The Sands of Sarasaland – Music Monday – August 31, 2026

So this past weekend, I streamed a Shuffler of different Mario and Sonic games. While I was playing, there was some discussion about how one of the games I played had an underrated soundtrack, and I agreed but decided that I wanted to share some love for this game and its main theme:

Super Mario Land was the first handheld Super Mario game. I had this game as a kid on my original gray brick Game Boy. When you start the game, there’s no menu music, but as soon as you hit start it throws you into the game with this theme playing from the start. The Game Boy, with its 8 bit goodness pulls you into this melody that has a jaunty feel to it. It does a fantastic job of preparing you for a trek through the Birabuto Kingdom in Sarasaland (NOT the Mushroom Kingdom)

It’s wild to think that this game came out in 1989. This was the game that introduced Princess Daisy! This game didn’t have Bowser as a main villain! It was so different and yet I loved this game. The Star Theme being the Can-Can, the Egyptian underground theme, and the fact that Tatanga, an extraterrestrial, is the main villain of this game.

I almost would’ve said that the Birabuto Kingdom theme was lost into obscurity….if it hadn’t been for Mario Kart World on the Nintendo Switch 2. Take a listen to this amazing remix:

I went back and checked out some other remixes and there was one from a Flash Game that I can’t remember but the track stood out to me because it was from this game:

A relatively short article for a relatively short game. Have you played the Mario Land games? Let me know in the comments or on Discord.

If you haven’t seen it, check out the shuffler from the stream mentioned at the beginning of the article: