When I was a kid I didn't have a Game Boy, which I thought was a grave injustice. A lot of my friends had one though and I spent a good amount of time playing theirs. Most of that time was spent playing Super Mario Land, mostly because everyone had it and most of the other games sucked. When I met my wife she told me she had an old game boy that had belonged to her and her brothers and when I expressed interest it and she dug it out of their basement. She had a few good games like Metroid II and a few bad ones like Spider Man, but one game she didn't have was Super Mario Land. This surprised me since like I said before, everyone had it.
So fast forward a few years to yesterday when I got a hankerin' to brows for some classics at my local Play-N-Trade. They didn't have a great selection but they had a few I was interested in. I ended up getting Ken Griffy Jr. Presents Major League Baseball for the SNES and Super Mario Land. KGJPMLB is a really fun baseball game from '94 that one of my friends had. It's everything that a baseball game needs to be, lots of fun with little complication. It was nice to buy a SNES game, it's been a long time since I picked up a new one.
Anyway, so this morning I got up from a 6 hour LOTRO bender (my trail subscription is up tomorrow) and sat down for a little classic Game Boy action. If you've ever played SML you know what a great game it is, really an example of hand-held game design done right. Now I never beat the game as a kid. In fact I don't think I ever got past the third world because things got unfamiliar after that. World 4 has a Chinese theme with bamboo in the background and kung foo guys jumping around. Its really weird how uncharacteristic this game of a typical Mario game. It definitely doesn't take place in the Mushroom Kingdom. The worlds (or I guess lands) are: World 1 Egypt, World 2 Water World with Aliens and Robots, World 3 Easter Island, and World 4 China. I was surprised to find that World 4 is the last one. The game culminates with a flying shoot-em-up level and a two part boss fight. Then you save Daisy (This is the game that she comes from) and the credits roll. So that's it. I beat in an hour the game that kicked my ass my entire childhood. High score 276080 bitchez.
I can see where I would have had trouble as a kid, the game is challenging. I found... holy shit I just played it again! Sooo much fun! OH Daisy! Anyway the game is pretty hard but for me this was entirely because my hands are no longer child-size and I was playing it on my Game Boy Advance SP. If you don't know, SP stands for "really fucking small." The other thing is that the control feels a bit loose or slippery which can make a hard performer even herder. Like controller throwing harder. I found myself unexpectedly falling off of ledges and saying things like "no fucking way", and "that's fucking bullshit". I'm pretty sure I didn't say those things back in 1989. I'm not saying the control is bad, it's just not Super Mario World precision. Kind of like how Disney Land isn't a cool as Disney World. I also got an occasional feeling of bad hit detection but then, it IS a tiny screen so who knows.
Did I mention there are shooting levels? So cool. OH Daisy!
No comments:
Post a Comment