Dom Robinson reviews

Price: £29.99 Players: 1-4 Instead of releasing a new Mario game on their latest handheld machine, they've taken two old ones from the Super Nintendo (aka SNES), tarted them up a bit and released them on the same cartridge. The original Mario Bros. game is simple enough and takes place on one screen, albeit with some vertical shift as it won't all fit on. Spiky enemies emerge from pipes down in the sewers and you, as Mario, have to jump up and hit the platforms when the baddies pass over you, rendering them unconscious. Run over them next and score your points. Extra points can be collected with coins that appear along the way. Connected to another GBA with a link cable, you can play as both Mario and Luigi in either this classic mode, or the battle mode. Sadly, as I was just playing with myself, the machine made a farting sound when I tried to select 'multiplayer' to see what would happen.

Sideways scrolling is the name of the game in Super Mario Bros 2 as you run from right to left, avoid getting killed and collect cherries, other paraphenalia and boost your strength with love hearts. These love hearts act like the rings in Sonic the Hedgehog. With them in your possession, getting hit by a baddie the first time won't kill you, but the next touch may well do so you must be careful. Instead of killing the enemy by jumping on top of them, here you can either pick things out of the ground to chuck in their direction or jump on one baddie's head to pick him up and chuck at the rest. Sounds a bit unfair to them, but they doubtlessly deserve it.

Don't expect to be knocked out by the graphics or sound - and with the GBA the volume is incredibly quiet even on its loudest setting - while the gameplay is simple but effective. It doesn't take a genius to work out what's required and that's where the game benefits since you can simply pick up and play without excessive reading of the manual, although a brief scan through the characters within the game is necessary. Gaming fans will be tempted to snap this one up if they're big fans of Mario, but if you played it ten years ago will you want to go back to it? For those who do it's a reasonable price to pay given that you're getting two games, but just don't expect to be bowled over by the content.

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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2001.