NOCLIP Pocket E100 - It Does, in Fact, Please the Lord - Super Mario Land

Oh, podcast. Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket…for the last time! We’re
interrupting our DLC theme because of the episode 100 milestone,
and we’re talking about Super Mario Land. If you’ve been following
for a while, you know that we started Pocket with an episode on
Super Mario Land 2, so we felt it was appropriate to end it with
the original Super Mario Land. This is a platformer and one of the
earliest games in the Mario series. Released on the Game Boy, the
limitations of the platform, and the age of the game, are both
apparent in how it affected visuals and design, and impressive in
how they were overcome. This feels very quaint to come back to, but
compared to how simple the majority of Game Boy games were, this
feels like a real accomplishment. With 12 levels over 4 worlds that
explore different themes, this feels more like a Mario game than
you might expect, and one that has some meat on its bones, even if
it isn’t very long. We’re going to be talking about the level
design in comparison to Super Mario Bros. and how much we think was
hardware versus the state of game design in 1989, how the music
carries the presentation despite the simple visuals distracting
from some surprisingly detailed sprites, and we call for Mario to
be restored to his former vehicle-driving glory. Thank you for
listening to NOCLIP Pocket this week! To be clear, the podcast
itself is going to continue on after today, but we think Pocket
specifically has outlived its necessity. Moving forward, we’re
going to hold on to the same release schedule and cadence of games
we talk about, but will be doing away with Pocket as a sub-show and
incorporating the shorter, weirder titles into the main show
instead. So basically we’re making a big deal out of nothing.
Pocket held some of our biggest surprises, so let us know, what was
your favorite episode of Pocket? Did you try any games you wouldn’t
have otherwise? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord!
There won’t be a next game in this case, so we’ll catch you on the
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 DLC episode next time!