Super Mario Land GAMEBOY

Super Mario Land, released alongside the Game Boy itself in 1989, was Nintendo’s first attempt at fitting a Mario platformer into a handheld — and it’s a noticeably different game from its console cousins rather than a straight downsized port. Levels run shorter, the game shifts setting from the Mushroom Kingdom to the fictional Sarasaland, and two stages break from side-scrolling entirely into an overhead-view submarine and biplane shooter.

Princess Daisy debuts here as the character Mario is rescuing, not Princess Peach, a detail that surprises people who only know the character from her later sports and kart spin-off appearances. The game also runs faster and looser than mainline Mario titles of the era, with physics that feel closer to an arcade game than the more deliberate pacing of Super Mario Bros.

As a pack-in-adjacent launch title, it was many players’ actual introduction to portable Mario, well before Super Mario Land 2 refined the formula into something closer to the mainline series.