Line #12 YMMV/SuperMarioLand


1	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation:
2	** {{Fanon}} says that Tatanga was merely hired by Wario to kidnap Daisy as a distraction, such that when Mario goes to Sarasaland to save her, [[VideoGame/SuperMarioLand2SixGoldenCoins Wario could enter Mario's castle and take over his country]]. The instruction manual for "Six Golden Coins" does indeed say that Wario took over Mario Land during the events of the first game, but does not say whether Tatanga was working under his hire. However, Tatanga reappears in ''[=SML2=]'', guarding one of the titular Golden Coins for Wario, lending credence to the theory.
3	** Biokinton, the boss of Chai Kingdom, is described in the manual as a creature so shy that no one has ever seen his body, which is obscured entirely by the cloud he hides in. While nothing is explicitly shown, the fact that Tatanga appears right after Biokinton is beaten -- and fights you in the same arena -- has led some to speculate that Biokinton was merely an assumed identity for the flying invader. It helps that, according to the manual, when Tatanga first appeared in Sarasaland, he emerged from a cloud. [[FridgeBrilliance Biokinton is the only cloud in the game, and when you defeat him, Tatanga emerges...]]
4	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: Despite being a really short game compared to the series' other games (including the sequel, ''Super Mario Land 2''), it has really great music.
5	** World 1: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OagQ94BQDaM Birabuto Kingdom / Ground Theme.]]
6	** World 2: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSSdWdJ8qQU Muda Kingdom.]]
7	** World 3: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKWdD9vaV4Y Easton Kingdom / Underground Theme.]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uedbtUi7YWo Remixed]] in ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosBrawl''.
8	** World 4: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evwUxZ7omcg Chai Kingdom.]]
9	** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoQmDkndLPs invincibility theme]] uses [[PublicDomainSoundtrack the]] [[Music/TheCancanSong Can-Can]].
10	** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxRBjOoqipU Marine Pop and Sky Pop]] auto-scrolling shooter levels have an energetic tune, as well as incorporating the main ''Mario'' theme.
11	** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGqRaAZdEuY ending theme]] is absolutely beautiful, and considered not only the best song in the game but one of the best songs in the entire series.
12	* BizarroEpisode: This game may have released when the franchise in general was only four-years-old, but it's still a huge deviation from what people expect to see in a ''Mario'' game. There's no Luigi, no Princess Peach, no Bowser, no Mushroom Kingdom. Instead, Mario's in the kingdom of Sarasaland, where he must rescue Princess Daisy from a space alien called Tantaga, flies a plane, pilots a submarine, and faces off against an assortment of ''very'' strange creatures: Koopa Troopas with ''exploding shells'', sentient stone heads that run and fly, hopping vampires, octopi, seahorses, and then some. Oh, and when he gets a flower and powers up, he throws ''superballs'' (black balls that bounce off walls and ceilings) instead of fireballs, and the Can Can Song plays instead of the Invincibility theme when he gets a star. Definitely a very strange ''Mario'' title, and no game has ever come close to being so weird and different since.
13	* CommonKnowledge: Whenever a fan brings up Sarasaland, they would often claim that it's a desert kingdom. They're about a quarter right, as Birabuto is a desert (based on Ancient Egypt to be precise). But Sarasaland also has other terrain styles like oceans (Muda), mountains (Easton), and Ancient China (Chai).
14	* EpilepticTrees: There is a theory that the player character isn't Mario, but actually ''Luigi masquerading as Mario''. This either shows how desperate Luigi is for attention, or heartwarming, as it turns Luigi and Daisy's relationship into a RescueRomance. Adding credence to this theory is the fact that back in 1989, DivergentCharacterEvolution hadn't really set in between Mario and Luigi yet, and they were still Palette Swaps of each other, which couldn't be displayed on the Game Boy.
15	* {{Fanon}}: Due to Superball Mario looking identical to Super Mario (due in part to the Game Boy's grayscale screen being unable to distinguish the two visually), some fans like to take Fire Mario's appearance in [[VideoGame/SuperMarioLand2SixGoldenCoins this game's sequel]] (with a feather on his hat) and use it as the appearance of Superball Mario, often also giving him a black or grey hat and shirt with red overalls. This would become OutdatedByCanon, however, after ''VideoGame/SuperMarioMaker2'', which reintroduces the Superball Flower into the series and gives Mario a Game Boy-styled grayscale color scheme upon touching it.
16	* HilariousInHindsight:
17	** A turtle that blows up if you stepped on it? [[WebAnimation/ASDFMovie Why does this sound so familiar?]]
18	** The boss of World 2, Dragonzamasu, resembles [[Franchise/{{Pokemon}} Kingdra]] in appearance, and it also happens to be a KingMook of the Horsea-resembling Yurarin.
19	** The fact that Sarasaland is one of the few kingdoms to be based on real world locations makes it truly ahead of its time, as kingdoms of that kind wouldn't be seen again until ''VideoGame/SuperMarioOdyssey'' came out 28 years later. Sadly, Sarasaland doesn't make an appearance in the game.
20	** It's been pointed out that the title screen --with Mario's fist raised on one side towards a single cloud floating in the sky on the opposite side-- bears an odd resemblance to the now-memetic [[GrumpyOldMan "Old Man Yells At Cloud"]] headline from ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''.
21	* ItsShortSoItSucks: It's the shortest out of all the Mario platformers, and could be cleared in little over half an hour. Only 12 levels in the entire game (less than half of the amount of levels in the original ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros1'') and each world has only three levels each, which is one of the most common criticisms people make of it.
22	* NightmareFuel: Honen are Torions that have their flesh eaten off by Tatanga. The Manga adaptation even shows it outright.
23	* PopularityPolynomial: This game, along with [[VideoGame/SuperMarioLand2SixGoldenCoins its sequel]], were acclaimed and sold well in their day, but fell into FanonDiscontinuity afterward due to their atypical plotlines and settings and being overall [[OddballInTheSeries weird]] games that lacked the involvement of series mastermind Creator/ShigeruMiyamoto. However, when fans started to critique the ''VideoGame/NewSuperMarioBros'' games (plus ''[[VideoGame/SuperMario3DLand 3D Land]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/SuperMario3DWorld 3D World]]'') [[ItsTheSameNowItSucks for their lack of variety and creativity in their settings and gameplay]], opinions on the ''Land'' titles shifted as fans would point to them and highlight how creative a ''Mario'' game can be without sacrificing the series' traditional fun gameplay (for the most part). In 2015, when Nintendo celebrated the 30th anniversary of ''Super Mario Bros.'', both ''Land'' games were included among the more iconic traditional games in the timeline.
24	* SuspiciouslySimilarSong: The music in the Marine and Sky Pop stages sounds a lot like the main theme of ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros1'', though this was probably intentional. The Game Over music also sounds like "Rock-a-Bye Baby".
25	* ViewerPronunciationConfusion: This being a Game Boy game from 1989, there are of course, no voices. As a result, a number of people wouldn't know that "Muda Kingdom" isn't supposed be pronounced "Mooda", but rather, "Myuda" (as in "Bermuda").

Context YMMV / SuperMarioLand