Mario's Handheld History Pt. 2: The Advance Years
This time we examine the numerous ports and original adventures Mario participated in during the GBA's lifespan...
...Continued From Page 1
Super Mario Advance 2
It would've made sense if the second Mario Advance title was
Super Mario Bros 3 but Nintendo decided to wow us with a stunning conversion of
Super Mario World instead. It was one of the defining moments of handheld life to hear the famous Marioworld theme coming out of your mitts. You'd sit there mesmerized by the title screen, in disbelief that this was in your hands. So was there any other ways they improved upon the game? It was generally left untouched aside from a few things to make the game a little easier, like if you're fire Mario or caped and get hit, you go down to being super Mario, not tiny Mario, so you in effect gained an extra bit of energy. You can also save after any stage if you want to, making it much friendlier for portable play where you often have to switch off unexpectedly. The game again had voiceovers for Mario but they seemed a little more infrequent than in the first Mario Advance title, phew.. You could now play as Luigi whenever it took your fancy, with a button press on the map screen swapping the brothers around. Luigi had his jumping ability from Mario Bros. 2 which would prove to be useful in many Marioworld stages. Graphically the game was again a pixel perfect reproduction of the SNES original, with only the smaller resolution of the GBA's screen and the reduction of play area being noticeably different from the original.
Despite coming less than a year from the launch and release of the first Mario Advance title, and perhaps due to the slightly higher international popularity of Mario World, Super Mario advance 2 was the highest selling of all the Mario Advance games for the GBA, scoring just slightly higher sales than the others. If this game is not in your collection, Shiggy wants to know why...
Super Mario Advance 3
Following on, Nintendo released a conversion of one of the most un-Mario games to be considered part of the Mario series. In
Yoshi's Island our little dragon friend was the star, looking after a little baby Mario while they undertook a quest to find baby Luigi who'd been kidnapped by Kamek and whisked away to Bowsers castle. The visuals in
Yoshi's Island were a big departure from the normal, with the backgrounds looking like they were drawn by hand with crayons and paintbrushes. The original title utilized the Super FX2 chip to create some stunning pseudo-3d effects. The music was also different, featuring some of the jolliest tunes every to be committed to cartridge form. The way the game played was like a traditional Mario title but instead of losing lives when being hit by an enemy, baby Mario would be ejected from Yoshi's back in a bubble and a countdown timer would appear, counting down until you managed to rescue the little guy. Failing to do so would result in him being nabbed by Kameks minions and you having to try again. The other major gameplay feature became the throwing of eggs at enemies and items, using careful aim to trigger switches and break through things.
The Mario Advance conversion was again faultless, even going so far as to add some bonus levels to play. The problem was that the original game was released so close to the end of the Super Nintendo's lifespan that it was never as popular as it deserved to be, with many people who grew up with the SNES by then looking forward to the Nintendo64 and eschewing the games ' kiddies graphics '. Its a damn shame that the game didn't sell as much as its companions, even on the GBA it only sold half as many as Super Mario Advance 2 did. Criminal! This game gave me more smiles than any of the other Mario titles and should definitely be a part of your collection.
Super Mario Advance 4
This was the one most of us had been waiting for and boy did Nintendo make us wait for it. Again it was a conversion from the
Super Mario All Stars version of the game, featuring the enhanced graphics. One of the main new additions to the game exclusive to the GBA was the inclusion of e-Reader compatibility. The e-Reader was designed by Nintendo as a cheap (it used paper cards) way to publish minigames and add bonus content to existing games via the e-Reader and with the right cards. The thing was, it wasn't exactly easy or convenient to use, getting hold of cards could be difficult and to transfer data from the e-Reader into another game you needed 2 Game Boys and a link cable to transfer the data from the e-Reader equipped unit to the one with the cartridge in it. The whole e-Reader experiment appeared to be failing almost as soon as it was launched and the unit was soon withdrawn from sale, having never even seen the light of day in Europe and being pulled before Nintendo had even published many of the promised Mario Advance expansion cards.
E-Reader aside though,
Super Mario Advance 4 was still an impressive game, though not looking quite as polished as the titles based on original Snes titles, the game played as solidly as it ever did. The only gripe many people had was the save game system wasn't as generous to the player as those in the previous Mario Advances. Saving occuring at specific places in the game, you could make temporary saves but if you forgot to and switched the unit off without doing so, you'd find yourself back at the main save point, often back at the start of a map. Cue bitemarks in the top of your Game Boy next time you powered up.
Welcome to Modojo, 
Written by Philip Jones on Tuesday, September 5, 2006
