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The Gaming Historian explores the Mario Land series

by: Sean Colleli -
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I've been a fan of Norman Caruso, aka the Gaming Historian, for years now. His thoughtful and insightful documentaries cover a variety of topics throughout gaming, but I particularly like his retrospectives. This time he looks at the Super Mario Land series on the Game Boy, Nintendo's portable answer to the Mario games on the NES and SNES.

I always liked the Mario Land games better than the main home console series, particularly Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. These games felt close enough to Mario 3 and Mario World to be authentic, but also just a touch obscure and weird, like you were exploring a corner of the Mario universe you weren't meant to see. Mario Land 2 is still my favorite of the classic 2D Mario platformers; you get level and enemy variety in there that's just off the wall and a little creepy.

Give the video a look; it's a thorough take on a footnote in the Mario series that might not get the praise of the main games, but certainly had its share of fans. After all, Mario Land and its sequels on the humble Game Boy sold dozens of millions of copies, so plenty of kids must have fond memories of them.