MARIO REVIEWED: Super Mario Bros. 2 (NES)

In this series of posts that I'm doing because I literally cannot contain my excitement for Super Mario Galaxy 2, I'll be looking back at the games in the Mario franchise. I'm primarily going to be concentrating on games in the main series, but there might be a couple of detours along the way, too.

It seems pretty unfathomable in this era of Mario's continued retail dominance (something like 14 million copies of New Super Mario Bros. Wii sold as of this writing) that there could be wildly different versions between Japan and North America of the sequel to the most popular videogame of all time, but that's exactly what happened in the mid-to-late 80s. Japan got their super hard, direct sequel to the original Super Mario Bros. that was essentially the same game (except, you know, harder), while in North America, we got… well, Super Mario Bros. 2.

Here's the history. After Super Mario Bros., some of that team went on to work on the direct sequel, trying to capitalize on the success of the first game by striking while the iron was still hot. Nintendo of America hated the game, namely because it's super hard, and they couldn't just not release a Super Mario Bros. sequel – it was guaranteed to make a metric ass-ton of money for them. At this same time, Shigeru Miyamoto, who created Super Mario Bros., and Koji Kondo, the legendary composer, were working on another game – Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic. That game was designed in collaboration with Fuji Television, to promote an upcoming event and featuring characters from the "Yume Kojo" universe. Understandably, that game never made it to North America. It was based on a property that Americans had no familiarity with, and Miyamoto and Kondo weren't quite household names at that point, so they couldn't release it based on their names alone.

But in Yume Kojo, NoA saw the opportunity to turn it into a Mario game – it already had some of the Mario elements like POW blocks and that signature jumping noise. The game had pretty radically different controls and a different setting than the Mario universe, so it was explained away as being Mario's "dream."

In the long line of Nintendo sequels, it's actually the NES Super Mario Bros. 2 that feels more in line with what one expects of a Nintendo sequel. This is a company that's made its name on taking a game that has a winning formula, and then almost completely tossing that formula out the window. Gone are the timing based platforming challenges of the previous game, and in it's place, a game where you can go forwards and backwards, up and down, into doors and out of them.

If that was the only change, this game mightn't have felt so weird, but that's not all. All of the enemies from the first game are gone, and replaced with (what would eventually become Nintendo staples) things like Shy Guys, Bob-ombs and Birdos. As well, you could play the game as any of four characters at any time – in one level, you could be Luigi, in another one Princess Toadstool. They all have completely different physics to them – Luigi can jump really high, the Princess can float, Mario's a good all-around character, and Toad can run fast and pull stuff out of the ground quickly.

That's perhaps the biggest change, outside of the weird Arabian-ish setting and somewhat dark elements to the game – the fundamental change in the way you defeat enemies. In SMB, you bopped them on the head, or you hit them from underneath. In SMB2(NES), you either pluck vegetables out of the ground and huck them at the enemies, or you pick up the enemies themselves and throw them at other enemies. And depending on the character you choose, that ability becomes easier or harder, while also trading off in other areas. Careful consideration of who you're going to use for each level is a skill into itself.

For as much as I detested this game as a kid (I wasn't very good at it), I can definitely see its merits now. Considered in and of itself, it's most definitely a fantastic game. Every thing controls really well (the hallmark of a good Mario game – who am I kidding, they're all good!), the pace is interesting and different, and it set a precedent for Nintendo to toss everything but the kitchen sink for their future sequels, which may be the hard thing to do but is definitely the more interesting thing to do with sequels.

It's not as strong as the other NES Mario titles simply because I don't find the setting or enemies to be super interesting. The bosses are better than Bowser in terms of challenge, but definitely not in terms of design. And a lot of the game just feels really weird a lot of the time. When you go down into one the pots that function as this game's version of a pipe, and those strange floating faces attack you, it's genuinely scary and offputting for a Mario game.

Still, there's no denying how solid this game is. The jump in quality of graphics and sound is pretty amazing from SMB to this game, and its interesting and awesome mechanics have informed the rest of the Mario series for sure. A port of a strange Japanese game could have been the deathknell for the Mario franchise, and even though fans at the time thought it was a really, really weird game (and it is), it's also a really fun game, and that's really all that counts for a Mario game. The singleminded pursuit of fun is artful in and of itself, and makes even this game a true standout in all of videogame-dom.