This review contains spoilers

A big improvement over the first. Mario Land 2 excels in its creativity, with 6 different zones all far more inventive than generic grass stage, generic snow stage etc. You'll get stages where you're a tiny Mario running through gardens stomping on ants that are now your size, stages where you're in a sunken ship/submarine, a stage in a zone called "Mario Zone" where the stage enterance is on a giant Mario's crotch, and everything inside is ball-shaped. And so much more.

Even the enemies feel much more interesting than the ones seen in normal Mario. There's Jason Voorhees-mask wearing Goomba's in the horror stages!

Not to mention the bosses - there's a 3 little pigs boss.

There's also some mechanics not seen elsewhere in the series, like an enemy kill counter, which, once it gets to 100 gives you a free star and resets.

Only problems I have with this game is that there's some slowdown at times, and the jump physics feel really wonky and inconsistent. Neither one is excess, it's more the fact that they're things that persist the whole time that suck. Though the jumping can be annoying on the last stage, as there's so many precise jumps you need to do.

The last stage in general is crazy. It's a pretty long gauntlet with zero checkpoints - including before the final boss - and only a couple of power-ups. Thank God for the 3DS's save states.

I really wish the New Super Mario Bros. series had taken more inspiration from this game. I'd love a modern take on it.

Reviewed on Dec 06, 2022


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