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How America Changed the Mario Brothers
DreamWinkle writes "It might seem unlikely considering that Mario was born and developed in Japan by Japanese minds, but America forever changed how our favorite plumber played. Why? Because Nintendo thought the U.S. and European gamers couldn't play. As a consequence, they never released the real Mario 2 outside of Japan because it was too hard, and instead released Doki Doki Panic with the Mario name. Since then, the entire Mario franchise has picked up traits from Doki Doki Panic, like the card game at the end of each level in Mario 3. This article takes a look at what elements really belong to Mario and what belongs to Doki Doki Panic. It's interesting to see that, point for point, Nintendo changed almost nothing about Doki Doki Panic before releasing it in the states and Europe as Mario 2."
Seriously, this news is 20 years old. I figured pretty much every serious gamer knows this story... More interesting is how frequently Japanese companies have made the American version of the game easier.
Anyone know the relationship between "Mario Bros" (on atari 8 bit), and the Nintendo Super Mario?
I thought this was very common knowledge by now, especially on Slashdot. For crying out loud, a link to About.com? For more detailed information about the differences between the U.S. and Japanese versions of all the Mario games, check out The Mushroom Kingdom.
As I wasted my last life fumbling with mario 3 using an emulator on my PDA while riding home on the bus, the Japanesse kid beside me chuckled. I gave him a dirty look, and turned away to try again. What an erie slashdot article to come home to.
Honestly, I remember playing Mario 2 and thinking "What the hell were they smoking when they made this game? Killing enemies with turnips you pull out of the groun? Red potions that take you to a mirror world? How does this fit between 1 and 3?". This actually explains a lot.
Also, I don't know why they thought we couldn't handle the real one - all the best gamers are in North America ;)
Now, if I had a look at, say this page linked from this article, noted here, then I probably wouldn't need TFA to tell me that Mario 2 was an almost complete rip off of some other game.
from the title, I thought it was going to be how the Mario brothers became fatter, and less efficient.
Many many video games have seen this treatment.
The very popular Final Fantasy series has very much seen this. We, in the US, never saw quite a few of the releases. For much the same reason - we are seen as too stupid. Later releases have been adjusted to meet both our markets.
The interesting question is: is this true? I don't really think so, Imports/unedited releases are too popular when available. IMO people are mostly just people - difficulty doesn't matter much. Culture references very much are important, but that is very different from complexity.
Lets put it this way: were there to be a "white" and "black" version of a US game release where the black version was VERY simplified from the white persons games for the same reasons would we accept it? Not in the least - and rightfully so. There may be some culture difference (maybe one prefers FPS over RPGS) but complexity and ability to understand it is not one of them.
I've always found it intereseting what prejudices are accepted and which are not. Not just in the above example (dark colored skin vs light colored), but in any of them. West vs east, tech vs non tech, color of skin, rural vs city, religious vs non-religious, or any number of classes that are compared. Pretty much everyone has them - I do. I try to root them out but am shown that I haven't found one from time to time. For whatever reason it seems to be human nature to group - some can try and identify it, some can not. And, in some cases, the groups are even accurate (if they are accurate to ignore them is horrid/destructive policy).
While there may very well be some cultural differences (maybe westerners do actually prefer FPS and simple games over easterners - though I'm not sure that's true), it's not because one can not handle them. I don't like art films - I can quite follow them and understnad them - however I still don't like anything but simple minded movies (I do, however, like complex books).
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
Should sites like this be eliminated?
...is it's effect on game series, as a whole. Up until then, sequals were little more than altered level sets. In fact, this is all the Japanese sequal to Super Mario Bros. is... aside from the addition of one item, the poison mushroom, it is simply a different level set. But with the game switch debacle that was Mario 2, the whole idea of a "sequal" changed from: "same game with different levels", to "new game with similarities to original game, with new levels". Since then, few series have been able to get by with simply altering level sets. Imagine what would have happened if Mario 2 had been released the way it originally was, in the US, Mario 3 wouldn't have had to be so innovative just to follow a similar progression, it could have just been a THIRD level set of the original game... but thankfully, the creators were forced to come up with some entirely new design ideas, and created one of the greatest games of all time.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Well, this is old news like others have said but it sure makes me glad I grew up in downtown Tokyo. I had the opportunity to waist tons of hours on this super hard Super Mario Brothers 2 with my Japanese buddies. And when I got tired of playing this difficult game I would just go to the toy shop to have the disk rewritten with a easier game for just 500yen (like Doki Doki Panic).
Like, don't warn us that the linked story tries to run ActiveX controls that "improve" my computer. I suppose most /.ers either run Firefox or have security turned up high, but hey, thats no excuse.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
Is it possible to buy the Japanese SMB2, as a cartridge I can play in my NES? Did the Japanese system use the same cartridges, or was there a slight difference?
Yes, I know you can use an emulator, or Super Mario All-Stars for SNES. I'm not interested in an emulator at the moment, and I don't have a SNES.
So assuming the cartridges are compatible, where can I buy one?
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$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
They DID release the original Mario Bros. 2, just not on it's own, it was part of the Super Mario All-Stars compilation for the SNES, then dubbed The Lost Levels. So the article is kinda wrong, it did get released outside of Japan - eventually. It is, however, more of the same old as the first game, only harder.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
I really want to play Doki Doki Panic with the original sprites.
"Everyone knows" that all the most awesome, hardcore Japanese games don't make it to the US because, overall, the US audience needs dumbed-down, easier games.
Everyone is wrong. Comparing mainstream audiences, Japanese gamers actually prefer easier, less-complex titles with more linear storytelling and less control and decision-making from the user. This is most evident in sports games. US/EU sports titles never make it in Japan in part because they are far too complex and a bit too difficult. JP sports titles rarely make it elsewhere because the gameplay seems dumbed-down and unrealistic.
In the case of the "lost levels", the game wasn't that popular in Japan either, while our so-called SMW2 has enjoyed enduring popularity in Japan, across multiple releases on multiple consoles. The problem with the SMB sequel wasn't just that it was too hard, it is that it's not that good. It's too much of a rehash of the first SMB and all the added difficulty comes from gimmicky and poorly-tested elements; it's more often annoying than it is hard.
As for RPG's not coming to the US, the problem here isn't that we aren't good enough for the excellent Japanese RPGs. The bigger problems are:
- Preferences. Japanese players like simpler, more linear games (you might even say "dumbed-down") with fewer skill-based elements and more emphasis on storytelling and presentation. They are also more tolerant of silliness.
- Costs. An RPG requires hundreds or thousands of times the translation effort of an action title. Margins are not always very high and many producers and distributors simply don't want to deal with such large up-front costs. Even extremely popular games like Nintendo's Animal Crossing and Zelda get delayed by months so they can be translated.
- Prior to 1996, RPGs were niche titles outside of Japan anyhow.
If you confine your analysis to only hardcore gamer audiences, the comparison becomes completely different. For instance, nobody can touch the Japanese elite at 2d arcade shooters, while on the other hand the Japanese are nonexistent in the FPS scene. But in both cases, the hardcore communities are completely unrepresentative of the mainstream audiences.--
Ikaruga scoreboard (supports netranking)
Doki Doki Panic? This is supposed to be "STUFF THAT MATTERS"?
I don't think this is what executives at Nintendo, Square, and the like are thinking. I'm not saying that Japan is devoid of nationalism or even outright racism, but I simply can't see a rational human being uttering the phrase "The American mind simply cannot take in all of the brilliance that is Final Fantasy I&II, we must water it down". It all comes down to the bottom line, and anyone wanting to sell a product has to know their market. There's a big difference between "Let's not port SMB2 because it won't sell" and "Americans are too stupid for SMB2".
Unfortunately, I feel the market disagrees with you. Take a look at rare instances where Japanese RPG titles get the full-on marketing push in the USA. EarthBound for the SNES is a good example. Originally known as "Mother 2" in Japan, the game received a very good (yet faithful) translation effort, had a big marketing push by Nintendo, and was prominantly displayed in oversize packaging that was custom-made just for that title (to accomodate the strategy guide they threw in to sweeten the deal). In fact, the USA translation was arguably more expensive to develop and market than the original Japanese version.
By your theory Earthbound should have done every bit as well as it did in japan. However, the game tanked badly. I was one of the, oh, maybe 5 people in the USA to buy that game. It was awesome, btw, but that's not the point.
There are a couple instances that play out similar to this, but smart companies learn lessons quick and that's why nintendo is very shrewd about what titles get ported.
As for this conventional wisdom regarding why Nintendo didn't release the "real" SMB2 in the USA... I don't buy it. I see the same reason stated repeatedly, but never with attribution. I'd be willing to guess that there was a quote taken out of context and/or badly translated. I'd be much more willing to believe that Nintendo felt that the Japanese SMB2 would be poorly received because the American gaming demographic skewed younger than their japanese demographic and that small children would be turned off by a weak cash-in of a game that was so frustrating that you wanted to bash the cartridge into tiny bits.
Yeah, I played it, and though I'm sure to offend the obscure-japanese-game-title-snobs out there, but the truth is this: The Japanese version of SMB 2 simply wasn't very good.
Maybe I should start submitting when I see a lot of 'slownewsday' tags. I'm still 0/3.
I do havea normal comment though.
I wonder if it's just a natural tendency for Japanese to make their games that much tougher. Is that because your average Japanese boy is more patient? I mean, Everyone knows taht the Japanese Final Fantasies basically have enemies that cause more damage yet your main characters earn less EXP per kill.
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I believe the original Mario 2 is available outside Japan. It's known as "Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels" and comes with Super Mario All Stars.
From my understanding, the big problem is that the Japanese branches were being mis-advised by their American staff at the American branches. "Oh no, American gamers would never like that" coming from 50-somethings who had probably never played a game before. It also took them a long time to realise that Americans and Europeans play different games - the earliest example I can think of of a game coming out in Europe and not America is "Vib Ribbon" (I'm ignoring Terranigma as that was refused a license in the US because it was felt the SNES was dead)
I have also heard that the reason that the original "Super Mario Bros. 2" was not released in the USA was because the USA had a stronger demand for originality and, thus, Nintendo was concerned that the game would not be well received in the states. Certainly, SMB and SMB2 are largely very similar; however, I'm uncertain which theory is correct, if not both.
At least elements from Doki Doki made it into Mario games and not elements from Captain N: The Game Master (which I used to love as a kid, but hate now because everybody else says it's cool to do so).
don't forget the europeans got thrown slightly easier games than either the US or Japanese, by virtue of most developers being extremely lazy and not taking the time to rework the game to work at PAL refresh rates, so tons of action games ran slower than their NTSC counterparts. this is due to the fact that the games timing were based upon the vertical retraces.
I can think of at least one exception to the "US games are dumbed down" argument that a lot of people have been putting forward - the Devil May Cry series. Every game (with the exception of DMC3 Special Edition) has had the difficulty level jacked up for American audiences.
"God is nothing but a public static final variable x." - my roommate
I think you're also oversimplifying and projecting western values onto the Japanese.
The concept of racial equality is a western one, and a western one alone. It is entirely acceptable in Japanese (and most of asia/africa/south america) culture to discriminate based on race. Emmigrating to Japan is hard at the best of times, but if you're brown of any description or russian (for example), you can essentially forget about it. It is not uncommon for establishments (pubs/bath houses/shops) outside of Tokyo to proudly proclaim "Japanese Only". http://www.debito.org/ has some interesting information about this sort of descrimination.
Divirging, but deciding not to offer something because "westerners aren't smart enough " is, in my opinion, entirely in keeping with cultural norms in Japan.
OK, it's old news. But the whole easy-ness thing is a real bummer.
:(
Not to brag (I've never really considered myself "good" at video games, I have friends who consistently kick my ass at it), but I picked up the New Super Mario Bros DS title a few weeks ago and beat it in about a week. Finished the final boss on my second try, and went back & polished off the 2 skipped worlds in a day or two.
This makes me a sad panda. It's a gorgeous game, loads of fun, but it was over before I knew it and compared to my childhood Mario experiences (SMB 1 & 3, SMW) it just seemed very easy. There's not even a % done indicator so I can see whether I've found all the coins and hidden spots. Am I missing something?
Justin
"Why would God give us a waist if we wasn't supposed to rest our pants on it?" - Rev. Roy McDaniels
I don't think the article ever really mentioned how many games inherited things from the Doki Doki Panic rebranding later on.
One of the biggest things that comes to mind is how Princess Peach can float and pull+throw turnips(?) seemingly out of nowhere in Super Smash Bros. Melee.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
Who hasn't seen this joke/protest before? Who doesn't know that toms hardware and some other sites paginate? How is this still considered funny? Is protesting funny?
I can't tell what's real anymore. Is every article a dupe or is it all backslashes?
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).
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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
When I see stuff like this hit the front page, it's not hard to see why sites like Digg are gaining in popularity.
Insert Sig Here
ummm there's a card game at the end of every level in Mario 3?
nothing
We, in the US, never saw quite a few of the releases. For much the same reason - we are seen as too stupid. Later releases have been adjusted to meet both our markets.
Final Fantasy 7 was actually significantly improved for the US version. Not only were random enemy encounter rates cut to about 1/3rd what they were in the japanese version, but two insanely difficult "mega weapon" optional final bosses were added.
This was later released in Japan as Final Fantasy 7: international edition and proved incredibly popular as the Japanese were as sick of random enemy encounters as we were. Since then Square has released several "international" versions of Final Fantasy games back home in Japan, bringing the circle to a close.
Square had tried with Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest to create a "stepping stone" RPG for the American market, so that players unfamiliar with the conventions could be brought into the fold, then could buy the more complicated regular RPG's. The feeling was not "Americans are dumb" but that the games had evolved over thousands of titles to involve highly specialized skills, like fighting games. And those skills needed to be built up a bit before players would really buy and enjoy RPG's. Cartridges were not only expensive to manufacture, but data-hungry RPG's were far more expensive than most, and many companies lost their shirts trying to bring quirky japanese RPG's out in the US. Look at how Shining Force did here. Unfortunately Mystic Quest was terrible, and tanked badly. Fortunately Square took another chance with FFIII, and has brought out every Final Fantasy here since then.
And say what you will, RPG's are still not as popular here as they are in Japan. When a new major-title RPG is released in Japan, work comes to a standstill across the country. Here, only the hardcore even know the names of anything but Final Fantasy, let alone would camp out overnight to get one. I still haven't come across many people who have played Dragon Warrior for the PS2.
The ______ Agenda
...was starting the debate "who looks more like Mario, Lou Albano, or Ron Jeremy?"
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
"It might seem unlikely considering that Mario was born and developed in Japan by Japanese minds, but America forever changed how our favorite plumber played."
Yes, his image was created in Japan, but Donkey Kong was created to sell in North America, a circuit board that could be tossed into unsold arcade cabinets over here, replacing the mundane space game that nobody remembers because nobody wanted to play it. Heck, it was NOA that gave him the name "Mario" (Super Jumpman Bros, anyone?). So it's a real strain to say "Only what came out of NCL is the One True Mario and anything else is heresy" when Mario was literally created to satisfy an international appeal.
And as for the The Lost Levels being "too hard" for players outside of Japan, the statement conveniently ignores the fact that it was a Famicom Disk System game. It sold well as a $5-$10 disk, but if you put the same music, the same graphics, the same features, the same gameplay as the original Super Mario Bros. into a new $50+ cartridge, it just wouldn't sell and we likely wouldn't even remember Mario today.
Besides, I have Super Mario All-Stars, I've played both and beaten both; Doki Doki Panic was harder. After having turned the original Super Mario Bros. inside out, there really was very little new to learn to beat the game, while Doki Doki Panic required learning some entirely new strategies.
It's true that many games are altered to be easier, between their Japanese and US releases. By contrast, note one game that became harder when released in the US - Final Fantasy VII. The American release featured the never-before-seen Ruby and Emerald Weapons, the super-hard optional monsters that you could fight solely for the purpose of glory. They were not available in the Japanese release, and many hard-core gamers, myself included, spent some frustrating (but ultimately gratifying) time trying to defeat them. The good response to Ruby and Emerald prompted Square to include optional uber-monsters in many of their subsequent games.
Also, check out the little Sambo face that gets pulled out of the ground.
-mkb
...but not as Mario 2. It was on the SNES "Super Mario All-Stars" compilation and titled "The Lost Levels". It was pretty much a harder version of the first Super Mario...more pits to fall in, purple mushrooms that would hurt you, etc. Graphics and sound were nearly identical. Also, to be fair, Doki Doki Panic was developed by the same team that made Mario, but before it's "Mario 2" makeover, it had more of an Arabian theme.
1. South America is in the western hemisphere.
2. Nowhere in south america you can't be vocally racist without risking jail or you ass getting kicked.
Where did you get such a silly idea like that? Really. I'm really curious since I lived in South America all my life.
ummm... racism was entirely acceptable in western culture too, until recently. Irish need not apply? Apartheid? Rosa Parks? Slavery? You have heard of these things right?
I don't think equality is just a concept of western culture, just that Japanese culture still hasn't developed as much as western culture. But I'm sure in a couple of decades Japan will have caught up.
I remember hearing that the American releases of games by large publishing companies often have tweaked gameplay to make them slightly "easier" to play (or conversely, making american games harder when exporting them), generally tolerances on timing, accuracy required and so forth. This does make sense, however, as historically European and Japanese gamers have had a good 20 years of fiendishly difficult platformers as their game of choice, where having to restart a level or indeed the game is a frequent occurence, and requires a great deal of dexterity and skill to play to completion - American games of the same era usually just took some perseverance, they weren't raised with the same ethic of skill needed. This is reflected in today's games industry where there is a larger American presence - anything from quake to gta 3, it doesn't take raw speed and skill to complete the game, but the later levels are more a challenge to strategy than anything else.
This isn't the only concession to culture games have made, it often goes the other way as well. For instance, it is considered unacceptable in Japan to see the protagonist actually die, you generally blink and stop, or fall off the screen, or something like that. Games have been modified to reflect this when shipping to that market as well, to appeal more to the demographic, which is equivalent to tailoring a game to a perceived demographic's skill in that area.
I have to disagree with you in one point. Here in South America racism is as bad as in any other western country. And I see you separate South America from "western countries". I feel slightly offended. Like when US people call themselves "Americans". But that's a separate issue. Discriminating people because of its race is very bad seen here. Sadly, it's common, but that doesn't make it acceptable. Specially in countries like mine (Chile), where you can see many european descendants as well as native descendants. I don't know where you got that from, but we do not have some kind of "aparhaid" (sorry if I mispelled).
About the game, when I played it the first time (back when I was around 10-12 years old I think), I always thought the game was too weird to be Mario, but I didn't question it much. In any case I prefer SMB3 over any other NES Mario. And I might have read it wrong (9 in the morning here and I'm sleepy), but I don't recall SMB3 having the card game in each end of world. It was a spawn in the map.
So maybe THAT'S why Ikaruga was so easy!
Like when US people call themselves "Americans". But that's a separate issue.
Go read a list of the full name of every country in the Western Hemisphere (or the world, for that matter), and let me know how many have "America" in the name. I will agree to call anyone from any one of those countries "Americans".
(Hint: "United States of America" is the entire list. Change your country's name from "Republica de Chile" to something like "Republica Americana de Chile", and maybe we'll talk, though even then I'd say "United States of America" would take precedence, not least because there's no other "name" in "USA".)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
If you're curious, check out our screenshots of the original NES Super Mario Brothers 2, only released in Japan on the Nintendo Disk System, then check out our reveiw of the title to see if we think Nintendo made a wise move to pull the plug on it.
Not true, my mom accidentally rented it for me when I asked her to get SMB3 during it's initial release. She came home with a box covered in anime characters, with a typewritten label that said 'SUPER MARIO III'. The third 'I' was drawn in with Sharpie pen.
Imagine my chagrin when I powered up the cartridge and got SMB1 graphics. Imagine my rage when I learned about the poison mushroom. At age six, there is no living that down.
I'm not here. This isn't happening.
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.
IN SOVIET RUSSIA, the Mario Brothers change YOU!
Apparantly, my manual transmission Honda only requires that the clutch be depressed when turning on for the American version. In Japan, there is no sensor requiring you to do so to start the engine. I think the fear was Americans were too stupid to be trusted to not start a car in gear.
That's really what the stories about Japanese Mario 2 are about, whether they realize it or not, perpetuating the stereotype of the Japanese as ultra-obsessed geeks who can buzzsaw through games. Hence the legend of Japanese Mario 2 being "too hard" for Americans.
1. Mario 2 is too hard, but for every damn body. Let's make that clear. I wouldn't doubt if it was that game that caused Miyamoto to start thinking hard about whether video games were getting too difficult for the average player.
2. Some levels and game objects feel hacky in a way that was entirely absent from the original game. "Bad" mushrooms, the springboards that sent Mario into the stratosphere, the wind effect, the final level, "World 9", and especially reverse warp zones, everything about it screams quickie sequel. Many of these effects overturn assumptions in bad ways, like the idea that trying something unexpected and finding a warp zone was a reward. How many gamers must have been shocked by jumping over the flagpole in 3-1 and getting PUNISHED for it? (The game also contained at least one death pipe, where you came out in a place where the only escape was a pit.) It could perhaps be argued that Nintendo learned their lesson regarding sequels with this game, as most of their later sequels make sure to introduce substantial new elements, and usually new game engines.
Meanwhile, Doki Doki Panic had a great design, a cartoony art style, similar secret-based gameplay with all its clumps of grass scattered about and number of secret passages, great monsters, and a license could never, ever, work in the U.S. (It was based off of a Japanese TV show.) They were going to have to rebrand it anyway, and it just so happened they had an unnecessarily punishing, hacky Mario 1 sequel to work around.
Really, their decision was not hard, and arguably the right one. And the game also allowed Nintendo to considerably expand the Mario universe: this was the game that gave us Shyguys, Pokeys and Ninjis, after all, not to mention everyone's favorite androgynous boss character, Birdo. It also elevated Peach to the status of full-player, which has happened surprisingly rarely in the years since, and also had a playable Toad, who's only had a starring role in Wario's Woods since.
Finally, note that, while the U.S. release of Mario All Stars (SNES) had "Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels" in it, the Japanese version had "Super Mario Bros. 2 USA", and in the GBA remake of Mario 2 the Doki dudes are entirely absent. Dreamland has been neatly assimilated into the Mario universe, both in the US and in Japan, and really, both are better off that way.
I think anyone who has been in Asia, and specifically Japan for any period of time will realize that the Japanese aren't more technically savvy than anyone else in the rest of the world. In fact, I'd argue that they're less savvy than many in the West.
Japanese don't like complicated technology. They want products they don't have to think about. Hence the popularity of the iPod, and Macs in general. What they do fawn over is new technology. It's common for people to throw out a phone after 6 months to upgrade to the latest and greatest.
Products like VCDs, Laserdiscs and Minidiscs took off not because they were necessarily better than existing technology. They were popular because it was something new and different. Japanese, once reknown for saving money now throw away money on new products like there's no tomorrow. Americans and likely westerners in general, tend to be more practical. If it something isn't overwhelmingly superior to existing technology people aren't really willing to spend the money on it. It's like those guys who go out and buy the most expensive SLR cameras they can find and get all the accessories available for it but then do nothing but take crappy family photos.
Part of the problem, however, is also management in America and the US market. There were countless games localized for the US because some idiot thought it would never sell otherwise. Look at all the lame, amateurish packaging we got in the US because god forbid the publishers retained the Japanese package art.
Then you've got industries here stifling progress in order to secure their own businesses. Phones in the US are consistently a year or more behind whats available in the rest of the world and always severely crippled. Why? Because US service carriers want to suck every last penny from their consumers. There's no way they'd ever allow a consumer to upload content directly to their own phone, or take that phone and just use it with any other service carrier. So why should a company bother importing a phone when the market will never allow it to become a viable product.
The idea that westerners are less sophisticated when it comes to technology is nonsense.
I think the card game that's being referred to is the rotating star/mushroom/flower card on the black background at the end of each level that you have to hit to finish the level.
Run fast and jump at a 45 degree angle...
"Run fast and jump at a 45 degree angle..."
...Guaranteed star and 5 lives every 3 stages!! :D
In any case, I always got 99 lives before leaving world 1. It was a must-do thing. And I always wished there were more than 4 lines of storage
The term "Western Culture" does not mean Western Hemisphere. It means the general culture of the west half of the Asian/European land mass. That is why the UK is considered "Western Culture". The US got most of it's origianl culture from England, and that is how we ended up a "Western Culture". Of course South America got much of it's culture from spain, which is also a "Western Culture", so that doesn't really change your argument. Just clarify item (1).
I loved Earthbound.
PS - I know where gamer number three lives, too. Gotta catch 'em...wait a minute.
Go read a list of the full name of every country in the Western Hemisphere (or the world, for that matter), and let me know how many have "America" in the name. I will agree to call anyone from any one of those countries "Americans".
How many countries in that continent north of Africa and west of Asia have the term "Europe" in their name?
What do you call people who hail from that continent?
So if a country in Europe decided to call itself the United States of Europe all of the other countries and peoples in that region should no longer call themselves European by your logic, right?
I guess if you repeat something enough it will become true.
I would like to put forth the opinion that "Americans are too stupid for SMB2" is not the reason (or at least not the only reason) that we didn't get the game. The real reasons are much more complex.
In Japan, Nintendo was releasing an upgrade to their Family Computer game system that used disks (looked a lot like floppy disks). This Famicom disk system needed games for launch. This is what the Super Mario Brothers 2 we never saw was for. From what I've read Miyamoto wasn't even truly involved with making Super Mario Brothers 2 and in fact was really just a "creative consultant" or something. Because he was busy making another disk system game 'Dreamfactory: Doki Doki Panic' (note that the name is Dreamfactory with a subtitle of Doki Doki Panic. doki doki is japanese onomatopoeia for a beating heart, i.e. excitement and danger.) I've even heard it rumored that "Doki Doki Panic" was really supposed to be the next mario but wasn't going to be ready in time so they made the rushed SMB2 and "Doki Doki Panic" evolved in a different direction. This makes sense to me. When I look at the Japanese Super Mario 2 I don't see some "extremely difficult game that Americans won't be able to play." What I see is a rushed expansion pack that was branded as an entirely new game. But why didn't we get this game? In my opinion there are two main reasons.
1) Because the NES was new in the USA. We had just gotten our Super Mario Bros. 1 and the Japanese SMB2 would be too close on its heels with almost no real evolution of gameplay. Sure SMB2 works fine when your launching a new disk system in Japan but Nintendo wasn't sure if another almost clone like SMB game would work on the NES.
2) Because we didn't have the disk system upgrade. Nintendo thought about bringing out the disk system upgrade in the USA eventually but never did. This is because we didn't need it anymore and Nintendo didn't want us to have it.
The disk system was created for two reasons. One was to allow to-disk saving of games, the other was to reduce costs of publishing the games. By the time the NES came out the famicom disk system was having problems. Due to some draconian copy right rules many companies didn't want to publish their games on the disk system. Also, companies were losing money due to the extremely easy to copy disk format. Nintendo was afraid of pirating if they used the disk system in foreign markets. What cinched our cartridge only platform was the fact that the other benefit of the disk system, saving to disk, wasn't as important anymore. Some of the disk system games were ported to the NES with password features instead of the save-to-disk ability the disk system used. Also, when Nintendo developed the disk system battery backup was very expensive. This price dropped pretty quickly, allowing the NES to use battery backup for games. Now there was no great need for the disk system for the NES.
I think the "SMB2 is too difficult for us" idea is perhaps partially correct but not exactly for the reasons everyone seems to believe. The japanese SMB2 could be saved. You could save and restore. If a warp took you backwards you could restore your game. The game is "too difficult" because the NES did not have the save feature that the disk system had.
Now because we didn't have a save feature and because the game was too much like SMB1, we didn't get it. It just didn't make commercial sense for the NES.
Miyamoto then got to take the game he had been working on and make a Super Mario 2 for the NES. Is it a real SMB2? I would argue yes. Miyamoto may have even originally planned for it to be the actual Super Mario Bros. 2 for everyone. But in any case it was released as SMB2 for the NES and eventually was released for the Japanese market as an alternate super mario bros 2.
We might not have got the expansion pack that was the Japanese SMB2 but we got an excellent, interesting, and fun game in its place. It just doesn't make sense to say our SMB2 is
Use the Z-modem protocol between Information Superhighway routers to compress the plaintext. ~LordOfYourPants
Article mentions the SNES All-Stars cart having the Lost Levels on it, with different graphics, but Lost Levels (with close to original graphics) was also an unlockable on the Gameboy Color Super Mario Bros DX cartridge.
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Wow, you should be modded troll, not insightful... America in just about any language outside of the US is used to refer to the two continents that carry that name. Go to any South/Central American country, and you will notice they all consider themselves american. FYI, someone who is from the US in spanish is referred to as "Estado Unidense." Which means from the US.
As an anecdote, when my family went to Colombia for vacation, my sister (then about 10 years old) was asked where she was from. She said "America", she was then asked again, where in America... The clarification was not so she would say what state, but instead what country!
Everyone that is at least 18-20 years old knows this already.
Must be a slow day on slashdot. Also the about.com article seems to be a rip of an article I remember reading a few years ago on a gaming website.
Oh well....
_buzlink_
We call people from the continent of Europe "Europeans".
We call people from the continent of Africa "Africans".
We call people from the continent of South America "South Americans".
We call people from the continent of North America "North Americans".
We call people from the country of Germany "Germans". They may be referred to as either "Europeans" OR "Germans"
We call people from the country of Columbia "Columbians". They may be referred to as either "South Americans" OR "Columbians"
We call people from the country of Canada "Canadians". They may be referred to as either "North Americans" OR "Canadians"
We call people from the country of The United States of America "Americans". They may be referred to as either "North Americans" OR "Americans"
There is no continent named "America", there is only North America, Central America and South America. There is only one Country named America. This really is not hard to figure out.
There are, or were, bootleg cartridges available of SMB2.
Back when I was a kid, WELL before SMB3 was released outside of Japan, the asshole at the local video rental place told me they had an imported "Super Mario 3" in. I was extremely excited, and rented it right away. I got home, turned it on, and wondered "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?" (It was, in fact, the Japanese SMB2.)
My mom convinced him to give me a refund.
A few days later, my friend rented and imported "Super Mario 5" from them, which finally turned out to be (the much sought-after) SMB3. We were as happy as you could possibly be.
To this day, I still wonder what the "Super Mario 4" cartridge was.
What a knob...
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
It is true that the U.S.A. is the only country name to include "America"... But using that logic, could a Mexican claim to be from the U.S.? (after all, they are from Estados Unidos Mexicanos, and "Americans" are from Estados Unidos de América - So Mexicans can claim to be from the United States of Mexico).
Yeah, yeah, I know that without the "de" it is more like "United Mexican States"... But still, you get the picture.
The only Mario game I liked was SMB2. Now I know why!
Self-censorship sucks. Grow a pair and learn how to actually write "fuck" and "dick".
FC Closer
What the fuck?
FC Closer
HE was a transvestite, if you don't believe me check the SMB2 manual.
Hold on. Is this the same western concept of racial equality that included the slaughtering of Native Americans, or the one that promoted "seperate but equal" as a perfectly valid way to treat people until the 1950's? If so, I'll need to recalibrate my notion of equality and re-read your post.
That said, I think you misunderstand me. I never said that Japan wasn't racist. Every culture has at least some level of racism it seems. My point was that greed wins out over racism (almost) every time. Nintendo's decision to alter gameplay was based more on business sense rather than racism. SMB2 would have tanked in the USA for the reasons I mentioned in my previous post. The relabeling decision netted them more money, and that's the motivation: money.
Huhuhuh... You said “nard”. huhuhuh...
So Colombia and Brazil, they all get along great, they're all Americans just having a big ol' party down there? Or do they stop you at the border and ask you for your passport and a bribe?
I call bullshit.
"Traditionally, Colombia's diplomatic and economic interests in the rest of Latin America were limited mainly to its neighboring rival, Venezuela. Colombia did not begin to identify with and pay more attention to other Latin American countries and to the English-speaking Caribbean until the mid-1970s."
Either way, the US has much more right to claim to be Americans, as we've been using the name to describe ourselves as such for a much longer time.
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No, because the country is "Colombia", with an "o", not with a "u".
I would be more willing to believe that since SMB2 was on that NES-disc thingie which never came out in the US or Europe, the western divisions of Nintendo scrambled around for something interesting and playable which they could quicky change out the player sprites. Especially since SMB2 seems to be more of an add-on, or extension to the original game -- the gameplay changes also seem annoying (Poison Mushrooms). Taking a great game in development (Doki Doki Panic) and branding it as a Mario followup seems like an easy (and fast) way to capitalize on the popularity of Mario in the western markets without the disc drive player.
{ - Generic Guy - }
I don't know maybe japan targets the teens and US/Europe targets the children, hence the watering down.
Also, I don't know why they thought we couldn't handle the real one
IMO Super Mario Bros. 2 (the real one) is overrated. There's a lot there that makes the game harder, and some of it, as far as I'm concerned, falls under the category of "poor game design" rather than being a worthwhile challenge. For instance:
Poison Mushrooms: They're a fair enough game element, but the visual difference between these and good mushrooms (the color of the spots) could potentially be lost on poor TV monitors.
Super Springboards: You bounce off these so high that you're off-screen for several seconds. On some levels you need to jump high off these and then make precision landings.
Castle Mazes: There were a couple of these in SMB - how they worked is that if you're in a castle and you run to the right, the castle will appear to be an endless loop unless you're on the platform at the "correct" elevation. There's no indication that this is a dynamic thing. You just have to figure it out. Reasonable if it's not taken to extremes, but SMB2 pushes this farther than SMB did.
You have to also consider how this all went down:
1985: SMB comes out in US and Japan.
1986: SMB2 comes out in Japan for the Famicom Disk System. The game, for whatever reason, is not released in the US. I think it's because of a combination of the difficulty (perhaps) and the somewhat poor game design choices, and the fact that, overall, it's "just another" SMB without much new to it.
1988: SMB3 is on its way, and the US is still without a SMB2. Do they release SMB2 (a first-generation NES title, by US standards) to the US, three years after the release of the NES? Bear in mind that in the time since SMB came out, NES games had gotten a lot better. Contra, Castlevania, and Rockman 1-2 all came out in that period. Plus SMB3 was coming, and setting a new standard for the series. I think apart from any concerns about how SMB2 would be received by US audiences based on its merits as a game or sequel, there must also have been concern that if they released SMB2 in 1988, it wouldn't measure up to more contemporary titles, with its one-direction scrolling, rather simple sprites, animations, and backgrounds, and the fact that it was little more than a new set of levels for a three-year old game that almost all NES owners had played (and probably gotten tired of, begun to see as antiquated, etc.). So they took Doki Doki Panic and put in Mario characters.
Now you can say what you like about how Doki Doki Panic/Super Mario USA doesn't fit the style of gameplay in the rest of the series... but nevertheless it was a damn good game. It had a good central gameplay mechanic (lift/throw) and used that to good effect to create some interesting boss battles, like the mouse/bomb fight or the final battle - much better than the "dump in lava or shoot with fireflower" that you had with Bowser in SMB 1 and 2.
I don't get how the article can attribute the minigames in SMB3 to the roulette feature in Doki Doki, however. What's the connection? Tenuous at best, I'd say.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
No, I will not work for your startup
Its on http://nintendo.about.com/od/editorials/ss/marioco mpare3_10.htm (page 10) is this a racist joke?
Keep it Simple Stupid...
A difficult interface to use while it will allow for more control also can add to confussion and non standardization and can make it less convient for the functionality. When it comes down to it with regards to any feture filled product, there are only a few fetures that anyone will use most of the time.
In america there are lots of smart people. Most of those people however have better things to spend there time on then spending 6 hours reading a manual and figuring out how to use all the fetures available in a gadget.
But weren't there a ton of Japanese RPGs that DID get the full translation treatment and did very well?
Secret of Mana?
Zelda?
Some of the Final Fantasy's?
Chrono Trigger?
Dragon Warrior?
And they're just off the top of my head.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
They added in the run feature to Doki Doki Panic when they made it into Mario 2. This created a very different game, easier in many ways. In our Mario 2, you could skip entire parts that you wouldn't be able to do in the original. The original Mario 2 has the disadvantage of being on a disk format rather then a catridge format, and the game had aged a lot by the time it was coming to the US. In a way it made a lot of sense to do it this way beyond how hard the game was.
Western society is now "enlightened" (for the most part) about mistakes of the past ;)
Actually, in "Estados Unidos Mexicanos" the last word acts as an adjective. The correct translation would be "Mexican United States". Which, I guess, strenghtens your point a bit.
so when are we talking about him?
you know, godwin's law and all....
I think it's more of a side effect of the complex system of face recognition getting honed down while your young, and not being able to adapt to the subtle differences later in life.
then again all look same is pretty interesting. I had some of my chinese and japanese friends do the test, and it seems that they can't tell the difference either! they scored the same amount of correct recognitions as me, and other european type friends.
I think the rationale behind "re-engineering for export" in Japan is more complex than the view that foreigners are "too damn stupid". In fact, such a view is quite insulting, and if anyone other than Americans were protrayed in the same light you'd likely be moderated into oblivion for making discriminatory, inflammatory remarks.
The Sharp Zaurus was pulled from US markets because it's too "hard" for americans. Yet the Zaurus is a raging success in Japan and they are on their 6th version that blows anything you can buy in the states out of the water.
NO, the reason it was pulled from the US market was becasue it wasn't making the company money. It wasn't as much to do with being too hard to use as much as it was the fact that the whole software platform was re-engineered and to translate it from Japanese to English would be a costly task. Since the older platform was a slow seller (a poorly marketed also-ran to Palm) Sharp decided to not bother. Being a fairly open platform others have taken up the task but it is a chicken-and-egg thing--Sharp won't officially re-enter the US market because there is no demand, but there is no US demand because the 3rd-party translation is not polished and they are grey-market imports with no support from Sharp.
From Cellphones to everything else. It is all "dumbed down" for Us consumption.
It isn't "dumbed down"...it is altered. It all HAS to be altered because we speak different languages--radically different languages--different vocabulary, different grammer, different writing--so different that it even affects how well a UI design works. Plus, features might be changed or removed becasue the technology infrastructure isn't here (pointless to pack a bunch of functions into a cellphone that aren't supported by any of the networks don't you think?).
Why do they do this? Because the average US consumer IS too damned stupid. Give them a DVD recorder remote with 52 buttons and a LCD status screen and they freak out. Give them full control menus on their TV for adjustment and they freak out. How many people went through the 80's with a blinking 12:00 clock on the VCR because it was "too hard to set"?
You are confusing stupid with "lazy" (in a good, Larry Wall sense). The US is a different culture than Japan--US likes BIG or POWERFUL. They'd rather not waste their time and brain power on something as trivial as a DVD player. 52 button remote with LCD? WHAT THE HELL FOR? We want tape player-like buttons, cursor keys and a numeric keypad and little else more--24 buttons or so and no more. Plus, DVDs have menus and on-screeen displays--the LCD is just a stupid idea--an LED or two is fine. Full control menus on a TV? Only geeks change the tint, contrast, brightness etc etc etc more than a few times in the life of a TV set nowadays anyways.
The reason we freak is NOT becasue it is too hard for us to figure out--it is becasue it isn't WORTH figuring out--it is too hard FOR THE INTENDED FUNCTION. Same goes for prograaming the VCR--it isn't the user that is retarded...it is the DESIGNER, and they never learned--it was always 2 or 3 menu levels deep to the right functions and tedious to do, and people have clocks all over and 6 or 8 hour tapes so they just didn't bother--they let it blink 12:00 and just pressed record before they left and hunted the tape later because it wasn't wasting brain power.
Japanese mindset is different...they like technology and features and miniature stuff and are way more tolerant of poor design. In essence, they are geekier than us. In my experience with a lot of Japanese-only products is that they are very advanced technically and mostly of good build quality but "quirky" to put it politely. Typically they are bleeding edge products that are designed around the underlying technology rather than the function or the user. Or, they suffer from a design tailored to smaller hands, or the Japanese language or the different cultural preferences. These quirks baffle us not because we
Yeah, you would think that. By all means, go track down a copy of the Famicom Disk with a suitable emulator. I'll even help you out. The disk image was linked in an earlier comment comparing the two games side by side and a decent emulator capable of playing the image would be FCE Ultra which is multi platform. Enjoy.
:) It did have the "Door Into Summer" tune so we can forgive it a bit.
Just don't get your hopes up though. While it's nice to actually play an odd piece of history, you'll be left scratching your head wondering why NOJ (yes, Nintendo of Japan) thought that this would be the game to release as Super Mario 2 in the rest of the world.
Don't get me wrong, I love SMB2; it's one of my all time favorite games. Trust me, I've played quite a few good games in my lifetime and this is a definite recommendation; I even like it more than Mario 3! It's almost as if Miyamoto and the rest of the team saw YKDDP and thought that there was some great promise in it if only it was polished a bit more. While this discussion is about how absorbing YKDDP in to the Mario universe forever changed Mario and other platform games (arguably for the better), you've also got to realize that it changed YKDDP.
Yume Kojou Doki Doki Panic on its own is OK but it feels like an unfinished beta. It's like comparing Sonic Crackers to Knuckles' Chaotix. Maybe that analogy isn't exactly fair because Crackers was a beta but Chaotix wasn't exactly the best game either.
"By your theory Earthbound should have done every bit as well as it did in japan. However, the game tanked badly. I was one of the, oh, maybe 5 people in the USA to buy that game. It was awesome, btw, but that's not the point."
Not really. I pretty much only play RPG's - you can count the non-RPG games I really like on your fingers (I think more than five, I know less than 10. I began playing in the 80's on a 2600). However, I was never fond of the earthboubd series. Not because of complexity - I found them quite simple - but because I hated the story. I didn't care about anyone or anything in the game - it's complexity had nothing to do with it. I figured that was most likely a cultural thing, I could see that it was a well done "something", but that something was something I didn't care for (to use another analogy I hate cheesecakes. I'm enough of a chef/cook I can taste quality vs crap even if I do not like a particular taste). I suspect that was true beyond just me.
Look at the Nippon Ichi games that are in the US. Were it not for Atlas these games would never have been seen - yet they have made quite a bit of profit and sold many units. I can't say they are particularly complex games (I've played MUCH more comples games - many developed in the US for the US), but the reason they were not imported was that American audiences were not "smart" enough to deal with them. Sales proved this to be false, they could be proved false over and over and over and the stereotype will remain.
Like it or not, Japanese see American gamers as stupid an not able to handle most "real" games. It's systemic in the industry. It will be for quite a number of years.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
Interesting - here in China you can get jailed for racist speech. Discrimination definitely exists, and racial quotas are in place that are much much stronger than in the US, but there isn't anything like the West's long history of racial genocide or racial slavery.
India has much the same laws.
But I guess 2.1 billion people doesn't matter much in your world view?