30/03/2017

Super Mario Land: It's VERY complicated


After having replayed Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle, I was in the mood for a retro rampage and decided to take a trip even further down memory lane by replaying The Game That Started It All: Super Mario Land, a.k.a. The First Video Game I Ever Purchased. I was an industrious kid and saved my pocket money on a regular basis, and that's how I was able to purchase a brand-new copy of SML very quickly after getting my Game Boy, saving myself from an dreary Tetris diet in the process. I cannot remember why I picked up that particular game, but I'd reckon that it was both because it was wildly advertised and because it was one of the very few Game Boy games available at the time. I didn't know what to expect from SML, but I sure hoped for the best. Alas, the best didn't come.

I'll be blunt: I don't like Super Mario Land at all. Right from the start, I had this tormented, twisted and passionate relationship with it: I loathed it, and yet it lured me in time and time again. The reason for these intense feelings was pretty simple: SML was way too hard for me back then, missing the challenging mark by a couple of miles and landing straight on the infuriating mark. My father would regularly comment on the fact that I was ridiculously riled up when playing that game, that my face was so flushed he thought I was having a heart attack and that I'd better go outside to get a breath of fresh air; and mind you, I did just that more often than not. On top of introducing me to dedicated portable gaming, SML introduced me to the concept of ragequitting. I spent weeks stuck in front of King Totomesu and felt the crush of despair when fake Princess Daisy turned into a disgusting giant fly, I fell over and over again in the millions of bottomless pits littering the game, I cried tears of blood in the Chinese levels; and the only time I actually managed to reach final boss Tatanga hanging onto my last life, my nerves were so frayed that I couldn't make a move and died on its first fireball. SML required a level of platforming skill that I couldn't muster at the time, and thus it ended up being a torture tool to young little me. To make matters worse, my father was adamant that I polished off the game entirely before purchasing a second one and was hardly swayed by my teary-eyed protests that SML was just too difficult and frustrating; and while that logic made perfect sense from a parenting point of view, it was utterly absurd from my burgeoning gamer's perspective. Games were supposed to be fun, so why wasn't I allowed to ditch a game that not only failed to entertain me, but irritated me to no end every time I picked it up? But my father had the power and the car that could drive me to the toy shop standing in the next town, and thus I had to abide by his rules and spend a couple of extra weeks toiling on SML and enduring its sloppy and slippery physics, its nerve-racking boss theme and its insanely demanding platforming.

Interestingly, while SML was overall a nightmarish experience for young little me, it absolutely didn't put me off gaming. On the contrary, it made me more eager than ever to tackle new games; and I think that's a testament to the vibrancy and intensity of my love for gaming. I was a yound kid, and gaming could have been just one of the many fads I embraced before ditching them without a second though; but this was something deeper and more serious, and I probably felt it at the time, if only confusely. And there I am, 27 seven years later, replaying SML and polishing it off in less than half an hour. Things sure have come a long way when it comes to my platforming abilities; but amazingly, replaying SML with a complete mastery of the gameplay was still not a pleasant experience. In fact, I felt the exact same mix of frustration, restlessness and emptiness I used to feel when I played SML as a kid, and I was so dispirited at the end of my short playthrough that I seriously considered selling my cartridge or even throwing it away. Heck, I'm still considering it.

If SML didn't me make me steer clear of video games as a whole, it sure made me steer clear of the Super Mario series. And yes, I'm aware that SML is not a true blue Super Mario game, having been developed by Gunpei Yokoi instead of Shigeru Miyamoto; and that's precisely why I decided to give the series a second chance by purchasing and playing New Super Mario Bros on the DS. Did I love it? Nope, not more than its Game Boy ancestor. Well, I guess my heart just belongs to Sonic after all.

In the end, my relationship with SML is still pretty complicated to this day. This was my very first game, and I have to acknowledge its importance and meaning in my gaming career; but on the other hand, I really don't like that game and don't think I ever will. So I'll probably put it to rest one way or another and wisely abstain from ever touching it again. Bad gaming memories are better left undisturbed, all the more so in a present that's brimming with fulfilling gaming experiences. I'd be curious to know what your very first game was and if it was a lacklustre experience or an amazing one, dear fellow gamers; so feel free to let me know in the comments. Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!

16 comments:

  1. SML is a really odd Mario game. Those random submarine/airplane levels and general world traveling themes in the game makes me wonder if this was supposed to be a completely different platformer by Nintendo but then they decided to turn it into a Mario game due to brand recognition.

    SML and SML2 had some really hard platforming sections, more so SML of course. And not the "it's hard but doable with skill" kind, but the "you will only get good at it after you die and know the level's layout" kind. The Wario games are infinitely better platformers.

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    1. The submarine level was actually my favourite level in SML. Heck, it's the ONLY level I genuinely enjoyed in the whole game, if I have to be totally honest. But yes, SML is a weird beast and an oddity in the series. I'd be tempted to attribute that weirdness to the fact that Gunpei Yokoi produced the game while Shigeru Miyamoto was "famously hands-off", to quote IGN's review of SML.

      I'm curious: what was the first game you ever purchased, and was it a good experience or a mixed bag? ^^

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    2. The submarine/airplane levels were also my favorites. Well, at least those were the ones that I still can remember having fun. It's probably been 20 or something years since I've played it and never got around replaying it. I also remember really hating the Egyptian level with the falling boulders and fire-breathing Sphinxes.

      >what was the first game you ever purchased, and was it a good experience or a mixed bag? ^^
      Boy oh boy. Let's see... The first game I've ever played was Sonic the Hedgehog on the Mega Drive (Genesis for the American folks) when I visited a cousin. The first game I've ever bought was Warioland 2 for the Game Boy. Both were excellent games that definitely made me like games through out the years and defined my love for platformers.

      And, on that note, I highly recommend you play the Warioland games, by the way. Really fun, solid platformers.

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    3. Ah yes, those horrible Sphinxes. "Gaos", they were called. Although I hated them too, we have to admit that these beasts' AI was quite stellar for the time: the trajectory of their fireballs took Mario's position into account, which was not so common back then.

      I'll check if I can get a cheap Wario game. I'm not into platformers as a rule, but that series is so universally praised that I can't help but being curious about it.

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    4. The Game Boy Pocket/Color Wario games weren't exactly scarce. I'd bet you can find used ones at around 10€. A sealed Virtual Boy Warioland, on the other hand, can fetch 100+€ or even 200+€! Madness.

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    5. You seem to be well-informed regarding all things Virtual Boy, so I'm wondering... Do you maybe own one, or is it just collector's curiosity? ^^

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    6. More like a gamer's curiosity about gaming history. I don't have the deep pockets needed to collect those games nor do I even ever touched a Virtual Boy for that matter. It's just that I really dig the whole mystique around the Virtual Boy's tragic crash and burn.

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    7. I'm with you on that; the story of the Virtual Boy's utter debacle is quite fascinating. It proves that even when they were at the top of their game, Nintendo could royally mess things up and take terribly uninspired decisions.

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  2. Those old Gameboy games were TOUGH. Super Mario Land and it's sequels no exception. I grabbed a couple of them on eBay a few months back and jumped into one briefly to test that it worked (it was this one). Needless to say, I didn't get far before ragequitting.

    > On top of introducing me to dedicated portable gaming, SML introduced me to the concept of ragequitting

    Amen to that!! I have no idea how I had the patience for this when I was a kid.

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    1. Well, I guess we had more time and less games on our hands back then. :p Like I said in my post, I was stuck with SML for much longer than I wished. Oh, and there's obviously the fact that ALL games were painfully hard back in the days, so this was pretty much a norm we all accepted, if only grudgingly.

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  3. Good thing you made this review; I had Warioland II for the gameboy as a child and I remember adoring it, so I've been meaning to revisit it. I don't know how accurate my memories are, but I remember having a lot of fun revisiting levels over and over again to get secrets. But me being me, I wanted to try out all the games in the series in order, which meant starting with SML, but nah, gonna skip those first two entries and go straight into Warioland. I'm not a fan of classic Mario as it is, I don't need to have games even harder than those.

    I started gaming so young that it's impossible to know what my first game was in almost every genre, much less first games in any console before the PS2. According to my older sister who introduced me to gaming it was Tetris on the original gameboy, which I'm sure was a fine introduction, it's really hard to screw up Tetris, but ehh...I can't recall a single screen from it. On the console I do remember (which means the Snes does not count), it was either Nights into Dreams, Tomb Raider or Sonic Jam. I recall playing Sonic Jam the most, but my money is on Nights into Dreams since that game came out first in Europe, but either way, any of those games are fine introductions to a console. As for the first game I remember on the handheld, it's Pokemon Red, so absolutely no complaints there.

    Oddly enough, I find myself a lot more prone to rage quitting nowadays, which is odd considering I have endless patience for games like Demon Souls. But platformers, be it 2D or 3D, seem to awaken a primal rage in me (childhood trauma perhaps?). Just this months I got so mad at the first Ape Escape that I got to the point where I started hitting my knee with my PSP in pure rage, and this was just to finish the story of the game, never mind completing it. Ape Escape! And I usually never even act out my rage towards a controller, much less a handheld!

    To be fair, I was playing the PSP version of that game that completely and utterly ruined the original control scheme, making the later part of the game almost unplaybable, and bad controls are the one thing I can never excuse in games. But I used to complete that game like it was nothing as child and I almost foam at the mouth just thinking about doing it now. I hope it truly is just because of the bad controls, because I just got Ape Escape 2 on PS4 recently and I'm dreading playing it now. I did beat Croc 1 100% last year, something I had difficulty as a child due to that games mediocre controls, and I didn't rage too much at it but still, it's sad how my memories of Ape Escape are now soured anyways thanks to the awful PSP port. It has pretty graphics, but that game needs the second analog stick to work.

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    1. Indeed, platformers are the ragequitting-inducing genre by excellence. I occasionally rage at my screen when playing RPGs that are a bit too heavy on the random encounter rate, but I never rageQUIT RPGs; platformers, on the other hand, can make my blood boil like no other genre under the gaming sun.

      I'd reckon that it's due to the fact that platformers require actual motor skills. You cannot force your way through by resorting to patient grinding like in RPGs; instead, you have to learn level layouts and master the game's physics, which can be trying at best and infuriating at worst if the involved platformer is on the hardcore side.

      On the other hand, hardcore platformers can be a million times more bearable with a few tweaks, such as an instant save feature. I realized this when replaying Ecco the Dolphin a couple of years ago on the PSP: while the Megadrive original routinely sent me into fits of rage, the PSP version was a delicious experience thanks to the instant save option. Not only did it save me from the chore of having to restart levels over and over, but it also allowed me to stop playing as soon as I felt I was loosing my cool and come back later, refreshed and happy to be able to forge ahead without loosing my progress. Heck, I'm sure I would have loved SML ten times more if it had featured a password system.

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  4. "saving myself from an dreary Tetris diet in the process" ahahah I must admit I feel quite the opposite, Tetris is perfect for my obsession for order and control #freak ;)

    I remember very few level of SML, but my worst memory was definitly "king totomesu". Seemed hell to me to get through him as a 7/8 years old child... Bad bad memory !! :D

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    1. King Totomesu was nightmare incarnate, period. He had that combined jumping and shooting pattern that you had to exploit cleverly in order to shoot fireballs at him; and me being afflicted with the shittiest sense of rhythm and still so young at the time, I just COULDN'T manage it for the life of me.

      His only redeeming quality was that you could bypass him entirely by hitting the switch located right behind him. To achieve that, you could either run under his belly when he levitated or, providing that you were Big Mario, ram into him, get shrunk and use the invincibility frames to run through him and hit the switch. THAT is how I actually managed to progress back in the days; only much later did I finally beat the abomination fair and square. That's a really interesting boss design that you don't encounter that often in platformers, and it somewhat made up for the sheer difficulty of SML's bosses.

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    2. By the way, do you remember A. playing Mario on her DS? When I told her "get the flower ! get the flower !" she answered "oh don't mind the flower, it's useless, it just makes the color of Mario's outfit change".... LOL WHAAAAT !!!???

      I don't know how she managed to play WITHOUT EVER getting and using the bullet flowers ^^

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    3. HAHAHA! Yeah, I remember that :D Aaah, young kids these days, not bothering to read gaming manuals... I remember that back in the early '90s, we used to read gaming booklets religiously before playing, and even after starting the game, just to get a better feel of the game world. I used to know the names of all the foes in SML; yet 30 years later, I can only remember the Chibobos and darn King Totomesu... :P

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