RF Generation Message Board

PARTICIPANTS:
GrayGhost81
singlebanana
douglie007
MetalFRO
Crabmaster2000
EZRacer
bombatomba
Duke.Togo
Mr_Stubbes
Link41
Disposed Hero
TurnAroundAndRun

I've never beat these, I'm in

I'll be in as well. Since there's so many ways to play original Game boy games (GB, GBA, Super Game Boy, Game Cube GB Player), does it matter what format?

You know I'm in!!!

Nope, play any format you want. All we ask is that you have fun! 😀

Definitely in. I literally have pages of notes on these games so I'll have lots to say after I refresh.

Oh, I want to be in on this one!  Ah...  Well, what the heck.  Count me in, and hopefully my life won't get all weird again (I really want to play some video games again!).

Just out of curiosity, will the "DX" mod be fair game?

Of course. Whatever you enjoy playing. This isn't a competition month..................or is it............

Definitely up my alley.

I'm in too. I don't have the physical copies of these games, but they're available on the 3DS virtual console.

Deleted my double posts, I'm down for the first one on Game Boy! Can't seem to get the second one working.

The boss in 3-3 is giving me a hassle, I'll try again later today.

Well that was an abruptly short game, apparently there is a harder mode?

Oh man, July is already?  Sweet.  Time for me to dig out my 3DS and get to work.

It is really short. The hard mode is unlocked when the select icon on the title screen turns into Mario’s head. I’ve beaten the game too so I might have to give the hard mode a go before taking on SML2.

I need to start, lol I almost forgot it was July

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Any checkpoints for discussion this month?

I was wondering this as well. I’ve beaten both games already and don’t want to jump the gun on the discussion for this month.

I just started playing Super Mario Land.  For a bit o' history, I played a tiny portion of this game back in the day and ridiculed it (why?), then tried again when I got a Super Game Boy and ridiculed it again.  I've thought about this all day and I have no idea why I was so against this game.  Sure, the physics are a little weird (jumping is a little floaty, Mario is kind of hard to control when dashing, and mushrooms have a weird way of dropping off after traveling forty-five degrees through a ninety-degree arc) but otherwise I love this game!  The music is really amazing, and I have been humming the theme for 2-1 and 2-2 for an hour now.

I've also been putting a lot of thought as to why I didn't like the GB when it was released due to blur and the lack of a backlight.   I used to play a ton of those Tiger handheld games (Simon's Quest and Thunder Blade come to mind) and they certainly didn't have any backlight and pretty much looked terrible. What a bummer, as I think about all the fun I could have had playing on a GB versus futzing around with the Super Mario Brothers Game and Watch instead of enjoying a superior title (plus other games).  Well, at least I am playing now.

Finished Super Mario Land.  Short and sweet, and I finished it on my second try (after killing all my continues on 3-2).  Overall quite a bit of fun, and once I got used to the jump fairly easy.  I missed quite a bit on my initial run, so I plan on going back over it and messing about with the levels.  I'll hold off a day or so for Land 2 though.  I tried playing it right away and only lasted a few steps.  I had forgotten how right on the money the physics are in it.  I will be playing the DX mod.  As far as I know it is just the basic game but with color.  This was one of the first GB games I remember playing a loving right off the bat, so I am looking forward to it.

I was able to beat Super Mario Land fairly quickly as well. Especially if your able to stock pile extra lives playing the bonus “ladder game” at the end of each level. The controls did feel a little loose, especially the jump, but the hardest thing for me to get used to was the exploding turtle shells. I lost a good number of lives forgetting that the blow up after you jump on them. Other than that the other enemies didn’t cause me to much trouble. I also played through the hard mode, but by stockpiling lives in the first few levels and learning the new enemy placements I eventually made it through the game again. I really enjoyed this game and I’m glad I finally got to play it.

Also I’m not sure if we’re posting our scores or not, but....

Here is my final score for regular mode:

(http://i.imgur.com/FlSNddD.jpg)

And my score for hard mode:

(http://i.imgur.com/lMbxL49.jpg)

@Mr_Stubbes - Well, you certainly beat mine.  In regular my high at finishing was 278360, and this was with collecting most coins that I could find.  I'll post a pic when I get a chance.

I just finished the first one. This was my first play through and it doesnt really feel like a mario game, I dont think I'll replay it again, the controls are not even close to the nes game. I wouldn't say it's a bad game, just nothing special.  I'm looking forward to the 2nd one.(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20190710/d5e28e0b90238f50cfa908e08ee7c4ce.jpg)

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Nice work guys!  Plan on starting tonight while my kids are at soccer practice. NERD DAD IN THE CAR ALERT!

Stuck on level 3-3 on SML1 so popped in SML2 and have made my way to the castle.

So I started the game last night at my kids' soccer practice.  I did pretty well on my first playthrough, but had a little trouble with glare from the sun setting.  Popped it in my Super Game Boy when I got home and beat it in one run.  :D

I've heard about and seen some posts about the game having poor controls. I really disagree and don't feel a lot of difference between it and NES SMB titles. However, I did notice a bit of a difference on how it plays on the Game Boy as compared to the Super Game Boy.  I have to say that I think the issue lies not in the game, but in the console.  At no point did I have any issue with jumping or notice any rigity.  I dunno, maybe it's just me, but that was my experience.

I also completely disagree with the statement, "it doesn't feel like a Mario game."  Yeah, it's a little different stylistically, but it feels more like "a Mario game" to me than SMB 2....which was not even originally a SMB title. Though named differently, many of the enemies are the same and transverse an environment from left to right like you do in the others.  I'd like to hear from you guys on why it does or doesn't feel like a Mario game. Would make for a good discussion on the podcast.

I have other thoughts on the game, but of course, will save those until the show.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D_KUanFWwAAHSj5.jpg)

I haven't played SML yet, but having played through it dozens of times in the last 30 years, I'll say that it does feel like a Mario game, but perhaps more of a "gaiden" than a traditional game. Keep in mind, when it released in 1989, there wasn't still a defined formula for Mario games. You had SMB, which was the original template, and the disparate releases of SMB2 between Japan and the West gave the 2 regions very different takes on what we knew of as a "Mario" game. SMB3 had released in Japan by 1989, but that didn't hit American shores until the following year. Even then, the formula that carried forward didn't really solidify until SMW, and SML2 after that. So taking the original SML in that context, it was just another take on the Mario idea. The physics are a touch goofy, such as the relatively lack of inertia, and Mario drops like a rock after a fall, but overall, it still looks and plays like you would expect a SMB successor to play. It's still one of my favorite games on the Game Boy, and despite knowing that, objectively, SML2 is the better game, my nostalgia for the original runs deep. I'll offer more thoughts after I give it another play through, but I thought I'd add something initial here, to keep the discussion going.

I wasn't planning on participating in this playthrough, but I've been bringing my GBA with me to work everyday to play on breaks, so I figured why not?

(https://i.imgur.com/kQSePk4.jpg)

Finished the first Super Mario Land. It was alright, but probably not something I would ever revisit considering I have easy access to the NES titles. I did really enjoy the shmup-inspired autoscrolling levels though and wish there had been more than two of them. Sure, it was short, but I was ok with that. I think I would have really enjoyed this game if I had it back in the day, and it's a good effort and pretty much what you'd expect from a Game Boy launch adaptation of Super Mario Bros.

As far as the controls and whether or not it feels like a Mario game, I can see both points. To me, it feels like the core mechanics are similar enough to the original SMB, but certain mechanics do feel a bit different. MetalFRO hit the nail on the head with the lack of inertia and sharp falling compared to SMB. I also felt like the hit detection was a little off at times regarding enemies and platforms, but that could have just been my imagination from playing on a small screen. Some of the enemies were different, but every Mario game has its unique enemies.

I'm planning on playing SML2 before the month is over, but we'll see if I get to it.

I did enjoy sml2 more than 1 but it ramps up the difficulty at the castle. But I might have been hard on the first game. I played it on the 3ds, but when I played it on the gba it wasn't as bad. I dont know if it's something in the emulation.(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20190711/61be4ab58996885c2a96559e5f6d0ad9.jpg)

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Well, I streamed Super Mario Land this evening, and ended up clearing it twice - once on Normal, and once on Hard:

Normal high score:

Here's my Hard mode score, seen during the end sequence.

Also, here's my stream, in case anyone's interested:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIhfceE0Liw

I finished SML2 as well and had a lot of fun doing it.

(http://i.imgur.com/pfGbIKX.jpg)

Regarding Super Mario Land, I'm definitely in the camp that says it doesn't quite feel right. Not a fan of the physics in this game and that really tarnishes the entire game for me. Like MetalFRO stated, because this is so early in the Mario timeline we didn't have established tropes for the series yet. So I don't think it's fair to be to tough on things that are different from Super Mario Bros, but I can't help it there is some stuff they should have just ripped off from that game. For example the ricocheting fireball is the worst. It's so easy to miss something and on a lot of stages that means waiting for that ball to bounce around a dozen times until it disappears. The turtles exploding can really kill the forward momentum/pacing of the game for me. The shmup stages, while I'm not against the idea, are so insanely easy and slow that there is just no fun in them.

With the 2 Mario games prior to SML you've got an amazing cast of enemies that are so iconic that many of them are still used in Mario titles and merchandising to this day. Every single enemy in SML is a bland forgettable attempt with no style or substance behind them. Prior to Mario Odyssey in which Nintendo finally decided to tweak the formula Mario games have had a bad rap for lives being meaningless, yet they are still in the game. I feel like that started with Super Mario Land and was in every major Mario game since that point. If that's the one thing to stick around moving forward from this game that's not a great legacy. The whole game itself is half the game Super Mario Bros was 4 years prior and doesn't have the same richness of secrets that SMB had either. When you finish a game that is half as long as SMB and have 30 lives left, something doesn't feel right. The bonus stage at the end of the level is a bad idea imo also. Too easy to get and abuse.

I definitely agree with bombatomba that the music is fantastic in SML though and definitely the highlight of playing this game for me.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think a lot of us growing up were in the mindset that handheld versions of console games were almost always inferior. I think SML is a prime example of that and a big reason why that stigma persisted for so long. I LOVE the Super Mario games and I've 100%'d nearly all of them in my life. I don't think SML is a bad game, I think it's a below average game though and it absolutely is near the bottom of my list of best Super Mario games and doesn't quite live up to the high standards most of the series offers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUt6i-PjeII

I can agree with some of this for SML. I found the controls a touch stiff and I had a few issues with hit boxes, where I clearly jumped on top of an enemy but would end up losing a life. I also found the fireball mechanics annoying as well. The action in itself felt weird and sluggish and waiting for a fireball to disappear was sometimes annoying. The difficulty of the game was also kind of an issue to me. It is very easy to rack up lives (even in the hard mode) resulting in little consequence to losing them, also with the clock resetting with each new life, it really slowed down the sense of urgency of the game to the point where the timer really doesn't matter. Had the bonus stages been harder to access the game may have been a little more challenging. As for the enemies, I thought they were interesting with a lot of variety. There were the standard goombas, koopa Troopa, piranha plants, etc,  which were for the most part true to their concept (except for the exploding koopas). I also liked the one off enemies for this series, like the fast moving Easter Island heads, the high jumping seahorses that shot balls at you, and the what I guess were elves? that were only stunned by being jumped on added some different obstacles to the game.

I think as the first portable system Mario game, I feel like this is right where it needed to be. They mimicked some things from NES version and tried some new things as well to make it a new yet familiar Mario experience.    

One thing I would say regarding the "fireball" is that it's not actually a fireball. The manual states that it's a "super ball" instead. Hence, why it bounces off surfaces. This was a conscious decision by the development team, so keep that in mind.

In terms of my updated thoughts on the game, I was ruminating on stream last night about the fact that I didn't even realize there was a Hard mode. After having played through it, my years of experience with the game meant that it didn't end up being that much more difficult. But I can see it being a fair challenge for a newcomer. There are quite a few more enemies in that higher difficulty setting, and a few spots where the enemy placement might feel a bit cheap, because of how you would normally run through a Mario level. That said, it was still fairly easy to overcome, and I enjoyed seeing the game in a different light, all these years later. This is one of those games where I might be tempted to buy a Super Mario Land DX cart, just to have the colorization. The game's music is so ingrained with me, and all the tunes in the game make me smile. I can't separate out my nostalgia for the game, and look at it very objectively, because I just love it too much.

I managed to beat Super Mario Land 2 in a single sitting, this evening. First time doing that. I had some fun with it, although the difficulty spike in the castle always throws me. I still prefer the original, even though I know that, objectively speaking, this is the better game. I have way more nostalgia for it, it plays faster, and slightly smoother, has a way better soundtrack, and I just enjoy it more, on the whole. I do appreciate that Nintendo was legitimately trying to make Mario on Game Boy a real contender, however. It followed the Super Mario World formula, brought in a new power-up, with the bunny ears, and introduced Wario, who has become a mainstay character of his own. But the music, despite having that bouncy, whimsical feel, often feels too much like variations on a theme, like Super Mario World. But it's not quite as well composed as that. On the upside, the different themed areas were a nice touch, though some of the enemy choices are a little goofy, such as the walking Jason Voorhees masks in the Pumpkin Zone. Also, the fact that you have to stomp on boss enemies in approximately the middle third of the top of their sprite is annoying. No Mario game before, or since, was as specific about how you had to take out bosses with a trio of simple bounces. It makes the boss fight on the moon more frustrating than it has to be. Despite all this, it's still a must play on the Game Boy, and something I've come back to a number of times over the years.

Here's my stream of it, if anyone's interested:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAewwEpR3vA

I'm a little behind everyone, but I am in! Starting Super Mario Land today.

Wooo! Woooo!

I was able to beat it in one sitting as well, it was a fun game that got me through a flight back home. I liked the varied worlds that existed in this game. My favorite one was Mario Zone even though the choice for the boss was a little weird. The difficulty of the game definitely leaned on the side of easy, due to coins and lives being easy to obtain. By repeating the floating bubble level you could rack up serious coinage in no time at all for chances of scoring big on the slot machine. In my playthrough I was able to hit the the 99 lives slot making the game a cakewalk. Also what adds to the lower difficulty is if you should run out of lives, all worlds you have cleared can be accessed again and you can go to the boss level immediately. While the final castle with Wario does she a big increase in game difficulty, if you were able to amass a bunch of lives from the slot machine, it takes some of the sting off. As for the boss hit boxes I didn't notice that I had to jump in the center of there head, I'm not 100% positive but I believe I had many instances were i was damaging them by jumping on the top left and right of their heads as well. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I played the 3DS virtual console version?
 
Ultimately I enjoyed both games for the July Playthrough. I'm glad I participated and finally played some classic games that I never had a chance to play when I was younger. I still haven't yet, but Super Mario Land 3 is on my list of games to play. I figured its definitely worth the play to close out the classic Super Mario Land series.

Just finished Super Mario Land 1. Finished it in two separate sittings, last night and this afternoon after work. Love it! It took me on a very nostalgic trip of my childhood.

I'm definitely a lot more positive on SML 2 than the first one. First off it looks fantastic. Love the cartoonish style Mario has to him. Unfortunately he still doesn't feel quite right physics-wise and is a tad too floaty for my tastes. It's not egregious though. Big fan of the overworld maps in Mario games and this one is no exception. Really helps make the game feel like an adventure and even bigger than it actually is. I like the themes a lot of the levels have to them, the Mechanized Mario, Moon and Halloween levels being my favs. Big fan of the secret exits and although I prefer how they were handled in Super Mario World, I'd rather have them in here as they are than not at all. The Carrot is a cool new power up. The gliding mechanic is introduces is fun and there are a few levels designed to take good advantage of it and a few others that become incredibly easy if you can bring a Carrot with you into the level (which is fun design when it's not abuse-able on every stage).

My favorite part of the previous game, the music is definitely my least favorite part of SML 2 though. It's got among the worst music in the whole series I think. Aside from Wario I also think it has maybe the worst cast of villains. They range for ultra generic (beetles, frogs, ants), or crazy out of place for Mario game (Jason head with knife in it, 3 Little Pigs?). Very weird choices for baddies. Wario is a cool villain though so he makes up for a bit of the lame regular guys. Totally agree with Mr_Stubbes that 1ups are ridiculous in this game (like I mentioned in my SML write up I think that game introduced the idea to the series that 1ups are meaningless and SML2 definitely ran with that idea).

Also agree with Mr_Stubbes that there is a massive jump in difficulty for that final castle. I personally love that it feels like a real test of the skills you've been learning, but I could see someone being turned off from it because it does seem like a bit of a departure from the rest of the game.

A little thing that I absolutely love is that they got rid of the highscore counter! Mario doesn't need a score counter and it's unfortunately that it came back in other later games after this one.

Overall I think SML2 was a HUGE step towards meeting up with it's console counterparts in terms of quality, fun and scope.

Finished Super Mario Land 2 last night in one sitting. First time I have ever played it and really enjoyed it as well!  I cannot argue that the difficulty ramps up tremendously in the last castle. No save point FTL!  It took me 30+ tries, but once I adapted to all of the patterns, it was much easier to get to Wario. Funny story about beating this, but I will save that for the podcast.

Started Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 today.  I feel bad that we left this one out, but man, three games in a month to discuss would have been a challenge. However, I still plan to dedicate some time to it and talk about it briefly on the show. Anyone want to join me in playing it?

SML down.

(https://i.imgur.com/2pGdVBN.jpg)

Having beat this a lot when I was younger, it brings back some fond memories. The physics still aren't quite right, and the hit detection is a little off, but it plays really well considering it was there at the start. Keeping a score in this one seems like an odd vestige with the number of lives that the game throws at you. If you want to pump up your score, it would benefit you to die a lot, which seems counterintuitive. If the game was tighter on lives then I think I would consider the score to be a better measure of skill.

On to SML2!

Welp, I played a few levels of Super Mario Land 2 and was enjoying it well enough, but when I came back to it my save file was gone, so it looks like the battery in my cartridge is dead. I don't see myself playing through the whole thing in one sitting, so looks like I'll be sitting out on this one.

Based on what I played, SML2 definitely feels like a step up from the first. The mechanics and presentation feel closer to Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World, although movement still felt a bit loose and slippery in comparison to those games. Seemed like a very solid game overall.


I never played the first two SML games back in the day, but a good friend of mine owned Wario Land, and I remember playing it a lot and really enjoying it. Definitely worth playing for those who are curious.

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.

(https://0x00sec.s3.amazonaws.com/original/2X/0/02e0c4e455677819785c22cfbef080ea64be7c5f.jpeg)

Got gud.

(https://i.imgur.com/3nL6Yf1.jpg)

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.

(https://i.ibb.co/KKwNhDK/Super-Mario-Land-2-2019-07-21-14-58-35.png)

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.

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!

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.

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. :)