Reviewing the Real Super Mario Brothers 2

An anonymous reader writes "When Mario Brothers 2 for the NES came out in the U.S. in 1988, many people were surprised at how different than the original Mario Brothers it was. The second Mario Brothers title that U.S. audiences know was never designed to be a Mario title at all. Instead, it's a game called Doki Doki Panic that's been modified with Mario sprites. Here's a review of the original Super Mario Brothers 2 as designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and released only in Japan. Nintendo felt that the poison mushrooms, blowing wind, and warps that took you backwards made it too difficult for North American audiences."

Links Ahoy!

[kisrael]

The Mushroom Kingdom [themushroomkingdom.net] is the best site I've seen for the Marioverse... they have a very good Doki Doki and SMB2 [themushroomkingdom.net] comparison.

Nintendo had a few oddball "2"s... I'm one of those oddball gamers who preders Legend of Zelda 2 to the original, I really dig SMB2 (it was the first game that made me think 'wow, THIS is a VIDEOGAME???', it looked that good).... and the way that Starfox 2 [dessgeega.com] was never released is a serious tragedy, it really was poised to take the series in some interesting directions, N64 is just pedestrian eye-candy in comparison...

Re:Too difficult?

[AndyG314]

There is an attitude at nintendo that americans art as good at games, or don't like hard ones, which prevails today.

Nintendo often does not releas some of its best games in the USA, and frequently "dumbs down" games for an american audience. Possibly because they see the american gaming audience as much younger...

Many ff games, SD3, and the first few fire emblem games were not released in the usa, other games like Fire Emblem path of radience were released here, but only much later, when nintendo needed something to keep the gamecube going after most other publishers had moved onto the next gen, and even then they took out nightmare mode.

I'm not sure why they do this, I don't see how it helps them, and I feel like it hurts them with the more hard core gamers.

I, for one, think it's "conversation" worthy.

[gameforge]

It may not be bleeding edge news, but original NES titles like this are worth talking about and appreciating. Shigeru Miyamoto [wikipedia.org] is, IMO, one of the most brilliant game designers ever... obviously, right? I don't remember where I read/heard this, but one of his game design "virtues" is eliminating everything between the player and the game; i.e., there's no controller in your hand, no TV, no console... just you and a game. Some games today do this well; with such sophisticated 3D graphics and surround sound, it seems like it should be easy. But the NES has only a few colors and rinky-dink sound, it's hardly accurate in any regard (simulation or otherwise). But Miyamoto and Nintendo accomplished this virtue amazingly well; they still do as far as I'm concerned. And no, I'm not a Nintendo fanboy, the last Nintendo product I bought was a SNES.

Nintendo in and of itself isn't like any other game company, and I think they're particularly interesting. They're over 100 years old... have been in everything from playing cards, to a taxi service at one point, and minute rice... and are still one of the big three game console manufacturers (the oldest one that remained successful, I might add). To rant a little... this is why when people talk about "gee, Nintendo's all washed up, Sony and MS have way better hardware", you've got to be kidding me - they're not going anywhere! And hardware isn't everything; but "fun" is almost everything. Their game console might drop in and out of popularity, or the state of the art; but it's not like MS is going to come out with the Xbox 720 and Nintendo will just fold up and go home.

(to rant a little more ;) Even without an article at all, old game history like this is a lot of fun to talk about, IMO. If you don't think it's interesting, or you already know everything there is to know about classic video games, you don't have to read the article or post a reply.

Hooray for fun games and game history!

Re:Too difficult?

[jandrese]

I always thought that was just an attempt to stroke Japanese Egos.

Most likely, SMB2 performed poorly (despite selling a TON of inital games) because it was too freaking hard for average human beings. I suspect a lot of Japanese kids moved on to less brutally punishing games (like SMB1) and complained a lot that it was just insane. Of course I don't have sales figures from Japan 1987 to coorroborate this, but I know excessively hard games can easily fall out of the "fun challenge" into the "screw this" category.

Re:Too difficult?

[some guy on slashdot]

Its possible the difficulty difference has nothing to do with the vast number of gameplay changes that get made when the game moves to the U.S market. Game developers probably tweak games for their American releases because we're the second market, and they can change things that they didn't like in the first run. They have time to make gameplay tweaks while they translate the game anyway, right?

As for the idea that the U.S. was given a "fake" SMB2 because the real one was too hard, I call bullshit. How do you think the American market would have reacted to a game that was essentially a level pack, and released only a year after the original game? It wouldn't have been worth the money, it would have made the Mario name seem generic, and would have served to dampen sales of the next Mario Bros. game. It was a better move in the American market to do something different, even if it meant making a game that was wacky and didn't quite seem to fit.

I don't know why some people seem to take the Super Mario 2 that we got as some sort of insult. It was an excellent game, and plenty hard in itself.

SuperMarioBros2(US) had more impact

[grumbel]

While historically the japanese version was the "real" SMB2, the US version had IMHO much more impact on the Mario series as a whole, plenty of enemies got taken over to the main series and some charakter behaviour as well, while with the japanese version there is pretty much nothing left. The insane difficulty hasn't been seen in other Marios, neither have the evil-bonuses. In the end SMB2(jp) really was more like a Add-On to SMB then a fully new part, so while SMB2(us) might have its faults, I am very happy that Nintendo did create it instead of just releasing SMB2(jp).

Re:Popularity of SMB

[Grey Ninja]

I'm trying to think of the highest ranking box office successes in history. Here's what I remember.

Star Wars (PG)
Titanic (PG)
ET (PG)
Indiana Jones (PG)

Then I figured that my list was probably terribly incomplete. So I looked up this [filmsite.org]. Take a look for yourself.

Re:This is news?

[Captain Cornflake]

Whats more insulting to the US: A) Nintendo not giving us the real SMB2 when it comes out? B) Slashdot trying to pass this off as a news article?

Re:Meh, what a worthless review

[Headcase88]

Luigi gets a floatier jump, but he's also taller, so he can't go through 1-block tall passages even when small. Luigi also has less traction, which is a tradeoff because being able to jump higher is a big help in some parts of the game.

Lost Levels is good, but you sure can't blame NOA for saying it was too hard back in the day.

Now for those with a USB gamepad and a NES emulator handy, I present you the "Lost Levels" of SMB3 [vintagecomputing.com]!