Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins

Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins is a platforming game for the Game Boy. It is the sequel to its more popular predecessor, Super Mario Land, and also marks the debut of Wario. Like its predecessor, it received a Player's Choice and was produced by the late Gunpei Yokoi rather than the Mario series creator Shigeru Miyamoto who wasn't involved in the development of this game.

Story
The plot (which takes place directly after the first Mario Land game) sees Mario returning to his estate after rescuing Princess Daisy only to find that it has been taken over by an old enemy, Wario while he was in Sarasaland. The six golden Coins (Mario's keys to the castle) were spread throughout Mario Land, and the game revolves around Mario traveling across his estate to collect the coins, then defeating Wario and regaining his castle.

The game begins with a simple "tutorial" level to help the player learn the controls of the game. After this is completed, the player must travel through seven different "zones" to collect the coins:


 * The Tree Zone: The Boss of this zone is a giant bird called Radonkel
 * The Macro Zone: Mario is shrunk and must defeat the giant rat Ricky
 * The Pumpkin Zone: Mario must defeat the witch Sabasa
 * The Mario Zone: Mario has to journey through a giant statue of himself and face the Three Little Pigheads at the end.
 * The Turtle Zone: Mario has to go inside of a Whale and fight an Octopus
 * The Hippo Zone a small world that features a Hippo who shoots Bubbles that Mario needs to use to fly up to the top exit into Space Zone.
 * The Space Zone: Mario has to don a space suit and journey to the Moon. The boss of this zone is Tatanga, the final boss of the original Super Mario Land, indicating that Wario may actually have orchestrated Daisy's kidnapping.

And finally, he must enter his own castle and defeat Wario.

Each zone (besides the castle) features multiple levels.

Gameplay
In many ways, this game was closer to the original Super Mario Bros. than its predecessor. The previous game included a few vehicle levels that put Mario at the wheel of a plane or submarine; these are removed in this game and replaced with the more traditional underwater levels (Mario's space travel is actually a version of the underwater levels, with the same principles). The games power-ups are a bit of a variety: the Super Mushroom and the Fire Flower perform their usual ability. There is also a Carrot which transforms him into Rabbit Mario. The Starman turns Mario invincible, but instead of jumping up and down erratically, it stay still on the ? Block. Defeating one-hundred enemies will cause a Starman to fall down to Mario. Collecting coins allows the player to play a roulette-type game where they can earn lives; this is different from other games where collecting one-hundred coins earns a 1-Up. The graphics are also notably more advanced than Super Mario Land, although all colors are still in black and white. Mario is portrayed by an actual sprite instead of block pixels.

The game is one of the first Mario games to have two different difficulty levels. The level can be chosen by picking Mario's size with the Select button before picking which file to save to.

If Mario loses all of his lives, he will also lose all the golden coins he has collected, and will have to fight their guardians once again.

The games enemies appear to have been translated much better than the first Super Mario Land, as its enemies include Goombas and Koopas, as opposed to the first games Chibibos and Nokobons.

Like Super Mario World, the game's locations can be traveled to and from by an overworld map. This gives rise to a few secrets, including "shortcuts" which allow Mario to traverse the map more quickly, and a casino where Mario can gamble his coins to earn more lives.

Common enemies

 * Goomba
 * Paragoomba
 * Koopa Troopa
 * Piranha Plant
 * Cheep-Cheep
 * Blurp

Tree Zone

 * Bopping Toady
 * Battle Beetle
 * Grubby
 * Noko Bombette
 * Bē
 * Skeleton Bee
 * Bee Larva
 * Bee'zerk
 * Cowfish
 * Dragonfly
 * Drill Mole
 * Egghead
 * Bwomp
 * Spikey
 * Sparrow

Macro Zone

 * Ant
 * Bazooka Ant
 * Miner Ant
 * Spiky Ant

Pumpkin Zone

 * Boo
 * Cyclops
 * Draculad
 * Haunted Lantern
 * Spooky Mask
 * Terekuribo
 * Umbrelloid
 * Pick

Mario Zone

 * Jumping Jack
 * Screwer
 * Tamanoripū
 * Tin Soldier

Turtle Zone

 * Fly Fish
 * Goomdiver
 * Gordo
 * Joe
 * Spiny Cheep-Cheep

Space Zone

 * Mini Ship
 * Spiky Slug
 * Star Twirler

Wario's Castle

 * Wario Mask

Bosses

 * Radonkel
 * Ricky
 * Sabasa
 * Three Little Pigheads
 * Octopus
 * Tatanga
 * Wario

Sequels & Prequels
After the introduction of Wario (who quickly became popular) the Super Mario Land series shifted its attention to him. The next game, Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, featured Wario as the protagonist, with Mario only making a minor cameo at the very end of the game. The next game in the series was simply titled Wario Land II, thus making Wario Land the final entry in the Super Mario Land series.

Although this game marked the first appearance of Wario, dialogue in the instruction booklet suggested that Wario was an old enemy of Mario who was jealous of his fame and fortune. In the comic book inspired by this game, Mario Vs. Wario, Wario was said to have been one of Mario's friends when they were both children. However because of the numerous indignities Mario (unknowingly) forced Wario to suffer, Wario swore revenge on him (which led to the events of both Super Mario Land and Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins).

References to Other Games

 * Super Mario Land - A sequel of this game. It is also revealed that Wario stole Mario's castle during Mario's rescue of Princess Daisy. Tatanga is seen working for him in Space Zone implying a connection between the two.
 * Super Mario World - Many enemies in this game return here. Also the spin jump returns.

References in Later Games

 * Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land - A sequel to Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins.
 * Super Mario 64 - The hubs in this, and every subsequent 3D Super Mario game, might have been inspired by the one main world map in this game.

Trivia

 * There is an easy way to avoid losing all the player's golden coins even if the player loses all of their lives. Simply reset the game before the "Game Over" screen appears, and the player will restart the game right before they enter the level in which the player lost their last life.
 * If the player loses a life in a level they have already completed, it is possible to exit the level by pressing Start + Select (even when the death animation is playing) without losing any lives.
 * On the File Select screen, if the player is deleting a file, Mario will transform into Bomb Mario.
 * The music for this game was done by Kazumi Totaka. If the player waits on the Game Over screen for 2 minutes and 30 seconds, Totaka's Song will play.
 * This is the first Mario game to feature a stage with an outer space setting.
 * This is the second Super Mario title (with Super Mario Land being the first) to not include Luigi, or make a reference to him.
 * This is the second game to feature a completely different Starman theme, the first being Super Mario Land.
 * This is the only game where Mario's castle makes a direct appearance.