Ah, now that brings back memories, and I still have a copy lying around somewhere. 

Wow, I think this may have been the first Mario game I ever played. I'll probably get it out of pure nostalgia.

Best shooting game on the GB, in this author's humble opinion.

Yes, I'm aware it's only 2 levels.

I'm curious-where to VC games sit on the Z-axis in the screen? Level, towards you, or back? I was actually kind of hoping you could push them back so it would be like peering into an arcade cabinet.

I love the music to this game

Super Mario Land is half the length of the original Super Mario Brothers and is even more simplistic and rough, I'd say it isn't worth playing and to wait for the inevitable release of its two sequels. They're much better games.

The funny thing about Super Mario Land is that it breaks the rule that makes Nintendo's first party handheld games exceptional.  While nearly everyone else made sort of scaled-down versions of their console games for the Game Boy, Nintendo made games that felt like with colour and some better graphics they could have been released on the consoles of the day.  Metroid II and Link's Awakening are absolutely essential entries in their respective series.  They didn't feel like half-assed spin-off product.  If you were a fan you had to play those games.  You figured that even if the Game Boy didn't exist those same games would have been made but for the NES or SNES.

Super Mario Land is exactly what everyone else released on the Game Boy.  It was just a scaled down Mario game for handhelds.  If the Game Boy never exists you would not assume that they would have bothered to make Super Mario Land in between the Super Mario Bros games.  It feels unessential.  It wasn't until the series morphed in Warioland that it really felt like you HAD to play these games.  Super Mario Land is more or less just to play Mario on the go and nothing more.

Except you won't be able to play this 1989 classic at launch either.  ;)  Except on your Game Boy.

To be fair, it was one of the first Game Boy games Nintendo released, so at that point in time they didn't really know what the best kinds of games were to release on the handheld.

Yeah, I totally agree.  Aside from Tetris, which Nintendo did not originally design, do any of the first Game Boy titles really hold up?  I'm not going to criticize Nintendo for that since they were clearly treading new ground.

It would have been nice if it had the Super Gameboy color scheme for it, but only if it were offered as an option. I would hate to be FORCED to relive games like this in full color HD or whatever. The point of playing old games is to re-experience them as they originally were. If you insist on HD color graphics, there are modern games for that. Please don't destroy the integrity of classic games by forcing them to look like modern games. If its just an option, fine, but only so long as its optional.