Celebrate the Game Boy’s 25th Birthday With the Pure Crazy-Ass of ‘Super Mario Land’

Yes indeed, gentlemen. For one week only, we're rebranding our usual Tuesday-ly retro piece in honor of the Game Boy. The chunky housebrick of a handheld reached its quarter-century yesterday (in Japan), and leaves a legacy of ball-busting sales behind it. Sales mostly attained by Tetris and Pokémon and other such wonders, with which it was able to defeat technologically superior competitors.

Sega's Game Gear? With its spangly color screen and everything? ‘Eff that. We wanted it monochrome and blur-tastically piss-poor. Damn right we did.

Admittedly, though, the Game Boy Camera really was a piece of shit, but we're veering off topic. Today, we're admiring the console's finest achievement: giving Mario the opportunity to fire torpedoes at the 'nads of a giant seahorse. Put another way, the rather demented Super Mario Land is coming at you.

The game was a launch release, and famously had... just about eff all to do with Mario as we know him today. Before Bowser got his shit together and became the villain of every damn game, who did we have instead? Tatanga, that's who. This bizarre little alien has kidnapped Princess Daisy (y'know, the one that isn't Peach) and hypnotized the people of Sarasaland. Wherever that is.

Needless to say, our hero is rather pissed about the whole situation, and sets about cruising through a series of stages to dispatch Tatanga and his cohorts and rescue the princess. But beyond that, it's scarcely recognizable. It's Super Mario, Jim, but not as we know it.

This time, legendary Nintendo dude and banjo-playing manchild Shigeru Miyamoto was not involved with development. Super Mario Land was produced by Gunpei Yokoi instead, and he was a different kind of nuts. A let's have Easter Island heads, sphinx bosses and a really craptacular airplane sort of nuts. You've got to admire his chutzpah.

It played much the same as the other 2D titles, with the timer and the jumping onto/over things and whatnot, but otherwise it's as peculiar as the sequel Super Mario Land: Six Golden Coins. A more apt title may have been Mario Takes A Trip In Doc's DeLorean And Wonders Where In Holy Balls He Is.

Images via gamefaqs.