by lamperiie
Finished on original hardware (except where otherwise noted,) default difficulty/settings, without any cheats, save states, patches, or exploits.
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Arcade version. I am not completely sure what the settings were on the cabinet I was playing on, but I can say it took me going back to that arcade every day for a week until I could finish it (at which point I could do so somewhat reliably.) My obsession with this machine is what triggered me to pick up a Genesis again, along with a Super Hang-On cart. I know there are seemingly arcade-perfect versions on 360 and PS3, but I actually think the d-pad oriented Genesis version plays the best of any console port. This is just the best solution until my inevitable midlife crisis, during which I will bring an upright Super Hang-On machine into my home.
As a kid I found myself returning to this over and over again after being disappointed with (and confused by) Super Mario 2. This continued even after the excellent Super Mario 3, which was too sprawling and complex to replace the original as a pick-up-and-play experience once you finished it a couple times. Super Mario Bros. is for sure my favorite pre-Galaxy Mario game, but I would always rather play the Vs. version (which will separately join this list someday once I manage to 1CC it.)
3/28/2016 (NES version): This was a favorite of mine as a kid, but I could never even get to the last level without cheating. I was surprised to find that as an adult I could get to the last level pretty easily after puzzling my way through certain tricky encounters, and only hit a hard wall on 5-1 and the following Joker fight. 5-1 has two parts where it's nearly impossible to avoid taking damage, resulting in you going to the Joker fight without full health. This is frustrating until you realize that one life will be a total waste against Joker anyway because you only have enough ammo to give him two good tries. The Joker fight itself is the biggest reason for me not to recommend this game. It's not the absolute hardest fight I've dealt with, but it's entirely unintuitive. Without being able to watch other people beat him on YouTube, I would not have finished this game. It still felt great to finish it despite this, but I'd tell anyone without nostalgia for the game to not feel bad walking away once they reach 5-1.
Master System version (loops after ~28 races.) The Game Gear version of this, which is the Master System version with a tight panning camera instead of a full screen view, is one of my favorite and most played games ever. It is the reason the Game Gear is the only system from my childhood that I never sold, and still have today. As late as 2005 I would still bring a Game Gear on road trips with a car adapter, and only bring this game. It's that good! What is the secret to this game's success as a home game, where you can't keep putting in quarters? It becomes a roguelike. I love finding the delicate balance of buying just enough nitros to survive the next race so I have money to get the next permanent upgrade I need to keep up with the Joneses (or Stewarts, perhaps.)
5/11/2016: Once you know what weapons to use in what situations, this game becomes surprisingly doable. Timeless classic. I'm skipping Simon's Quest (2), but looking forward to playing Dracula's Curse (3) with the FDS music.
5/10/2016: Completely solid game, but not quite at an elite level in any category (other than box art.) This is one of the first games you should start with on the NES if you're trying to build up your skills and tolerance for games of this era, as it sits on the easier side and is rarely confusing.
3/18/2016: This is the kind of game I revisited the original Game Boy to find. Delightful, challenging, and doesn't outstay its welcome. I only found it frustrating initially because I didn't realize you could repeatedly press down to fill up new balloons.
Although the packed-in Tetris ended up getting more playtime, there is no question that Super Mario Land was a better demonstration of how close this system was to being a portable NES in all of the ways that count. The only aspect of this that holds up 100% today is the music, but the whole experience is still charming.
6/19/2016 (via Super Game Boy 2): More than anything else, I couldn't stop thinking about how incredible it was that a game with this scope and variety could fit on a Game Boy cartridge and run on a Game Boy. It beats the vast majority of NES games in those categories, and even surpasses most of its 16-bit competition that was out by its 1992 release. Playing this helps me better understand how people could be frustrated with the barebones simplicity of early Genesis releases. Those games did not throw new elements at you every level the way this does, and it had to work within much tighter constraints. I also feel the save system is perfectly designed. When you run out of lives you lose all of your golden coins, which just means you have to go and finish each boss stage again. With how short these stages are, and how fair the boss fights are, this provides a large enough setback to make the game tense without being overly punishing or asking you to repeat something from scratch that can't be accomplished within the battery life of the system. My only criticisms of this game are that the music falls short of the original Super Mario Land, and that the controls are not anywhere near the quality of a traditional Mario game. I suspect they could not implement the controls exactly as they should be due to the fact that Mario is huge relative to the screen size, making his traditional speed and agility a poor fit for the game. What they invented in place of traditional Mario controls felt sluggish and a bit unresponsive in places. Thankfully this is a non-issue due to the difficulty level of the game being designed around this, at least until the final Wario stage where you'll need a few practice runs to fight through the controls.
5/9/2016: Best game on the TG16/PCE for me. The gameplay has precision, clarity, and a relentless tempo balanced by an unwavering stream of bubbly and refreshing art and music. A perfect game that alone justifies ownership of the console. The only disappointment with this game is when you try to branch out to other games in the series. None live up to this game's controls, style, and disarming simplicity. The character is nowhere near as cool as Bonk, but as a game this would have been a much stronger counterpunch against Mario and Sonic than any of the Bonk games were. I suppose having the original Adventure Island already on NES would have dampened the effectiveness of that.