Kudos to Howard Phillips recognizing that what would eventually be known as The Lost Levels wasn't going to work well as a sequel in the US. Getting a reskinned Doki Doki Panic ended up being the best thing that could have happened to Mario because of how novel everything felt for the second time in a row.

The theme music here is just as memorable as in the original game as far as I'm concerned, and this game probably had the best controls out of any platformer to have come out at the time of its release. The visuals were colorful, had some great new enemies, nice animations, and little flourishes like stealing the magic carpet and being attacked by one of the bird doors towards the end of the game. I do think it overstays its welcome a bit, as the last third of the game starts feeling a bit repetitive, and I also wish they had done more with the Subcon world behind the magic doors. While this wasn't what they initially intended for the sequel, what they ended up with ended up working out far better.