On Christmas Day in 2017, an individual by the name of Iván “toruzz” Delgado presented to the world a patch for Nintendo’s Game Boy title, Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins.
The patch, titled “Super Mario Land 2 DX” (in the tradition of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX and R-TYPE DX, I have little doubt), updated the monochrome visuals of the original Game Boy title to the standards of the Game Boy Color, and even added the ability to play as Mario’s younger, taller, and usually looser-handling bro, Luigi.
Of course, as one can easily tell from the title, this was not Mario’s only adventure on the handheld platform. That meant there was still work to be done.
A year and four months later, as many are celebrating the 30th anniversary of Portable Power, Delgado has struck again to commemorate the occasion with an update to one of the Game Boy’s launch titles. Behold, “Super Mario Land DX“:
While Mario’s big little bro is nowhere to be found (more’s the pity, considering it’s his girlfriend who needs rescuing this time out), this patch nevertheless gives the colorized treatment to one of the plucky plumbing protagonist’s more unique adventures. What’s more, while the gameplay remains the same, some of the graphics have been updated beyond just adding a slew of 8-bit hues, thus making Mario look more like his usual cartoony self.
If all that wasn’t enough, Delgado says in the ReadMe file that, like “Super Mario Land 2 DX” before it, this game will even run on real hardware! I have no idea how that works (I’ll leave that to you to figure out, if you’re interested), but the assurance is nice.
For many years, a number of Nintendo’s (and their third parties’) Game Boy titles have felt like they could do with an update, a fresh coat of paint. While Nintendo did colorize some titles in a manner similar to this for the Game Boy Color (such as the aforementioned The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX), most of their early portable library has remained monochrome.
But more recently, something interesting has been taking place. First, Nintendo released Metroid: Samus Returns for the Nintendo 3DS, a modern remake of the Game Boy’s Metroid II: Return of Samus in a similar vein to Metroid: Zero Mission. More recently, they’ve announced a remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening for the Nintendo Switch.
With those in mind, one has to wonder if we could see even more remakes of Game Boy titles to come — including official updates of the two Mario titles highlighted here.
I personally hope so. The Super Mario Land games and the characters found within could use a bit more love in the modern Super Mario canon.
(Incidentally, if actually playing the game for yourself isn’t in the cards for some reason, you can watch a playthrough of the hacked version here and see for yourself what makes it stand out from so many other 2D Mario titles.)
News Credit: Hackaday
