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Part 1: Tetris to Super Mario Land 2
Almost anyone who bought a Game Boy bought Tetris. The king and father of puzzle action gaming is well known for causing many nights of lost sleep. It saw battle in the Gulf War, and probably is more widely owned than its NES counterpart. In a way, it was also symbolic in that Tetris was created by a Russian, but accepted widely in the US. Tetris became so big, in fact, that it eventually spawned its own company, called
(surprise!) The Tetris Company. Speaking of its foreign roots, many reviewers of later Tetris games would complain about their lack of a Russian soundtrack.Tetris was by no means the only ported game on Game Boy. Games like Pac-Man, Ninja Gaiden, Mega Man, Golf, Tennis, Dr. Mario, and many other games would make there way onto the portable. Puzzle games were the most common conversions, but Mega Man made many appearances, as well. However, Game Boy would not be complete without Nintendo's biggest mascot.
Super Mario Land seemed very odd to most people, mainly because very little translation had been done. Mario's creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, did very little with it (and all the other Mario Land games). Despite this, it sold very well, and is owned by many people even today. After SML, many games would be released, including Metroid II, Kirby's Dream Land, and many other less significant games.
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Mario. Before Pikachu (and the rest), he was the one to have. Nintendo couldn't imagine releasing a system without Mario. In fact, as powerful as Pokémon is, Nintendo still relies on Mario to launch a system. Super Mario Land was designed like a miniature Super Mario Bros (SMB3 had not yet come out). If you got hit as superball (not fiery, due to Game Boy's monochrome nature) Mario, you became small (tidbit: in the Japanese version of SMB3, you went back to small if you got hit while fiery, etc, which the programmers forgot to correct in the title screen introduction of the US version).