The Super Mario Land series was Nintendo’s chance to bring its flagship game series to the Game Boy handheld console.

The second instalment landed in 1992 to generally strong reviews, but the game also introduced the world to Wario for the first time. Bwahahaha!

Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins

This one always felt like quite an odd Mario game whilst playing it – some of the level designs is a bit atypical for the series.

But we loved the game as young ones, revelling in the Game Boy adventure of finding those six pesky coins, which requires your standard level completion and defeating various bosses.

As kids playing this, we kind of felt it was the “dark” Mario game.

Bits of it genuinely creeped us out. Perhaps it was because of the lack of colour, with most titles in the series an impossibly vibrant experience.

At the time, it also felt like quite the mammoth adventure. We didn’t complete it, but as you can see above it’s possible to run through the title in about half an hour.

It’s certainly not the best Mario experience you can enjoy. But as a Game Boy effort, it was a big step up over its rather basic predecessor.

And it’s something Nintendo decidedly added to for Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3. What a dodgy title that was, looking back now, but a fine game all the same.

The Speedrun

It wouldn’t be a retro game unless someone out there has do a speedrunning mission on it. But Games Done Quick did an extra special one for IGN back in 2016.

They completed 6 Golden Coins in seven minutes! Yikes. But the good thing is the semi-annual event is all in the name of charity. Nice to know magnanimous sorts are out there, eh?

Speedrunners don’t typically set out to complete the game in a way you might expect. Through fact-finding experimentation, they “break” the game to find astonishing bugs.

These issues typically let a player finish the title much faster than would normally be feasible. And the net result is Super Mario Land 2 is wrapped up in seven minutes.