Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins

Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins is Nintendo’s 1992 Game Boy platformer and the direct follow-up to the original Super Mario Land. Developed and published by Nintendo, it brings Mario back to Mario Land after Wario seizes Mario’s castle and places the land’s inhabitants under a spell. The game is notable as Wario’s debut: Mario’s greedy new rival has scattered the six Golden Coins needed to open the castle gate, giving the adventure its central goal.

Like other side-scrolling Mario games, each course asks players to guide Mario to an exit while avoiding hazards, finding blocks and items, and defeating enemies. The Game Boy’s Control Pad moves Mario, while the action buttons handle jumping and running; a precise jump remains the basic way to overcome foes and gaps. Super Mushrooms make Mario larger, Fire Flowers allow him to throw fireballs, and Stars grant temporary invincibility. A heart item adds an extra life, while coins can be spent in a bonus area for chances at lives and power-ups.

The most distinctive new item is the Magic Carrot, which turns Mario into Bunny Mario. In that form, he can make higher jumps and slow his descent by using his ears, changing how players approach long drops and hidden routes. Super Mario Land 2 also lets Mario move left as well as right through its levels, and its courses have more vertical space than the first Game Boy entry. Clearing a stage means reaching its exit door; hitting the bell above it starts a bonus game. The cartridge saves progress, an especially useful feature for a portable game with many areas to revisit.

Mario Land is arranged around a world map rather than a single fixed sequence. After the opening, players can tackle its six themed zones in their preferred order, from the unusual Macro Zone, where Mario appears tiny in an oversized setting, to the Space Zone and the underwater Turtle Zone. Many regular stages can be replayed, and alternate exits uncover secret levels. Each zone culminates in a boss guarding one Golden Coin. Collecting all six opens the route to Mario’s castle, where the campaign ends with a multi-stage confrontation against Wario.

The Game Boy release shares familiar Mario series foundations—question blocks, pipes, Goombas, Koopa Troopas, power-ups, and secret paths—while using a structure closer to the larger contemporary home-console adventures than to its own predecessor. Its large character sprites and varied zones make each stop on the map feel different despite the original Game Boy’s monochrome screen. Nintendo later reissued Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins for Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console, preserving the original Game Boy game for another generation. More importantly for the wider series, Wario’s introduction here led directly to Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 and established a character who would become a regular part of Mario games.