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http://themushroomkingdom.net/bugs/smb

everything is there.

The All-Stars version of Super Mario Bros. has inaccurate physics when jumping and breaking a brick, unfortunately. Mario keeps rising in altitude instead of immediately falling down, which sounds minor but affects you if you're used to running and hitting bricks without stopping like in the original.

For years, I thought I was the only one who ever noticed this, but I see that it's mentioned at TMK.

A little known fact is that Mario's brother, Luigi, was originally named Levitzi. (He was adopted from a Jewish couple.)

Nintendo will be releasing a game next spring called Luigi Rescues Pe[s]ach. "Let my princess go!" In the game, Luigi eats moshe-rooms and chocolate shekels to give him power, but watch out for the maror! He tosses spinning dreidels at the Koopa Troopas to knock them off their feet.

Unfortunately, the sequel to this game is going to be a real bummer... 40 years in the desert

About.com says: Luigi was Papa, and Toad was Mama The Mushroom Kingdom and Progressive boink: Luigi was Mama and Toad was Papa The about.com article seems unreliable http://nintendo.about.com/od/editorials/ss/marioco mpare3_2.htm. The various links provided by other Slashdot users all say Luigi was originally the taller, high-jumping Mama http://themushroomkingdom.net/smb2_ddp.shtml and http://www.progressiveboink.com/archive/dokidokipa nic.html. Considering the Progressive boink article has a copy of the ROM included and strong indications that it's author played the Doki Doki Panic version (instead of only looking at screenshots) I'm inclided to give the nod to him.

First of all, until Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island this game was questionable "Mario canon", once Shy Guys started showing up in Yoshi's Island did this game truly become part of the series (in terms of mechanics, etc.). Until then, NONE of the Mario games shared any of the mechanics from SMB2/SMBUSA, this includes the differences in the characters. I don't know why the submitter thought that the panel roulette from SMB3 inherits off the slot machines in this game. Those are entirely different features in the game (with SMB2 requiring you to collect coins to power the slot machine and SMB3 giving you a single shot at a panel with the payoff occuring every 3 levels... totally different). The Super Mario Advance series started with retconning SMB2 into the rest of the series (with changes such as adding a scoring system, turtle shells now bounce off obstructions, etc.) and made changes to the rest of the games to accomodate that (SMA2:Super Mario World allows you to play as Luigi in single player mode, complete with SMB2 jumping and other subtle but interesting changes, SMA4:Super Mario Bros. 3 allows you to give Luigi "low gravity" and add SMB2 veggie sprouts to the SMB3 levels, but only if you have an e-Reader. There's also a couple of e-Reader levels in SMA4 that contain SMB2 elements).

Second, as has been mentioned earlier, there a lot better resources for the comparisons. They are more in depth, hit a lot more differences than the About.com article, and are presented a lot better on the web. Here's what I found just linked off the wikipedia entry for Doki Doki Panic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doki_Doki_Panic Which, by the way, has a nice list of all the changes on its own.

http://themushroomkingdom.net/smb2_ddp.shtml
http://progressiveboink.com/archive/dokidokipanic. html

When I see stuff like this hit the front page, it's not hard to see why sites like Digg are gaining in popularity.

You're missing the point. The article's about the effect that those changes have had on all future versions, not just about the changes themselves. Everybody's in such a rush to yell "DUPE!" they don't bother to read.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

DreamWinkle's summary indicates that's what the article is about, but it's really not. The article just shows a bunch of comparison screenshots and talks about what changed and what didn't, and even then, The Mushroom Kingdom's Doki Doki Panic/SMB2 comparison is more accurate, more thorough, and easier to navigate.

### Anyways: I am a big fan of digging down and understanding everything we can about how our minds work. But I always had a fear that at some point we'd know that we were powerless machines who could do nothing but react deterministicly.

I like to look at software, specifically games, in comparism. They are deterministic and designed by intelligent beings after all, so they shouldn't have any "free-will", yet, still interesting things happen. For example take a look at SuperMarioBros1, looks normal, yet, there is the MinusWorld, Mario can do wall-jumps and even jump over the pole at the end of the level[1]. Not sure, if some of the issues ever showed up in beta testing, but they for sure weren't designed or intended by those who wrote the game, they simply happened as a result of a complex system. Now, even if the human is being equally deterministic like SuperMario, the world and the rest of the universe provide a *much* larger system then the NES cardridge of SuperMarioBros1, so lots of interesting things can and will happen simply because the system is much to complex. I for one don't need a free-will, since the system is so complex that I can't predict its outcome anyway.

[1] http://themushroomkingdom.net/smb_bugs.shtml

The Mushroom Kingdom is the best site I've seen for the Marioverse... they have a very good Doki Doki and SMB2 comparison.

Nintendo had a few oddball "2"s... I'm one of those oddball gamers who preders Legend of Zelda 2 to the original, I really dig SMB2 (it was the first game that made me think 'wow, THIS is a VIDEOGAME???', it looked that good).... and the way that Starfox 2 was never released is a serious tragedy, it really was poised to take the series in some interesting directions, N64 is just pedestrian eye-candy in comparison...

The Mushroom Kingdom is the best site I've seen for the Marioverse... they have a very good Doki Doki and SMB2 comparison.

Nintendo had a few oddball "2"s... I'm one of those oddball gamers who preders Legend of Zelda 2 to the original, I really dig SMB2 (it was the first game that made me think 'wow, THIS is a VIDEOGAME???', it looked that good).... and the way that Starfox 2 was never released is a serious tragedy, it really was poised to take the series in some interesting directions, N64 is just pedestrian eye-candy in comparison...

I guess the salaries in this Far Side weren't too far off after all!