| Super Mario Bros. 2 | |
|---|---|
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| Developer(s) | Nintendo EAD |
| Publisher(s) | Nintendo |
| Designer(s) | Shigeru Miyamoto |
| Composer(s) | Kōji Kondō |
| Series | Mario |
| Engine | modified Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic engine |
| Platform(s) | NES, SNES (Super Mario All-Stars), Game Boy Advance (Super Mario Advance), Virtual Console |
| Release date(s) | NES NA October 1988 EU April 28, 1989 AUS May 1989 JP July 14, 1992 Game Boy Advance JP March 21, 2001 NA June 10, 2001 EU June 22, 2001 Virtual Console AUS May 25, 2007 EU May 25, 2007 NA July 2, 2007 JP August 10, 2007 |
| Genre(s) | Platform |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: E (Everyone) (VC) |
| Media | 2-megabit cartridge |
| System requirements | [Nintendo Entertainment
Software] |
Super Mario Bros. 2 (SMB2) is a platform game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System video game console. It was released in North America in October 1988,[1] Europe on April 28, 1989 and in Japan on July 14, 1992. The game was also remade as part of the Super Mario All-Stars collection for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), released on August 1, 1993 in North America and December 16, 1993 in Europe. It was rereleased on the Wii's Virtual Console in Europe, Australia and New Zealand on May 25, 2007 and the U.S. on July 2, 2007. It is also in Super Smash Bros. Brawl as one of the unlockable game demos in "Masterpieces."
Unlike the majority of other Mario titles, SMB2 was not developed from an independent point; rather it is a redesign of the Japanese Family Computer Disk System game Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic. Nintendo's original sequel to Super Mario Bros. was released in Japan as Super Mario Bros. 2 in 1986; however, because of that game's perceived difficulty and its close similarities to the original game, Nintendo decided not to release it in the West at that time. The redesigned Western version of Super Mario Bros. 2 was released in Japan in 1992 under the title Super Mario USA (スーパーマリオUSA), and in 1993 a 16-bit remake of the original Japanese version was released to the rest of the world as "Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels" (part of the Super Mario All-Stars collection for the SNES).
Because SMB2 is a redesign of a non-Mario game, the game differs greatly from the original Super Mario Bros. The game has sold over ten million copies, was the third most sold title on the Nintendo Entertainment System[citation needed] and was critically acclaimed at the time. Many elements from Super Mario Bros. 2 have since become part of the Mario series canon and the repertoire of recurring elements.
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Super Mario Bros. 2 is a side-scrolling platform game. At the beginning of each stage, the player is given a choice of four protagonists to control: Mario, Luigi, Toad, and Princess Peach, credited in the game as merely "Princess." Each character has different strengths; Mario is a well-rounded character, but Luigi can jump the highest of the four, Toad can run and pluck vegetables the fastest, and Peach can jump the farthest, due to her ability to hover for a short time. All characters have the ability to increase the height of their jump by ducking briefly before they jump.
Unlike most Mario games, no enemies can be defeated by jumping on them. Instead, the player character must throw objects at enemies, such as vegetables plucked from the ground. Certain opponents can be picked up and thrown as well, and several levels feature blocks marked with the word "POW", which when picked up and thrown kill all the enemies on screen at impact.
The game features a life meter, a then-unique feature in the series. The player begins each stage with two points of health, represented by red diamonds, and can increase the number of health points in the meter by collecting mushrooms. Health can be replenished by floating hearts, which appear after a certain number of opponents have been defeated. The invincibility star from the first game appears, with a player needing to collect five cherries to get it.
Each stage contains one or more hidden flasks of potion. When plucked and thrown, a potion creates a door to Sub-Space, an alternate world in which coins are collected instead of vegetables when plucked. The mushrooms used to increase the health meter can also be found here. The player automatically leaves Sub-Space after a short time. The coins collected are used in a slot machine mini-game played between stages. This mini-game is the chief means of obtaining additional lives. In addition to the mushrooms and slot machine coins, several Sub-Spaces are also used as warp zones; these involve the use of vases as pipes.
Various Nintendo of America employees disliked the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2, which they found to be frustratingly difficult and otherwise little more than a modification of Super Mario Bros. (SMB1).[2] Nintendo thus rejected the idea of releasing the game in North America and decided to adapt a completely different game. Because of this, although Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic was originally set in a storybook and had an Arabian theme completely unrelated to the Mario series, it was modified to use sprites and music from the Mario series as well as to introduce new characters in keeping with the Mario storyline.
Most of the differences between DDP and SMB2 are small graphical changes, such as animation being added to the POW blocks, bomb fuses, cherries, potions, vegetables, and extra frames of animation for numerous enemies for the SMB2 version, all made possible by the use of the MMC3 mapper chip. Super Mushrooms replacing large hearts as life-meter increases, the characters shrinking when reduced to only one unit of health, and some music tracks being made longer with more instrumentation were among some other changes. Some of DDP's sound effects used the Famicom Disk System's sound chip; these were replaced by PCM channel samples. DDP's save feature was also taken out of SMB2 because adapting it to cartridge would have required an expensive battery-backed save. Another feature added to the SMB2 version of the game was the ability to switch the active character between levels; in DDP the only way to change characters was to start a new game from the beginning.
Super Mario Bros. 2 received a graphical, audio, and gameplay upgrade when it was rereleased five years after its original release as part of the Mario games collection, Super Mario All-Stars (1993, SNES). While substantially similar in gameplay and to the original, a few minor differences were made in the Super Mario All-Stars version to address perceived issues with the original. Additionally, the game was remade into Super Mario Advance, with no changes made, besides the unlimited continue function.
Whereas the original NES version of Super Mario Bros. 2 only allowed players to continue twice after losing all of their lives, the All-Stars version enabled players to continue any number of times due to the reintroduction of a save function (as with the original Doki Doki Panic). The ability of players to win lives in the All-Stars version of the Bonus Chance game was also increased from a maximum of 5 to 10. In the original NES version, players were forced to use the same character throughout the duration of a level; the All-Stars version additionally enabled the player to select a different character after losing a life. Minor glitch-corrections were also made such as the repairing of occasional musical errors.
Finally, various minor stylistic and aesthetic changes were also made, including the changing of Princess Toadstool's hair from brunette to blonde, alterations in size and shape of in-game elements (e.g. the icons of the Bonus Chance game, and the units of the health meter), minor alterations to music, and the insertion of effects such as split-screen and blurring that utilized the enhanced graphical capabilities of the SNES.
In March-April 1996, Nintendo (in collaboration with the St.GIGA satellite radio station) released an ura- or gaiden-version of the game for the Satellaview system featuring graphical enhancements similar to Super Mario All-Stars. This new game was entitled BS Super Mario USA Power Challenge (ＢＳスーパーマリオＵＳＡ パワーチャレンジ), and like all Satellaview titles it was released episodically in a number of weekly volumes.[3]
BS Super Mario USA Power Challenge was never released outside of Japan and as with all other Satellaview titles it has never been re-released as a stand-alone title. The game exists today solely in ROM-format and is traded online by Satellaview emulation enthusiasts.[3]
In 2001, Super Mario Bros. 2 received another enhanced remake as part of Super Mario Advance (also containing a remake of Mario Bros). Super Mario Advance was developed by Nintendo R&D2,[4] and represented the first Mario title for the Game Boy Advance.
The Super Mario Advance version of SMB2 includes several new features such as the addition of the new enemy, Robirdo (a robotic Birdo acting as the boss of world three), the addition of the Yoshi Challenge (in which players may revisit stages to search for Yoshi eggs), and an all-new point-scoring system (a first for the game). Graphical and audio enhancements were also added in the form of enlarged sprites, multiple hit combos, digital voice acting, and such minor stylistic and aesthetic changes as an altered default health-meter level, boss-order, backgrounds, the size of hearts, Princess Toadstool being renamed to the now-standard "Princess Peach," and the inclusion of a chime to announce starmen, were also added. The game also included a full version of the original Mario Bros. arcade game from 1983, with updated audiovisuals and Mushroom Kingdom-based enemies replacing the generic creatures of the original (Spinys taking the place of Shellcreepers, for example); this game would be included in all three subsequent Super Mario Advance titles, including Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga.
Nintendo's decision to choose Super Mario Advance as the Game Boy Advance launch game was seen by some as misguided; GameSpot in particular thought that Super Mario Bros. 3 or Super Mario World would have been a better choice for a launch game considering their respective popularity[5] (both titles were eventually also remade as part of the Super Mario Advance series). However, IGN praised the choice, calling it "one of the most polished and creative platformers of the era".[6] In any case, Super Mario Advance was a best-selling launch game, and became part of the GBA's Player's Choice lineup as one of the console's first three Player's Choice games (along with Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga and Super Mario Advance 3).
Upon release, Super Mario Bros. 2 was highly successful, and it is the third highest-selling game ever released on the Nintendo Entertainment System, with over ten million copies sold.[citation needed] Nintendo Power listed Super Mario Bros. 2 as the eighth best Nintendo Entertainment System video game, mentioning that in spite of not being originally a Mario game, it was able to stand on its own merits and its unique takes on the series' trademark gameplay.[7]
When it was re-released in 2001 as Super Mario Advance it received generally positive critiques, garnering an aggregate score of 84% on Metacritic.[8] One reviewer concluded "all nostalgia and historical influence aside, Super Mario Bros. 2 is still a game worth playing on the merits of its gameplay alone."[9]
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Doki Doki Panic | Table of Contents |
Walkthrough
| Doki Doki Panic | |
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| Developer(s) | Nintendo |
| Publisher(s) | Fuji Television |
| Japanese title | 夢工場 ドキドキパニック |
| Release date(s) | |
| Genre(s) | Platform |
| System(s) | Famicom Disk System |
Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic (lit. "Dream Factory: Heart-Pounding Panic") is a 1987 platform game released for the Famicom Disk System about a family who plans to rescue two children. "Doki doki" is a Japanese onomatopoeia for a rapidly beating heart, and it is commonly found in Japanese video game titles, carrying connotations of excitement and anxiety.
The game is known for its Western conversion in 1988 as Super Mario Bros. 2 for the NES which had its characters changed to those from Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. The western version of Super Mario Bros. 2 was also released in Japan for the Nintendo Famicom as Super Mario USA.
The game was developed in cooperation with Fuji Television to promote its Yume Kōjō '87 (tr. Dream Factory '87) event, which showcased several of Fuji TV's latest TV shows and other products at the time. The game featured the mascots of the Yume Kōjō festival — a family consisting of siblings Imajin and Lina and their parents, Papa and Mama — as its main characters. The rest of the characters, including the main villain, Mamu (known as Wart when localized for Super Mario Bros. 2), were all creations by Nintendo for the game. The game takes place within a book with an Arabian setting. All four characters are playable, and the game is not fully completed until the player plays through as all four.
Even though it was not originally conceived as a Mario game, Shigeru Miyamoto had a larger involvement in this game than he did with the original Super Mario Bros. 2 (known outside Japan as The Lost Levels) which was released in Japan. Some elements from the Mario universe already existed in Doki Doki Panic, such as the Starman, coin and jumping sound effects, the POW blocks and level warping. Also, the game's soundtrack was already composed by Kōji Kondō, the original Super Mario composer, and upon the conversion needed only a few alterations such as removing most of the arabian elements, replacing them with original Super Mario tunes.
In 1988, the game was localized for North America, Europe and Australia as Super Mario Bros. 2. The Yume Kōjō family members were replaced by Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool, and Toad, and numerous other small changes were made, such as the B Button on the NES controller making the characters run. Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic represents the original source of several elements that later became common in the Mario series, such as characters Birdo and Shy Guy.
 Title screen |
Contents |
By in large, the gameplay from Doki Doki Panic to Super Mario Bros. 2 remains unchanged. There are only a few differences between the two games as far as gameplay is concerned.
is used for nothing more than
picking up object or enemies, and throwing them. Holding down will not make your character
accelerate. This was only added to Super Mario Bros. 2 because
B-button running was such a popular feature of Super Mario
Bros.In constrast to the gameplay, a lot of things about the way that Doki Doki Panic looked and sounded were altered in the transition to Super Mario Bros. 2. The following is a list of features that were changed.
| Change | Doki Doki Panic | Super Mario Bros. 2 | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Imajin → Mario |  |
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In Doki Doki Panic, it was the young son named Imajin who was the average character, neither strongest or weakest in any particular way. He was selected to become Mario in the western conversion of the game. |
| Mama → Luigi |  |
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The tall mother was the high jumper of the family in Doki Doki Panic. She was chosen to be converted to Luigi, perhaps as a nod to his jumping abilities in the Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 2. Luigi was the higher jumper of the brothers in that game as well. |
| Lina → Princess Toadstool |  |
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Imajin's sister, Lina, inherited some amazing jumping abilities from her mother. However, instead of jumping high, she could jump very far. She was a natural choice for the conversion to Princess Toadstool, who can apply her pose and royal grace to her gravity-defying leaps. |
| Papa → Toad |  |
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Although he has a face which closely resembles Mario, the stature and dress of the father more closely resembles Toad. And so the father of the Doki Doki Panic family was converted to Toad, and Toad inherited the father's great strength and speed. |
| Bonus Chance |  |
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Although both games featured a Bonus Chance game, where you could spend the coins that you collected from Sub-space on a slots-like game in order to earn extra lives, the look and layout of the bonus in Doki Doki Panic was much simpler. It was made more elaborate and made to look similar to the title screen of Super Mario Bros. 2. |
| Still black grass → Animated red grass |  |
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In Doki Doki Panic, the dark grass lay on the ground, still and lifeless. In the western conversion of the game, the grass color was lightened to a brighter red color to make it stand out from the background, and it was animated with a slight breeze softly blowing the blades about. |
| Lamp → Potion |  |
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Fitting in with Doki Doki Panic's Arabian theme, the entrance to Sub-space was granted by discovering and tossing a Magic Lamp on the ground. Rubbing the lamp won't cause a genie to arrive, but the door that appears functions the same as the door which is conjured by the magic potions that Mario and crew discover. |
| Heart → Mushroom |  |
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Just like in The Legend of Zelda, the characters' life meters in Doki Doki Panic are increased by collecting Heart Containers. Since the western conversion was chosen to be a Super Mario Bros. game, it was thought that Mushrooms should play a role somehow, so the Hearts were replaced with Mushrooms. |
| Head → Shell |  |
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In Doki Doki Panic, some of the grass that the players lifted was not grass… it was hair. The hair of a disembodied head that was buried in the ground. When tossed to the ground, it glided along the surface knocking out every enemy that it came in contact with. This behavior was coincidentally similar to another item in the Super Mario Bros. universe; the Koopa turtle shell. |
| World Gates |  |
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The gates which seperated one world from the next had a different visual appearance in Doki Doki Panic. They were far more artistic and stylized. For Super Mario Bros. 2, they were redesigned and redrawn to resemble the faces of hawks. |
| Bomb explosions |  |
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In the Japanese version, the explosions created by bombs were accompanied with the letters "BOM" as a means of indicating the loud explosion sound that occurred. Afraid that players might not understand the significance of this non-word, Nintendo added a "B" the end of the word, to make it spell "BOMB" so that there could be no misunderstanding. |
| Phanto |  |
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The key guardian Phanto of Doki Doki Panic looked a little less sinister than the Phanto that western players are familiar with. In addition to the more serene face, Phanto does not shake and come to life as soon as a player collects a key in Doki Doki Panic. He does not come to life and attack until the player returns to the main portion of the map. While this may seem like Doki Doki Panic players have an advantage, the lack of the "B-button Run" ability made Phanto a lot harder to escape. |
Other changes include the following:
Sounds were also altered from the original version to the western release.
This game was converted into Super Mario Bros. 2 when released outside of Japan, with some significant changes both to the graphics and gameplay.
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