The Games That Made My Childhood – 01 Super Mario Land

The Original Game Boy and Super Mario Land can be considered what got me into Video Games to begin with. I was more of a rambunctious outdoor kid. I didn’t sit down and watch Saturday Morning Cartoons. I didn’t read comics as a kid, except for Sonic the Hedgehog but not until later on when I was a well-established gaming nerd. I had baseball cards and played outside a good ninety percent of the time up until middle school.

My Love of gaming started back in second grade. I lived in Virginia at the time, I moved a lot because my family was Military. We lived in a small cul-de-sac that was being developed, so only a few houses and surrounded by trees. We played in that forest quite a bit, there was a neighbor girl we played with occasionally. We were only there a year and I was maybe 7 years old so I don’t remember much about her, but she is the reason I am a gaming nerd and super addicted to collecting.

On day sometime before my birthday, she had just had her birthday, I think. She came over to show us her new toy, she had in her hands a Game Boy. The Original Grey Brick in all its glory. This was the early 90’s, I had never seen a video game before. I thought it was the coolest thing, I knew I had to have one. My Birthday was coming up and I convince my parents that that was what I wanted. I kind of remember it being like $60 or so for the Game Boy, Super Mario Land was a packed in-game. I don’t know what happened to her or where she went after we moved, but thank you, neighbor girl, for introducing me to a lifetime of entertainment.

I didn’t actually know anything about Mario at the time, so I didn’t know what to think about a weird game set in a desert with a guy spitting fireballs. I have to admit that as a kid I never got good enough to beat this game, I did when I got older. I did get far enough to learn about the sphinxes and the airplane level. Super Mario Land was a jumble of so many different themes but it was fun. I only ever played the Game Boy Mario games until the Super Nintendo came out. It may be a bit of a controversial belief, but Super Mario Land is one of my more loved Mario games.

This was a whole new world. After that, every moving car trip, every vacation drive, downtime at grandparents’ houses, anytime I couldn’t be playing outside became Video Game Time. That Grey Brick was my system of choice for around the next 6 years. Followed by every version of Game Boy they made: Pocket, Color, Advance, then onto the DS Line. I now own at least 30 consoles or handhelds and 1300 games.