|
Super Mario Bros. Deluxe
As Mario and/or Luigi (if you're playing a two-player
game), you scour a fantastic landscape, avoiding or dispatching menacing
critters, trying to find all of the coins, and occasionally encountering
opportunities to gain super size and powers. (There are also plenty of
opportunities to get your overall-wearing alter-ego killed, too.) At the end of
this lengthy quest - which now includes more scenes and challenges than the
original arcade game - lies a princess awaiting rescue. It's light years away
from the relatively simple quest of Donkey
Kong.
(Nintendo, 1985; Deluxe Color edition released in 1999)
Super Mario Bros. was the "killer app," so to speak, of the
original NES console, and was faithfully translated for the original black &
white Game Boy. So why revamp the game yet again? Simple: Super Mario Bros.
Deluxe is a showcase of the myriad capabilities of the Game Boy Color, as
well as pre-color peripherals such as the Game Boy Printer. It's also a
killer demonstration of a then-new technology which manufacturers had been
trying to perfect since the ColecoVision days: battery backed-up memory on
board the cartridge. Also included is the ability to swap high scores via
the Game Boy Color's infra-red interface, a much-ballyhooed feature of
which virtually no use has been made.
If anything, Super Mario Bros. Deluxe is like the DVD of the original,
only with tons of extra features. There are extra levels to conquer, but
extraneous to the game there are also picture galleries (which can be
printed out with the aforementioned Game Boy Printer peripheral),
mini-puzzle games, and other fun stuff. And of course, you can save your
game at just about any point along the way without having to write down a
password that later must be entered tediously using the joypad.
The color graphics are extremely sharp, the music bounces along just like
the original, and as with the original Super Mario cart for the classic
Game Boy, the control you have over your pixellated avatar onscreen is
exceptional.
I'm not convinced that Super Mario is the best game for the Game
Boy Color, but it sure does provide a cool demonstration of some of that
machine's woefully underused features.
Rating: 
A whole dollar - trade it in for more quarters, you'll want to play this
one again!
Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com editor/webmaster
 
 
|
