Super Mario Bros 2 Japan is rough, it's mean, it's downright cruel, and to be frank it's also just completely disgusting to look at.

And I'm not even talking about my dislike for the details they added to some of the graphics like the cocoa pebbles ground. It's the fact that Miyamoto and his crew apparently forgot that games should still be enjoyable even if the difficulty is ratcheted up several magnitudes. Making the player have to waste their precious time on this Earth to run through boring as shit maze levels is not what I call "difficulty", and neither is getting tricked into Warp Zones that force you into killing yourself via pit or painstakingly allowing the timer to run out to avoid going back to earlier levels.

It's saddening seeing Nintendo give influence to rom hackers and Mario Maker shitbags by placing invisible blocks to break your skull on and send you careening down a pit. Even more saddening that they tried to add the most horse shit attempt at longevity to the game by demanding the player beat the game eight times to access the extra stages in the original version. It's embarrassing, and I really respect NoA for vetoing this pile of shit for western release because I definitely would've fallen off the Mario hype train if I played this thing back in the day.