Super Mario Land was expected to showcase the console until Nintendo of America bundled Tetris.

[2] As Mario, the player advances to the end of the level by moving to the right and jumping across platforms to avoid enemies and pitfalls,[3] the screen only scrolls to the right, as the player advances, but will not scroll back to the left, and sections of a level that have passed off screen cannot be revisited.

[4] Two of the game's twelve levels are "forced-scrolling" Gradius-style shooters where Mario helms a submarine or airplane and fires projectiles towards oncoming enemies, destructible blocks and bosses.

[5] When jumped on, Koopa shells explode after a small delay, Mario throws bouncing balls rather than fireballs (referred to as "Superballs" in the manual),[6] 1-Up Mushroom power-ups are depicted as hearts, and the level-end flagpoles are replaced with a platforming challenge.

[5] About 22 years later, Super Mario Land was released for the Nintendo 3DS via Virtual Console on June 6, 2011, as one of its first games.

[12] Its new features include an increased size (about 60 percent zoom) and an optional "shades of green" color palette to match the effect of the original Game Boy's monochrome.

[13] Following the Game Boy's "overnight success",[10] Super Mario Land became the second best-selling 1989 release in North America (below Nintendo's Tetris).

[15] Ed Semrad and Donn Nauert of the same outlet both declared Super Mario Land "easily the best Game Boy cart" of the time.

[16] Player One further pronounced Super Mario Land a "masterpiece", "the pinnacle of portable video gaming".

[2] Complex's Gus Turner wrote that the graphics were "simple",[26] and Official Nintendo Magazine said the game was "ridiculously short".

[26] Eurogamer's Chris Schilling called Hirokazu Tanaka's soundtrack "surely one of the all-time greats",[6] and Official Nintendo Magazine said it was among the "greatest videogame music ever composed".

[10] Mean Machines said it was not "a true Mario game", not worth its originally high review score, and "in retrospect, not really a classic".

[18] Glen Fox of Nintendo Life agreed, writing that it was an impressive achievement at the time but did not age as well as other Mario games.

[6] IGN's Thomas cited "out of place" gameplay elements like the shooter levels, exploding Koopa shells, non-extinguishing fireballs, and non-Princess Peach plot as departures from the series.

[5] Thomas attributed this to Mario creator Miyamoto's lack of involvement in the game's development, which he described as "famously hands-off".

But he too was perplexed by the new sphinx, seahorse, and Moai head enemies, and considered the exploding Koopa shells a "cruel trick" disdainful of the series' core gameplay.

Subsequent series games such as Super Mario Land 2 both dropped the original's tiny scale and chose the classic fire flower fireballs over the first installment's bouncing balls.

[5] The song "Supermarioland" (1992) by British group Ambassadors of Funk was inspired by the game and became a novelty hit, appearing in the UK top ten charts.

Simon Harris, the mastermind behind Ambassadors of Funk, said that he initially had no intention to create Super Mario-themed compositions, but after his friend introduced him to Nintendo's Game Boy console, he became fond of the theme music from Super Mario Land, composed by Hirokazu Tanaka.

He realised that the songs on the game's score had a similar tempo to house music, so he was able to incorporate the samples into "Supermarioland" easily, recruiting Einstein to provide the rap vocals.