When the Gameboy player came onto the Switch, I was a little annoyed at part of its opening line up.

But now after Mario Land 1 and 2 the 3rd in the series Wario Land is up and ready for me to review.

For the third entry in the Super Mario Land series (for people new, the Land series are the Super Mario games released on the Game boy, aka the portable console ones) there was a rather large shake up that was given away by the title. Super Mario Land 2 managed to be an excellent conversion of Mario’s game play to the point it felt like a mini Super Mario World at times. So rather than just do that again but larger we get a game starring the villain of that game, giving us a Nintendo game where you play as an anti hero.

Wario Land has you play as Wario for the first time. While it somewhat still plays like a Mario game, things are slightly tweaked  to give you the feeling of a different playable character. This is not just playing as Luigi with different stats than his brother. Wario does things his own way. Rather than run, Wario does a shoulder charge, rather than just jump onto enemies, Wario can pick them up when stunned to throw them. Rather than Mushrooms, Wario gets Garlic. Finally Wario gets a series of hats to give him more power ups instead of fire flowers or cape feathers.

Even the object of the game is different. Remember Wario doesn’t do things out of the goodness of his heart or to help people. Nope, he’s a greedy guy. He’s in this game to get some treasure, and perhaps a castle of his own after losing the one he stole from Mario. So he’s off to the Kitchen Islands to steal from the Brown Sugar Pirates.

Like Mario you then play through a number of levels each broken up into their own little worlds (ok I understand the term but maybe ‘zones’ would work better, but I’ve been saying worlds now for decades) each with a boss at the end. You don’t get regular check points and level endings either, because this is Wario and everything is about money. First level ends showing how an enemy gets out a large coin worth ten coins to pay for the level exit. Beating Bosses also causes a rain of coins to fall from the sky. After clearing a level one of the two mini games can double your coins up to 3 times. The check points in the level too require 10 coins, with Wario, it is all about the money.

Two unique elements that set this apart from Mario Land 2 outside of the standard gameplay are the hidden treasures which you can find in certain levels throughout the game, and that some levels end with you hitting a large switch. These levels then change something in the over map and from there changes certain levels in that zone. If you go back to that level the level is now different because of the change in the zone map allowing access to areas you couldn’t get to before.

One thing I found rather disappointing, is that after a boss is beaten, you can’t face them again. You go through the level and get to the boss arena, but the boss isn’t there now. A little sad for wanting to replay the fights. This was a problem with Mario Land 2 though, so could just be a memory limitation with the Gameboy games.

Rather than making a bigger new entry in Mario Land, Wario Land does a great job of tweaking the gameplay for a new character, so that you can see some of the same origins, but now going its own way. New enemies, new obstacles, new power ups all for a new star and it plays great, hence why I was happy this one finally showed. After this the next two entries in the now Wario Land series would just make him invincible resulting in a more platforming puzzle style gameplay, but in this game it’s a true platformer and the best of the Gameboy trilogy thanks to it.

Rating: 🎮🎮🎮🎮🎮

Sgathaich writes weekly reviews for The Orkney News. Here’s last weeks’s