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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.
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
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.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
...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.
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=-
"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)
Don't forget Wrecking Crew, where Mario and Luigi take hammers to a building. It had a level editor!
What sound do people on rollercoasters make? Hint: it's not Xbox 360.
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
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.
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
The Cartridges aren't cross-compatible because of the pinout difference, and the difference in physical shape. However, to get an adaptor, the easiest thing to do is unassemble some of the ealiest carts, like excitebike, which was a famicom cart with an adaptor. then just stick the whole thing in a plastic shell. However, since this was a disk system title (like the two famicom Zelda games, and Super Mario Bros,and I belive kid icarus, etc...) there might not be a cartridge version available. it might be best to emulate it, if you're looking for the closest experience, but disk games need the FDS Bios, and it can be hard to get it to work with some emulators. You'd probably get off better just grabbing a Super NES, or waiting and getting a Wii For the Virtual Console deal.
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/
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
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.
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.
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 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
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!
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?
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