50 Years of Video Games: Super Mario Bros. 2 (NES)

One of the most often repeated pieces of video game trivia is that the game America received under the name Super Mario Bros. 2 was not originally the sequel to the NES smash hit but an entirely different game. When the first Super Mario Bros. game helped the Nintendo Entertainment System achieve a massive foothold in the U.S., it was no surprise the American branch of Nintendo was eager to release a sequel to keep riding the wave of popularity. When they did take a look at the game called Super Mario Bros. 2 in Japan though, they found a game that was not only much harder than the original, but it wasn’t very good either. While America would one day get that game under the title Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, Nintendo of America instead decided to retool a different game and release it in 1988 as Super Mario Bros. 2. Their choice: a game called Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic, a game meant to tie into a 1987 technology festival that used dreams and masks as thematic elements. The main characters were swapped out for recognizable faces from the Mario series and the 2D platformer was released to Americans with its new title, and thanks to that interesting business decision, not only did America end up getting the better sequel to Super Mario Bros. but they also indirectly lead to many characters and concepts becoming iconic parts of the Super Mario Bros. series.

Since the game is mostly a visual reskinning of the original title, Super Mario Bros. 2 ends up keeping the dream focus in its plot. One day while sleeping, Mario has a dream of climbing a staircase and entering Subcon, a world of dreams whose peaceful inhabitants have been subjugated by the frog king Wart. Waking up before he can assist, Mario and his friends later come across a cave with a similar staircase to the one in his dream, and sure enough, scaling it takes them back into the land of dreams where now Mario, his brother Luigi, Princess Toadstool, and her mushroom-headed servant Toad can now all work together to save the people of Subcon from Wart’s evil forces.

With each new level you enter in this platforming adventure, you are given a choice of the four characters for who you will be playing as. While every stage can be beaten by any character, each of the four heroes plays a bit differently. Luigi manages to have the highest jump of them all, able to reach areas the others might have to work more to get to, but jump height doesn’t necessarily make him the best jumper. The Princess is able to float for a bit after her jump, making her not only a good pick for new players to help them better safely land but also giving her more horizontal range than Luigi. Toad is a more niche pick, his benefits not impacting platforming capabilities as much but the little guy is both the fastest and the one who can pluck the vegetables you throw as weapons faster than anyone else, making him a good pick for experts trying to blitz through the adventure or people who want to make certain boss fights easier since you can be armed with your throwing item sooner. Since every character can also briefly hunker down and charge up a super jump, Toad having the worst jump doesn’t mean he’ll ever find himself unable to reach a ledge although sometimes he’ll have to put more work into getting up there than others.

Mario doesn’t have any exceptional stats or unusual tricks by comparison, but he does come with one big benefit that could make him the best pick: the game is essentially built around him. He’ll never fall just short of a jump, he can travel at a solid pace, and he can pull vegetables out quickly enough to turn them against foes. While the others have moments where they shine because they can exploit the level design in a unique way, Mario is always a solid pick and a good way to learn a stage. Unfortunately you can’t switch your character after a death which would have been a nice way to let players make more informed picks on who to use for a stage, but after continuing from a Game Over you can at least.

While Super Mario Bros. 2’s action could usually qualify as side-scrolling platforming, right out of the gate the game informs you that Mario isn’t just going to be running from left to right this time. The first stage drops you into a level from above, a vertical descent that introduces you to the idea that levels can end up going in many directions. Levels can be climbs up into the clouds, descents down through sandy pits where you need to pluck your own path, travels through twisting caves, and yes, some runs across open plains to reach the right side of the level. However, many levels have doors connecting areas, stages often consisting of a few different distinct areas to explore. Even within areas that have more distinct themes like being an ice world or desert you can find new ideas cropping up that even future titles don’t really dip into, one of the ice levels featuring differently sized whales as platforms, and the desert even features an area where you see no obvious way forward… unless you hop on the birds that fly by and ride them through danger to your destination. In fact, most enemies in Super Mario Bros. 2 are only deadly to touch from the sides, so many times you can pop onto them for a ride over danger or even pluck them up to hurl at other foes.

The fact that enemies are both platforms and weapons in Super Mario Bros. 2 gets a lot of mileage. When you’re hopping across waterfalls you sometimes only have the fish leaping out of them to use as safe platforms, when you’re in caves you sometimes have to grab a living bomb and chuck it towards a breakable wall before he blows up on you. The simple masked Shy Guys don’t pose much risk, but grab one and maybe that fireball spitting plant ahead or the tall green cactus monster to tall to leap over can be taken out without too much danger to yourself. The idea that your foes can be they’re own undoing even extends to boss encounters, with the giant mouse Mouser hurling bombs at you that you can toss right back and the reptilian creature Birdo firing eggs from her mouth that you can hop onto and throw back into her face. Admittedly, Birdo crops up far too often, changing to be a little more dangerous over time by adding fireballs to the mix but still rehashed a bit much so she becomes a bit unfortunate to see again. Mouser makes a reappearance as well, but there are a few more unique boss encounters, usually at the end of a world, that ask for a difference approach like trying to safely use Clawgrip’s hurled rocks as ammo or trying to defend yourself from the three-headed snake Tryclyde with the same blocks you then have to then hurl at him.

In some ways you could say Super Mario Bros. 2 blurs the line between item and enemy, but even within that space Phanto stands out. Every now and then you’ll encounter a locked door, and while many games will passively let you store a key until you need to use it, in Super Mario Bros. 2 you need to carry that item overhead just like you do anything else you’re looking to use. When you pick up the rather big key though, Phanto will come to life, the angry mask flying through anything in his path to try and hit you to get the key back. If you throw the key away he’ll retreat from the screen for a while, but as soon as you pick it back up, he’ll come flying in from the screen’s edges to continue his assault. Not only is this an already tense little chase where you need to toss the key away for breathing room but also need to carry it enough to get it to its destination, but the areas you pass through carrying this key are often made to be a bit hard to traverse themselves, and if you don’t want to lose the key or your life, you need to play pretty carefully in a nice new little challenge to how you platform about a stage.

Level and enemy encounter creativity is already pretty high, the idea of turning dangerous things against themselves a fun concept that finds use both in battle and navigation, but there are still other ideas at play in Super Mario Bros. 2 that make adventuring forward even richer. When you start a stage your character enters with two hearts and will die if you lose them both, but hidden in levels are potions that can take you to an area called Subspace. A dark reflected world where the screen boundaries are solid instead of scrolling as you move, the area in Subspace can contain many useful things. The most obvious is the mushroom, the player able to grab this to expand their health to a third and possibly fourth heart, but they’ll need to place the potion right to enter the part of Subspace with a mushroom. There are often little hints on where a mushroom could be in the normal level so you can make a pretty decent guess at where to throw it down, but there is a little more to Subspace still. The vegetable sprouts you find on the ground and can pluck for a weapon if you don’t want to risk grabbing an enemy are replaced with coins in their reverse world counterparts, these coins letting you play a post-level slot machine for extra lives. In normal play you can also dive down into pots to occasionally find new areas, but if you enter a pot in Subspace you can instead teleport ahead into the adventure, a nice way of getting back to where you left off if you ran out of lives and continues in your previous run. With additional ideas like cherries to collect that will pay off with an invincibility power-up when you reach five allowing you to plan when you get a brief surge of untouchable power, Super Mario Bros. 2 even invites you to tailor your forward progress in a more involved way instead of just always taking every helpful item or option as it comes along.

THE VERDICT: Super Mario Bros. 2 plays like a dream, the concept of enemies being their own undoing so often adding a lot more texture to how you approach this platformer. Whether you’re picking up and throwing a nearby item or the enemy itself to overcome a foe, using a baddy as a way to navigate the level, or twisting a boss’s attack back at them, the foes in your path aren’t just dangers to overcome but little opportunities. The levels themselves take many creative turns, the player heading in many different directions across many different environments, sometimes even making their own path or having to engage in a dangerous game of keep away with a key-hungry mask to make progress. The four different characters let you gain different edges in a level even though sadly you can’t swap them out easily, but with even more extra layers added by things like Subspace without overcomplicating the game, Super Mario Bros. 2 ends up not only a worthy successor to the first game but one that carves its own path with many wonderful ideas.

And so, I give Super Mario Bros. 2 for the Nintendo Entertainment System…

A GREAT rating. Super Mario Bros. 2 definitely has its moments where it asks you to be skilled at platforming, but the game makes such excellent use of its enemy roster that it elevates it beyond just nice and varied level design. Sure Birdo really could afford to sit out and let other bosses conclude more levels, but she does have a simple yet solid fight design that embodies the game’s approach to designing the opposing creatures. Subcon is full of creatures and characters who aren’t just blocking your path but can also help open it up more if you use them well, and even if you aren’t willing to try and jump on that snake’s head to try and use him as ammunition, you can often find vegetables in the ground or blocks nearby so you aren’t totally out of luck if you accidentally killed a foe who could have been helpful. Having different playable characters not only means you can sometimes get around levels in new ways but it also adds a bit of a flexible difficulty mode to the adventure. Add in other little optional things like trying to make the most of cherries or finding good ways to use the Subspace potion and Super Mario Bros. 2 ends up with a lot of depth under a surface that always remains inviting and accessible. If you want to pick Mario and just run to the end without exploring those depths you can and the game can still provide some good and varied levels and enemy encounters, but the extras are easily within reach and adding them to your playthrough helps make Super Mario Bros. 2 an even greater experience.

Who knows what would have happened to Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic if it hadn’t been reskinned to star one of the biggest faces in gaming, but considering it was tied to a 1987 Japanese tech festival that had a fairly small cultural footprint, it could have possibly never made it to an international audience. Yume Kōjō can be translated as Dream Factory and was meant to be an expo to show off the dreams of what the future could hold, but even though some of Mario’s creators made the game, they probably couldn’t have dreamed of the wider success their tie-in platformer would achieve after a smart rebranding. We’re definitely fortunate the game’s creative systems were shared the world over, the game even making its way back to Japan as Super Mario USA eventually so that it could firmly affix itself as a worthy part of an excellent platforming series. While the Super Mario Bros. 2 Japan originally received literally reused the design of the first game but with much harder stages and little new added, the game America received in its stead is brimming with new ideas on how to get around and how to deal with the dangers before you. Creativity is brought to most every aspect it can be, and while some limitations lead to things like too many Birdo battles, the overall adventure continues to bring new delights until the dream is over.