Oh crap, I need to find out if I have a Game Boy that works. Let’s see…
Whew! Here it is, in all its barely visible glory.
Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 is the first game ever to feature Wario as a playable character. He was introduced as a villain the previous game in this series, 6 Golden Coins, and was apparently enough of a hit that they *immediately* put him front and center. I’ve never quite understood the appeal, to be honest.
The story of the first few Super Mario Land games is amusingly interconnected – during the events of the first game, in which Mario is in an unusual kingdom called Sarasaland, Wario took over Mario Land and steals its namesake castle. Super Mario Land 2 is all about undoing that, and at its end, order is restored when Wario is expelled from the castle. Undeterred, Wario resolves to get a castle of his own, which will be cooler and better than Mario’s, which brings us to this week’s game.
This game also introduced Captain Syrup, the first female villain of the overarching Mario universe. She was also the villain of Wario Land II, but hasn’t hasn’t shown up in much since.
If you’ve played literally any Mario game, you should have a good idea of how this works – Mar…sorry, Wario – jumps on platforms and enemies, collects coins, and tries not to die. Like his less evil counterpart, Wario can dash to move more quickly, and can collect a handful of different powerups. He’s got some cool ones, too – a set of horned helmet him extra strength when barreling through things, and a winged helmet lets him fly horizontally for a pretty solid distance.
The game has an overworld reminiscent of its predecessor, or like Super Mario World. The levels themselves are just numbered, though, which is a bit frustrating – this makes it needlessly tough to, say, remember a particular level that you enjoyed. Even considering how the game is somewhat hampered by the limits of the Game Boy, a lot of the levels feel fairly uninspired, and most are disappointingly easy. There are a lot of them to play through, though, and they’re certainly well-made, but this falls a bit short of feeling like a big, varied Mario release.
In general, the bar for top tier Mario-adjacent games is very, very high – to no fault of its own, Wario Land doesn’t really belong in that tier. It’s a pretty fun game, though – I’d especially recommended for a young retro gamer who wants to work up to a bigger challenge. It’s a great pick for that.
Wario Land was, as you can probably guess, a pretty big hit – it made the character a mainstay of the Mario universe and spawned numerous sequels of its own, including what is probably the best game for the Virtual Boy, the appropriately named Virtual Boy Wario Land.
Let this serve as a reminder that literally all Virtual Boy games look like that. Wario’s popularity also led to the creation of the delightful WarioWare series, which generally consists of a series of frantic, weird micro-games. While I don’t know that I’ve ever fully gotten the appeal of Wario himself, WarioWare is easily one of my favorite Nintendo franchises.
Next week’s game is a 16-bit racer that I apparently own but have never heard of. That might be good? You can’t say it won’t be. Here’s hoping you’ll come back to find out.