SUPER MARIO BALL AKA MARIO PINBALL LAND
by Andrew Fisher (@merman1974)
Super Mario Ball – released as Mario Pinball Land in the US – is a strangely international title. It stars a plumber (Italian-American) as the ball in a pinball table (an American invention), in a game published by Nintendo (Japanese) and developed by Fuse Games (British). Even stranger, I bought it from the website of a British retailer best known for selling music – HMV, named after the famous painting of a dog listening to a gramophone (His Master’s Voice).
The original Japanese cover for Super Mario Ball.
Fuse Games started in Oxfordshire, England in 2002. Founders Adrian Barritt and Richard Horrocks had previously been behind the best-selling Pro Pinball titles. Fuse approached Nintendo with a playable demo (the opening level and final Bowser confrontation) of a potential GameCube pinball title featuring Mario, but development moved to the Game Boy Advance. Barritt commented in a 2004 IGN interview the GBA was the “ideal platform for a pinball game, something that you can just pick up and knock the ball around for a bit,” and “with experience on systems like the Super Nintendo we knew we’d be able to push the hardware of the GBA very hard to its limits.” A team of just five people developed the game, originally revealed under the working title Mario Pinball. Shigeru Miyamoto was credited with a producer role, overseeing the use of Mario. Barritt later admitted in a Cubed3 interview that they wound up making the game too difficult for pinball beginners as “you had to take the time to control the ball.”
The Fuse Games logo from Super Mario Ball.
The title screen options, with Time Attack unlocked on beating a boss.
Super Mario Ball arrived in my life thanks to a sale on the HMV website, at a bargain £4.99 (about $8-9) compared to the original retail price of £29.99 ($50). It was the ninth of the eleven Mario-titled games Nintendo released on GBA, including the SNES remakes. The plot explained through a short intro sequence sees Mario and Princess Peach visiting a funfair, waiting in line to try the Air Cannon ride. This turns the rider into a ball via the Spherasizer and then shoots them out of a large cannon towards a target. As the spherical Peach is loaded up for her turn, two Goombas move the cannon to aim towards Bowser’s Castle and send Peach into the villain’s clutches once more. Mario jumps into the Spherasizer and becomes a ball to save her.
The intro sequence, with Mario and Peach queuing and the Goombas interfering.
Mario ready to launch.
Bowser’s Castle is only accessible once you have defeated a Boss.
The player presses A to launch the ball – immediately, without a pinball-style plunger – and keeps Mario in play with the L and R buttons. Alternatively the D-pad operates the left flipper, and A the right flipper. A also selects options and B activates the current power-up, shown in the item box. Mario starts with three lives and more can be earned. Play starts at the Fun Fair screen. By loading Mario into the cannon (when it is active), the player can shoot themselves to four other areas – Grassy Greens (leading to a windmill), Frosty Frontier (with icy floors and penguins), Shifting Sands (with a pyramid rising out of the desert), and Bowser’s Castle (initially unavailable).
The first screen of Grassy Greens, with locked doors.
Raise the pyramid by hitting the Sphinx statues, but do it quickly before it sinks again.
Each area is split into multiple screens separated by Doors, most of which have numbers on them. This is the number of Stars Mario must possess to open the Door, before he can be flipped along the pathway it blocked. For example the first Door inside the Haunted House requires 10 Stars. Stars are earned by completing a screen (mostly by defeating enemies) or other tasks. There are extra ways to access new screens; pushing a heavy snowman onto a crack in the ice area creates a hole leading to an underwater screen. Certain screens have different mechanics, including juggling Yoshi eggs to activate a pillar that gifts you a Star. The Mini Mushroom shrinks Mario, allowing him to be flipped into small entrances leading to a beehive and ice cave. The Mega Mushroom makes him bigger, making it easier to kill enemies and hit targets.
The Item Box contains the Mini Mushroom, press B to shrink.
Mario collects the Star on the underwater screen.
Earning Coins allows you to buy power-ups from Toad, by hitting the tent he has set up in certain screens. Yellow coins are more common, as Blue Coins are dropped by a combo of one or more kills. Some enemies are killed by one hit of the ball, others require more hits. For example, Penguins and Spinies must be flipped onto their back and then hit again to kill them before they get back up. The most useful power-up is the Blue Pipe, stopping the ball from draining (dropping off the bottom of the screen between the flippers) for a short while.
A combo creates Yellow and Blue Coins at the Fun Fair; hit the “test your strength” machine for a bonus Yellow Coin.
Toad’s yellow tent, where you spend Yellow Coins.
Visiting Toad’s tent on the Fun Fair screen, Blue Coins can buy an extra life (green mushroom) or enter the bonus games. These are based on hitting Bullet Bills and knocking back Chain Chomps, adding a bit of variety. Hitting a golden Question Mark after clearing a screen of enemies gives a random power-up, while classic ? blocks also appear on some screens to dispense Coins and power-ups when hit. Large coloured Switch Blocks must also be hit to unlock things as the game progresses. The numbered Doors and the switches make revisiting areas essential to get further.
Toad’s tent on the Fun Fair screen, where you spend Blue Coins.
The Bullet Bill bonus round, hit them for points.
The Chain Chomp bonus round, knock them back up the screen.
To proceed deeper into the Castle and find Bowser, Mario must first find four keys. These are collected by defeating a boss in each area, and then inserted into the relevant boss statue in the courtyard to raise the portcullis protecting the Castle’s entrance. The bosses included Petey the giant Piranha Plant (found inside the windmill), the Giant Boo in the Haunted House and the mummified Tutankoopa in Shifting Sands’ pyramid. The aforementioned underwater area has a familiar sunken ship; inside is the Cheep Cheep Pufferfish boss, defeated using BoBombs. Once a boss has been beaten, it is unlocked for Time Attack mode. This sees the player trying to reach and defeat a boss as quickly as possible. Waiting at the end of the game is Bowser himself.
Two keys have been inserted into the courtyard statues.
This level is open for Time Attack mode.
On the one hand it’s a clever reworking of pinball with a Mario makeover. Familiar elements such as collecting Stars, warp pipes and shy Boos hiding their faces work well. The graphics are nicely done, with the background themes helping give each of the four areas (and the Haunted House) a strong identity. The cute characters were drawn with a pre-rendering technique similar to that used for Donkey Kong Country, giving them a rounded and solid appearance. The multicoloured Shy Guys are a personal favourite, especially in a pyramid screen where they dodge between pillars. There are plenty of Yows and Ouches from Charles Martinet accompanying Mario’s bouncing movement around the themed tables. There are short but repetitive tunes for each area, while the boss themes are effective due to their faster tempo adding urgency. Boss battles are a particular highlight, especially the Pufferfish, and working out how to damage them requires strategy and timing. To collect all 35 Stars and unlock the alternative ending, Bowser must be beaten and the other four bosses (re-appearing in later rooms of the castle) defeated for a second time.
Trying to hit the Boos in the Haunted House.
The Shy Guy steps out from behind the pyramid’s pillar.
On the other hand, the gameplay can be fiddly and frustrating. The tables are cramped and the ball moves fast. It is especially annoying when you drop off one screen and back to an earlier part of the level, meaning you have to repeat a task that takes precision and timing to complete. The respawning enemies are infuriating at times, but understandable given the way the levels are designed. Although I put many hours into the game, I would not rate it among the best Mario experiences in my life.
You will see the GAME OVER screen a lot…
…but you can SAVE the game to continue later.
Released in autumn 2004, the critical response was mixed with a Metacritic average of 62%. GameSpot’s 7.5 out of 10 was positive, saying it “combines Mario with pinball to create an interesting kind of adventure game.” Nintendo World Report also gave 7.5, noting that the game was very short and the narrow Doors were “evil”. Japanese magazine Famitsu awarded three 7’s and an 8, totalling 29 out of 40. IGN’s 5/10 was more typical, complaining of “bad table layouts with an overwhelmingly annoying ‘playfield reset’ element”, and concluding, “The gameplay itself is far more flawed and annoying than it is fun to play.” Super Mario Ball was later available on the Wii U’s Virtual Console from November 2014.
Mario has been sent dizzy by the bad reviews… actually it’s when you “drain” the ball.
Fuse Games tried to correct some of the mistakes with its DS follow-up Metroid Prime Pinball. The Morph Ball was always going to be better suited to replacing a pinball than an inflated Mario, and the game has six clever tables based on locations from Metroid Prime. It came with the Rumble Pak, which plugged into the DS’s GBA port and gave tactile feedback as the game played. Fuse Games went on to create Touch Generations title Active Health with Carol Vorderman for the DS (the only game in that series developed outside Japan) and nearly folded after releasing DSiWare game Pinball Pulse: The Ancients Beckon. Merging with Barnstorm Games, the company rebranded as Silverball Games and revived Pro Pinball table Timeshock across several formats with the help of Kickstarter funding.
The cover of Metroid Prime Pinball, showing the Rumble Pak was included.
Samus in Morph Ball form has to destroy the boss on the upper screen.
As the retail landscape has changed, HMV has experienced mixed fortunes. Back in the 1980s its larger stores stocked computer games and software, but like many other high-street chains it dropped them in the 1990s once specialist retailers (the likes of GAME and GameStation, now merged) came along. In the early 2000s HMV tried returning to retailing console games and expanded, taking over book chains Waterstones and Ottakars. Overstocking of games led to periodical sales in-store and on the website, hence my bargain purchase of Super Mario Ball. Competition from online stores saw HMV enter administration in 2013, be bought up by private investment firm Hilco and then collapse into administration again in 2018. HMV remains on the British high street thanks to a buyout by Canadian chain Sunshine Records, which had previously snapped up HMV Canada.
Petey the Piranha Plant on the attack in the windmill.
When the Pufferfish is big, you hit him with a BoBomb to do damage.
Then there’s digital downloads. Personally I prefer to own a physical product – CD and vinyl for music, a paperback book to read, a DVD rather than a streaming service (although I am a recent convert to the convenience of Netflix), or a boxed video game to play. The cardboard carton of Super Mario Ball is part of my collection and I can keep it. I still love to flick through a well-written instruction manual before I play a game for the first time. I don’t have to worry about patches and DLC, or the game being “delisted” and unavailable to play any more. (I “lost” several Wii Ware titles when my first Wii failed, and I had a similar bad experience with losing games when I was forced to update my iPad). I can just put the diminutive Super Mario Ball cartridge into my GBA and play. Or my GBA SP. Or the Game Boy Player attached to my GameCube. Or my DS Lite, also coincidentally purchased from HMV (with Mario Kart DS, Nintendogs and Animal Crossing: Wild Wood).
The European cover for Super Mario Ball
I love Nintendo. I own a NES, SNES, N64, GBA, GBA SP, GameCube, DS Lite, Wii and Wii U, and plenty of Mario games for them all. But the Commodore 64 will always be my first love.
The random item collected here damages all onscreen enemies.
Yes, you have to knock the penguins over – and push that snowman onto the crack in the ice.
Hit the Blue Switch to stop the windmill’s sails spinning, and then get in there to fight the boss.
Andrew Fisher is a freelance writer specialising in retro games, with a personal collection of over 3,000 retro games across many formats. He is a regular contributor to Retro Gamer magazine – https://www.retrogamer.net, and writes the More C64 column for The Retrogaming Times website – https://www.classicplastic.net/trt/. His book The Commodore 64 Games Book 1982-19xx, featuring over two hundred game reviews, was published in 2008. He recently completed over 700 SNES game reviews (including several Picross games) for the Super Nintendo Anthology from Geek-Line Publishing. He has contributed music and been a games tester for newly released C64 games. He has been working on a book project with fellow writer Jerry Ellis, titled Arcade Imperfect, due for publication in 2020. Andrew is 45, married to Alison and helps look after his stepdaughter Madalyn.
Andrew enjoys a well-earned cup of tea from his ZZAP! 64 mug. Photo processed with the Retrospecs app.
Wahoo! You are a Super Reader! But the adventure doesn’t stop here… There’s more of this project in another castle! This article is just one level in an entire Super Mario Multiverse, a galactic collaboration between writers around the world sharing a bit of our hearts and memories about our favorite Mario games. Visit the Center of the Multiverse to see more:
