Retro gaming has now been around for so long that at times it can get recursive. Nostalgia for nostalgia. So it is that in 2026, I recently picked up New Super Mario Land to play with a friend. Now, you might be thinking, wait, there’s a new Super Mario Land? And the answer to that question is, not exactly. Super Mario Land, as in, the original Game Boy title from 1989, doesn’t figure high as a Nintendo retrospective. At only twelve levels, the game is comically short. Aside from Mario himself, the game doesn’t use iconic characters from the franchise at all, instead using the strange aesthetic blend of ancient Egypt coupled with alien invaders. It only figures as a trivia question in that this game marked the first appearance of Princess Daisy, who doesn’t really do anything except not be Princess Peach.
But that’s only half the origin story behind New Super Mario Land, as the homebrew Super Nintendo game takes its cues from the New Super Mario Bros. series, a series which, in the Wii era, spotlighted classic Mario gameplay in the form of a chaotic four-player platformer, where surviving players can free their fallen comrades from slowly floating bubbles. You can, of course, play the New Super Mario Bros. games in a single player mode, and this is certainly the most coherent way to do so. But the couch co-op was the real innovative draw. As couch co-op itself has been sidelined in recent years, so too, has the New Super Mario Bros. series, last seen in a Switch port in 2019.
That very same year, an anonymous programmer created, as a sort of love letter to friends and the thirty-year anniversary of Super Mario Land at large, New Super Mario Land. To put it simply, New Super Mario Land slams the two concepts together. The simple, generally weird worldbuilding of Super Mario Land is upgraded to sixteen-bit graphics built from scratch. But more notably, right from the game’s opening screen, we are promised four player gameplay. And by some manner of wizardry, New Super Mario Land is able to pull off four player Mario on original hardware.
Whether in single player or multiplayer, New Super Mario Land is a fairly easy game. Extra lives are plentiful, and it’s only really with the final boss, Tatanga, that an enemy emerges who’s tough enough to really soak up all those lives the player has been gathering. In New Super Mario Land, Tatanga doesn’t just more closely resemble his official art, the alien also has a far more fiendish attack pattern, with enough spin on his projectiles and movement to keep him from becoming as predictable as he was in the original. Multiplayers can take advantage of the safe zone behind Tatanga, freeing their allies from their bubbles as they inevitably succumb to Tatanga’s firepower.
New Super Mario Land is a very rewarding game in this sense, as up until that point, allies mostly just get in the way. This was also the case in all the official New Super Mario Bros. games, is why the Mario franchise’s main foray into co-op play has largely fallen by the wayside. Extra players just aren’t that helpful, in terms of actually trying to beat the game. But then, you don’t play Mario on the couch with a friend because you’re trying to win. You’re doing it to have fun. And as long as you can take the misfortune of accidentally being killed by your teammate in stride, it’s a lot of fun watching New Super Mario Land’s wonky physics engine struggle with unexpected interactions.
Ironically, Super Mario Land is a better venue for this kind of gameplay than more mainline titles for precisely the reason the game has a low estimation in the official history of Nintendo. The game’s very short. It is, bizarrely enough, perfectly short for the kind of gameplay the New Super Mario Bros. series pioneered. Getting a friend to come back, session after session, to finish the seventy-odd levels of New Super Mario Bros. Wii is a bit of a challenge. But the twelve levels of New Super Mario Land is the perfect length to remain engaging all the way through to the end, with a final boss just difficult enough you’re relieved that he was the final challenge.
Indeed, the Gradius style levels of the original game, including the finale, were odd in the original context of a Mario game. But in this shorter format, they feel quite fresh. So it is that despite being a labor of love by a hobbyist, New Super Mario Land is remarkably accessible to casual players, identifiably Mario, with all the great ideas of the franchise, but with a focus on accessibility that makes New Super Mario Land feel like a real game, rather than just an expression of a brand.
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