited by the Gameboy's black-and-white screen, character and enemy sprites are larger and more detailed, and the backgrounds are a lot more lush this time, which is a big plus. I also really loved the music and sound effects, which hearken back a lot more to the original trilogy of games seen on the NES.

All-in-all, "Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins" is just fantastic. It takes the classic formula and reworks it perfectly for an on-the- go experience, and improves over the first entry in virtually every capacity. While it might not be the best Mario game in terms of the franchise, this is easily the definitive Gameboy-era Mario, and it's up there with the best of the best. And so, I give it a perfect 10 out of 10! If you haven't played it, it's definitely one to check out!