The Games That Made My Childhood – 09 Yoshi and Tetris

There isn’t a whole lot to say about either of these so I feel like if I don’t combine them into one post there would just be 2 super short posts. Both Yoshi and Tetris can be considered Puzzle Games. I never spent hours playing either of these, they were just shorter time-wasting games.

First up, Yoshi and yes that is the entire game title. A puzzle game similar to Tetris where you have to keep the stacks from getting too tall in order to keep from losing. There are 4 stacks, Mario can have his hands on two stacks at a time and whichever stacks he is holding will trade places. If two of the same enemy touch, they will destroy each other and clear the space. There are also two halves of a Yoshi shell which can be put together to make a Yoshi, the shell halves will also clear out all enemies between the two halves. The game never ends, it just speeds up as the “levels” increase. Yoshi keeps track of a high score and how many Yoshi’s you create.

Tetris was a game that existed on pretty much every system, and they all play exactly the same. For those of you out there who by some miracle have never seen Tetris, I’ll go ahead and explain it quickly. Different shaped blocks fall from the top of the screen and the player can direct where they land and rotate the pieces as they fall. If the player completes a horizontal row, the entire row disappears. If you fail to remove rows and the stack of blocks reaches the top of the screen you get a “game over”. The more rows the player erases the higher their score. As the game progresses, the pieces spawn and fall faster.

Yes, I did say this was going to be short. You can see why I didn’t want to make those separate posts. Neither game is particularly exciting or filled with replay value. They are just the kind of thing to waste time or calm you down from other difficult games. I would definitely give them a try if you have never played them for sure. In fact, I recommend pretty much every game I list. It is always fun to try new games whether they are good or bad, what someone considers a bad game might be fun to someone else.

The Games That Made My Childhood – 08 Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3

I had to change a few things. Originally, I was going to do this one last week, but I decided the Super Mario Land games needed to be done in order. Back when I was a kid, we didn’t know much about the Mario Bros. For most of us, Wario wasn’t an idea yet. I grew up on the Game Boy, and most of what I knew came from the Game Boy games, I didn’t see the original NES Super Mario Bros until I had a SNES and Mario All-Stars. I think it’s entirely possible I picked this up just by the Super Mario Land 3 part of the title.

If you haven’t noticed by now, all the Super Mario Land games are a continuing story. The first Was Mario rescuing Daisy. The Second was Mario trying to take back his castle from Wario who stole it while Mario was rescuing Daisy. The third is Wario trying to get his own castle after Mario took his castle back. So here we have Wario who left for an island, found a genie, and for some reason is trying to raise money to pay the genie. Actually, money determines what kind of castle you get at the end of the game.

Just like Super Mario Land 2, Wario Land has different areas and stages. There are 7 areas of the island, filled with unique enemies that haven’t shown up in Mario games. Wario’s goal is to collect all the coins on the island, and stages have hidden treasure rooms to loot that help with the final overall coin count. If you manage to collect everything and score 99,999 coins, Wario will get his own planet. Don’t confuse this with Mario though. Since coins are the treasure we need to get the best castle and be better than Mario, coins won’t get you an extra life, 100 hearts are what give you extra lives.

So, this time we are playing not as Mario but as Wario. Wario has some different moves. He can jump like Mario, but he can also do a charge to rush through enemies and brick walls. Wario can pick enemies up and throw them at other enemies. Wario can collect different hats for some unique abilities; A horn Viking hat lets increases his strength and charge damage, A jet hat lets him run faster and charge underwater, and a dragon hat lets him breathe fire.

I really enjoyed Wario Land as a kid. I had a small collection of Game Boy games and the three Super Mario Land games are something I poured a lot of time into. I haven’t played any of these games in years, but I’m going to a con in a week or two as Captain N and I have vowed to only take my original Game Boy with its Flash Cartridge. After starting this and feeling nostalgic, I very much want to play some of these games again, it’s been too long.

The Games That Made My Childhood – 07 Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins

I experienced a few different Mario games on Game Boy before I ever saw Super Mario Bros on the NES. Super Mario Land was what came with my Game Boy, my first video game. As a kid, I only ever had access to about 10 different Game Boy games, and some of those technically belonged to my sister. I have all of those games now; Super Mario Land 2 was one of hers and I had to fight to get a chance to play. Super Mario Land 2 was vastly different from the original and also vastly superior.

In Super Mario Land 2, Mario returns from his adventure in Super Mario land. After Rescuing Daisy, Mario Returns to discover that Wario has stolen his castle locking him out and placing the people of Mario Land under his curse. Now he must collect the six golden coins to break the magic barrier locking him out of the castle. Wait, Mario has a land and a castle? I don’t think these have ever been mentioned since. He must have been embarrassed after Wario took over, I always thought he lived in Peaches Castle. Maybe after Paulina and Daisy, Peach was mean enough to take all of Mario’s Land to add to her kingdom. I knew Peach wasn’t the nicey-nice ruler everyone thought she was, Mario should have stayed with Pauline.

Where Super Mario Land and Super Mario Bros were fairly linear, Super Mario Land 2 gave you a few different “worlds” and let you visit them in any order you wanted; There was a Tree zone where you walked through a giant tree among giant insects, The Space Zone where you walked around the moon and floated in low gravity, The Macro zone where you were really small inside a house, The Pumpkin Zone where you walked through a graveyard and it might as well have been Halloween, The Mario Zone where there are a lot of gears and circus enemies but you are inside a giant robot Mario and The Turtle zone where it’s tropical and infested with pirates. Each area had a boss and you had to eventually go through all six worlds to collect the coins that would unlock the door to Mario’s Castle.

Super Mario Land 2 had the normal mushroom and fireball power-ups but introduced the carrot that turns Mario into a rabbit, this lets him jump really high and flaps his ears to fall slower. There were also a lot of unique enemies that I don’t believe have ever been seen in other Mario games such as the bear on a beach ball, the giant bugs, the cannonball shooting pig, the hockey mask, the cowfish, or any of the japan demon themed monsters. The enemies were really themed to the worlds. Super Mario Land 2 also had a little casino thing where you could spend coins to hit a spinning wheel to get power-ups and extra lives.

I was always a fan of Super Mario Land, but Super Mario Land 2 was probably my favorite Mario game for most of my childhood. This is definitely a game I would like to go back and play again in the near future.

The Games That Made My Childhood – 06 Taz-Mania 2

I grew up with the Looney Tunes. I was a huge fan of the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote. However, I also happened to really like the Tasmanian Devil. I had Taz-Mania 2, yet I never knew about or tried to find a Taz-Mania 1.

In Taz-Mania 2, if you haven’t guessed already, you play as Taz the Tasmanian Devil. Taz’s family has been kidnapped by hunters and Taz has to go save them. Taz-Mania is a platforming game, meaning you have to navigate your way through levels and jump over obstacles while either avoiding or killing enemies, and you only have 5 minutes to get through a level. There are little power pellets and such to grab along the way. Taz has health points so after 5 hits you die and have to start over at the last checkpoint. Taz-Mania has a few types of pickups in it; Food will heal Taz, non-food things like torches will hurt Taz, coins will give you points an 100 coins will give Taz an extra life, half and full circle arrows will give Taz spin-power. Spin power is what Taz uses to make his Tornado and defeat enemies, it is also what lets him gain extra speed going downhill to jump across extra-long gaps. Spin power runs out quickly though, it only lasts about 10 seconds. Taz has to get through 16 levels and bosses to save his family.

The beginning years of my gaming life were pretty much just the Game Boy, I didn’t know the NES existed at that time. I will admit that back then I much preferred Taz-Mania 2 over Super Mario Land. I probably honestly played Taz-Mania a lot more than I did Mario, at least until Super Mario Land 2 came along. We only owned about 10 Game Boy games as a kid, and while that made it easy to take every one along on a road trip in my case, I didn’t play every one constantly. There were games Like Taz-Mania that I played more than others.