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Reviewing the Real Super Mario Brothers 2
An anonymous reader writes "When Mario Brothers 2 for the NES came out in the U.S. in 1988, many people were surprised at how different than the original Mario Brothers it was. The second Mario Brothers title that U.S. audiences know was never designed to be a Mario title at all. Instead, it's a game called Doki Doki Panic that's been modified with Mario sprites. Here's a review of the original Super Mario Brothers 2 as designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and released only in Japan. Nintendo felt that the poison mushrooms, blowing wind, and warps that took you backwards made it too difficult for North American audiences."
As mentioned at the end of TFA, a SNES reworking of the real SMB2 came out on the Super Mario All Stars cartridge as the Lost Levels. Also, hunting down a copy of the Doki Doki Panic ROM for NES emus is worth the time. It's kind of bizarre playing that game again without the cast of Mario characters.
This guy's the limit!
I've always found it odd that even though the US SMB2 wasn't considered canon, some parts of it have managed to make their way into the real Mario world anyway, Birdo, Shyguys, the fact that Luigi can jump higher than Mario, Princess Peach floating...
The only reason Mario ended up with a mustache was because programmers needed some sort of feature to show that he had a mouth.
Can someone explain to me why a game released in Japan was thought to be "too difficult" for players in the U.S.? Are we American's just wimps when it comes to video games? Are the Japanese really that superior to us in the arena of manipulating a pixelated plumber?
Beyond that- anyone who equates violence with maturity is either 13 or really needs to see professional help. If anything overt violence is a sign of immaturity.
I don't agree with that statement. Look at movies - there are two primary ways to get an R rating: sex and violence. The more explosions you add to a movie, the higher your box office draw. The more skin you show, the more adults will flock to your movie. Neither of these add anything to the plot or content of a movie, but without them it's harder for a movie to attact an audience.
Then you have movies like Seven, Silence of the Lambs, and other classics. These movies are built almost entirely around violence, and not of an immature kind either.
Violence is a part of everyone's life. Even in our relatively sheltered 21st century lives, it's a day to day fact - if not in person (and at some point it IS in person for most people), then by proxy. It's also a mature subject, in that you try to shelter the young from it as best you can - and in that it takes an adult to understand it as a story mechanism and not the central focus.
I also don't agree about most violent games having violence purely because of poor gameplay. I haven't seen many truly bad violent games, except for those copying far superior violent games. Grand Theft Auto required violence for it's storyline to work at all, yet the same gameplay worked well for Simpson's Hit and Run (a far less violent game). First Person Shooters require violence, and the greatest of them all have been some of the most violent games ever to exist. Also, like movies, fiction-based follow-the-story games have usually been at their best when the plot was "mature" - simply because sex and violence are visceral. Just ask Shakespeare. Virtually all of the major classics of literature have involved shock of one sort or another, even when that shock isn't as gaudy as less talented hands make it.
In other words, there is nothing intrinsically immature about violence. Glorifying it as something it's not is a sign of an immature mind that has neither truly experienced nor understands violence, but accepting it as a reality, and something that gives fictional events and experiences a deeper sense of reality, is a sign of maturity. Whether that person abhors it and avoids it wherever possible, or whether that person can sit back and enjoy a good tragedy without the "cool" factor, both are signs of maturity, not immaturity.
(Imagine Hamlet without the murder, vice, insanity, incest, and blood? Or Henry V, or Julius Ceasar, or Macbeth)
Do not confuse "Freedom of Choice" with "Free Will".
Mature gamers automatically are drawn to mature subjects, but it seems that immature games have usually had the longest run.
Be careful with the word "immature" here, it carries a negative connotation that I don't believe you intend (and you're wrong if you did intend it). And "mature" games, very often, are presented in a juvenile, sensationalistic way, while games that don't seek to play up their blood-and-sex content are free to have a more mature subject matter. Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, to give recent examples, are games have have almost a storybook presentation but are far from immature.
Anyway I think the phenomenon you bring up isn't all that surprising. Games that seek to shock or titilate tend to age rather ungracefully, since newer games that seek to do the same are, overall, better for having better graphics, while the older games are quickly superceded in the areas that were their primary selling point.
While the Japanese SMB2 had some interesting new features -- wind/weather, bad powerups -- it lacked the whimsy and mystery that SMB2 provided. It was really just more of the same.
That being said, I know of lots of people who would've loved to have "more of the same". I knew people that played SMB1 inside and out and would've definately bought the Japanese version had it been available. I think *both* versions should've been sold here.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Why write this crappy article? Well, the E3 registration deadline is less than 2 weeks away. Maybe he's one review away from scoring a press pass. Hmm...
Oh look, he wrote an article about how to get into E3 last year.
bort.
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