20. Super Mario Land (Game Boy)

It was 1989 and Nintendo Entertainment System mania was in full swing. For Nintendo’s next trick it introduced the Game Boy, a category-defining new portable cartridge system. The NES had rocketed to success, in part, on the strength of Super Mario Bros., so Game Boy naturally launched with Super Mario Land, a bite-sized take on the platforming plumber.

Luckily Super Mario Land was quite good—heck, it eventually became the fourth best-selling Game Boy game (18 million!). The physics were kinda wonky, but the tiny Mario ran about nimbly, tossing ricocheting “superballs” at a strange new cast of bomb-shelled turtles, oversized insects, hopping kyonshi zombies, and a literal alien. It even had two mild but pleasant shoot ‘em up stages, in which Mario piloted subs and airplanes in hopes of rescuing a new princess, Daisy.

It turns out the weirdness was not just from the new platform, but because development was handled by Nintendo producer Gunpei Yokoi’s R&D1 group rather than Shigeru Miyamoto’s EAD. (R&D1 later made Super Mario Land 2 and branched off into the Wario series.) Super Mario Land is as off-brand as Mario would ever get, and I’d say the better for it. This was also the first Super Mario game with (very good) stereo music, and the first time western players—who’d missed out on Japan’s Super Mario Bros. 2—got to revisit the original adventure’s bricks-and-mushrooms formula.

Super Mario Land was a slight but enjoyable jaunt which, in hindsight, feels a little outshone by the brilliant games that followed. That doesn’t mean Mario’s charming visit to Sarasaland wasn’t a great way to burn through another set of four double-As, though. — Alexandra Hall

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