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Super Mario Bros. 2
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 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 video 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 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 North America 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, but 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 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 3rd 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.

[edit] Gameplay

Mario, on top of a hill

Toadstool, Luigi, Mario and Toad, the four playable characters in Super Mario Bros. 2. They are shown in order of speed when running and picking up objects.

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 Toadstool, 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 Princess Toadstool 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 in this game can be defeated by jumping on them. Instead, the player character must throw something at the enemy. Characters are able to pluck vegetables from the ground and throw them at opponents to defeat them. Other opponents can often be picked up and thrown as well, and several levels feature blocks marked with the word "POW", which when picked up and thrown kills 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 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 this installment of the Mario Bros. series. In addition to the mushrooms and slot machine coins, several Sub-Spaces are also used as warp zones; these involve the use of pipes in the levels.

[edit] Development

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.

[edit] Comparison with Doki Doki Panic

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.

[edit] Enhanced remakes

[edit] Super Mario All-Stars

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.

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.

[edit] BS Super Mario USA Power Challenge

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. The game made use of "SoundLink" narration (radio drama-style streaming voice data intended to guide players through the game and give helpful hints and advice) and broadcast CD-quality music. Due to the nature of SoundLink broadcasts these games were only broadcast to players between 6:00 and 7:00PM on broadcast dates, at which times players could download the game from the Events Plaza on the BS-X application cartridge.^[3] A single rerun of the broadcasts was conducted in the same weekly format from June 3, 1996 to June 29, 1996 at 5:00 to 6:00PM. The BS-X download location for the rerun changed to Bagupotamia Temple.^[3]

While the underlying gameplay itself is largely similar, new and arranged content has been added. For instance, the BS version newly featured a score. Furthermore, at the beginning of the game Mario is the only playable character. Later in the game, time-dependent events occur triggering, among other things, the possibility of using other characters. Another feature unique to the game is the inclusion of gold Mario statues (ten in total for each chapter) that are hidden in various locations (including Sub-Space). Collection of the statues in-game grants the player an extra life and refills the life meter. After clearing a level, the player could press "Select" to see some statistics such as the number of statues, coins, cherries, and mushrooms collected, as well as display which bosses had been defeated.

As a 4-volume broadcast, each week bore a different subtitle. The names of the volumes were:

• "We, Super Birdos" (「あたしたち、スーパーキャサリンズ」, "Atashitachi, Sūpā Kyasarinzu"^?)^[4]
• "Tryclyde's Secret Quicksand Surprise" (「ガブチョもびっくり流砂の秘密」, "Gabucho Mobikkuri Ryūsa no Himitsu"^?)^[4]
• "Fryguy on Pack Ice" (「氷の海でヒーボーボー」, Koori no Umi de Hībōbō^?)^[4]
• "Wart's Trap, Look Out Mario Brothers" (「マムーの罠，危うしマリオブラザーズ」, Mamu no Wana, Abunau Shi Mario Burazāzu^?)^[4]

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]

[edit] Super Mario Advance

Super Mario Advance box art

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,^[5] 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 popularities^[6] (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".^[7] 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).

[edit] Reception

Upon release, Super Mario Bros. 2 was highly successful, and it is currently the third highest-selling game ever released on the Nintendo Entertainment System, with over ten million copies sold.^{[citation needed]}

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] Other reviewers took exception to the fact that the game was Doki Doki Panic repackaged as a Mario game, while acknowledging they enjoyed the game itself.^[10]

[edit] See also

• List of best-selling video games

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Super Mario Bros 2/Yume Kojo Doki Doki Panic Retro Corner - XLEAGUE.TV and TGWTG's video feature on Super Mario Bros. 2
• Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic-The strange truth behind Super Mario Bros. 2
• BS Super Mario US
• Super Mario Bros. 2 at NinDB
• Super Mario Bros 2 commercial at PimpMyNintendo