Mario Pinball Land

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Mario Pinball Land
Super Mario Ball cover art
Developer(s) Fuse Games
Publisher(s) Nintendo
Producer(s) Shigeru Miyamoto
Composer(s) Nimrod Productions
Platforms Game Boy Advance, Wii U Virtual Console
Release date(s) Game Boy Advance
JP 20040826August 26, 2004
NA 20041004October 4, 2004
PAL 20041126November 26, 2004
Wii U Virtual Console
PAL 20140911September 11, 2014
JP 20140917September 17, 2014
NA 20141127November 27, 2014
Genre(s) Pinball
Mode(s) Single player

Mario Pinball Land, known internationally as Super Mario Ball (スーパーマリオボール Sūpā Mario Bōru?), is a pinball video game that was developed by Fuse Games and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy Advance and released in 2004. It is the ninth Mario game for the Game Boy Advance and is a spin-off of the Super Mario series that began on the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Gameplay

File:MarioPL.png
Mario, a ball, has just been hit by a flipper. Note the counters for stars, coins, and lives on the HUD.

To proceed, Mario must collect enough stars to open specific doors, a gameplay element borrowed from Super Mario 64. There are 35 stars to collect in total. In typical Mario fashion, Mario must explore different areas to reach his aim of saving the princess. There are five different worlds, each guarded by a boss. There's The Fun Fair (the main starting area), Grassy Greens, Frosty Frontier, Shifting Sands, and Bowser's Castle.

Plot summary

When Mario and Princess Peach visit a funfair, Peach steps into a cannon, but the cannon is operated by Goombas. The Goombas shoot Peach from the cannon into Bowser's castle, and Mario must save her. He does this by using a machine that makes him a spherical ball, allowing for the pinball action of the game.

Development

As Adrian Barritt and Richard Horrocks, veterans of the Pro Pinball series, had founded Fuse Games, they decided that, in the words of Barritt "we needed a bit of impact before they would even bother to speak to us". So they thought about a Mario pinball game, and produced a playable demo, featuring both the possible first area and the last one with a showdown with Bowser. Afterwards Barritt and Horrocks went to Seattle to pitch the idea to Nintendo of America executives, and were approved. As the resources were limited, Fuse decided not to develop the game for the Nintendo GameCube, resorting to the Game Boy Advance instead. Barritt added that he considered the portable "[an] ideal platform for a pinball game, something that you can just pick up and knock the ball around for a bit" and stated that "with experience on systems like the Super Nintendo we knew we'd be able to push the hardware of the GBA very hard to its limits". Despite Fuse hiring more people, the whole game was created by a small team of only five people.[1]

Reception

Reception
Aggregate scores
Aggregator Score
GameRankings 65%[2]
Metacritic 62 of 100[8]
Review scores
Publication Score
Edge 4 of 10[2]
EGM 4 of 10[2]
Eurogamer 5 of 10[7]
Famitsu 7, 7, 7, 8 of 10[8]
Game Informer 7.5 of 10[2]
GamePro 4 of 5[6]
GameSpot 7.5 of 10[3]
GameSpy 2.5/5 stars[5]
GameZone 8 of 10[9]
IGN 5 of 10[4]
Nintendo Power 3.8/5 stars[2]

Mario Pinball Land received mediocre reviews. The review collation site GameRankings gave a score of 65% with a large number of overall review scores lower than 72%.[2] Most reviews praised the excellent graphics, but criticized the game for being pointlessly difficult and having overall poor gameplay. IGN's review in particular criticized the gameplay for having "bad table layouts with an overwhelmingly annoying 'playfield reset' element". The review concluded that "the gameplay itself is far more flawed and annoying than it is fun to play" and rated it 5/10.[4] Adrian Barritt later admitted that during development they wound up not making the game easy enough for pinball beginners as "you had to take the time to control the ball", which lead to Fuse trying to not repeat the same mistakes in follow-up Metroid Prime Pinball.[10]

Not all reviews were negative; GameDaily.com said that the game "...may irk you on occasion, but it's definitely worth checking out," giving it 6/10.[11] GameSpot gave the game 7.5 out of 10, saying that the game "combines Mario with pinball to create an interesting kind of adventure game".[3] In one of its highest scoring reviews, The Video Game Critic gave the game an A- and said it's "hard to put down."[12]


References

  1. ↑ Fuse Games on Mario Pinball
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ GameDaily Mario Pinball Land review
  12. ↑ http://videogamecritic.net/gbamr.htm#Mario_Pinball

External links

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