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Game Review: Super Mario Bros 2 (All-Stars Version)
Hey, did you know that Super Mario Bros 2 was based on a game called Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Pan- 
Super Mario Brothers 2 is another one of the NES games where the sequel was extremely different from the game it followed after, like Castlevania and Simon's Quest, The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game. That meant that when I first played it, on a rental from whatever video store my parents went to, I didn't think it was anything out of place. Sure, none of the enemies or the music was the same, and the most basic gameplay element of the original Super Mario Bros--jump on enemies to kill them--didn't work anymore, but it had Mario in it. That was enough.
Also, I was able to beat it, so that made me very well-disposed toward it.
Luigi finally gets his due.
The most obvious change on starting Super Mario Bros 2 is the cast.
On starting every level (in the All-Stars version, after every lost life), the game offers the choice between Mario, Luigi, Toad, and Peach. Each character has certain advantages: Mario is the all-around average character, Luigi can jump much higher and has a slight hang-time in the air, Toad can pick up items and enemies extremely quickly, and Peach is below-average in most things but can hover for a while after jumping. Different stages obviously have different layouts, making them better suited for particular characters. The All-Stars version is really the best way to approach this, since picking an unsuitable character can be fixed after a lost life rather than requiring a continue. Not that any of the characters is really unsuitable--the worst any stage gets based on a particular character is "annoying."
I used to always pick Peach for everything because the ability to hover seemed so much more powerful than anything else, but I was overvaluing it. There are desert stages involving digging through sand and picking up objects before they sink, where Toad is a much better choice. There are stages where a powered-up Luigi jump can skip whole sections and go almost straight to the end. There are stages where Mario is a perfectly fine choice, such as every stage in the game. There's a longplay I put on in the background once where the player beats the entire game using only Mario, and I've beaten the entire game using only Peach. For people who prioritize grabbing and throwing, I'm sure they prefer to beat the entire game with Toad.
Speaking of Peach, I think it's notable that in the second Mario game ever, the Princess was a playable character. Ignoring the CDi games (and you should), the Legend of Zelda has never had a game with playable Zelda outside of spin-offs like Hyrule Warriors, yet the Mario series had it in the second game ever. Sure, it's only because it was based on an existing game's mechanics, and Nintendo went right back to having Peach get kidnapped in Super Mario Bros 3, but it happened back in 1988. If only Nintendo had done it more often since then.
It's no Yoshi.
Much like the first stage of Super Mario Bros, the first stage of SMB2 is a great introduction to the mechanics. It starts with the chosen character falling out of the sky, teaching the player that stages can scroll vertically as well as horizontally now. After going through a door and being confronted with hills and strange grasses waving in the breeze, the player will probably try to jump on top of the nearest shyguy only to find that they're now riding it. With nothing else to do, they'll try pressing B and then learn about picking things up. Pressing B again throws the shyguy but it doesn't die, so that tells the player they need to do something else to defeat their foes. From there, the game expands to picking up the grass and throwing vegetables, riding enemies to get to new places, using potions to open doors to sub-space and pick up coins and mushrooms, and everything else.
In a sense, Super Mario Bros 2 is more consistent about its mechanics than Super Mario Bros is. In the latter, jumping on Bowser in a castle leads to death and it takes hitting the axe to win the fight, in contrast to the way that Mario defeats almost every other enemy in the game. In comparison, SMB2's bosses are all beaten by throwing things at them. Sometimes bombs, sometimes vegetables, sometimes the mushroom blocks that occasionally appear, but it's always the same mechanic as defeating anything else.
Phanto looks even more ominous in 16 bits.
Despite not originally being a Mario game--though the idea was originally a Mario tech demo--a surprising amount of SMB2 made it into the greater Mario series. This is the first game where Luigi jumping higher than Mario became canon. Peach's hovering also remained, showing up in games like Super Mario 3D World. Bob-ombs made their first appearance here, as did pokeys, ninjis, and pidgits. It starts the Mario franchise's climb up to lives being nearly worthless, since with a bit of planning it's easy to earn dozens of lives from the between-level slot machine minigames. Though admittedly it turned out to be a good thing that I got all those lives, because I used up a dozen of them on the last stage of the game.
One of my major complaints about SMB is how samey the levels felt. Despite having aboveground, underground, underwater, and castle tilesets, it felt like there wasn't much variation in the stages, and Worlds 5 through 8 especially felt like palette-swaps of Worlds 1 through 4. SMB2 didn't feel that way to me. Even though it lost the castle and underwater stages--there's no swimming in SMB2 at all, and barely any standing water--SMB2 has aboveground, underground, desert, ice world, and skies, with some variation like waterfalls, or the stage with the whales. Vertical scrolling reappears after the first stage with having to dig through sand or descend into the bottom of magical pots. And the enemies play into the traversal, with one stage requiring a ride on an albatross back to the left to reach the exit to the next screen, and multiple stages using the pidgit's magic carpets or requiring the player to jump on the backs of leaping fish to cross giant pits. I got a bit fatigued of SMB around World 6-2, but I never got fatigued of SMB2.
It's all just a dream.
When I went back and replayed Super Mario Bros, the conclusion I reached is that thanks to the existence of Super Mario Bros 3 and later games, there's really wasn't a reason for me to play it anymore. That's not true of Super Mario Bros 2, which is different enough in gameplay and in challenge that it sits in a category of its own. It's quirky and weird in the way that NES sequels often were, but in an inventive way that makes a new and interesting game out of the basic platformer structure of Super Mario Bros. It has a playable Peach, and she's the best character because she can fly. I'm not going to come back to this as often as I will SMB3, but it's still worth coming back to even now.
Super Mario Brothers 2 is another one of the NES games where the sequel was extremely different from the game it followed after, like Castlevania and Simon's Quest, The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game. That meant that when I first played it, on a rental from whatever video store my parents went to, I didn't think it was anything out of place. Sure, none of the enemies or the music was the same, and the most basic gameplay element of the original Super Mario Bros--jump on enemies to kill them--didn't work anymore, but it had Mario in it. That was enough.
Also, I was able to beat it, so that made me very well-disposed toward it.
Luigi finally gets his due.
The most obvious change on starting Super Mario Bros 2 is the cast.
On starting every level (in the All-Stars version, after every lost life), the game offers the choice between Mario, Luigi, Toad, and Peach. Each character has certain advantages: Mario is the all-around average character, Luigi can jump much higher and has a slight hang-time in the air, Toad can pick up items and enemies extremely quickly, and Peach is below-average in most things but can hover for a while after jumping. Different stages obviously have different layouts, making them better suited for particular characters. The All-Stars version is really the best way to approach this, since picking an unsuitable character can be fixed after a lost life rather than requiring a continue. Not that any of the characters is really unsuitable--the worst any stage gets based on a particular character is "annoying."
I used to always pick Peach for everything because the ability to hover seemed so much more powerful than anything else, but I was overvaluing it. There are desert stages involving digging through sand and picking up objects before they sink, where Toad is a much better choice. There are stages where a powered-up Luigi jump can skip whole sections and go almost straight to the end. There are stages where Mario is a perfectly fine choice, such as every stage in the game. There's a longplay I put on in the background once where the player beats the entire game using only Mario, and I've beaten the entire game using only Peach. For people who prioritize grabbing and throwing, I'm sure they prefer to beat the entire game with Toad.
Speaking of Peach, I think it's notable that in the second Mario game ever, the Princess was a playable character. Ignoring the CDi games (and you should), the Legend of Zelda has never had a game with playable Zelda outside of spin-offs like Hyrule Warriors, yet the Mario series had it in the second game ever. Sure, it's only because it was based on an existing game's mechanics, and Nintendo went right back to having Peach get kidnapped in Super Mario Bros 3, but it happened back in 1988. If only Nintendo had done it more often since then.
It's no Yoshi.
Much like the first stage of Super Mario Bros, the first stage of SMB2 is a great introduction to the mechanics. It starts with the chosen character falling out of the sky, teaching the player that stages can scroll vertically as well as horizontally now. After going through a door and being confronted with hills and strange grasses waving in the breeze, the player will probably try to jump on top of the nearest shyguy only to find that they're now riding it. With nothing else to do, they'll try pressing B and then learn about picking things up. Pressing B again throws the shyguy but it doesn't die, so that tells the player they need to do something else to defeat their foes. From there, the game expands to picking up the grass and throwing vegetables, riding enemies to get to new places, using potions to open doors to sub-space and pick up coins and mushrooms, and everything else.
In a sense, Super Mario Bros 2 is more consistent about its mechanics than Super Mario Bros is. In the latter, jumping on Bowser in a castle leads to death and it takes hitting the axe to win the fight, in contrast to the way that Mario defeats almost every other enemy in the game. In comparison, SMB2's bosses are all beaten by throwing things at them. Sometimes bombs, sometimes vegetables, sometimes the mushroom blocks that occasionally appear, but it's always the same mechanic as defeating anything else.
Phanto looks even more ominous in 16 bits.
Despite not originally being a Mario game--though the idea was originally a Mario tech demo--a surprising amount of SMB2 made it into the greater Mario series. This is the first game where Luigi jumping higher than Mario became canon. Peach's hovering also remained, showing up in games like Super Mario 3D World. Bob-ombs made their first appearance here, as did pokeys, ninjis, and pidgits. It starts the Mario franchise's climb up to lives being nearly worthless, since with a bit of planning it's easy to earn dozens of lives from the between-level slot machine minigames. Though admittedly it turned out to be a good thing that I got all those lives, because I used up a dozen of them on the last stage of the game.
One of my major complaints about SMB is how samey the levels felt. Despite having aboveground, underground, underwater, and castle tilesets, it felt like there wasn't much variation in the stages, and Worlds 5 through 8 especially felt like palette-swaps of Worlds 1 through 4. SMB2 didn't feel that way to me. Even though it lost the castle and underwater stages--there's no swimming in SMB2 at all, and barely any standing water--SMB2 has aboveground, underground, desert, ice world, and skies, with some variation like waterfalls, or the stage with the whales. Vertical scrolling reappears after the first stage with having to dig through sand or descend into the bottom of magical pots. And the enemies play into the traversal, with one stage requiring a ride on an albatross back to the left to reach the exit to the next screen, and multiple stages using the pidgit's magic carpets or requiring the player to jump on the backs of leaping fish to cross giant pits. I got a bit fatigued of SMB around World 6-2, but I never got fatigued of SMB2.
It's all just a dream.
When I went back and replayed Super Mario Bros, the conclusion I reached is that thanks to the existence of Super Mario Bros 3 and later games, there's really wasn't a reason for me to play it anymore. That's not true of Super Mario Bros 2, which is different enough in gameplay and in challenge that it sits in a category of its own. It's quirky and weird in the way that NES sequels often were, but in an inventive way that makes a new and interesting game out of the basic platformer structure of Super Mario Bros. It has a playable Peach, and she's the best character because she can fly. I'm not going to come back to this as often as I will SMB3, but it's still worth coming back to even now.
no subject
but I can happily ignore the Zelda CDi games. :')
I stink at the old 2D Mario platformers too much to get much enjoyment out of them, but I still like and appreciate them for what they are. especially the music.
no subject
especially the music
That's my biggest complaint about the All-Stars version--everything looks great and plays great, but I thought the 16-bit versions of 8-bit Mario tunes are overengineered and lose out on the simplicity of the original. That's most true in SMB, but it's still a bit evident in SMB2 and SMB3.
no subject
huh, I actually mostly prefer the SNES tracks. couldn't tell you why, though. :V