Episode 281: Mario Goes Portable

I remember those hilarious voice samples in Super Mario Advance, but the GBA version of SMB2 USA felt pretty nostalgic to play. I laughed so hard when Jeremy did the digging Toad sounds. XD

RosseenG

Great posts, Ryan. One small correction: the first mention of the name “Peach” in the US was actually Yoshi’s Safari.

Realized two more things listening to this again: 1) Back in 1993 the Princess in the movie is called Daisy. At this time Princess Toadstool hadn't ever been called "Peach" in the US, not until Mario 64. At the time whoever wrote it could have assumed Daisy and Toadstool were the same character. 2) When the Tanooki suit reappeared in Mario 3D Land, it doesn't fly - it pretty much just acts like Mario Land 2's Bunny Ears. I kind of wish it used the Ears instead of the Tanooki suit to fit the "Land" naming, but the Tanooki suit just has too much nostalgia attached to it.

Ryan Langley

SMB Deluxe was THE Game Boy Color only game for me. In 1999 there wasn't any other way to take the original Mario Bros on the road or play the Lost Levels with original NES graphics. I remember playing it on my 8th grade class trip. Sadly I traded it in eventually. I believe it also had one of the few uses of the infrared thing on the GBC, you could trade/merge high score lists I think.

DarthObvious

I think the biggest shame of all the Mario remakes between Deluxe and the Advance series is that a lot of the expanded and enhanced features are really cool, and they're all tied to these deeply flawed releases whose issues are inherent to the system they're released on. I particularly wish that Mario World had gotten a remake with the Dragon Coin collection mission included, because that's a particularly fun-sounding challenge in the abstract. I know there IS a hack out there that adds the secret stages from Yoshi's Island advance to the SNES game, but I don't think they add an extra entry to the game menus, so it takes the place of the extra levels, and I'm pretty sure life count (and, heck, death count) isn't recorded either. That Yoshi's Island port is *still* deeply impressive for what it was, and it's only in the past year that it's been definitively dethroned as the ideal portable way to experience the game, at least on Nintendo systems. Either way, I *love* having the egg launch button on the R trigger, and I'm glad newer Yoshi games retain that control option. Mario Advance 4 SMB3 is probably the least-compromised of the games. While it doesn't sound as nice as the SNES remake as part of Mario All-Stars, it looks almost as good, and because it doesn't have the HUD taking up the bottom the screen is significantly less compromised than its brethren. Plus, the game has a sort of color profiling setup for things like the Game Boy Player or backlit systems.

Aaron

There are the Toad houses that give you a free one, but as those are one-time use until you clear out all the game I tended to stay away from them -- the eternal 'one time use' conundrum in video games. If I can't beat *this* level without relying on backup, what hope have I of the next level after it??

Aaron

I figure if they're localizing the material for regions where people might conceivably have a knowledge of Spanish in addition to English, changing the Egyptian stage to "birabuto" from "piraputo" was probably intentional given that the former contains a fairly rude word in it. Similar reasons to why 'Laputa' was called 'Castle in the Sky' here, though Swift was fully conscious of the meaning of the name even if Ghibli was only using it to homage Swift's idea specifically of a floating city rather than the deeper political commentary behind it.

Aaron

I didn't play Super Mario Land until a few years ago and on an actual Game Boy and I still ended up loving it.

littleterr0r

Talking about how gimmicky the first few stages of Mario Advance (SMB2) was reminded me of New Super Mario Bros. The promotion of that game was entirely around the Mega Mushroom. gimmick. It appears in the first 2 levels, and then only in 2 more after that.

Ryan Langley

As a Guided By Voices fan, I appreciated the reference

John Learned

Oh god.... I remember playing (and beating!) the SMB Deluxe version of the Lost Levels. I tried to revisit the game recently and just had to tap out after the first castle... It really was a "you had to be there" kind of experience.

James Couche