Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park, aka Athletic Land (Colecovision/MSX Reviews) Plus Bonus Reviews of the Unreleased Atari 2600 Version and Athletic World – The Indie Sequel for Game Boy!

January 26, 2026 by Leave a comment

Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park
aka Athletic Land
Wait! Don’t Go! I swear this isn’t a joke review!
Platform: Colecovision and MSX
Released in 1984
Developed by Konami
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

(Colecovision) Can you tell how deliberate I was in picking this picture first? By the way, Cabbage Patch Kids was the first toy that caused Black Friday riots. Not stampedes, but actual f*cking riots! The dolls were the biggest hit Coleco had EVER had in their entire company’s history. Far more profitable than Colecovision (it’s not even close), but they’re also proof positive that Arnold Greenberg was one of the worst CEOs in the history of gaming or toys. He was awesome at “step one” and not so awesome at any step that followed. Every single hit product Coleco had once he took over in 1975 he eventually turned into a loss leader. Colecovision gave birth to the Adam Computer, the business Greenberg REALLY wanted to be in and pushed hard for even though they had no infrastructure for home computer development or manufacturing (it’s not remotely close to the same infrastructure a game console utilizes). Then he ignored engineers who told him it wasn’t ready or any good and pushed it into production. Today the Coleco Adam is largely considered the one of the worst computers ever. Cabbage Patch Kids went from BILLIONS in sales to record-setting inventory crush in a three year span when he ignored established toy trends. Coleco was the #1 toy maker in the world in 1984 and bankrupt by 1988. The guy who greenlit all those hit products also didn’t have a clue about managing them. But hey Arnie, thanks for Colecovision. I do loves me some Colecovision.

You’d probably figure Cabbage Patch Kids would be a game for young children. An “edutainment” game along the lines of Reader Rabbit, right? Nope. Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park is basically the Colecovision’s version of Pitfall!, the David Crane classic (yes, I’m aware Colecovision does have a real port of Pitfall! too) mixed with a little bit of the reality competition Ninja Warrior with challenges like skipping across pillars and trampolines. It’s also one of those games people like me discover and are always shocked to find out it’s “really good!” that, upon revisit, I’ve dropped down to “it’s fine.” It’s still a remarkable achievement given how early this was in the genre though and an underrated showcase for what would soon be gaming’s #1 genre.

(Colecovision) That is one smug looking main character. If this game had been more popular, the fish would have gone down as one of the most notorious gaming antagonists. Trust me on this. I’ll also note that the last jump is one of the most deceptively difficult challenges in gaming. Any attempt at jumping off when the platform is anywhere but the lowest it gets or maybe one tick above the lowest will result in a death. Now a modern game would probably do a better job of conveying that and maybe have a line or maybe the platform itself lights green for jump and red for don’t jump. But for a platformer made early in the genre’s learning curve, this is impressive.

In the game, you scroll one screen at a time to the right and jump over and across different things. Make no mistake about it, this is a shameless Pitfall! rip-off, in style and substance. And, like Pitfall!, Cabbage Patch Kids’ problem is the genre has come so very far from the trail that it helped blaze. As an early platformer, there’s only a handful of challenges here that are mixed and matched, but they’re not always optimized for maximum gameplay. Actually, “a handful” isn’t entirely accurate, because when I actually counted-up the amount of things Cabbage has that can kill you, I was kind of stunned. By my tally, there are ten possible primary hazards (eleven if you count the timer) and seven supplementary hazards that can be mixed-and-matched with them. In the above screenshot, in addition to the moving platforms, I had to avoid the dreaded fish. In a screen with the trampolines, I might be hopping across mini-ponds that have the fish while also avoiding spiders that fall from above.

(Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park for MSX) This is a “sock it to you” level: water to jump over with fish jumping out of the water, spiders raining down on you, and a camp fire right at the end that you have to jump over (a tight squeeze between it and the final pond) that also spits fireballs at you.

So they actually squeezed more millage out of the obstacles than I realized and props to them for that. But, once you have the timing down, Cabbage Patch Kids is really just requires patience. With the fish, the fire, the ropes, the spiders, and the moving platforms, it’s just a matter of waiting for an opening. Within an hour of starting, the only obstacle that consistently got me killed was the fire, and only when it’s positioned like it is in the above screenshot, where there’s barely any room to jump over it. Because it fires projectiles, the timing of when it’s even safe to stand on the space between it and the water is tricky. Maybe that’s where the Cabbage Patch Kids license actually factors in and this is baby’s first platformer. Probably not since some of the screens are pretty hardcore in the amount of stuff they throw at you. They also missed several chances for risk-reward temptations. Plus there’s the occasional head-scratching empty screen. Those really weirded me out, because the empty screens happen even deep into the game. Here is one on the 68th screen of the game.

(Cabbage Patch Kids for MSX) There was literally no challenge on this screen. Just walk right and don’t stop to smell the flowers since the timer is still running. Or maybe the challenge is sensory deprivation, and the object is to not be lost in isolation of your own internal madness. Probably not since I didn’t die on it once.

Sometimes my readers get angry or confused by my constant usage of “it’s fine.” Which is strange because “it’s fine” always means, at the very least, “I had more fun than not” which is an automatic YES! because that’s my criteria at its most basic. And Cabbage Patch Kids is fine, truly! I’m giving it a YES! and everything. But yeah, I mostly use “it’s fine” for games that I or others have overrated. In the case of Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park, it’s a solid platformer that was ambitious for its era and does a good job with the limits it had, but the fun isn’t endless and it’s certainly not an all-time great. Even if it’s not making gameplay mistakes, it’s just too limited and too easy to clock. My only real gameplay annoyance was how rigid the trampolines are to use. You want to hold RIGHT and press the jump button when your feet are about to make contact.

(Cabbage Patch Kids for MSX) This apple is the only bonus points item in the game and it only appears in trampoline levels. It only scores 200 points, which is nothing when you consider you get 2,000 points just for finishing a group of ten stages. Hell, sometimes I genuinely think the apple is impossible to get if it’s in the wrong position on screens with spiders/coconuts. I’m kind of fine with that too because it feels like it’s there to tempt players. What the game could have used to give it some extra score-chasing mileage is more risk-reward chances. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind if every screen had a fruit. Having only one feels like it was there because an executive said “add some items to collect! Kids love that sh*t!”

At first I thought Konami realized they burned a pretty damn decent action game on Cabbage Patch Kids of all things because they re-released this for the MSX under the name “Athletic Land.” Except it appears to be the other way around. Athletic Land was either already out or already nearing the end of development (release dates for MSX being fickle) and Coleco had a good working relationship with Konami, plus the MSX and Colecovision are very, very compatible. To put it in perspective, the MSX emulator I use is also my Colecovision emulator. Either way, Konami just quickly flipped Athletic Land to Cabbage Patch Kids, and it’s a good thing they did because that gives this a fighting chance at a modern re-release if Konami ever decides to put out another MSX collection. Three volumes of ten MSX games were released for the original PlayStation exclusively in Japan from 1997 to 1998 (that were combined and released as one big set for the Sega Saturn) and Volume 2 has Athletic Land. Great sign that this is a modern re-release candidate. The problem is that Athletic Land is visually just a minor upgrade of the Colecovision Cabbage Patch Kids game while the MSX Cabbage Patch Kids has some pizzazz and is the only game that lets you custom-create your character. In the three screens below, Coleco Cabbage Patch Kids is on the left, the MSX version is in the center, and Athletic Kids is on the right.

Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park for Colecovision
Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park for MSX
Athletic World for MSX

Note that all three of those screenshots were taken on level 36. Now, I’m not sure if it’s just the placebo effect, but I think Athletic World might be slightly, slightly harder than the other two in terms of timing, but if it actually is, it’s negligible. Overall, for such an early platformer, Athletic Land/Cabbage Patch Kids aged remarkably well. Plus it controls a little better than the original Atari 2600 Pitfall!, though it’s very picky about what jumps land and which ones don’t. I jumped a little too early once hopping onto the first log on a screen and died from the jump somehow. It probably counts as walking into the log, which is fatal. I only did it once and never again because I learned my lesson. So while it’s not age-proof, Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park/Athletic Land is fun enough for thirty minutes, making it an ideal addition to a compilation. Not an all-time classic, but for sure one of the all-time hidden gems. I kind of feel sorry that the game is tied to Cabbage Patch Kids. I imagine a lot of kids who were too cool to play a game based on dolls never bothered to give it a try. Their loss.
Verdict: YES! YES! and YES!

BONUS REVIEWS

Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park
Platform: Atari 2600
Unreleased Completed Prototype
Designed by Ed Temple
Developed by Coleco
NEVER BEEN (officially) RELEASED

My first GAME OVER came on the 4th screen of the game. Yeah.

Oh the Atari fans are going to hate this review. Apparently Cabbage Patch Kids is considered one of the best unreleased prototypes, but I’m not there. It IS impressive, don’t get me wrong, but the jumping physics are very strange. Like, some of the weirdest I’ve ever played. You don’t actually have to press a direction when you jump. You’ll move forward automatically, but the actual trajectory of the jumps are these high, shallow arches. It’s so weird. You kind of have to just play it to appreciate it. The game is certainly tailored around it, though. All the platforms or waterholes are spaced correctly to accommodate the actual length you travel, and you can change direct mid-jump too. That’s the only way you can do a straight up-and-down jump.

Cabbage Patch Kids (Atari 2600)
Cabbage Patch Kids (Atari 2600)
Cabbage Patch Kids (Atari 2600)

While all the obstacles are here, the trampolines are much harder to use, and there’s less of them (thank god). The character looks like someone wearing bunny ears, the sound effects and music are a dental drill to the eardrums and the bees look more like the disembodied torsos of women. Plus, collision is a little bit on the picky side, but on the other hand, you can get away with some things you can’t get away with in the other versions. Like at one point during the log platforms, I jumped directly from the second-to-last log to the ground and didn’t die. Also, you don’t die from jumping off too high a point on the moving platforms. But what really killed Cabbage Patch Kids 2600 for me was that the angles of the gaps are much easier because of the automatic movement. Once I stopped trying to move on my own and realized the game did the hard part for me, I went from losing all my lives on the fourth screen to barely needing to do any work at all, and I just stopped having fun. It’s a good effort, truly, but I didn’t like this at all. Sorry, Atari fans, but Alligator People is still the superior 3rd party unreleased Atari prototype.
Verdict: NO!

Athletic World
Indie Remake of Athletic Land/Cabbage Patch Kids
Platform: Game Boy – Super Game Boy Enhanced
Released April 12, 2023
Developed by MHZ Games
Download the ROM – Pay What You Want
Link to Store for Physical Copy

Leave it to an indie developer to make the greatest game in this series!

What a damn impressive effort Athletic World is. The name is a bit confusing since Athletic World is also the name of an unrelated NES game that was designed for use with the Power Pad. But, make no mistake, THIS Athletic World is exactly what an early-era Game Boy port/sequel of Cabbage Patch Kids/Athletic Land would have been, and it’s an outstanding game that would make the original designers proud (at least I hope so). It adds new obstacles, and the timing of the moving obstacles is much, much more fine-tuned to create an optimized challenge. So, I want to get the message out there, to anyone who aspires to make a modern tribute to a classic game, download this ROM, get a pen and paper, and start taking some notes.

Athletic World kept surprising me. After over 80 stages and having gone a while before any new obstacles were introduced, I was organizing my thoughts and shaking my head at how well made this was and BOOM, another new obstacle: a snake. Huh.

First off, the authenticity of an early-era Game Boy title is astonishing. Every aspect of this feels exactly like a launch-window game for that platform, but in a good way. Athletic World has charming sprite work, sound effects, and a good chiptune. The designer didn’t take advantage of having more resources available to them than a designer at the time might have had. I’m not some kind of purist and often point out that there’s nothing inherently noble or sacred about the limits developers had because, make no mistake, studios of that time frame would have crawled on shards of glass to have higher storage capacity. But because Athletic World is such a simple game, I think it actually lends charm to the experience. Other than including Super Game Boy features, Athletic World has a small file size and feels the part, but it works because it’s the gameplay that’s optimized, not the appearance.

This is one of the new obstacles and it looks so simple. It’s just a tiny little stick on a rope that swivels (right before I hit publish Angela said “I think it’s supposed to be a tire swing.” Maybe?). If you can actually hop on it, I never figured out how (and not for a lack of trying, I assure you). It’s really hard to clock by itself. It’s rarely by itself, too.

All the obstacles of the original games are back, but the jumping physics aren’t. Jumping is much shorter and stiffer in this one. The bouncing balls and other obstacles can’t be survived just by jumping straight up and down. You have to be moving forward or backward, and the obstacles take advantage of this. The biggest change isn’t the new obstacles, but how fine-tuned all the obstacles can be. I said about the Coleco/MSX games that once you have the timing down, it’s just a matter of waiting for an opening. While the same theory applies here, that window is much shorter. The genre might be platforming, but the action feels more like a Frogger-style cross-the-road game at times and you’ll likely find yourself wiggling back and forth waiting for things to line-up in a way that you can make your short jumps.

Weirdly (perhaps sadly) the blank screens return, only instead of being absolutely nothing, your cat (or a dog if you play as the boy) is waiting for you. Sometimes it leaves a bonus fruit for you, and sometimes it takes a sh*t and if you step on it you lose 700 points. I’m not joking. Cute clapback to the original, I guess, but I wish these would have been dumped altogether. Heh, dumped. It’s funny because you’re jumping over sh*t.

The new obstacles are mostly winners. One of them sees you clinging to the side poles that you slowly start to lose your grip on. I never died on that screen or even came close and had to deliberately wait and see how long it takes to lose your grip, so perhaps that should have been reworked. The swinging stick I already showed off is the hardest new challenge, and there’s also disappearing platforms and a new style of dive-bombing bird. This game also has a climax too! After 99 screens, you have to follow your pet and rush as fast as you can through ten screens (just don’t try to copy the pet, since they can jump on things that kill you. Learned that the hard way). You can’t wait for an opening because you’re being chased by bees, but this is where the fine-tuned design shines brightest. And after you finish this and get the game’s ending, guess what? There’s a second quest that’s much harder. Hot damn, this developer went all-out. My biggest complaint is that, once you reach second quest, there’s no option to skip straight to it if you turn the game off. If the developer reads this and there’s a cheat code, you need to alert GameFAQs.

It’s actually well done. Again, he did a great job of fine-tuning.

So, this really is everything you’d want a sequel/remake to Athletic Land if the franchise had lasted past the MSX. It even has the Konami code in it! While I was playing Athletic World, I kept thinking “I really hope the developer is proud of this game.” I mean, I sincerely hope that about every indie game I play, even the ones I don’t like, but Athletic World succeeds on so many levels and is probably doomed to remain obscure. Why wouldn’t it? A fan-made Game Boy tribute to a game already deeply under the radar? Christ, I’d be stunned if this sold 100 copies (my friend Saud ordered one of the physical carts right before I published this, so make it 101). Yet, its existence fills me with joy. Athletic World is, no joke, one of the best Game Boy titles I’ve reviewed yet. It makes very few mistakes, pays proper tribute to an older game, and it does all that while perfectly mimicking a specific style of game on a black and white platform. Most importantly, Athletic World remembers that there’s no better way to show your love for a game than making a better version of it. CELEBRATE THAT! How can anyone who loves gaming not feel a little warm inside that something like this could exist? Athletic World is everything good about indie gaming tributes with none of the bullsh*t, and I love it.
Verdict: YES!
And seriously, give it a try and if you enjoy it, kick the dev a few bucks, or hell, order a physical copy!

 

Filed under New Games for Retro Platforms, Retro Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Super Mario Land and Super Mario Land DX (Game Boy/Game Boy Color Reviews)

January 4, 2025 by 5 Comments

Super Mario Land
Platform: Game Boy
First Released April 21, 1989
Directed by Satoru Okada
Developed by Nintendo
Included with Switch Online Subscription (Standard)
Listing at Mario Wiki

I used the “Game Boy Pocket” screen filter in the NSO Game Boy app.

2025 is just starting and I’ve got Nintendo launch games on my brain. I can’t imagine why. Now that I’ve reviewed the Game Boy Tetris in Tetris Forever: The Definitive Review, I wanted to look at the road not traveled. The game that was developed to be the pack-in for the Game Boy, until Henk Rogers and Bullet-Proof Software convinced Nintendo that Mario Land would make Game Boy a children’s product, while Tetris would make Game Boy an EVERYONE product. The end result? Tetris became a global mega hit, Game Boy went from black and white curio to genuine gaming powerhouse, and Mario Land did okay. And by “okay” I mean it’s the #2 selling original black and white Game Boy title that wasn’t a pack-in (only Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow’s combined sales are greater).

To the game’s credit, especially since the guys behind it weren’t exactly Nintendo’s varsity team, it looks great given the limitations. Nowhere near as silly as the Game Boy version of Batman: The Video Game looked.

In fact, Super Mario Land outsold Super Mario Bros. 3. Yep, really! It’s astonishing, isn’t it? This little, unassuming tech demo, the first Super Mario game made without Shiggy’s involvement, defeated a game that many would consider to have been the most anticipated sequel in gaming history, and certainly a game that actively reigns as one of the most cherished and beloved video games ever made. Is it really all those things just because it wasn’t packed-in with the Game Boy? I mean, duh, along with coming out the day Game Boy did as well. Mario Land is fine, but it’s not amazing. It’s not even so good that being one of the best selling games of all-time makes any sense outside the context of being a launch title for a relatively cheap, yet scorching-hot platform. I’d love to see what the attach rate was for the Game Boy and Mario Land through the first two years of Game Boy’s existence. It had to be in the high 90 percentile. It’s a strange game for someone of my era to look back on, because Mario Land is incredibly weak compared to other Super Mario games. Yet, I honestly don’t remember meeting anyone who was around for the Game Boy launch who had anything but glowing memories of it. Mario Land is as beloved as any other 80s Mario title. And it’s SO WEIRD.

I accidentally beat the third boss in about a second, before I even realized I was fighting a boss. Just one running jump, then walking off a platform onto a switch was all it took. I had been prepared to whine about this more, until I remembered that the Bowser encounters in the original Super Mario Bros. ended when you hit a switch at the end and weren’t exactly epics.

Mario Land is certainly the jankiest Super Mario game. It’s the movement physics that threw me off. There’s absolutely no sense of inertia at all. Whether running or landing from a jump, Mario stops on a dime. Hell, he stops on the rivets at the edge of the dime. You would think this would make platforming much easier, since it turns every jump from a calculated, athletic type of action that has to account for momentum into just a matter of raw distance. But, you do have to continue to hold the movement, because you can stop in mid-air too. My brain couldn’t adjust to this, I died just as much from screwing up otherwise basic jumps as I did misjudging enemies. I’m not trying to sound like an amazing gamer or anything, but I suffered the type of deaths playing Mario Land that I haven’t had playing a 2D platformer in a LONG time. I’m talking about screwing up some very basic stuff, and I felt so awkward when it happened. Like “jeez, I know that was on me, too. Yeesh.”

On the other hand, the lack of weight and momentum does make any interval-based enemies easier to get past. No worries about skidding INTO these fish. There’s no skidding! So, the physics engine isn’t totally challenge-creating. It’s just as often challenge reducing. Compare this game to the Cheep Cheep bridges in Super Mario 1, such as level 2-3. It’s not just that they fly out from the ground from underneath you, but it’s just as much your own momentum that makes those some of the hardest sections in Mario games. But, if the levels based around Cheep-Cheeps controlled like Mario Land does, I don’t think they’d be that hard at all.

Presumably, the lack of sliding was done to accommodate the motion blur issues in the early Game Boy screen. It’s also safe to assume that the length of the game was based around being a fraction of the OG Game Boy’s battery life, since there’s no means of saving. Not that you need it, as at only ten standard levels and two shmup levels, Super Mario Land is the shortest of any Super Mario game (at least when playing EVERY level, start-to-finish). Should take you 45 minutes, tops. When I first played Mario Land years ago, I didn’t like it at all. Now, eh, it’s fine. The ten normal Mario-style levels are decent enough. They’re a few steps above “basic” Super Mario gameplay, with things like hidden elevators or invisible floors that don’t really do all that much, but are fun to discover. And yet, outside of the question mark blocks and general hop ‘n bop gameplay, it never feels entirely like a Mario game. It feels like a Mario knock-off. But, like, a really decent, really flagrant knock-off.

You get to where I am by an invisible floor. If you’re not Little Mario, you have to deliberately take a hit, or you can’t go this way and have to fight the robots directly. There’s a couple areas like that in Mario Land.

I have two big problems with Mario Land. While I enjoyed the shmup stages well enough (hey, I like shmups!), ending the game on one was a massive downer. But, all credit where it’s due: this is the rare “let’s add a shmup to a platformer” game where the shump section doesn’t feel completely divorced from the rest of the game. They do a good job of making it feel like it’s the same character in the same world. The other big problem is the game is just too easy. Despite some pretty humiliating deaths, I never had to sweat a game over because there’s too many coins, extra lives, and short-cuts. I won’t say that it crosses the line or anything, because I did lose like six or seven lives along the way, including four to the final boss, but I still finished with around two dozen lives to spare. And when I threw on toruzz’s excellent Super Mario Land DX ROM (review up next), I finished the game with 58 lives. FIFTY-EIGHT! There’s only twelve levels, for Christ’s sake!

I don’t think ending a Mario game with a shmup boss is the wisest choice, but apparently this was the original intent by Miyamoto, who wanted something like this to be the finale for the original Super Mario Bros.

The best thing I can compare Mario Land to is watching the first season of The Simpsons. Everything is alright and certainly the product you’re familiar with, yet somehow also somehow so horribly wrong that it’s kind of a little spooky for it. Weirdly, it’s for the same reasons as the Simpsons, too: everything is off-model, including the locations, and very against the established canon. In the case of Mario Land, it’s full of one-off settings and enemies that never showed up in the franchise again and often feel like they belong to an entirely different franchise. Hell, the first three bosses can be defeated in the same way you beat Bowser in Super Mario 1, AND EVEN THEN, it never feels like they’re Mario villains, and the last boss sure as sh*t doesn’t. But ultimately, Mario Land doesn’t last long enough to bore, or even really to frustrate. I imagine a child in 1989 was probably thrilled that they had something that was a LOT better than the Super Mario Game & Watch for a portable Mario experience.

The most remarkable aspect of the game is it actually does make you feel like you’re in different worlds instead of against a static screen. It’s immersive, and in a way that holds up well in 2025. I didn’t expect that at all.

I played Mario Land twice in black & white and twice on DX (coming up), and I never shook the feeling that I was playing a glorified tech demo. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s the reality of a launch title. When I look back on those Mario games that served as springboards for new platforms, most are pretty rough. Even Super Mario 64 feels like the whole engine could collapse at any time. Which makes sense, because they had to cut a ton of content from the game to make the release date, and even then, Miyamoto kept asking for more time to polish it, until Nintendo President Hiroshi Yamauchi told him the game was good enough. What strikes me most about Mario Land is, yea, it’s only twelve levels long, but there ain’t a stinker in the bunch. Every level is solid. Hell, you can’t even say that about every level in New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe’s first world. So, maybe Super Mario Land hasn’t aged particularly gracefully in terms of its build. This is the roughest game in the entire franchise, and really there’s nothing even close to it in that regard. But, they still managed to show that the Mario formula is so airtight that it’s almost impossible to screw-up. Mario Land is solid, and as the Grand Marshal of the Game Boy, it’s hard to imagine getting the platform off to a better start.
Verdict: YES!

Super Mario Land DX
Platform: Game Boy Color
Latest Release: April 20, 2022
Unauthorized ROM Hack of Super Mario Land
Developed by toruzz
Link to Patch at ROMHacking.net
I use THIS tool to apply patches.

Super Mario Land DX isn’t merely a colorization of Mario Land, but that part certainly stands out the most. I’d previously played toruzz’s colored version of Super Mario Land 2 (which I will do a review for both the original and the DX version at some point in 2025), but Mario Land DX is equally impressive. The new sprites for Mario and enemies look great, and the whole game POPS as it never has before. It’s so visually pleasing that you really wish Nintendo would just buy this build and make it official. It’s beautiful, and Mario games should be beautiful, right? Plus the notorious slowdown in the hard mode (IE the replay of the game after you beat it) is gone too. I’m pretty sure the version on Nintendo Switch Online also corrects the slowdown issue but don’t quote me on that.

Yep, that’s Luigi. Yep, he controls kinda like you think he will. No, it’s not as cool as it sounds.

Mario Land DX’s big-big-big addition is Luigi, which is done in the same style as Luigi in the Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 2 (aka The Lost Levels). He moves looser and jumps higher. However, it’s just not as fun as it sounds. I think it’s too loose. It’s probably best to think of Luigi as “Mario Land if the controls weren’t as good.” Unlike Mario, Luigi does have a little momentum. It makes lining up with the tiny blocks pretty hard. There’s a few sections in the game where you can smash a block between other blocks to reveal a hidden elevator. It’s insane how long it took me to line up Luigi to get that. I also went back to skidding off platforms. Yea, I wasn’t building up 50 lives in this run. Nope, not happening. With Mario’s platform games, for me, what makes them stand out in the genre is precision controls and precision movement. Mario took off as a franchise because, above all else, they control the best. Turn those controls rotten and Mario games wouldn’t be the biggest franchise in the genre. There’s a reason why Alex Kidd isn’t an icon, folks. 

This took FOREVER for me to get.

I’d only recommend the Luigi quest if you’re a REALLY big fan of Super Mario Land and want to experience it in a new way. I’ve never been a fan of games that use deliberately bad (or if not bad, difficult) controls for challenge. This is NOT made for me. But, it’s super easy to recommend Super Mario Land DX to anyone who wants to dip their toes in the wonderful world of ROM hacks because, golly, what an effort. And if you like color but really hate the new sprites (and some people do), you can toggle them off. There’s a few ROM hacks out there that change the levels, but I really sort of get the impression that the original design team already wrung every single drop of gameplay out of the limited Super Mario Land engine. I don’t really want to play more levels of it, especially when the only option left is to become trollish with the stage design. What toruzz has done here is EXACTLY what I want, and all I want, from a Mario Land ROM hack. Good job.
Verdict: YES!

Filed under Nintendo Switch Reviews, Retro Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Save Me Mr. Tako Definitive Edition

July 2, 2021 by 1 Comment

Technically, this could be a Second Chance with the Chick review. I reviewed Mr. Tako back in 2019, noting I didn’t care for the difficulty, the lives system, etc. In fairness, I didn’t have nostalgia for the Game Boy, which is as close to a prerequisite for enjoying Mr. Tako as it gets. As far as difficulty and other technical issues go, developer Christophe Galati was game, and in fact, he did patchwork on Steam. Unfortunately, his publisher on Switch, who I won’t even give the dignity of naming, just wouldn’t cooperate. Having gotten to know Chris, he got a raw deal. What really sucks is there’s no way of getting those adopters of Mr. Tako this port for free. I like Chris. A lot. He’s a good guy. I admire that he persevered through a nauseating situation to get his work out there at its maximum potential.

This dialog from Mr. Tako became absurdly meta.

Now, having said that, my #1 problem with Save Me Mr. Tako was always that I was never this game’s target audience to begin with. That’s totally out of Chris’ hands. I’m just not nostalgic for the Game Boy. I don’t see how anyone can be. Such nostalgic feelings would be no different than someone being nostalgic for.. I dunno.. rabbit ears on a television. Why would you long to go back to that today? It doesn’t seem convenient, and the picture quality was never as good, and sometimes you’d probably have to get up and adjust the damn things. Imagine someone wishing they could tune-in Netflix using rabbit ears. That’d be so dumb! Why would you want that, Dad? What is wrong with you?!

Sorry, that was awkward.

Well, how come that’s dumb, but reminiscing about the Game Boy, to the point you’d crave a new game that looks like a Game Boy game isn’t? The Game Boy looks the way it does because it was cheap, could run on batteries without sapping them, but was still a major step above the previous option for handheld gaming, which was either Game & Watch or typing swear words into a calculator. Unlike something like, say, the NES or Super NES, where you can do a lot with the limited color palette and sprite-sizes, the Game Boy is just always ugly. Even a game like this, which if it had come out in the 90s, would have been in the upper-echelon of Game Boy games, in both graphics and gameplay. Yea, Mr. Tako is an amazing achievement: a modern indie stylized like a retro game with almost no seams of modern stitching, and it’s even fun. But I’d rather it look like almost any other platform. I can’t get over it.

There’s tons of different four-color palettes you can use. Why not just do the Super Game Boy thing and have a customize option? On a side note, thank you for including photosensitive options. Always classy.

Which is not to say you can’t appreciate Mr. Tako as a game without the four-color thing getting in the way. Mr. Tako is still potentially one of THE all-time great indie mascots, but like Pikachu before him, he has to get his adorable ass out of Game Boy Land and into something more flattering for his personality. Then again, Save Me Mr. Tako goes to some wickedly dark places. The parents of Mr. Tako, the former King & Queen lived happily ever after. No wait, they fucked and died, like all Octopi do. None of that cutesy Disney crap. Octopus die after mating, and by god, that’s going in the game!

I get why they’re there and I know that other players like them more than me, but I sort of wish none of the human-based levels existed. I always winced when they came up. I didn’t like a single one, but again, that’s just me. I thought they were always boring.

Actually, “by God, that’s going in the game!” seems to have been the motto for developing Save Me Mr. Tako: Definitive Edition. There’s a jaw-dropping FIFTY power-ups. Fifty! In a weird way, I kind of admire that Chris didn’t say “I’ll save that one for the sequel!” at any point. But for a mascot platformer, it’s kind of overkill. You can reload your hat at any midway checkpoint, but realistically, you’ll only have one or two that you actually like to use. There’s also fifty stages, a few of which are inspired, but most of which are plain at best, if not outright tedious. Christophe suffers from Peter Jackson syndrome: he desperately needed an editor. Rework the fifty levels down to eight worlds of four stages each, with all the best bits from the stages deleted used to extend the good/average levels. When Mr. Tako is good, it’s a lot of fun. But it gets samey and sloggy, and for what? So a sales blurb can say fifty stages? If nobody is raving about the level design, it doesn’t matter. Give me thirty-two good levels to fifty mostly dull ones any day.

I decided a few weeks ago I’d save this for my 10th Anniversary review. Then I went down my timeline to fetch the media for this review, since I hadn’t added that, and I realized “oh shit, I only uploaded videos. Well, that’s okay, the video are still.. on.. my Switch.. wait, didn’t I clean all my media out a few weeks.. ago?” 🙁 Well, fudge.

But, Mr. Tako actually is an overall net-positive this time. Part of that is the difficulty is adjustable and therefore more reasonable this time around. It allows you to appreciate the absolutely batshit raving story about a war between humans and octopus, which is so gosh-dang charming and melodramatic that you have to admire it. At times, the story interruptions can get a bit annoying, and the limited Game Boy appearance can make telling some characters apart a bit harder than it needed to be, but I was genuinely invested in where this was all going. Funny enough, as nutty as the story is, it’s also thoughtful and at times sentimental and sweet. I didn’t really care for the human leads as much, be it their arc in the storyline or playing as them at various times in the game, but I appreciated that gameplay was used to drive the narrative. It’s the rare mascot platformer where the story matters.

The boomerang was my go-to weapon. There’s a sword as well, but it has no oomph to it.

So, they added hit points and now a game I barely didn’t like is one I barely liked. Yes, Mr. Tako is fun. It needed less levels with more going on, and less power-ups with the filler cut and the best stuff refined to a mirror-shine. For all the baffling choices made, Mr. Tako still manages to pull-off a worthwhile platforming adventure. That doesn’t exactly sound like a ringing endorsement, but it’s still an endorsement. Oh, I’m all-in on Mr. Tako as the next big indie franchise. I hope it can find its audience this time. And, if not, maybe next time! Assuming the Game Boy stuff is exchanged for 16-bit aesthetics. It’s kind of funny: ten years ago today, I posted my very first review. The Cathy who wrote THAT review didn’t get nostalgic for anything. The Cathy of 2021 says things like “do you know what I could go for today? Super Mario Sunshine! You know, that game I liked when I was twelve!” Maybe if I’d grown-up with the original Game Boy, I’d been a lot more enthusiastic about a game looking this way. Then again, I did grow up with a Nintendo 64, but if an indie developer made a game that looked like that, I’d dunk their nut sack in teriyaki sauce and let my dog eat their balls off.

Save Me Mr. Tako: Definitive Edition was developed by Christophe Galati
Point of Sale: Nintendo Switch, Steam

$14.99 wiped tears away and thanked everyone for ten amazing years in the making of this review.

Save Me Mr. Tako: Definitive Edition is Chick-Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard

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