Super Mario Advance (Game Boy Advance Review)

Super Mario Advance
Platform: Game Boy Advance
First Released March 21, 2001
Directed by Toshiaki Suzuki
Developed by Nintendo
Available with a Switch Online Expansion Pack Subscription
Listing on Mario Wiki

Oh, sweet Clawgrip. How did they ever do Doki Doki Panic without you?

I’ve already said everything I need to say about what masterpieces Super Mario Bros. 2 and Doki Doki Panic are. All that’s left is the game that introduced me to that world, which I first played in the wee hours of the morning following the GBA’s launch. I probably clicked-on my GBA at around one o’clock in the morning on June 11, 2001. At about 1:01 A.M. I was probably red in the face angry over how sh*tty the GBA screen was. It didn’t matter how many launch games I got, because I could only see two of them: this and ChuChu Rocket. It’s funny that I look back on 2001 with such fondness, because two of the three major launches SUCKED! My hands were too small to properly wield the Duke, and I couldn’t see the GBA’s screen. At least the Xbox issue was fixed by my father snagging an imported S-controller for me relatively quickly. Nothing could save the GBA though.

I wasn’t even into puzzle games during this era, but I liked the versus mode of ChuChu Rocket, which was the first console game I ever played with online play. Except it had seriously horrible, ruinous lag. That was fine. On Dreamcast, I played the hell out of this against CPU opponents, which is why I wanted a copy for my new portable game device. Would have been nice if I could have seen the screen. ChuChu Rocket, like Super Mario Advance, is pretty bright, but still not bright enough to overcome the GBA’s horrible original screen.

I was pissed because the game I had actually been hyped for, and the one that was the first game in my brand new Game Boy Advance, was Castlevania: Circle of the Moon. I can’t believe there’s apologists for the GBA screen, because I thought it was un-f*cking-playable. Circle of the Moon was clearly not fine-tuned for THAT screen. I’m actually certain the only explanation was the development team didn’t know the screen wouldn’t be backlit. Meanwhile, ChuChu Rocket was obsolete because I already had a version of it that I could, you know, actually see! I wanted ChuChu Rocket for car trips, but even in sunlight, I thought the screen sucked. So the only reason why the GBA’s launch wasn’t a complete letdown for me was Super Mario Advance. Even though I really enjoyed it, I had no idea what Super Mario Bros. 2 had actually accomplished. To my credit, I was still 11, about to turn 12.

If you want to be mean about it, you can steal Birdo’s bow. They should have had it get pissed and fire eggs like a machine gun if you do this.

In that original 2001 session, I remember thinking that Mario Advance was maybe the easiest video game I’d ever played up to that point. I’m pretty sure even back then I didn’t die more than a couple times, with world 5 – 1 and 7 – 2 being the only levels that got me more than once. I only remember one specific death: when the door came flying at me right before the Wart battle, I was so startled that the damn thing killed me. Otherwise, besides the odd jump to my death, I quickly got through Mario Advance, and while I enjoyed IT well enough, I enjoyed the squinting required to play it so much that my GBA went into a drawer, pretty much never to see the light of day again. I never got another new game for that model. I was excited for another installment of Pokemon, but when those came out, so did the GBA SP, and the Game Boy Player followed soon after. So really, the only game I ever played with my original GBA was this one, and while I really liked it a lot, it wasn’t exactly like it blew my mind. I think the reason it didn’t was entirely that f*cking screen.

The funny part of that story is that I had no idea that Nintendo had actually made this version of Super Mario Bros. 2 unfathomably easier than the already pretty damn easy NES original. How?

• They added a third hidden mushroom in every stage, so now your max health is five.
• Health refills are just sitting around pretty much everywhere.
• Including inside boss chambers.
• And you get health refills for every thrown object (be it an item or enemy) that results in a kill combo of two or more. The POW blocks are the exception to this.
• Just the act of throwing the new giant Shy-Guy, even if you throw it at nothing, gives you a heart every throw, meaning every single appearance by them is basically a full life refill.
• There’s significantly more enemies, which sounds like it should make the game harder, but instead, they’re there specifically to be combo victims. That means even more opportunities for health refills.
• They’ve significantly increased the amount of weapons you can pluck from the ground.
• And they added more weapons tailored towards mass destruction of the enemies.
• They also added many more extra lives in the stages.
• They made it so you can bet all your coins on a single spin of the slot machines, paying off tons of lives if you win.
• A kill combo five gives you an extra life.
• Plus you get an additional extra life for every enemy after five.

There’s just no way I can spin these decisions in a way that makes logical sense. This goes beyond simply nerfing Super Mario 2. This is like full-on baby proofing of a game to a level never before done, unless you count emulator stuff like save states and rewinding. If you manage to Game Over playing Super Mario Advance, you should seriously consider another hobby because this gaming thing just isn’t going to work out for you.

The Birdos especially get it bad, as there’s usually additional weapons in their chambers AND life refills.

Everything I disliked about Super Mario Advance as a soon-to-be 12 year old is still 100% accurate. I’ll tell you this: if you have a REALLY young child, you might want to consider this as the game to break them into platform games, or even gaming in general. I mean, it’s colorful, has a wide variety of levels and enemies, tons of stuff to do, memorable characters, satisfying bosses, controls like a dream, and it’s basically the most easy video game this side of playing Pong against someone with a broken paddle. If you’re a challenge seeker, there’s nothing here for you. Okay, so the whole “games an experience instead of a challenge” is my driving force, and was my driving force even back when I was 12. But there’s SOME limit to that. Games need to push-back. Mario Advance is the game that not only doesn’t push back, but it practically switches sides and pushes with you against itself.

It wouldn’t be until years after it launched that Mario Advance grew on me. I’d just finished Mario Galaxy and realized I’d never REALLY played Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3. After that, apparently I still had to work Mario out of my system because I played Mario Advance 1 again. Back then I DID NOT replay games once I finished them. That just wasn’t something I ever did. But my Mario Advance experience had been tainted by Darko Nintendočić, so I popped it in my Game Boy Player. It was almost like it was divinely inspired, because I remember thinking “how did I never notice this game is f*cking brilliant?” I hadn’t aced the game the first go around and didn’t expect to this time, either. But I did. Every Advance Coin. Every Yoshi Egg. Okay, the Advance Coins weren’t THAT hard to find and neither are the Yoshi eggs. Why it matters is nabbing a 100% completion means playing EVERY level.

In a sense, the Yoshi egg hunt could be considered the game’s “hard mode” since the eggs replace two of the mushrooms. This would be swell, except they’re almost always hidden close by where the mushrooms they replaced were originally found. Plus you have to unlock the egg hunt by beating the game. Thankfully, you don’t need to nab every Advance Coin to do this, something I forgot. I wish I had just warped really quick to the end, but I didn’t. I beat the game with Mario, and realized quickly I didn’t want to get every egg again. I think I’ve overdosed on Mario 1 & 2 and need to move on.

In my first replay of Mario Advance, I enjoyed experiencing all twenty levels so much that I was crushed when I found out getting a 100% completion didn’t unlock more content. I was blown away by how all twenty of them feel completely unique from each-other, and how playing them with each character also changes the, for lack of a better term, personality of each level. I came to realize that they really went all-out on the layouts and enemy design and fine tuning the controls for the characters. Mind you, it wouldn’t be until decades later, when I played Doki Doki Panic, that I realized how truly fine-tuned it actually is. I think that actually speaks volumes about how good Super Mario Bros. 2 is that so many people who love it are completely unaware that the version they’re playing isn’t even the game at its most idealized.

I swear to God, the first time I played the NES version of Super Mario Bros. 2, I had no clue there was no Robo-Birdo. When I got to the end of World 3 and another Mouser was waiting for me, my heart sank. I really thought the game was going to alternate between Mouser and Tryclyde until the Wart battle. This is such a fantastic boss battle that I think it sucks they didn’t replace the second Mouser with a second new boss. Maybe for the next remake, Nintendo? I’m kidding. Please don’t remake this again. Make a brand new game with this type of gameplay.

I first played Super Mario Advance as a soon-to-be 12 year old. Now I’m a soon-to-be 36 year old, and like so many things in life, my opinion on Mario Advance has changed dramatically over the years. Of the four versions of Mario 2 (not counting BS Super Mario USA, a modified version of the Super Mario 2 found in Super Mario All-Stars that made for the Satellaview, which isn’t even the full game), Mario Advance I’d put third, with only the version found in Super Mario All-Stars behind it. It’s still an amazing experience. Veterans of Mario 2 or even Doki Doki Panic can enjoy playing “spot the difference.” with the subtle changes made to level layouts or enjoy one of the easiest collect-a-thons ever made. I did one single full playthrough for this review and I got 99 out of 100 coins.

Son of a bitch. Forgot one f*cking coin in World 3 – 1 and somehow never noticed. Yes, I went back and got it. You can collect the coins in the Yoshi Challenge. Unfortunately, by the time I unlocked that, I was too burned out on Super Mario 2 to go get all the eggs.

But, I do question why they took such extreme measures towards lowering the difficulty. It’s almost unprecedented in the history of gaming. The irony is Doki Doki Panic became one of the biggest games in the entire history of the medium because the original Super Mario Bros. 2 was too hard, yet they subtracted from its difficulty in Super Mario Bros. 2 USA. But that version still does little things that prevent you from going on complete cruise control, like having you be committed to a single character every stage. Pick someone not as suitable for a level? Tough sh*t, and in retrospect, I’m fine with that. But then they removed even that from the Super Mario All-Stars version, which allows you to swap every life. (shrug) That’s why, as much as I love Super Mario Bros. 2 and even Mario Advance, I really hope they don’t remake it again, because what’s left to nerf at this point? Have it literally rain hearts? Have enemies surrender on sight? When you pull Birdo’s bow off, the brain spurts out of a hole? Get to Wart’s chamber only to find him dead with an empty can of V8 laying next to him?
Verdict: YES!
It’s my little blog’s anniversary! Thank you everyone for fourteen incredible years! I love you all! For keeps!