Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 was a huge success when it was released for the Gameboy. Who knew till this day that Wario would have some of the most popular side-scrolling games of all time? In my opinion, this series of side-scrollers can be on par with other games like Megaman, Duck Tales, and Super Mario. This time, I will be talking about the popular second game in the Wario Land series, Wario Land 2.
This time around, Wario is asleep in his huge castle that he got in the last game. Sadly, this break must end, since Captain Syrup is back again with her pirate crew to get more treasure. Though this time, she decided to steal from Wario himself. They go inside his castle and start causing mischief, and it’s up to Wario to get back his gold and beat down on Captain Syrup.
This time, it’s more of a side-scrolling adventure game, where your goal is to go from point A to point B, though the levels are set up like Duck Tales or Little Nemo, the Dream Master. Here the levels have multiple doorways to find more coins, or have the ability to play a mini-game to get a piece of treasure. Wario has a totally different style, from the 2.5D look on the last game to a flat side view. He isn’t as detailed as he was in the last game but it’s just a small gripe, and not worth putting in the bad parts of the review. This time around, Wario still has his shoulder ram attack and he can still pick up enemies. He still has power-ups, but they aren’t in the form of caps. The power-ups this time around are more status related, since some enemies have attacks, where if they hit you with that attack, you can use that said ability to get through certain areas of the game. For example, you can be squished as flat as a pancake to get through thin areas. The other abilities include Wario catching on fire to get through firebricks, Wario getting tipsy, and many more.
The graphics of the game are pretty good for Gameboy standards, but I prefer the ones from the first game. Since the first game was designed off of Super Mario Land 2, I can’t really complain about them changing up the look. The enemies from the last game are still around, but there are also new enemies like the status ailment enemies, which give Wario different abilities. The boss fights are pretty creative and fit the whole Wario style with silly anime-esque cartoon expressions, and just a fun look overall. The best feature by far is that Wario can’t die. He can collect coins and use them as his health, and each time he collects, he adds it to his health, and each time he gets hit, he loses just a few coins. It’s not like Sonic, where if he gets hit once, he loses all his rings.
Though this can be a fun game, let’s now move onto the bad parts of the game. There isn’t much so this paragraph is going to be a little shorter then other reviews. The music in this game isn’t as great as in the last game. I mean, at least there is music, but it just doesn’t seem to fit Wario. The boss fights can be a little unforgiving, since if you mess up, you are sent to a different part of the level, and will be forced to restart the whole boss fight. When you miss a treasure in the level, you can’t go back to that level and you would have to beat the whole game and do it again just to get back to the area where the treasure is.
All in all, Wario Land 2 is a pretty good game. I would highly recommend it to anyone who has Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, or Nintendo DS. Even though he is just an evil version of Mario, Wario will still have a place in my heart as one of my favorite video game characters of all time. Hopefully, I can find the third Wario land game and play that one.
This game gets a 9 out of 10.
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