Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988)

The story of how this came to be is more interesting than the game itself. With the president of Nintendo America basically telling Nintendo hard pass on the actual Super Mario Bros 2. Truth be told, I also found the game to be more frustrating than enjoyable, much like the American based Nintendo office said. Still it was a weird move to take a completely different game, reskin it then sell it as Mario. It's honestly a good game in its own rights. By subsuming the Mario name, it certainly guaranteed this game would be remembered well beyond the NES shelf life. I kind of doubt this game franchise (Doki Doki Panic) would have taken off on its own and created a new franchise. Not because it's bad. It's just very weird and quirky.

It plays very differently from Super Mario Bros. It's more floaty with it's controls and honestly in most ways controlled better than Super Mario Bros. I certainly died less often from the controls. But also to be fair the game didn't have nearly as difficult platforming challenges. It also feels more like an adventure game. It's still quite linear. But later levels get increasingly more complicated and long. Sometimes featuring a few branching paths. It also features better boss fights than what Super Mario Bros had to offer. The boss fights do get pretty repetitive with Birdo getting reskinned and reused a ton. Then some weird frog villain named Wart to end the game. Mario does at least establish a villain before the end of the first world. Featuring Bowser getting dunked into a pit of lava over and over again. Yet still managing to beat Mario to the next castle only to get dunked again.

I did like the art direction and while there was basically two songs for the entire game, they were colorful and bright. I liked the Whale level in particular.

Preliminary: Welp, I'm worried this might feel a bit redundant since I already played Doki Doki Panic and loved it. I suppose in this one you can change characters between each level so I could get a feel for more characters (in Doki Doki Panic, you play as one character for the whole game. Which had a nice replayability factor, so you could experience the game with the different skills). It's funny I just looked at my Doki Doki Panic review and I used the word redundant right at the start of that one too :-p Anyway, I love that it's a game I can just pick up and play, and one I have nostalgia for. Hopefully that'll make up for it basically being a re-skin of a game I already played. I always liked playing as Princess Peach as a kid, and I only got to try one of the characters in Doki Doki Panic, so here goes nothing!

Day 1

Maybe it's just cuz I have higher expectations now with late 88 games than when Doki Doki Panic came out, but it feels clunky. Not liking Luigi's jump much, no wonder I avoided him back in the day. And because I already played Doki Doki, I'm struggling to justify pushing through. That being said, I had a morning meeting so had to get up an hour earlier than usual, and was a brutal day at work, and couldn't really get motivated to OSRS boss either so it could just be the day :-p I think that is, at least, the cause of me not liking the sound effects :-p the ladder climbing is really annoying me rn. And the scrolling...

Yeahhhh I think I am going to stop here. If I return to it tomorrow and enjoy it more, I will properly revisit it. Otherwise I will just call it today.

Day 2

Welp, I took a break last night and got into Alien Crush and into the [turns out it was 1990] DOS game Dangerous Dave, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed but had to drop Dangerous Dave since the version I was playing was a 1990 remake basically. So today I returned to Super Mario 2, a nostalgic game but was dragging yesterday when I had to build up the mushroom things to reach a platform (thank goodness for the duck power jump, but still needed to build those like a pyramid). At first I was still not clicking with it, with this basically being Doki Doki Panic but with Mario tunes and characters, but now that I'm on to world 3 I'm getting in the groove and after trying out the original 1988 Apple II version of Dangerous Dave (as opposed to the 1990 one I was all excited about last night lol), it's nice to return to the tight, responsive controls of the NES. Fast, intuitive gameplay, I know there's a lot more to this game but I'm just playing it to win, seeing what Red Potions I can find to up my overall health for a world and otherwise just playing to find the boss and finish the level :-p Good ol action platformer fun. I could use warps and whatnot since, again, this is basically just Doki Doki Panic with tweaks, but I am going to try to play through it all. Plus I only know a couple warps, and I wanted to play this blind.

I like how fast-paced the controls are like the ladders, but then it resulted in some silly deaths like when I fell down the gap of a ladder rather than going down the ladder. And I keep getting stuck up against walls and platforms, quite amateurish. It felt a bit more glitchy than I remember Doki Doki being but I'm sure that's just perception. I'm flying through it tho may be able to finish it tonight. Lol I love how their heads are big even when they get small

Day 3

This game really is very glitchy. Just got stuck here

At last I have beat this. I almost dropped the game, but glad I pushed through to the end, tho Doki Doki is really the main one you should play. The ending is nice and cute. See the screenshots below.

Look: 7.5/10 Not very impressed with the graphics, I remembered Princess Peach looking cooler ha. It is funny/cute how she raises her arms when she jumps :-p But still the classic, nostalgic Mario colors and vibe, can't say I disliked the Look at all. However, being aware that this is Mario characters put into Doki Doki Panic with tweaks did make some of the derivatives of the Doki enemies a bit silly :-p Not gonna lie, I missed the character I used from Doki Doki Panic

Sound: 7.5/10 Quite unremarkable, but cute ending song and overall has that Mario touch.

Play 8/10 I almost dropped this to a 7.5 because I almost dropped the game due to some of the tedious puzzle segments in levels, but thing is, once I was in the grove during any given play session, those puzzles were just a part of the straightforward action fun.

Feel: 8/10 Indeed, straightforward action fun, with nostalgia from when I was young. Can't deny that Feel.

Attachment: 8/10 Reality is, I preferred the characters of Doki Doki, so that's the one I will return to in the future. However I can't deny my attachment from decades of knowing this game and always finding it a bit of a mystery. When young, I said this was my least favorite Mario but also that I loved playing as Princess Peach, her float jump, and deep down found it a fascinating confusing odd game in the Mario series. That it is!

Overall: 7.8/10

Completion: Main Story, using a variety of characters

Playtime: ~1h 45m

Well, could not finish it. Just could not. If i have played it for the first time in 1989, i would be so drunk by the Mariofever that all problems here would not be a problem at all.

However, the game has aged like milk. Nowadays, we all know this is Doki Doki Panic with a Mario skin over it. By knowing that, the game feels like a romhack. Ignorance is a bless, so they say.

Not defeating an enemy by jumping on them feels so weird. No koopa-troopas. No goombas. It’s like a wild dream and you HAVE to play it in a separate fashion from the other installments of the series. You MUST not play this after (or before) playing SMB or SMB3. Too long, didn’t read: it is like The Godfather 3. It is not a bad game. Just a bad game comparing it to the other 8bit Mario Games.

It had the goods: Princess Peach as a playable character is very vanguard for the 80s, as there were so few female leads back them. The introduction of Shy Guys and Birdo is good as well. Also, it is a good, entertaining plataform in it’s own rights.

Anyway, I dont tend to go back to this game ever again. It’s simply not Mario. Just a so so NES game that Nintendo of America made the western world swallow as a Mario game because Super Mario Bros. Lost Levels was to hard for light users of that time (as gamers were mostly kids).

Welp, my copy of Wonder hasn't arrived yet, so I'm just gonna keep playing some old games until it arrives. Super Mario All-Stars was one of the first titles I had on the SNES, so I have very fond memories of Super Mario Bros. 2. I had never played the original NES version of the game, so I ended up playing the Switch Online offering of that version.

As almost everyone knows, Super Mario Bros. 2 is not really a Mario game, but a reskin of the Japan-only Doki Doki Panic. That comes across loud and clear when you play it--the polished and brisk sense of movement of the original Super Mario Bros. is not quite here. Mario feels slow, even clunky sometimes, with one particular issue that comes to mind being how jumps sometimes cling weirdly to the environments. But this game isn't really about precise platforming, as much as it is about exploration and combat, and in that sense it does manage to succeed on its own merits.

It helps that the level design in this game is pretty solid. Due to this game's different focus, it unfolds at a relatively relaxed pace, and it enables some interesting vertical platforming and backtracking sections. It does get pretty hard later on, but with the Switch's save state and rewind features, I never ran into any frustrating moments like with the original Super Mario Bros. Let's put it this way: as a child, I was never able to get very far in the original Mario Bros., but Mario Bros. 2 became one of the first games in the series that I was able to beat. It helps that the game's automatic checkpointing prevents you from having to replay previously completed sections as much as with the original game.

Despite my fond memories of this game, though, I did feel a sense of shallowness as I replayed it. There's only so many variations I could see of picking up and throwing things to defeat enemies and opening doors with keys before I realized that Super Mario Bros. 2 only really offers a relatively small list of ideas when compared to some of the best Mario titles. But I do really appreciate it for its uniqueness and impact on the series as a whole, particularly with how the multiple playable characters and dreamy aesthetic influenced future Mario games for the better.

Pros:

• Super Mario bros. 2 has a charm that no other entry in the series really has. Enemies, backgrounds, and objects just ooze a style that didn't "feel" mario, but has proven to be a great addition to the series.
• Levels are vertical! Older mario games never had much verticality, so playing smb2 next to the other nes games feels liberating!
• Chucking enemies, instead of killing them outright upon jumping on them, is super cool and changes how you interact with enemies.
• Multiple Characters with unique abilities!

Cons:

• Birdo. Enough said.
• Level design can sometimes be too experimental. I wouldn't say riding on a carpet over massive pits is necessarily the most fun I had in the game. Some levels just aren't that much fun.
• Not enough Enemies. The ones we have are nice, but having variety in enemy size or how they attack would have elevated the gameplay.

Super Mario bros. 2 is a great addition to the classic trilogy that deserves a proper place in the history of the series.

Super Mario Bros. 2 is probably the strangest 2D Mario game in the series. I don't dislike this title. But there's a lot of things about this game that doesn't sit right with me.

The development for this game is probably the most interesting. After the success of Super Mario Bros., Nintendo got to work on the sequel. When making the game, they intended on Super Mario Bros. 2 to be the same as the first game. Except way harder. Thinking that the US wouldn't be able to handle the difficulty, Super Mario Bros. 2 (The actual one) was released only in Japan. While the US and Europe were given an entirely different game. But it wasn't made from the ground up. They essentially got a game called Doki Doki Panic and changed the assets to resemble Mario. So the US version is a reskin of Doki Doki Panic.

Super Mario Bros. 2 allows you to play has 4 characters. Mario is average, Luigi who has the best jump, Peach who can float, and Toad who can pick up things faster. The gameplay consists of you grabbing keys to unlock doors, throwing items to kill enemies and fighting bosses. It's fairly challenging. But never too bad to where you wanna shut the game off.

Super Mario Bros. 2 may just be a reskinned game, But it's a fun time nonetheless.

3/5

Would Recommend

History:

I tend to relate every game console to where I was in my life, or maybe it's the other way around, I'm really not sure anymore. Anyway, when it comes to the NES, I remember that being the time when video games were this new, fun, family activity. When adults would talk about finding warp pipes and breaking high scores without being embarrassed about it as would become the trend in the mid-late 90's. With Super Mario 2 specifically, I remember spending more time watching my dad and uncle try to navigate this game, than actually playing it myself! As much as I try to tell myself that I hate this game for being some kind of bastardized, simplified reskin of a game for us poor Americans, all I have to do is hear those opening notes of 1-0 and I'm immediately sent back to my childhood.

Expectations:

I don't think I've ever beaten this game. I remember a lot about it, bits and pieces, but I don't think I've ever seen the end credits. That's obviously my goal here, and I think I might be able to pull it off this time. After playing the first Super Mario earlier in this project though, I definitely want to try to do it without warp pipes!

Day 1:

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't putting this game off. My 4 year old called Super Mario 2 the "Princess Peach" game for a while, and it was almost always the game she wanted to play together before discovery Super Mario 3. I've played it a lot over the last several months, but never for more than 5 minutes at a time or so.

I can't say making a serious attempt at this game was something I was actually looking forward to doing.

I will say, though, that playing Mario 2 now a days is completely different than playing as a kid. When I was younger we'd pretty much play as Peach exclusively due to her hover ability. I always saw this as the most valuable ability, and never saw a good reason to play as anyone else. Couple decades later, and I'm amazed at how many fun and broken things you can do with Luigi! I hated playing as Luigi as a kid! He was hard to control and his jumping was weird. Now with some practice I can practically skip whole levels!

Same with Toad actually. In fact it was only this year that I learned what his special ability was, which adds a new level of fun to some of the more boring stages. Sprinting across the desert at high speeds with a snake on your head is fantastic.

I did beat Mouser (Mouzer?) in World 1, and the hydra in World 2, before getting stuck on World 3...

I eventually settled on Peach for World 3, mostly because of 3-2. In the end though I couldn't get past the second half of 3-3 and decided to call it for the night.

I'm not "not" having fun with this game. It's a solid game in it's own right. I guess I just never particularly enjoyed playing it for long periods of time and despite my hopes, playing again as an adult hasn't really changed that for me.

Day 2:

Argh! Used all my lives to make to World 7 and choked right at the end of 7-1, sending me back to the beginning of the game. I played for a bit after that but couldn't really get my stride back. Tomorrow I guess...

Day 3:

Last day of play and I can't even get back to World 7, instead getting stuck on World 5, twice! It is fun seeing my progress though. On my first attempt of the night I was able to rip through World 1 in what felt like about five minutes. Luigi's insane.

Conclusion:

In the end, I think I did have more fun with this game than I thought I was going to, but still not as much as I was hoping I would. Super Mario 2 almost feels like a paradox: It's a really solid game. Fun to play, nice to look at. It's not a really great Mario game which is what it will forever be judged on.

If I look at it for what it is, though, I really do see a good game here. For a 1988 title the graphics, sound and music are incredible and timeless. Having multiple characters and multiple paths to take was still pretty new at the time, and every level felt different. I think where I, personally, start to fault Mario 2 is in its stage designs. They're fine at first, but after World 3 it start to feel... awkward. It's hard to say the game is too difficult, but between the iffy physics and some unusual level design choices, it becomes difficult in ways that I feel it shouldn't. In spite of that, I think it's still a great game to pop into the NES every once in a while.

Liked:

- Great graphics and smooth gameplay with no flickering and very little lag.
- Great and memorable music and sounds.
- Mastering sections of the game feels very fun and rewarding.
- Levels felt varied and different.
- Luigi.

Disliked:

- Game takes a steep difficulty curve about halfway through, and that difficulty sometimes comes from unusual circumstances.
- Physics can often feel slippery, and jumping feels imprecise for a Mario game.
- My wife thinks the hedgehogs are adorable BUT I KNOW BETTER!!!

Personal Score: