Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3

Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 is a platformer developed and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy in 1994. It gives Wario, Mario's greedy rival introduced two years earlier, his first starring role, and reframes the whole genre around his character: rather than rescuing a princess, Wario is out to raid Kitchen Island for enough treasure to buy himself a castle. The design follows from that premise, rewarding thorough exploration and greed over speed. Players poke into every corner, smash blocks, and hoard coins, with the size of the ending reward, and Wario's eventual prize, scaling to how much loot they haul out. Slower, chunkier, and more methodical than a mainline Mario platformer, it suits an unhurried afternoon when there is nowhere to be and every reason to dig through a level twice. It introduced mechanics and a tone that would define the long-running Wario Land series that followed. A well-received and substantial handheld platformer, it takes a perfect summer premise, a pirate raiding an island for a pile of gold with all the time in the world, and builds a whole game around the pleasure of slowly digging it up. Its greedier, more exploratory spin on the platformer set the tone for every Wario Land that followed.