GBA - Mario Pinball Land

Haiku-Review:

if you want to play
a good non-pinball pinball
game - Sonic Spinball!

Nano-rant:

...oh, and I'm not kidding either.  This game is so focused on luck of the draw it makes me want to punch a baby!!  Seriously, chuck this game and go play the far superior Sonic Spinball and you'll see exactly what a pinball/platformer hybrid should be.

Additional Comments:

Now that that's out of my system, let me clear the air.  When I first got my hands on this game, it made for a fun little time-killer.  But, good god, try and take this game to the next step - trying to beat it - and you'll start pulling your hair out over how skill-less this game is.  Take it even further and try to accomplish the 100% finish to attain the alternate ending, well....  And what really bothers me is that the game isn't even hard, it's just so frustratingly luck based, it's insane.  Case in point: second King Tut battle.  I had to have spent somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes battling that son of a bitch.  Why?  Well first off, his room is circular the second time around, and hitting the obelisks is damn near impossible due to Mario's interaction regarding the flippers and circular design often resulting in skirting the room's perimeter at top speed.  And when you finally do hit the obelisks, it's even more impossible to hit King Tut himself before you're shrunk back down to size.  The only other boss battle I can recall that even remotely stretched on for such a ridiculous amount of time was Galbalan in Ys III: Wanders from Ys, but that's because he seemed to suffer from the 2 million hp syndrome.

Really, I didn't expect much from this game to begin with, but to have Mario in the title, I did expect something a little better than this.  Oh well...

Music?  Sadly, I can only find music from the boss battles, and in my opinion, the boss battle themes just aren't as good as the stage themes, which truthfully, I enjoyed quite a bit, especially the Snowy Stage.  And in my opinion, the music is the only highlight of the game.

And so, this game is a fun little treat for about 20 minutes and then nothing but a frustrating she-bitch of a game from there on out.  Don't play it!

Rating: 1 star out of 5