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."

Comments

Does anyone not know about the story of SMB2?

[bonch]

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.

Re:Does anyone not know about the story of SMB2?

[stickb0y]

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.

Re:Old...

[Coneasfast]

for those who don't know though, you can find this (and other) info on the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros.

Re:original "Mario Bros"

[KDR_11k]

The original Mario Bros was an arcade game, the Atari got a port of it as did numerous other platforms. It came after Donkey Kong but before Super Mario Bros.. There are variants of it in other Nintendo games, for example the battle game in SMB3 and a remake of the arcade game in all Super Mario Advance games and Mario & Luigi.

MB was also the game that introduced Luigi.