This review contains spoilers
The peculiar history of the American Super Mario Bros. 2 has been well documented for decades, garnering the status as the red-headed stepchild of the Mario franchise. In short, the real Super Mario Bros. 2 was considered too difficult by American standards. Considering the content in what we in America know as Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels, they might have had a point. Instead, America was treated to something completely foreign to all of the foundations presented in the groundbreaking Super Mario Bros. Sometime later, it was revealed that the American Super Mario Bros. 2 was a Japanese game called Doki Doki Panic, masquerading as the sequel to Super Mario Bros. It was a case of Doki Doki Panic wearing Mario’s skin with only a few familiar properties to make it marginally discernible. “Super Mario Bros. 2” turned out to be a fraud. This never would have stuck with today's internet-savvy gamers, who would’ve caught onto this as quickly as the wind. In the pre-internet days of 1988, the radical changes to Super Mario Bros. 2 didn’t even raise one skeptical eyebrow. The Mario franchise was still in its infancy, and the elements that make up a Mario game weren’t as concrete. They were too busy enjoying the game to care. Nowadays, people fervently try to discredit the American Super Mario Bros. 2, labeling it as a “fake Mario game,” retrospectively noting that the game sticks out like a sore thumb. Nintendo has paved over the reskinned anomaly that is the American sequel to Super Mario Bros., but they have not erased it from the Mario canon. Nintendo has kept several properties from this version of Super Mario Bros. 2, becoming staples in the Mario universe.
Immediately, something about Super Mario Bros. 2 should ring suspiciously. The player chooses between four characters instead of being catapulted into the action as the titular red plumber. Mario is one of the selectable characters, but who wouldn’t be intrigued by the new options presented here? The other playable characters are Luigi, Toad, and Princess Toadstool/Peach, a few recognizable characters from the first Super Mario Bros. The selection here seems appropriate enough, but I can’t help but think it was slim-picking back in 1988 before the Mario universe expanded. These were the four characters from the first game that weren’t enemies or Bowser. Doki Doki Panic offered four different playable characters, so Super Mario Bros. 2 had to follow suit, I suppose. Each character also comes with their own unique abilities, something also copied and pasted from the Doki Doki Panic source. The recognizable Mario characters are painted over the characters from Doki Doki Panic with the same attributes. Mario is the balanced character with a reasonably high jump radius, Luigi jumps higher but is harder to control, Toad can’t jump as high but seems to be the strongest, and Peach is the wildcard character with a gliding motion.
The moves that Mario characters have here are directly intertwined with their DDP counterparts, but the dynamic between each character has carried over into future Mario games. Luigi was essentially just “green Mario” in the first game with no unique attributes. His swapped color pallet signified that it was the second player’s turn. Luigi was the same as Mario to keep both players on equal standings, but Super Mario Bros. 2 doesn’t offer multiplayer. Here, Luigi’s differences help formulate him into a character that is entirely removed from Mario. In the direct sequels, Luigi is reverted back to a reskinned Mario for the second player. Over time, Luigi formed his own independent personality and moveset. He was the taller, more air-bound younger brother, exactly how he was in Super Mario Bros. 2. The plucky cowardice of Luigi’s personality came later. Toad is confined to an unplayable in subsequent Mario titles, which is a shame because he’s a favorite character in this game due to his strength. One could argue that his inclusion in this game is only due to having a minor presence as an NPC in the first game, but this game proves that Toad can be fully capable of the action. Princess Peach’s character here isn’t implemented much into the main Mario franchise due to her obligatory role as being more catchable than chlamydia at a Vegas whorehouse. The traces from Super Mario Bros. 2 are not lost as they carry over into Peach’s role in Super Smash Bros. Peach can glide in the air for a short time and pull a vegetable out of the ground to use as a projectile. If that’s not enough of a Super Mario Bros. 2 easter egg, plucking from the ground as Peach will net you a bomb on rare occurrences, a happenstance from Super Mario Bros. 2
Nintendo may have carried over different attributes introduced for the playable characters, but the most important inclusion is all of the staple Mario enemies introduced in this game. Unlike the playable characters, these enemies are directly from DDP, so the Mario franchise has adopted these enemies directly from the main source. It’s unbelievable how many recognizable enemies are in this game. The Shy Guys, Pokies, Ninji’s, Bob-omb’s, and even the androgynous Birdo debut here. These are all Mario enemies that have a presence in the franchise, practically to the same degree as Goombas and Koopas from the first game. Yet, they all would have been relegated to an obscure Japanese game if Nintendo hadn’t decided to repaint DDP as a Mario game.
If you start to consider a few things, these enemies more or less fit more appropriately into the lore and background of Doki Doki Panic than any Mario game. The Mario series is inspired by sections of Japanese culture and mythology, namely the villains like the shiitake mushroom-shaped Goombas and the Koopas. Doki Doki Panic is heavily inspired by Arabic mythos. There are many desert-themed levels in Super Mario Bros. 2, and the magic carpet rides are a dead giveaway. The playable characters from DDP that were reskinned as Mario characters are wearing turbans and other middle-eastern garbs. The only aspect of DDP that allows it to be absorbed by the Mario universe without seeming totally unfit is the element of vague psychedelia. The first Super Mario Bros. and Doki Doki Panic take place in a colorful world with a myriad of strange creatures to dismantle their oppressive regime, a rabbit hole of an adventure similar to Alice in Wonderland. The only difference is that DDP opens with a cutscene that explains the story's premise better. The world takes place in an Arabic storybook, and two children have been pulled in and captured by Mamu, or Wart as he is known in the American Super Mario Bros. 2 and the four characters have to rescue them. In Super Mario Bros. 2, there is absolutely no context to the surroundings until the very end.
Besides the enemies and the backgrounds, the most radical shift in the American Super Mario Bros. 2 is the gameplay. I remember playing this game for the first time as a kid and wondering why the enemies weren’t defeated when I jumped on their heads as I rode on top of a Shy Guy for two minutes. The trick that I soon became privy to is that everything in this game is defeated by either picking it up and throwing it or throwing something at an enemy. Every enemy can be easily hoisted up and disposed of, making the game's difficulty always manageable in terms of combat. Some vegetables can be used as projectiles after rooting them from the ground. Mushrooms are not found in boxes but through doors that teleport you to a nocturnal, parallel space to the surrounding area. The mushrooms are not from DDP but a staple item to make the reskinned game feel more like Mario. Many of the more distinctive aspects of DDP were translated to fit the Mario universe, like Koopa shells instead of shrunken heads and going through doors instead of genie lamps. The sound design in Super Mario Bros. 2 is also leagues better than the ear-piercing effects from DDP.
One thing from the original DDP that isn’t translated more effectively into Super Mario Bros. 2 is the difficulty. My biggest grievance is the game’s arcade-style difficulty, in which you go back to the beginning when you get a game over, but I could say this about any game with this direction. Super Mario Bros. 2 has other difficult aspects that make me wonder about the quality of this game. The movement in Super Mario Bros. 2 is very loose and flighty. This may just be because I primarily play as Luigi, but I found this to be the case playing as the other characters as well. Jumping on a foe to pick them up can be inaccurate at times resulting in unfair damage done to the player. Ironically, my biggest gameplay gripe comes with the game demanding too much precision. In the underground sections of the game, the player has to pluck the bombs from the ground and use them to blast open areas in solid dirt barriers to progress. Unfortunately, the bombs have a blast radius of a tepid fart, so the player has to be incredibly accurate to blow up the barriers. The player has a finite number of bombs, so the player will have to restart plenty of times. The dirt-digging sections suck, and while the key chase sections are tense and harrowing, that mask is way too fast for anyone’s convenience.
The biggest improvement from the first Mario game, reskinned from another game regardless, are the boss battles. Getting to the end of Bowser’s castle eight separate times got incredibly stale very quickly, but Super Mario Bros. 2 offers many different, formidable foes at the end of each world. Mowser is a bomb-throwing rodent that will test your bomb-cooking abilities, Tryclyde is a hydra creature that will test your throwing abilities, and Clawgrip is a crab that will test both. Between all of these bosses are the Birdo encounters where she will spit eggs at you to throw them back at her. These occurrences happen at least 15 different times, but Birdo alternates her color and her attack patterns to prevent her encounters from becoming stale like Bowsers. Wart, the final boss of the game, is a portly toad who is defeated by every fat person’s true weakness: healthy food. He’s not more difficult than the other bosses but takes a few more hits to take down. After he chokes on too many garlic cloves, Wart is defeated, and the player rescues some fairy creatures trapped in a vase. All the player characters celebrate, and Wart is dragged off and disposed of by the serfs of the kingdom. The entire game is then revealed to be a dream that Mario is having.
Unbelievable. The game’s premise is one of the most cliche endings any narrative can have. This is the best they could do? After some consideration, however, the American Super Mario Bros. 2’s existence is like a weird fever dream. It’s a reskinned version of an obscure Japanese game with almost every property kept with Mario’s persona at the helm. It holds a bizarre place in the history of gaming’s most iconic franchise, and its further recognition in the Mario canon naturally draws some ire from fans. It doesn't seem as if Nintendo is ashamed of this game. However, as many properties from DDP have been adopted into the Mario universe, such as the enemies and character abilities. The four playable characters in the more modern Super Mario 3D World are the same as they are here, an obvious tribute to Super Mario Bros. 2. It was an interesting idea that people only have discrepancies with retrospective insight. The players in 1988 didn’t care because it was a solid successor to the first Super Mario Bros., and the fact that it was copied from another game didn’t matter in the long run.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
Immediately, something about Super Mario Bros. 2 should ring suspiciously. The player chooses between four characters instead of being catapulted into the action as the titular red plumber. Mario is one of the selectable characters, but who wouldn’t be intrigued by the new options presented here? The other playable characters are Luigi, Toad, and Princess Toadstool/Peach, a few recognizable characters from the first Super Mario Bros. The selection here seems appropriate enough, but I can’t help but think it was slim-picking back in 1988 before the Mario universe expanded. These were the four characters from the first game that weren’t enemies or Bowser. Doki Doki Panic offered four different playable characters, so Super Mario Bros. 2 had to follow suit, I suppose. Each character also comes with their own unique abilities, something also copied and pasted from the Doki Doki Panic source. The recognizable Mario characters are painted over the characters from Doki Doki Panic with the same attributes. Mario is the balanced character with a reasonably high jump radius, Luigi jumps higher but is harder to control, Toad can’t jump as high but seems to be the strongest, and Peach is the wildcard character with a gliding motion.
The moves that Mario characters have here are directly intertwined with their DDP counterparts, but the dynamic between each character has carried over into future Mario games. Luigi was essentially just “green Mario” in the first game with no unique attributes. His swapped color pallet signified that it was the second player’s turn. Luigi was the same as Mario to keep both players on equal standings, but Super Mario Bros. 2 doesn’t offer multiplayer. Here, Luigi’s differences help formulate him into a character that is entirely removed from Mario. In the direct sequels, Luigi is reverted back to a reskinned Mario for the second player. Over time, Luigi formed his own independent personality and moveset. He was the taller, more air-bound younger brother, exactly how he was in Super Mario Bros. 2. The plucky cowardice of Luigi’s personality came later. Toad is confined to an unplayable in subsequent Mario titles, which is a shame because he’s a favorite character in this game due to his strength. One could argue that his inclusion in this game is only due to having a minor presence as an NPC in the first game, but this game proves that Toad can be fully capable of the action. Princess Peach’s character here isn’t implemented much into the main Mario franchise due to her obligatory role as being more catchable than chlamydia at a Vegas whorehouse. The traces from Super Mario Bros. 2 are not lost as they carry over into Peach’s role in Super Smash Bros. Peach can glide in the air for a short time and pull a vegetable out of the ground to use as a projectile. If that’s not enough of a Super Mario Bros. 2 easter egg, plucking from the ground as Peach will net you a bomb on rare occurrences, a happenstance from Super Mario Bros. 2
Nintendo may have carried over different attributes introduced for the playable characters, but the most important inclusion is all of the staple Mario enemies introduced in this game. Unlike the playable characters, these enemies are directly from DDP, so the Mario franchise has adopted these enemies directly from the main source. It’s unbelievable how many recognizable enemies are in this game. The Shy Guys, Pokies, Ninji’s, Bob-omb’s, and even the androgynous Birdo debut here. These are all Mario enemies that have a presence in the franchise, practically to the same degree as Goombas and Koopas from the first game. Yet, they all would have been relegated to an obscure Japanese game if Nintendo hadn’t decided to repaint DDP as a Mario game.
If you start to consider a few things, these enemies more or less fit more appropriately into the lore and background of Doki Doki Panic than any Mario game. The Mario series is inspired by sections of Japanese culture and mythology, namely the villains like the shiitake mushroom-shaped Goombas and the Koopas. Doki Doki Panic is heavily inspired by Arabic mythos. There are many desert-themed levels in Super Mario Bros. 2, and the magic carpet rides are a dead giveaway. The playable characters from DDP that were reskinned as Mario characters are wearing turbans and other middle-eastern garbs. The only aspect of DDP that allows it to be absorbed by the Mario universe without seeming totally unfit is the element of vague psychedelia. The first Super Mario Bros. and Doki Doki Panic take place in a colorful world with a myriad of strange creatures to dismantle their oppressive regime, a rabbit hole of an adventure similar to Alice in Wonderland. The only difference is that DDP opens with a cutscene that explains the story's premise better. The world takes place in an Arabic storybook, and two children have been pulled in and captured by Mamu, or Wart as he is known in the American Super Mario Bros. 2 and the four characters have to rescue them. In Super Mario Bros. 2, there is absolutely no context to the surroundings until the very end.
Besides the enemies and the backgrounds, the most radical shift in the American Super Mario Bros. 2 is the gameplay. I remember playing this game for the first time as a kid and wondering why the enemies weren’t defeated when I jumped on their heads as I rode on top of a Shy Guy for two minutes. The trick that I soon became privy to is that everything in this game is defeated by either picking it up and throwing it or throwing something at an enemy. Every enemy can be easily hoisted up and disposed of, making the game's difficulty always manageable in terms of combat. Some vegetables can be used as projectiles after rooting them from the ground. Mushrooms are not found in boxes but through doors that teleport you to a nocturnal, parallel space to the surrounding area. The mushrooms are not from DDP but a staple item to make the reskinned game feel more like Mario. Many of the more distinctive aspects of DDP were translated to fit the Mario universe, like Koopa shells instead of shrunken heads and going through doors instead of genie lamps. The sound design in Super Mario Bros. 2 is also leagues better than the ear-piercing effects from DDP.
One thing from the original DDP that isn’t translated more effectively into Super Mario Bros. 2 is the difficulty. My biggest grievance is the game’s arcade-style difficulty, in which you go back to the beginning when you get a game over, but I could say this about any game with this direction. Super Mario Bros. 2 has other difficult aspects that make me wonder about the quality of this game. The movement in Super Mario Bros. 2 is very loose and flighty. This may just be because I primarily play as Luigi, but I found this to be the case playing as the other characters as well. Jumping on a foe to pick them up can be inaccurate at times resulting in unfair damage done to the player. Ironically, my biggest gameplay gripe comes with the game demanding too much precision. In the underground sections of the game, the player has to pluck the bombs from the ground and use them to blast open areas in solid dirt barriers to progress. Unfortunately, the bombs have a blast radius of a tepid fart, so the player has to be incredibly accurate to blow up the barriers. The player has a finite number of bombs, so the player will have to restart plenty of times. The dirt-digging sections suck, and while the key chase sections are tense and harrowing, that mask is way too fast for anyone’s convenience.
The biggest improvement from the first Mario game, reskinned from another game regardless, are the boss battles. Getting to the end of Bowser’s castle eight separate times got incredibly stale very quickly, but Super Mario Bros. 2 offers many different, formidable foes at the end of each world. Mowser is a bomb-throwing rodent that will test your bomb-cooking abilities, Tryclyde is a hydra creature that will test your throwing abilities, and Clawgrip is a crab that will test both. Between all of these bosses are the Birdo encounters where she will spit eggs at you to throw them back at her. These occurrences happen at least 15 different times, but Birdo alternates her color and her attack patterns to prevent her encounters from becoming stale like Bowsers. Wart, the final boss of the game, is a portly toad who is defeated by every fat person’s true weakness: healthy food. He’s not more difficult than the other bosses but takes a few more hits to take down. After he chokes on too many garlic cloves, Wart is defeated, and the player rescues some fairy creatures trapped in a vase. All the player characters celebrate, and Wart is dragged off and disposed of by the serfs of the kingdom. The entire game is then revealed to be a dream that Mario is having.
Unbelievable. The game’s premise is one of the most cliche endings any narrative can have. This is the best they could do? After some consideration, however, the American Super Mario Bros. 2’s existence is like a weird fever dream. It’s a reskinned version of an obscure Japanese game with almost every property kept with Mario’s persona at the helm. It holds a bizarre place in the history of gaming’s most iconic franchise, and its further recognition in the Mario canon naturally draws some ire from fans. It doesn't seem as if Nintendo is ashamed of this game. However, as many properties from DDP have been adopted into the Mario universe, such as the enemies and character abilities. The four playable characters in the more modern Super Mario 3D World are the same as they are here, an obvious tribute to Super Mario Bros. 2. It was an interesting idea that people only have discrepancies with retrospective insight. The players in 1988 didn’t care because it was a solid successor to the first Super Mario Bros., and the fact that it was copied from another game didn’t matter in the long run.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com