NOCLIP Pocket E100 - It Does, in Fact, Please the Lord - Super Mario Land

NOCLIP

Oh, podcast. Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket…for the last time! We’re interrupting our DLC theme because of the episode 100 milestone, and we’re talking about Super Mario Land. If you’ve been following for a while, you know that we started Pocket with an episode on Super Mario Land 2, so we felt it was appropriate to end it with the original Super Mario Land. This is a platformer and one of the earliest games in the Mario series. Released on the Game Boy, the limitations of the platform, and the age of the game, are both apparent in how it affected visuals and design, and impressive in how they were overcome. This feels very quaint to come back to, but compared to how simple the majority of Game Boy games were, this feels like a real accomplishment. With 12 levels over 4 worlds that explore different themes, this feels more like a Mario game than you might expect, and one that has some meat on its bones, even if it isn’t very long. We’re going to be talking about the level design in comparison to Super Mario Bros. and how much we think was hardware versus the state of game design in 1989, how the music carries the presentation despite the simple visuals distracting from some surprisingly detailed sprites, and we call for Mario to be restored to his former vehicle-driving glory. Thank you for listening to NOCLIP Pocket this week! To be clear, the podcast itself is going to continue on after today, but we think Pocket specifically has outlived its necessity. Moving forward, we’re going to hold on to the same release schedule and cadence of games we talk about, but will be doing away with Pocket as a sub-show and incorporating the shorter, weirder titles into the main show instead. So basically we’re making a big deal out of nothing. Pocket held some of our biggest surprises, so let us know, what was your favorite episode of Pocket? Did you try any games you wouldn’t have otherwise? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! There won’t be a next game in this case, so we’ll catch you on the Xenoblade Chronicles 3 DLC episode next time!