Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 (Game Boy) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
402A playthough of Nintendo's 1994 platformer for the Nintendo Game Boy, Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3.
This video shows a full clear of the game, including all secret stages, exits, treasures, and the "perfect game" ending.
After Wario's failed attempt to liberate Mario of life and home in the 1992 game Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, it seems that the anti-hero has decided to build a castle that would put Mario's to shame, and so he rows himself out to Kitchen Island, the home of a band of pirates, to plunder their treasure and fund his dream.
That's right. A Super Mario Land game, sans Mario, outside of a tiny cameo appearance during the ending.
Kitchen Island contains forty courses, and several of these courses contain secret exits that will lead to a new areas on the world map. There are also fifteen treasures to be collected by finding keys and unlocking chests, and all of these need to be found for the best ending. The structure of the stages varies quite a bit - some areas are wide open and encourage you to explore, while others force you down a single linear path
While Wario Land is structurally similar to Six Golden Coins, and by extension, Super Mario World, Wario handles very differently from what we had so far been accustomed to with the Mushroom Kingdom's plumber. Wario slowly plods everywhere on account of his stubby legs, but he has a dash that can destroy blocks and hurt enemies, and he can power himself up by donning one of three hats: the dragon hat lets him breathe fire, the bull hat gives him horns that he can use to attach himself to the ceiling, and the jet hat allows him to fly around at brisk speeds. These hats can be found littered throughout the stages, and you'll often need to cater your choice of which to use for the obstacles you're going to have to deal with.
There is a lot to explore, so despite the game's extremely low level of difficulty, there's enough to keep you occupied for quite awhile. It's unfortunate, though, that it marks a huge departure from the standard "obstacle course" style stages that Mario games had been to this point. Wario Land is among the first to steer the Mario ship more toward the "scavenger hunt" style gameplay that went primetime in Super Mario 64. Whether or not that's a good thing is a matter of personal opinion, but while I do think that this game does it well, I've never been a fan of the collect-a-thon gameplay model. It was actually because of this shift in Nintendo's games that I never regretted getting a PlayStation instead of a Nintendo 64 back in the day.
One particular achievement that Wario Land deserves to be recognized for is its presentation. The graphics are outstanding for a Game Boy game. The huge sprites have tons of personality, they stand out well on the blurry screen, and there's a lot of background animation to keep things lively. If the game wasn't monochrome, I could easily see it passing for a 16-bit game. (It's not quite on Trip World's level, but it's not far off!) The music is also great. It's not something that is particularly "pleasant" to listen to, but the weird, energetic melodies and the creeper-vibe instruments suit Wario to a T.
I have always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with Wario Land. It doesn't feel like a Mario game, and I've always resented it for cannibalizing the Mario Land series, but there's no denying that I've always had fun with it. It's Mario in name only, but it's a quality game that, like so many first-party games, upped the ante for what people could expect from the platform.
Recorded using Retroarch's DMG shader for that classic dot-matrix look.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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