Greed Is Good: Review of “Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3”

Pith Helmets: Not just for Safari's

First of all, I’m terribly sorry by the sudden lack of reviews. I took a little trip out of state, and I sorta dropped the ball there. Sorry.

Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 is a platforming  game for the Nintendo Gameboy that was released in 1994 and was produced by the late Gunpei Yokoi. It was the first game to feature Wario as both a playable character and the main character, with the debut of Captain Syrup and her Brown Sugar Pirates who are recurring series of villains in the Wario Land series.

The whole concept of the game is pretty simple, and a little bit unorthodox back then, as it is basically a quest of greed and the main character’s notion is entirely selfish. No princesses to save, no worlds to save, just basically for Wario to acquire as much money as possible and acquire a grand castle to simply make Mario jealous.

The gameplay for Wario Land is simple, but good. You run to the other end of the level, bashing away at monsters, blocks, while acquiring scads of coins, and occasionally, finding rare treasures that at the end, will add to your already vast amount of coins. You also have different power-ups in the shape of caps that will aid you. There are some which allow you to hook yourself into the ceiling and create a butt stomp, and ones that allow you to fly at breakneck speed, and also ones that breathe fire, leaving nothing more than smoldering pixellated carcasses(well, not really, but you get the point). Some levels have rooms where there is treasure, but you must find the key corresponding to that room, and at the end of each level, you are given a chance to double up your total coins or get you more lives.

In terms of how this game looks, there is nothing much to be said about it since this is a Gameboy game. I’m notreally griping that the graphics could be better, but I could swear that I sometimes saw that it reminded me of Super Mario World. Then again, everything looks eerily similar in a Nintendo game, especially if it’s part of the Mario and Wario franchises.  As for the sound and music, again there is nothing much to be said about it, although some of the music is catchy, but not exactly memorable.

Overall, this game is a good game to actually spend your time on(I actually finished this game not too long ago) if you want to kill some time and relive the days of when having a portable game console the size and width of a break was the most fun you could ever had on boring car trips. You can find this game in your local ROM website.

Score: 4/5