FYI: The moon zone boss is the alien guy you fight at the end of Marioland! My family started in video games by winning a domino's pizza contest and won a game boy and this game.
It's worth mentioning that gameboy screens, when new, weren't just two shades of chartreuse. The materials that made up the LCD screens have broken down over time. When new, they were actually much more contrasty. The "blacks" were a much darker, less neon-y blackish green. Yes, they still turned to blurry mush when you moved, but they were surprisingly crisp when the screen was still, and with a decent contrast.
Total buzzkiller aren't you? These machines still work. Gameboys can even work after a bombing. I miss old tech. It was durable and now we can buy weak technology by built.
Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Hellllllll Yes! I absolutely loved SML2. Wario was such a genius idea, and I loved the commercial growing up. We didn't really have guides readily available like that back then, so i felt really proud finding all the secrets myself. Fave world is Macro or Mario. Nintendo playing coy w/ the Balls level in Mario one.
As a kid, we were too poor to have an NES (or later an SNES) but my parents did save for a Gameboy. This was my only Mario game growing up. I adore this game to this day.
I was obsessed with Gameboy as a child, but I was only able to afford a second hand one until late 1992 (for children in Mexico back then, it was harder to buy videogames), after spending summer vacation doing small errands and earning enough to buy it, it had tetris, but i borrowed SML2 from a friend, and it was just amazing.
It's always been close between this and the 1st Wario Land. The 1st Super Mario Land was fun, kinda easy and short, it did feel weird doing jumps in that game!
Almost two years back for me, I played all the way through this and Link's Awakening DX for the first time ever (had only played a couple of stages of this; only the first dungeon in LA) and I genuinely believe they both hold up wonderfully. I never got bored or tired of SML2. LA, I will admit I enjoyed the remake more after it released, but both are now special memories that I hold dearly.
Good to see your appreciation of japan extends to the best game series out there! Such an improvement over the first game. Mario looks like he does from smw. The levels are fun and unique.
I replayed it last year as well, and I actually found a secret level I'd never found in my previous three or so playthroughs during childhood! Definitely still a fun game. The last castle and boss were really the only difficult part though.
Yeah it was incredible to have an adventure like this in your pocket in 1992. It was so great back then to see the night and day difference between launch titles and titles that came out a few years down the road
Also, like Tetris, playing this on the massive kiosks at Toys R Us were magical and I miss being able to do that so much. It's just not the same on a Super Game Boy.
I played the hell out of this game when I was a kid. I'd get the tree world music stuck in my head all the time. Seeing the color ROM hack makes me want to go back and play it. Great review, Drunk.
This was one of my favorite Game Boy games! It was such a huge improvement over the original Mario Land! It was one of the most unique, yet fun Mario games. The Mario Land 2 DX patch is definitely well worth it as well! The added color and Luigi mode make it a great way to revisit it! The game is also really easy, except once you get to Wario's Castle which is a _huge_ difficulty spike!
I love this game. Right up there with Kirby's Dreamland, this was one of my all time favorites, not just on Gameboy, but on any console. I love everything Halloween, so it was awesome having the witch boss. And this game's soundtrack is a seriously underrated gem.
Oh man, I miss those days. Playing games like this on a handheld even with a terrible looking spinach screen was mind blowing as a kid. The Game Boy is nostalgic as hell and I hope and pray that Nintendo will bring the original Game Boy and the Game Boy Advance to Nintendo switch online, fingers crossed.
I miss those days too... nowadays Nintendo don't give a sh1* for us, fans - and will charge a ton of money for 10 or so games bad emulated in Switch that is not yours if you drop Nintendo s*1t online service...
They will but in the meantime I highly recommend getting an Analogue Pocket. Super Mario Land 2 DX and the Analogue Pocket, it's like they were born for each other!
This is probably the most underrated Mario game imo. The soundtrack absolutely slaps (The credits roll music is my favorite tune from the game), the platforming is tight, lots of secrets to find, cool enemies, and you can do everything in whatever order you want. Also this series spawned the Wario Land spinoff series that came into its own and made Wario a household name.
I played and 100% Donkey Kong Land 2. It is extremely good and miles better than the first one. And the levels are all different from the SNES game, so if you know the SNES game, this has new levels. Almost like a DLC.
I can’t even begin to describe how livid I was when Nintendo did that montage of every main series Mario game at the end of the 35th anniversary direct, and they completely skipped over this one as if it never existed.
@@Howitchewstofeel5gum - All I’m saying is that I was pissed that Nintendo acknowledged Yoshi’s Island in that montage, despite the fact that it’s more of a spin-off than an actual main series Mario game, but yet they couldn’t be bothered to include SML2.
Yes, Mario Land series was always kinda marginated. You barely get references in other Mario games (seeing the Super Ball Flower in Mario Maker 2 was a unespected surprise for me)
I think the only ding I can give it is Mario's jump momentum. You can't move that freely in the air if you decide to. Other than that, the game has aged really well considering its 30 years old. Yeah, it makes us "old", but time marches on and we still have cool stuff like this with which we can share our experiences.
If you have a 3DS, you can buy it from the 3DS eShop. But don't wait too long. Starting May 23rd, you'll no longer be able to add funds to your account via a credit card for 3DS or Wii U purchases.
I played and finished this game last year, and I really liked it! It's a wildly imaginative game for such limited hardware that I was left impressed throughout the whole game. I mean, you get to have mario explore a mechanical Mario! Wish they brought back this series, this second entry is a good reason for why they should. Great game.
I just got this game for my game boy color. Is there a way to save your progress so that I can turn off the system and finish it later? I don’t see a way to save my own progress by pressing start or select.
This game is a real gem on the Gameboy, and one of my personal favorites in the Mario series. But as you rightfully pointed out, it's also a master class in how to squeeze the most out of a piece of hardware!
Saw this on my recommendation time line and I'll answer the question. Yes! This is one of the top 3 best 2d Mario games ever and it's a crime that Nintendo hasn't put it out on switch/OLED/lite via NSO or as part of a combo package either way i love this game i replayed it on emulators on tablets and on my phone and it's just a joy to play.
Having just played through this game again as a 31 year old I can’t disagree with how highly you rate the DX ROM hack that brings it into full colour. I played it on my flat screen TV and it felt like my childhood experience of playing it, only rejuvenated. 10/10 Mario game.
I didn't remember much about about the game off-hand, but I remembered how much I played and loved the game at the time. Up there with Link's Awakening as my most played Game Boy games. :D
I replayed it last year, and I was surprised how hard the end was. I spent at least a couple hours trying to beat it. I didn't remember its being so hard as a kid.
There were tricks to making it easier, like the hidden star in the red bouncing ball enemies room and the avoidable floor tiles that activated the slamming Wario fists.
I'm so happy you have finally reviewed this one. I think it is a blast of a Mario game, with so many original ideas that should have been featured in subsequent ones. The overworld and the stage themes are beyond the classic "forest, fire, snow, water" worlds. And I think Super Mario Land 1 still stands as a real fun playthrough too, even though it's a simpler game. But hey, simple is not a bad thing if done correctly. 6 Golden Coins should have been rereleased in some Mario collection though
I got this for Christmas in 1992. Probably the most excited I've ever been about a new game release: FINALLY this felt like we were getting a proper Mario game on the GB. And it didn't disappoint at all. I loved all the little secrets. I loved the overworld map which felt similar to Super Mario World, but still unique enough to make it stand out. I loved that it actually uses traditional Super Mario Bros enemies like Koopas, while also introducing new ones unique to this game. SML1 always felt a little like it could have been a reskin of just about any other platformer, with a Mario sprite put in, and even the controls for example didn't feel quite up to Mario standards. But this really felt like a proper, full fledged Mario game, that still had an identity all its own.
You just hit the nail Snesdrunk, this game was amazing, it was the most spectacular experience on a handheld back then, only surpassed by Link's Awakening later (at least for me). It's true that Miyamoto wasn't involved in this game, but it had the great Gunpei Yokoi as producer. Thank you for bringing this awesome video, it brings tons of good memories.
SML2 was incredibly fun and had a mysteriousness to it all its own. The GB had good games even early on, but the release of this and Link's Awakening were peak for the system IMO. Of course, someone several years younger than me might say Pokemon R/B was the best game to ever come out for the GB. It's insane the longevity it had. What an incredible system.
IMO Donkey Kong in 1994 was the pinnacle of Game Boy. Kirby's Dream Land 2 in 1995 is also great. But the years between that and Pokemon were a little lean (though I was obsessed with the camera and printer in early 1998)
Definitely an all-time great from the OG handheld era. I was always intrigued by the need to find Magical Coins. Not sure why, it was just an idea I always thought was cool.
SML2 is a good game but it has one big problem: it's floaty and slow as hell, probably because Mario's sprite now takes up so much room on the screen. In the video you seem to not care for SML1 much but this is one thing it definitely has going for it over the sequel, it plays snappy and fast, exactly because Mario is tiny so you can see a lot of what's ahead. I only had SML2 as a kid myself but I grew to appreciate the first game a lot more later. They're both impressive in their own way but SML1 is better suited to the hardware and kind of plays better.
The DX Color romhack patch. I replayed Super Mario Land 2 in color. Very refreshing after 20 years since I last played it. That last Level/Castle is still tough as nails.
That's the rub with the difficulty. First you can choose any level with similarly low difficulty, but with the castle is suddenly gets harder. A more linear approach with gradually increasing difficulty would have helped :D
Dude, remember playing this game when i was like 5 years on the back row of the car of my parents, i found this game so good at the time, I realized how good it was later on when I noticed that 90% of original gameboy library is mediocre. Good memories
Loved this as a kid. Every zone had a secret level - except Mario Zone for some reason which wasted so many evenings trying to find something that didn’t exist. Remember kids, we had no internet then to look it up - it was word of mouth or find it yourself.
Oh my i love playing the game an hearing the soundtrack is so smart the way of using the same motive for almost everything! A must if you like Mario, breathe or living in this universe XD
This game deserves SO much more love. There’s just so many great things about it - fun art style, cute new enemies, interesting story, Wario, great music, and the coolest credits glitch/shortcut I have ever seen. I hope with its addition to the Switch GameBoy app that more people will discover it (or at least that Nintendo will respect it a little more going forward)
Being someone who doesnt usually play or like Mario games i absolutely love this one. Is right there with New Super Mario Bros DS, Mario Kart DS and the original Super Mario Bros on NES as their favorites in the franchise.
As a Game Boy enthusiast, I can say this is one of the best gb titles ever, but nobody should play this. YOU have to play the DX ROM hack. It improves the game and makes one of the best gb titles better in every way. YOU CAN PLAY AS LUIGI!
I had NO idea this had a colour patch. That is insanely cool! Loved this game as a kid, and it's probably my favourite game in the original gameboy not named Pokemon.
This was one of my favorites as a kid on the gameboy. It really showed that good games could really happen on the system. And it still holds up to this day.
Pure nostalgia, sitting in the shed that passed for a common room at my school, pouring with rain outside, smashing through this incredible game. The graphics blew my mind at the time, and THAT soundtrack!
Man i remember like it was yesterday: The full Game Boy Pack with Tetris, or the standard one plus whatever an extra game costed. The (agonizing) dilemma: on one hand, better bang for my (limited) buck, on the other, I got to choose what game I got (with the knowledge that I wouldn´t get another one for a while). So... Super Mario Land 2. Never regretted it. Wait, it has a color hack?! Checking it out now. This kind of tidbits are one of my favourite thing about your videos. Thanks for making the rest of my day great! Hope yours is as well. Cheers!
I have to counter point a bit on this. The increased size of the character sprites leads to a complaint I also have with Super Mario World and a lot of SNES era games, only even worse because it's on a tiny handheld screen: The characters are bigger so there's less screen space to work with. Just look at how much more of the level you can see in the Mario Land 1 clips. Making the character sprites twice as big means there is a lot less space for everything else!
This is one of my favorite games of all time. I played the absolute hell out of it on my original Game Boy in the mid 90’s. Seriously some of my favorite childhood memories. 1,000%.
What I love about this game is that they really went creative with the black and white colored screen and went with an old cartoon asthetic with the music and rubber hose styled enemies. It really shows how different it was from other Mario games. Extremely creative.
What blows my mind .. is how old my Gameboy is .. it's an original 1989 model made in Japan and it STILL WORKS *PERFECTLY* .. and the battery saves on the cartridges just recently gave up the ghost and the data vanished ... they lasted until just last year or the year before .. that's crazy.
Crazy to think the simpsons is as old as the game boy and still on. My lil kid self would have never imagined my nearly 40 year old self would still be seeing new simpsons episodes
Thanks for the upload, Drunk! Went and gave the DX version a shot, and I'm floored by how well the color conversion is handled. One nitpick about the hack, the koopas are green, but behave like red koopas in that they don't walk off ledges. Hmmm...
This game rules, although it is super easy compared to any of the mainline series. The sounds & music are outstanding, and still live rent-free in my memory 29 years after first hearing them
This was my childhood growing up. We did own an SNES with Super Mario All Stars and Super Mario World, but since my family are travelers and dragged me along wherever they went, having Super Mario Land 2 on Game Boy was the game I probably played the most. It has all the modern Super Mario conventions that hold today.
I hated Mario Land as a kid. It didn't play like an NES mario, so that ruined it for me. I've softened on the game since then, but if I had had this game as a kid, I would have loved it. It really is fantastic and it's a shame that the ideas here weren't really explored in later consoles.
My brother and I loved this. He beat Wario before I ever could. Hell I think I would hand him the Gameboy so he could beat him for me. Great game for real.
It sure is, especially the 'coloured' hacked version (though the original is worth it too!). It's much better than the original Super Mario Land. Definitely worth giving it a go even today!
Nice to see you cover something more main stream. The hidden gem stuff is nice but since I didn't have a lot growing up it's cool seeing a review of something all of us had or at least played.
SML2 was my first game on gameboy that I got alongside DKL2 and then Pokémon later that year. This made SML2 the first Mario game I ever owned myself and it is everything you say it is. Still love it to this day and was finally able to “100%” it as an adult. My poor motor skills as a kid had me always dying against the witch and the octopus boss and I couldn’t remember the pattern on the moon well enough to get it. Thanks for sharing with us, and I hope you have a good rest of your day too. Ours is a little better for your hard work 🙂
I once traded my cosuine my super Nintendo for his game boy for a week just so I could play this game. You can beat this game very well in just an hour. Lots of fun to play.
Great reminder on this one and I LOVE that you mentioned the early MST3K days. I got to work with Joel on the new seasons and he's still the mellow semi mad scientist he was back then.
I do recall when playing SML2 on the Super Game Boy or Game Boy Color there was some color added to the game. Not to the quality of the ROM hack though.
As usual, spot on review. The first SML was good considering the initial understanding and use of the GB hardware. This one felt much more Mario taking cues from World. I could easily come back and pick this one up. And the castle at the end is very much a ball-busting experience but the payoff is worth it.
i remember first popping this in my gameboy back in the day. fell in love with it. the music and the graphics big improvement over the first. i still jam to the music over the years.
FYI: The moon zone boss is the alien guy you fight at the end of Marioland!
My family started in video games by winning a domino's pizza contest and won a game boy and this game.
Cool, never made the connection! He's called Tatanga IIRC
This is the most retro comment I've ever read, sounds straight out of Nintendo Power.
And, in that, we learn that Mario's jump is more powerful than 8 missiles.
Nice :)
Yes, Tatanga! I think that's also the girlfriend on Boy Meets World.
It's worth mentioning that gameboy screens, when new, weren't just two shades of chartreuse. The materials that made up the LCD screens have broken down over time. When new, they were actually much more contrasty. The "blacks" were a much darker, less neon-y blackish green. Yes, they still turned to blurry mush when you moved, but they were surprisingly crisp when the screen was still, and with a decent contrast.
This is fascinating. Thanks for sharing.
2d shoot 'em ups were rough, but there were a good number of RPGs. It was great for RPGs.
Total buzzkiller aren't you? These machines still work. Gameboys can even work after a bombing. I miss old tech. It was durable and now we can buy weak technology by built.
The Game Boy Pocket also had a lot of blur when things moved on the screen. The Game Boy Color fixed this problem though, which is how I played SML2.
Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Hellllllll Yes! I absolutely loved SML2. Wario was such a genius idea, and I loved the commercial growing up. We didn't really have guides readily available like that back then, so i felt really proud finding all the secrets myself. Fave world is Macro or Mario. Nintendo playing coy w/ the Balls level in Mario one.
"Obey Wario, destroy Mario!!" I still say that to this day!
I agree, the game is awesome.
And I also really love its sequel, too.
Even more fun on the super gameboy! Changing color pallets for different levels like water or space.
@@Steve-Fiction OH YEAH- and all the Warioland handheld games it spawned! Always will be personal favorites of mine :)
Still one of my favourite GB games, I love its big content and the save feature.
As a kid, we were too poor to have an NES (or later an SNES) but my parents did save for a Gameboy. This was my only Mario game growing up. I adore this game to this day.
I was obsessed with Gameboy as a child, but I was only able to afford a second hand one until late 1992 (for children in Mexico back then, it was harder to buy videogames), after spending summer vacation doing small errands and earning enough to buy it, it had tetris, but i borrowed SML2 from a friend, and it was just amazing.
Me too lol
Then I got an n64 then Mario 64 was my second :)
@NÄFYUS 2049 The one that I was able to afford was a second hand one too, but I didnt care, it was just great to have my own GB ib my hands.
@NÄFYUS 2049 Yeah, otherwise you had to be a millionaire to buy tons of batteries for it, I also had the ac adapter
Heck yeah it is. I replayed it last year and it holds up!
It's always been close between this and the 1st Wario Land.
The 1st Super Mario Land was fun, kinda easy and short, it did feel weird doing jumps in that game!
Almost two years back for me, I played all the way through this and Link's Awakening DX for the first time ever (had only played a couple of stages of this; only the first dungeon in LA) and I genuinely believe they both hold up wonderfully.
I never got bored or tired of SML2. LA, I will admit I enjoyed the remake more after it released, but both are now special memories that I hold dearly.
Good to see your appreciation of japan extends to the best game series out there! Such an improvement over the first game. Mario looks like he does from smw. The levels are fun and unique.
Same. I played it all the way through on my Super Game Boy for the extra colors lol. So good.
I replayed it last year as well, and I actually found a secret level I'd never found in my previous three or so playthroughs during childhood! Definitely still a fun game. The last castle and boss were really the only difficult part though.
This was _such_ a huge step up from SML1
Yeah it was incredible to have an adventure like this in your pocket in 1992. It was so great back then to see the night and day difference between launch titles and titles that came out a few years down the road
Also, like Tetris, playing this on the massive kiosks at Toys R Us were magical and I miss being able to do that so much. It's just not the same on a Super Game Boy.
I played the hell out of this game when I was a kid. I'd get the tree world music stuck in my head all the time. Seeing the color ROM hack makes me want to go back and play it. Great review, Drunk.
The DX version really adds a whole new lease on life to a game that was already console quality tier.
It's awesome in colour
This was one of my favorite Game Boy games! It was such a huge improvement over the original Mario Land! It was one of the most unique, yet fun Mario games. The Mario Land 2 DX patch is definitely well worth it as well! The added color and Luigi mode make it a great way to revisit it! The game is also really easy, except once you get to Wario's Castle which is a _huge_ difficulty spike!
I love this game. Right up there with Kirby's Dreamland, this was one of my all time favorites, not just on Gameboy, but on any console. I love everything Halloween, so it was awesome having the witch boss. And this game's soundtrack is a seriously underrated gem.
Oh man, I miss those days. Playing games like this on a handheld even with a terrible looking spinach screen was mind blowing as a kid. The Game Boy is nostalgic as hell and I hope and pray that Nintendo will bring the original Game Boy and the Game Boy Advance to Nintendo switch online, fingers crossed.
I miss those days too... nowadays Nintendo don't give a sh1* for us, fans - and will charge a ton of money for 10 or so games bad emulated in Switch that is not yours if you drop Nintendo s*1t online service...
They will but in the meantime I highly recommend getting an Analogue Pocket. Super Mario Land 2 DX and the Analogue Pocket, it's like they were born for each other!
@@TarikA the pocket seems underpowered. i want at least n64 to run
@@humphrex That also involves at least one analog tigger. You're a different audience then and should look out for getting the Odin. :)
@@TarikA i just bought a controller for my phone
This is probably the most underrated Mario game imo. The soundtrack absolutely slaps (The credits roll music is my favorite tune from the game), the platforming is tight, lots of secrets to find, cool enemies, and you can do everything in whatever order you want. Also this series spawned the Wario Land spinoff series that came into its own and made Wario a household name.
Hell yeah I can remember the credits music perfectly even though I haven't completed the game in probably 25 years! It was that good of a tune
I feel like you should add "Super" to Mario
Gameboy games be referred to as “companion pieces” is an absolutely perfect way of describing them 👍🏻
You know it’s going to be a good day when SD posts a fresh video in the morning.
I hit the like button before the SNNNNNES in SNES drunk gets said
nice profile pic :P
@@marbyyy7810 I like urs better 😁
@@marbyyy7810 thanks 😁 Orc is one of Thee Oh Sees best albums!
@@iamryan9234 it really is
I was just playing this game yesterday! I got it at a rummage sale a year ago for like 25 cents, alongside Pokémon Pinball and Donkey Kong Land 2
I played and 100% Donkey Kong Land 2. It is extremely good and miles better than the first one. And the levels are all different from the SNES game, so if you know the SNES game, this has new levels. Almost like a DLC.
I remember the Donkey Kong games being borderline unplayable on Gameboy because the sprites kinda overlapped.
I played the every inch of this game when I was a young child. The nostalgia blast this video brought me was intense.
I can’t even begin to describe how livid I was when Nintendo did that montage of every main series Mario game at the end of the 35th anniversary direct, and they completely skipped over this one as if it never existed.
They skipped other games, too. Also, if this is the type of stuff that makes you "livid", you really need to get out of the house more lol.
@@Howitchewstofeel5gum - All I’m saying is that I was pissed that Nintendo acknowledged Yoshi’s Island in that montage, despite the fact that it’s more of a spin-off than an actual main series Mario game, but yet they couldn’t be bothered to include SML2.
Yes, Mario Land series was always kinda marginated. You barely get references in other Mario games (seeing the Super Ball Flower in Mario Maker 2 was a unespected surprise for me)
Same for 3d land
@@budreviewsgames If this is the stuff that makes you "pissed," you need to get out of the house more.
I think the only ding I can give it is Mario's jump momentum. You can't move that freely in the air if you decide to. Other than that, the game has aged really well considering its 30 years old. Yeah, it makes us "old", but time marches on and we still have cool stuff like this with which we can share our experiences.
I knew nothing of this game, so I learned a ton, thanks for the awesome video!
play it. it still holds up
If you have a 3DS, you can buy it from the 3DS eShop. But don't wait too long. Starting May 23rd, you'll no longer be able to add funds to your account via a credit card for 3DS or Wii U purchases.
I played and finished this game last year, and I really liked it! It's a wildly imaginative game for such limited hardware that I was left impressed throughout the whole game. I mean, you get to have mario explore a mechanical Mario! Wish they brought back this series, this second entry is a good reason for why they should. Great game.
I just got this game for my game boy color.
Is there a way to save your progress so that I can turn off the system and finish it later? I don’t see a way to save my own progress by pressing start or select.
@@chrisa6950 From what I know, the game automatically saves when finishing a level. Does that work? I think it should.
@@chrisa6950 It should autosave, if not, the internal battery may be dead and need replacing.
This game is a real gem on the Gameboy, and one of my personal favorites in the Mario series.
But as you rightfully pointed out, it's also a master class in how to squeeze the most out of a piece of hardware!
Total length of video: 335 secs.
Total length of "SNES Drunk": 3 secs.
.9% of the video was spent listening to "SNES Drunk".
Saw this on my recommendation time line and I'll answer the question. Yes! This is one of the top 3 best 2d Mario games ever and it's a crime that Nintendo hasn't put it out on switch/OLED/lite via NSO or as part of a combo package either way i love this game i replayed it on emulators on tablets and on my phone and it's just a joy to play.
This is a trick question. The answer is always yes.
Having just played through this game again as a 31 year old I can’t disagree with how highly you rate the DX ROM hack that brings it into full colour. I played it on my flat screen TV and it felt like my childhood experience of playing it, only rejuvenated. 10/10 Mario game.
I didn't remember much about about the game off-hand, but I remembered how much I played and loved the game at the time. Up there with Link's Awakening as my most played Game Boy games. :D
The final castle leading up to wario in this game is actually pretty hard. Took me a long time actually beat it.
I replayed it last year, and I was surprised how hard the end was. I spent at least a couple hours trying to beat it. I didn't remember its being so hard as a kid.
It's how I discovered the "Easy Mode"
There were tricks to making it easier, like the hidden star in the red bouncing ball enemies room and the avoidable floor tiles that activated the slamming Wario fists.
I'm so happy you have finally reviewed this one. I think it is a blast of a Mario game, with so many original ideas that should have been featured in subsequent ones. The overworld and the stage themes are beyond the classic "forest, fire, snow, water" worlds. And I think Super Mario Land 1 still stands as a real fun playthrough too, even though it's a simpler game. But hey, simple is not a bad thing if done correctly. 6 Golden Coins should have been rereleased in some Mario collection though
I got this for Christmas in 1992. Probably the most excited I've ever been about a new game release: FINALLY this felt like we were getting a proper Mario game on the GB. And it didn't disappoint at all. I loved all the little secrets. I loved the overworld map which felt similar to Super Mario World, but still unique enough to make it stand out. I loved that it actually uses traditional Super Mario Bros enemies like Koopas, while also introducing new ones unique to this game. SML1 always felt a little like it could have been a reskin of just about any other platformer, with a Mario sprite put in, and even the controls for example didn't feel quite up to Mario standards. But this really felt like a proper, full fledged Mario game, that still had an identity all its own.
Me too
OMG nostalgia has caught me hard with this one. Loved this game as a kid!
This game was so fun. Whiled away lots of Saturdays on this one. Great level design and fantastic music. Love it.
You just hit the nail Snesdrunk, this game was amazing, it was the most spectacular experience on a handheld back then, only surpassed by Link's Awakening later (at least for me). It's true that Miyamoto wasn't involved in this game, but it had the great Gunpei Yokoi as producer. Thank you for bringing this awesome video, it brings tons of good memories.
SML2 was incredibly fun and had a mysteriousness to it all its own. The GB had good games even early on, but the release of this and Link's Awakening were peak for the system IMO. Of course, someone several years younger than me might say Pokemon R/B was the best game to ever come out for the GB. It's insane the longevity it had. What an incredible system.
IMO Donkey Kong in 1994 was the pinnacle of Game Boy. Kirby's Dream Land 2 in 1995 is also great. But the years between that and Pokemon were a little lean (though I was obsessed with the camera and printer in early 1998)
Nice video. Enjoyed the shout out to mystery science theater.
You should check out Mercenary Force for the GB
The Color/DX hack of SML 2 is amazing! Its freakin gorgeous!
SML2 gave us Wario and Mario World inspired sprites in a compact Grey Brick format.
Love it.
Definitely an all-time great from the OG handheld era. I was always intrigued by the need to find Magical Coins. Not sure why, it was just an idea I always thought was cool.
SML2 is a good game but it has one big problem: it's floaty and slow as hell, probably because Mario's sprite now takes up so much room on the screen. In the video you seem to not care for SML1 much but this is one thing it definitely has going for it over the sequel, it plays snappy and fast, exactly because Mario is tiny so you can see a lot of what's ahead. I only had SML2 as a kid myself but I grew to appreciate the first game a lot more later. They're both impressive in their own way but SML1 is better suited to the hardware and kind of plays better.
The DX Color romhack patch.
I replayed Super Mario Land 2 in color. Very refreshing after 20 years since I last played it.
That last Level/Castle is still tough as nails.
That's the rub with the difficulty. First you can choose any level with similarly low difficulty, but with the castle is suddenly gets harder. A more linear approach with gradually increasing difficulty would have helped :D
This was the first Gameboy game I ever owned. Bringing back some serious nostalgia for me!
Dude, remember playing this game when i was like 5 years on the back row of the car of my parents, i found this game so good at the time, I realized how good it was later on when I noticed that 90% of original gameboy library is mediocre. Good memories
Nice! I had no idea this game had so much going for it
Liking this road you're heading down with the Gameboy content. Keep that up.
Speaking of Atari Lynx, how about reviewing some games? Blue thunder and Gates of Zendocon are some of the great games I'd love to see your take on.
as a kid I so wanted a lynx and turbo express, lol
Loved this as a kid. Every zone had a secret level - except Mario Zone for some reason which wasted so many evenings trying to find something that didn’t exist.
Remember kids, we had no internet then to look it up - it was word of mouth or find it yourself.
Oh my i love playing the game an hearing the soundtrack is so smart the way of using the same motive for almost everything! A must if you like Mario, breathe or living in this universe XD
They did the same for Super Mario World right? (same motif for most of the music?)
@@leparraindufromage366 dont remember, going to check bro :O maybe they do that for plenty of games
@@leparraindufromage366 Just saw a documentary on Mario World, and its true Koji Kondo use the same motif!
This game deserves SO much more love. There’s just so many great things about it - fun art style, cute new enemies, interesting story, Wario, great music, and the coolest credits glitch/shortcut I have ever seen. I hope with its addition to the Switch GameBoy app that more people will discover it (or at least that Nintendo will respect it a little more going forward)
You know it's a good day when SNESDrunk uploads
SML2 is really creative, prime example of limitation breeds creativity.
Being someone who doesnt usually play or like Mario games i absolutely love this one. Is right there with New Super Mario Bros DS, Mario Kart DS and the original Super Mario Bros on NES as their favorites in the franchise.
As a Game Boy enthusiast, I can say this is one of the best gb titles ever, but nobody should play this. YOU have to play the DX ROM hack. It improves the game and makes one of the best gb titles better in every way. YOU CAN PLAY AS LUIGI!
Do you have a link, friend?
I had NO idea this had a colour patch. That is insanely cool! Loved this game as a kid, and it's probably my favourite game in the original gameboy not named Pokemon.
This was one of my favorites as a kid on the gameboy. It really showed that good games could really happen on the system. And it still holds up to this day.
You forgot to talk about how amazing the soundtrack is.
Exactly! The moon waltz fits perfectly with the low gravity.
2:15
Serious writers should learn from this man
Absolutely killed it
I like that your videos are clear and straight to the point. A pleasure to watch 👊🏼
My favorite game on Gameboy.
Pure nostalgia, sitting in the shed that passed for a common room at my school, pouring with rain outside, smashing through this incredible game. The graphics blew my mind at the time, and THAT soundtrack!
Man I totally forgot about this game! Crazy that it was on the gameboy. Another great video!
3:00 Wario is tough but compared to the gauntlet you need to face to get to him it almost seems like a relief. Wario's castle is brutal!
The original gameboy ran on 4 AA batteries. Still a gread deal, though.
Loved my recent playthrough a couple of years ago. It's still a blast, a great way to relax for the weekend ^^
Man i remember like it was yesterday: The full Game Boy Pack with Tetris, or the standard one plus whatever an extra game costed. The (agonizing) dilemma: on one hand, better bang for my (limited) buck, on the other, I got to choose what game I got (with the knowledge that I wouldn´t get another one for a while). So... Super Mario Land 2. Never regretted it.
Wait, it has a color hack?! Checking it out now. This kind of tidbits are one of my favourite thing about your videos. Thanks for making the rest of my day great! Hope yours is as well. Cheers!
Awesome day¡! Thanks ya'll! 😁
Love your content. And revisiting Gameboy games is extra fun!
I have to counter point a bit on this. The increased size of the character sprites leads to a complaint I also have with Super Mario World and a lot of SNES era games, only even worse because it's on a tiny handheld screen: The characters are bigger so there's less screen space to work with. Just look at how much more of the level you can see in the Mario Land 1 clips. Making the character sprites twice as big means there is a lot less space for everything else!
it's a different game
Yeah Mario being smaller definitely has advantages, but ML2 was designed with the lower field of view in mind.
For the music alone, yes
This is one of my favorite games of all time. I played the absolute hell out of it on my original Game Boy in the mid 90’s. Seriously some of my favorite childhood memories. 1,000%.
That KTMA reference at 3:15 is an *unbelievably* deep cut
I love the Super Mario Land series for GB.
What I love about this game is that they really went creative with the black and white colored screen and went with an old cartoon asthetic with the music and rubber hose styled enemies. It really shows how different it was from other Mario games. Extremely creative.
What blows my mind .. is how old my Gameboy is .. it's an original 1989 model made in Japan and it STILL WORKS *PERFECTLY* .. and the battery saves on the cartridges just recently gave up the ghost and the data vanished ... they lasted until just last year or the year before .. that's crazy.
Crazy to think the simpsons is as old as the game boy and still on. My lil kid self would have never imagined my nearly 40 year old self would still be seeing new simpsons episodes
Thanks for the upload, Drunk! Went and gave the DX version a shot, and I'm floored by how well the color conversion is handled.
One nitpick about the hack, the koopas are green, but behave like red koopas in that they don't walk off ledges. Hmmm...
Great video (as always) would love to see more original Gameboy reviews!
So many memories playing this
This game rules, although it is super easy compared to any of the mainline series. The sounds & music are outstanding, and still live rent-free in my memory 29 years after first hearing them
Agreed, SML2 is very easy.
I played it back in the day in the original green screen Game Boy. It was amazing back then and I still have fun with it today
This was my childhood growing up. We did own an SNES with Super Mario All Stars and Super Mario World, but since my family are travelers and dragged me along wherever they went, having Super Mario Land 2 on Game Boy was the game I probably played the most. It has all the modern Super Mario conventions that hold today.
SNESdrunk the young legend
Absolutely LOVE this game. Super creative game.
I hated Mario Land as a kid. It didn't play like an NES mario, so that ruined it for me. I've softened on the game since then, but if I had had this game as a kid, I would have loved it. It really is fantastic and it's a shame that the ideas here weren't really explored in later consoles.
My favorite GB game, saw it on notifications and came running.
Great video my man
I used to love this game so much as a kid!
Thanks for the great Reviews!
I made it to the MST3k reference and then realized I needed to stay and watch the rest.
My brother and I loved this. He beat Wario before I ever could. Hell I think I would hand him the Gameboy so he could beat him for me. Great game for real.
It sure is, especially the 'coloured' hacked version (though the original is worth it too!). It's much better than the original Super Mario Land. Definitely worth giving it a go even today!
Amazing game. One of the best GB games for sure!
Nice to see you cover something more main stream. The hidden gem stuff is nice but since I didn't have a lot growing up it's cool seeing a review of something all of us had or at least played.
Of course it is! Easily one of the top 5 games on Gameboy.
I played this on the Super Gameboy. The thing that has colors for Gameboy games but not necessarily the right colors in the right places.
SML2 was my first game on gameboy that I got alongside DKL2 and then Pokémon later that year. This made SML2 the first Mario game I ever owned myself and it is everything you say it is. Still love it to this day and was finally able to “100%” it as an adult. My poor motor skills as a kid had me always dying against the witch and the octopus boss and I couldn’t remember the pattern on the moon well enough to get it. Thanks for sharing with us, and I hope you have a good rest of your day too. Ours is a little better for your hard work 🙂
I remember playing this as a kid (first Mario game I got sort of far in?) and it was pretty unique. Great channel! I love the short videos.
What an extremely well put conclusion on this video. Nailed it.
I've always loved the fact that Mario Land 2's music is just one theme arranged in various styles to fit the mood of each level
You should do the Donkey Kong Country first Gameboy game! It's pretty impressive for an Original Gameboy game imo.
I once traded my cosuine my super Nintendo for his game boy for a week just so I could play this game. You can beat this game very well in just an hour. Lots of fun to play.
Great reminder on this one and I LOVE that you mentioned the early MST3K days. I got to work with Joel on the new seasons and he's still the mellow semi mad scientist he was back then.
Yaay! Thanks for the video, I played this game some years ago and was thrilled by how different it seemed from other games. Good to see Clyde T. Dog!
I do recall when playing SML2 on the Super Game Boy or Game Boy Color there was some color added to the game. Not to the quality of the ROM hack though.
As usual, spot on review. The first SML was good considering the initial understanding and use of the GB hardware. This one felt much more Mario taking cues from World. I could easily come back and pick this one up. And the castle at the end is very much a ball-busting experience but the payoff is worth it.
i remember first popping this in my gameboy back in the day. fell in love with it. the music and the graphics big improvement over the first. i still jam to the music over the years.