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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."
...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.
"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.--
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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.
It's not just video games. Electronics are "dumbed down" for the american consumer. There are craploads of electronics they sell in Japan and sell like mad that we do not see here. 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. In Japan it is common to have combo DVD-MiniDV tape devices, something that home video editors here in the US would kill for.
From Cellphones to everything else. It is all "dumbed down" for Us consumption.
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"?
Most of the cool electronics that geeks here would kill for are castrated and then have soft corners installed for us "special" americans so we do not hurt ourselves.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
cultural priorities really explain it -- knowledge of how to use a technical device isn't all that important in the grand scheme of things. For example, I doubt the average Japanese developer is any better than an average Indian, Chinese, or American one. Their culture doesn't have an inherent +10 skill for technology, its just cultural priority. When you live in a shoebox, technology is an escape... i only need 1x1 meters for my sony playstation + lcd monitor + final fantasy VXIII.
How many cellphones have I had in a lifetime? 5 at least. I no longer learn all the functions of my electronic device, i want it to 'work'. Douglas Adams said it best (paraphrasing)-- "Technology is a word used for a device that doesn't work yet. A chair is technology, but no one things of it as such."
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
It doesn't sounds like Americans are being singled out though. Europeans got the same products, AFAIK. Also, it may not be that Americans (or Europeans) are too "stupid" to use the more complicated devices, maybe the Japanese just don't know how to make a complex interface that is intuitive for anyone but themselves.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
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