Mario Pinball Land

The game received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the game's presentation, especially its excellent graphics, and its premise of blending Mario with pinball, but criticized its high difficulty level alongside the playfield reset mechanic of its tables, with some also faulting its overall short length.

The game is entirely single-player. To proceed, Mario must collect enough stars to open specific doors, a gameplay element borrowed from Super Mario 64. There are 35 stars to collect in total. Mario must explore different areas to reach his aim of saving the princess. There are five different worlds, each guarded by a boss. The worlds consist of the Fun Fair (the main starting area), Grassy Greens, Frosty Frontier, Shifting Sands, and Bowser's Castle.

Mario and Princess Peach visit a funfair and wait in line to try a ride called the Air Cannon, where the rider is turned into a ball via the Spherasizer and shot out of the cannon. As Peach is about to take her turn, two Goombas kidnap her by aiming the cannon towards Bowser's Castle. To save Peach, Mario uses the Spherasizer to turn into a ball, allowing for the pinball action of the game.

As Adrian Barritt and Richard Horrocks, veterans of the Pro Pinball series, had founded Fuse Games, they decided that, in the words of Barritt "we needed a bit of impact before they would even bother to speak to us". So they thought about a Mario pinball game, and produced a playable demo, featuring both the possible first area and the last one with a showdown with Bowser. Afterwards Barritt and Horrocks went to Seattle to pitch the idea to Nintendo of America executives, and were approved. As their resources were limited, Fuse decided not to develop the game for the GameCube, resorting to the Game Boy Advance instead. Barritt added that he considered the portable "[an] ideal platform for a pinball game, something that you can just pick up and knock the ball around for a bit" and stated that "with experience on systems like the Super Nintendo Entertainment System we knew we'd be able to push the hardware of the GBA very hard to its limits". Despite Fuse hiring more people, the whole game was created by a small team of only five people. Mario Pinball Land was first announced under the working title of Mario Pinball in Nintendo's product release schedule on April 1, 2004, as one of two previously unannounced Mario titles for the GBA alongside an untitled new entry in the Mario Party series that would make use of the handheld's e-Reader peripheral, with a planned release date of May 24. Further details were later revealed during the 2004 E3 expo, with playable demos and a release date of October 4. The game's final name was announced in June 2004 on Nintendo's official website.