Sometimes, Nintendo doesn’t play it safe and tries a bold new thing with one of their classic franchises. This can turn out really well. Breath of the Wild threw out many of the Zelda tropes for a blend of open world exploration and light Souls-style combat and the result was one of the most beloved mainline entries in the franchise. It carried the legacy of Zelda weirdness from Majora’s Mask forward into the modern era.
Other times this same spirit of creativity has taken the company down a different, seemingly even more random path. In the run-up to the launch of the Game Boy, before Nintendo knew they were going to pack in Tetris, they developed a new Mario game. Set in the brand new universe of “Sarasaland,” and featuring Princess Daisy instead of Peach, Super Mario Land was meant to sell consoles the same way that the Bros trilogy had for the NES before it.
Now, even though it didn’t earn the coveted Tetris spot inside the box, it still sold something like 18 million copies — so Super Mario Land was hardly a failure. But it’s very odd in the tradition of other Nintendo creative swerves.
Sarasaland is a weird place, made up of vague fantastical takes on real-world places like Egypt, Easter Island, and…the general idea of the sea? The villain…
