Month of Mario: Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (Game Boy)

The first Super Mario Land game was strange for taking video gaming’s most recognizable hero and having him go on a tour of kingdoms inspired by real life cultures when usually he sticks to the familiar trappings of his own fictional world. Fighting sphinxes, Maoi heads, and hopping vampires stood out in a series with a usually pretty defined aesthetic, but Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins might be even stranger almost because the things Mario goes up against this time are an odd mix of mundane and outlandish. One world has you shrink down and face off against ants inside a fairly normal tree, another has you riding in a bubble that comes out of a hippo’s nose to reach outer space. One boss is just the Three Little Pigs, but they cap off a world that takes place inside of a giant mechanical Mario. Designed to be quite a departure from the Mario series trappings by a team who didn’t even care much to be working on a Mario title, Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins is apparently still a toned down version from an even wackier set of initial ideas, but the developers certainly succeeded in making something that almost doesn’t even feel like a part of the broader set of Super Mario side-scrolling platformers.

Even the game’s manual sets up a story rather strange for our usually humble plumber to be participating in. After saving the Princess Daisy in the previous game, Mario returns to a private island with a castle that he apparently owns and finds it has been taken over by Wario. This warped exaggeration of Mario has resented the heroic plumber since childhood and saw his chance to take control of the place while Mario was off adventuring, sealing the castle off with six golden coins he has entrusted to various villains around the island. While some like the interesting return of the previous game’s antagonist Tatanga seem like proper stewards of these important treasures, Wario also seems keen in trusting simple wildlife like a Big Bird and an Octopus who aren’t much more than their names imply. Perhaps reaching some of these defenders of the coins is meant to be the real challenge, Mario having to do things like enter a whale’s stomach or suit up for some outer space adventuring to get the coins needed to get back in his castle and oust his odd villainous reflection.

Even in black and white, Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins can feel like a rather cartoony adventure. The character sprites are fairly large, meaning it’s easy not only for characters to have recognizable expressions, but some even react to Mario hopping on their head to defeat them. While you do see the rare recognizable face from Mario’s past like a ghostly Boo or Piranha Plant, you also see walking hockey masks with a knife jabbed into their top, sharks with boxing gloves, and the very strange Moofish, a fish with a cow’s face who swims in tree sap. Levels can have you walking across what look like LEGO blocks, trying to delicately weave through the ribs of a whale, exploring a submarine’s interior, or trying to float around stars, there being many levels that might be the only time you encounter a certain enemy type or concept.

Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins features 32 unique levels, although some are secret levels that almost serve as a chance to toy with a gimmick or provide a lot of opportunities to earn coins for the strange gambling minigame where you can try to earn extra lives and power-ups. However, many of the levels can be fairly short, not often having the time to fully explore the weird and wonderful things they’re introducing. Part of this can come from the game sometimes offering a high and low road, the player able to choose their platforming preference based on what looks more manageable, although it’s not always too informed a choice. The large characters and objects sometimes means you can’t see too far ahead or will spend moments with notable areas of interest off-screen simply because the Game Boy screen isn’t large enough. Maybe you could knock a teddy bear off a ball to ride it across spikes and get some goodies, but if you’re standing on the small block path above it, you might not even know it exists, missing out a potential area of interest unknowingly because of the limited visual real estate.

That doesn’t mean you’re going to constantly miss out on intriguing and unusual things though. The short levels will have areas you must travel through that guarantee you’ll run into the more unique monsters and level mechanics. Mario can pick up a few power-ups to better handle the dangers in his path, a Mushroom allowing him to take an additional hit before perishing but also giving him the strength needed to bust blocks with his head or more interestingly drill through blocks below if you do a little spin jump. Fire Mario is definitely a useful form to have, being able to chuck fireballs at enemies in front of you helping to deal with some of the creatures that can’t be killed with a jump. However, you will be asked to pick between offensive power and platforming assistance when you have the choice between a Fire Flower or Carrot. Carrots will turn Mario into Bunny Mario, the little floppy ears on his head actually able to flap and keep him airborne much longer. With the ears you can glide across large gaps, sometimes almost too effectively when it allows you to pass over large stretches of a level, but other areas like the tree ascent where a drop down can lose you a great deal of progress definitely feel like they’re battle tackled with the bunny ears despite the presence of many bugs you might have wanted to blast with fire. Power-ups aren’t too rare, the invincibility star even making a good deal of appearances and always showing up if you rack up 100 defeated enemies, and at the end of a stage you can try to hit the goal bell to play a minigame to potentially earn extra lives or free power-ups.

Power-ups definitely enhance level navigation, but they’re not the only thing that can change how you approach a stage. Rather than just trying to leap across gaps or atop creatures, sometimes you’ll find yourself in a situation like the outer space stages where your jumps go even higher or you even find yourself floating about entirely. That tree sap where the Moofish reside can be scaled with repeat jumps or sunk into deliberately, and water levels give you more freedom to move about the available space. The stages don’t feel long enough to truly explore all their ideas or really push them to the point they get overly difficult, but that does change a bit when you reach Wario’s castle and face a level that is truly challenging. Long, filled with a few different ideas to learn and then overcome as they get a touch more difficult, and capping off with a boss battle with multiple phases, Wario’s castle feels like it properly explores its ideas and puts up a fight, but every other zone in the game can be tackled in your desired order so perhaps they were kept easier because of it. Even the bosses often only require three jumps on the head to defeat, something you can even potentially chain together before they’ve gotten off a single attack. The Three Little Pigs surprisingly might be the next boss best after Wario partially because they last long enough to potentially cause you some trouble, but even when it’s not overly difficult, Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins won’t lose its charm because you keep facing novel if shortly embraced oddities to fuel your interest and change things up a touch.

THE VERDICT: The wonderful wackiness and fascinatingly mundane elements of Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins aren’t always fleshed out inclusions, but the unique flavor of this Mario platformer comes from the frequent new obstacles that keep the platforming lively. Some concepts are held back by the small screen and stage size, but areas like the whale’s insides and Wario’s castle really shine while others still delight with the entertaining and strange directions they head, all while your power-ups give you some greater control over how you tackle each trial.

And so, I give Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins for Game Boy…

A GOOD rating. Better than its predecessor but still limited by its home hardware, Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins feels like its stages could have really thrived over the SNES or even NES where you can see a lot more of what you’re up against. Admittedly though, even in its present state the game can slow down when it tries to show too many things at once, so it likely couldn’t have pushed the Game Boy further in displaying all the wonderful weirdness. The strange creatures and level themes are often the show stealers rather than the substance of a stage because you can too often make it through before it’s left an impression, but the willingness to head in new directions leads to memorable moments like the space stages where things play differently enough they can’t help but stand out. Wario’s castle does show what a tougher level can be like in this game’s format though and a few more levels that at least got a touch closer to its approach to laying out quick but escalating dangers could help the other zones. Even with the freedom to pick your first world to tackle, the boss stages feel like they could have at least been more complex since they cap off the zone, and a few more protections to allow bosses to have a chance of showing off their fight could have made the weaker ones like Big Bird a bit more memorable. However, while things can whisk by a little too quickly, there’s still a lot to see and enjoy even beyond the surface level strangeness. You’ll wonder why that hedgehog up ahead is flashing and learn the hard way what ants without antennae do. You’ll try to jump on a bee only to see it buzz off and leave you falling down the gap it was hovering over or need to figure out the odd movement patterns of a UFO with legs. Many miniature moments like that add up into an interesting adventure with plenty of enjoyable little platforming tests, but nothing can excel when so many ideas are discarded right after you’ve come to understand them.

Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins only really had Wario move onto new games with Mario after its release, and while there’s a lot of strange and interesting ideas that could have been built up or expanded upon here, it is a fun little enclave of oddity for a Mario fan looking for some truly unexpected and unusual situations for the plumber’s platforming exploits. At times it almost feels like it’s not even a Mario game, like he had somehow stumbled into some other platforming game by mistake, but the areas are well built for his power-ups and polished jumping controls so it’s only what you see rather than what you do that seems abnormal. Perhaps a remake could bulk up the stages to fully explore the ideas they only briefly present, but the wide range of concepts ensures even when it’s not too difficult, it still can’t help but draw you in as you must see what weird creature or level idea ends up along your path to save Mario’s rather odd island home.