It’s funny how people can turn their noses at something that’s meant to be fun. What is meant to be a celebration of the Game Boy’s 30th anniversary has been meant with mostly the praise that it rightfully deserves, but there have been some surprisingly negative feedback thrown in as well, much of which are a bit overblown.

The hack does an incredible job of colorizing the black-and-white (or pea-soup-green) world of the original game, and it breathes new life into a game that’s often overshadowed by its NES counterpart. Everything looks exactly as one would imagine the game ought to look, and it provides a colorful experience that the Super Game Boy never fully delivered. What especially impressed me was the use of ambient background colors, which adds a lot to the game; the black space in the underground sections, and the brown backdrop in the tombs, add a certain depth to those areas that you never knew they needed.

The new Mario sprite is something that you will either love or hate, but I think it’s just okay. The problem is that the original blocky Mario sprite is oriented with the front of his body facing the screen, and his head facing the side. It’s a perspective that works fine when abstracted, but looks weird when details are fleshed out, even more so when accounting for run animations. This is what’s happening here, and while the perspective and run cycles look a bit odd, they’re in no way a dealbreaker for this hack.

Some have also complained about the new sprite causing collision detection problems, which is most noticeable when jumping diagonally around coin blocks. However, I tested the game with and without the hack, and this problem is consistent with the original game.

That same comparison also determined that the hack does cause a slight dip in the frame rate. Hopefully, toruzz can find a way to optimize the code and smooth it out, but that slight dip isn’t so horrible as to not warrant giving this hack a try.

Another reviewer complained about how toruzz should have fixed a bunch of bugs, added Luigi, and throw in some additional content, but that’s not a fair assessment of a hack that only sought to give the game a fresh coat of paint in celebration of its roots. It’s like receiving a free pizza and complaining that it should have came with pepperoni, sausage, peppers, and extra cheese.

Overall, it’s not a perfect hack by any means; the goofy perspective of Mario’s sprite lends itself to his reworked sprite looking weird in its more detailed state, and there is that noticeable dip in frame rate, but this isn’t the catastrophe that some people have it out to be. It’s an enjoyable experience from beginning to end, and it’s one that will make you smile.