A bite size hunk of Mario goodness that reveals the strengths and limitations of its system.
Its controls are utterly old school. Mario jumps, runs and shoots fireballs--only they aren't fireballs but rubber balls in this one. The rubber balls have a nifty feature where they pick up coins but the non-nifty feature where you can only have one on screen and sometimes one will bounce around uselessly as you are accosted by various monsters.The big addition here are are two vehicle levels where you pilot the Marine Pop and Sky Pop, which handle similarly despite one being by sea and the other by air. These both have the unique property of growing right along w/ Mario when he eat a mushroom. No matter your mode of transport though the controls here are tight and responsive. In other words when you die, it's your own fault.
The setting here is Sarasland, which is different than the Mushroom Kingdom in that the turtles here explode and there's no Bowser but Tatanga to kidnap the hapless princess. The sprites here are small and kind of lack detail. They look pretty much like the original Super Mario Brothers, which isn't bad but later games in the series show off the Game Boy's capabilities much better. The music, however, is excellent and definitely some of the very best released for the system. It is is typically cheerful Mario but well adapted for the four themed worlds you go through.
Each of these worlds has a unique array of monsters and hazards which, along w/ the vehicle levels, provides some nice variety in this small package. The game is fun but rather on the easy side which is compounded by the fact that it's somewhat short. I managed to beat it my very first try picking it up after probably fifteen years w/o playing it. Handheld games of any generation frequently suffer from designers treating them as light versions of their home console counterparts and this isn't really an exception. However, Super Mario Land does prove you can put a full-fledged platforming experience in the palm of your hand even though it also shows the Game Boy couldn't quite offer the depth of playability of its larger sibling--at least not yet.