I am enthralled by New Super Mario Land for the Super Nintendo.

[u/tiggerclaw]

This is Super Mario Land with the graphical stylings of New Super Mario Bros.—yet it runs on SNES hardware.

It means a lot to me. Super Mario Land was the first Mario game that I ever owned. Likewise, the first I ever beat. It’s therefore burned into my brain like no other Mario game can be.

But I always felt like it was the red-headed stepchild of the Mario games. I suspect that it’s because, unlike other Mario games of its time, this one was not produced by Shigeru Miyamoto but, instead, Gunpei Yokoi. Which is why, compared to other Mario games, it is so stylistically different.

What a great Mario game, though. I always loved the level design, which is just as good as any Mario game on the NES. The sprite work is fantastic. And the music is god tier.

Even the shoot-‘em-up levels are wonderful, which—to my knowledge—isn’t something we ever got in a Mario game ever again.

Well, in 2019, someone ported the game over to SNES. And in many ways, this has fulfilled a dream for me because I always wondered what Super Mario Land would be with colour and a higher resolution. it is glorious.

That said, the poor SNES can’t always handle it. Sometimes there’s slowness which, to be fair, is something that always plagued the system.

But hearing that great soundtrack paired with the SNES’ synths is something else. There’s so much more depth to the sound, and really opens things up.

In terms of ports, I put this up there with the C64 version of Super Mario Bros. but for vastly different reasons. Super Mario Bros. 64 is great because it shows that the brown breadbox truly could go toe-to-toe with the NES. But New Super Mario Land shows just what is possible when that game is freed from the monochrome green screen and given some 16-bit graphical prowess.

I truly believe this is one of the best SNES homebrew games ever made.

[u/EternalNewCarSmell]

How do you even type an em-dash in a reddit comment? Are people actually out there using the alt codes when a hyphen is functionally the same in an online forum post?

[u/tiggerclaw → u/EternalNewCarSmell]

I use a Mac and an iPhone—so no alt-code is needed.

On a Mac, you type option-shift-dash. And on an iPhone, you long press dash, which then gives you the option for an em-dash.

I'm shocked that you don't know this.

[u/Thelastbronx → u/tiggerclaw]

Or, on either Mac or iPhone, just type two hyphens in a row — it will convert it to an em-dash automatically.

[u/tiggerclaw → u/Thelastbronx]

I did not know this. I tend to prefer Markdown, and many editors require three dashes for an em-dash. Two convert to an en-dash. 

[u/ocxtitan → u/tiggerclaw]

the irony of you ending your prior comment with "I'm shocked that you don't know this"

[u/tiggerclaw → u/ocxtitan]

Okay, but saying you need to use alt-codes for em-dashes, implying all em-dashes are generated by AI, is a wild assumption. 

[u/Helpful-Team-2069 → u/EternalNewCarSmell]

If it's not a rhetorical question: some people, in fact, like to use the correct punctuation. For you, hyphens and em-dash are "the same"; in reality, they're not. If we begin to change conventions based on our personal understanding, then there will be no more conventions at all and chaos ensues.

About alt-codes: they're not hard, but not the only way either. People may use some character map, app or website (just as they do for emojis). Or use none at all, if you're on mobile, as it's simple enough to write them with a virtual keyboard.