i’ve been playing super mario land 2: 6 golden coins for a while (inc. on the subway during my trip to NYC), but i finally sat down and beat it yesterday. was it just me or was the last level about 10 times harder than the rest of the game? i still haven’t really gotten used to the game boy interface in terms of fine movements, although it’s not a problem for a game like zelda that doesn’t require them. i def. had a much easier time when i played it with my gamecube adapter. does anyone else have this problem?

anyway, the game is def. a good ‘un, although i (along w/ many others it seems) found it to be rather too easy overall. it does have the trademark mario inventiveness (although as with super mario land 1 the mario guru shigeru miyamoto apparently didn’t work on it), and includes such unique elements as: a carrot power-up that provides bunny ears for flying, dripping goo that you have to swim through, one level where you get to use a bubble you can soar the skies in, some bonus stages, a space world, a plethora of hidden levels, and the first appearance of mario’s arch-nemesis wario (who incidentally is going to be making his appearance in the next smash bros. game).

this wikipedia list of mario games places it choronologically after super mario bros. 3 and super mario world (the latter of which i haven’t yet played, although a SNES is high on my list of next ebay purchases). it feels pretty similar to super mario bros. 3, although i found the tightness of the game movement to be noticeably less. haven’t really noticed anyone else mentioning this, though, although people have commented on the fact that there’s noticeable slowdown during crowded animations. those were a bit distracting but not prohibitively.

replayability is surprisingly high, thanks to the non-linearity of the games and the levels. i’m more inclined to replay this than super mario sunshine, actually, or even super mario bros. 3 which even though i haven’t played in years i still am sure i know far too well. a big plus for me was the ability to save, and the hidden levels. i think super mario world also has hidden levels, but this was new for me. i’d found most of the visible extra levels, but this excellent (and mostly spoiler-free) wikipedia article alerted me to the fact there are quite a few that aren’t visible. that page is good if you want to know which stages have hidden levels but you want to figure out for yourself how to get to them. and for a good walkthrough ign.com has a good one as usual.

not sure when i’ll be getting super mario land 1, which from what i remember from trying it out in stores when it came out, is much, much more primitive. but you can be sure that i’ll be playing it eventually.