Super Mario All Stars Advance
Billi Plancarte
Super Mario Bros. 2 is a platform game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was first released in North America in September 1988 and in the PAL region in 1989.
After the smash hit Super Mario Bros. in 1985, Nintendo quickly released a minor adaptation of the original with advanced difficulty titled Super Mario Bros. 2, for its mature market in Japan in 1986. However, Nintendo of America found this sequel too similar to its predecessor, and its difficulty too frustrating, for the nascent American market. This prompted a second Super Mario Bros. sequel based on Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic,[a] Nintendo's 1987 Family Computer Disk System game which had been based on a prototype platforming game and released as an advergame for Fuji Television's Yume Kōjō '87 media technology expo. The characters, enemies, and themes in Doki Doki Panic have the mascots and theme of the festival, and were adapted into the Super Mario theme to make a second Super Mario Bros. sequel.
Super Mario Bros. 2 is a 2D side-scrolling platform game. The objective is to navigate the player's character through the dream world Subcon and defeat the main antagonist Wart.[1] Before each stage, the player chooses one of four protagonists: Mario, Luigi, Toad, and Princess Toadstool. All four characters can run, jump, and climb ladders or vines, but each character possesses a unique strength that causes them to be controlled differently. For example, Luigi can jump the highest; Princess Toadstool can float because of her dress; Toad's strength allows him to pick up items quickly; and Mario represents the best balance between jumping and strength. Unlike Super Mario Bros., this game has no multiplayer functionality and no time limit. The original only scrolls from left to right, but this game can also scroll right to left, and even vertically in some areas. Unlike other Mario games, the characters cannot defeat enemies by jumping on them but can stand on, pick up, and throw most enemies at each other to defeat them. Other objects that can be thrown at enemies include vegetables pulled from the ground and mushroom blocks.[2]
The game consists of 20 different levels across the seven worlds comprising Subcon. Each world has three levels, except World 7, which has two.[3] Each world has a particular theme that dictates the obstacles and enemies encountered in its levels, such as desert areas with dangerous quicksand and snowy areas with slippery surfaces. Levels contain multiple sections or rooms that are connected via doors or ladders. Some rooms are accessible by entering certain jars. Magic potions found in each level are used to temporarily access "Sub-space", a reflected, unscrollable area where the player can collect coins and Mushrooms that increase the character's maximum health. In addition, certain jars, when entered in Sub-space, will warp the player to the later worlds, skipping levels altogether. Other items available include cherries, which are collected in order to acquire a Star; and the POW Block, which can be used to destroy all the enemies visible on the screen quickly.[4] The player must defeat a boss enemy at the end of each of the first six worlds, then defeat Wart himself at the end of World 7 to complete the game.
The player starts Super Mario Bros. 2 with three lives, one of which is lost each time the player's character loses all health from enemy or hazard damage or when the character falls off the screen. The player can replenish health by collecting floating hearts that appear upon defeating a certain number of enemies. The player will receive a Game Over upon losing the last life, though the player may continue up to twice in one game. Extra lives may be obtained by collecting hidden 1-Up Mushrooms or by using the coins collected from Sub-space to play the Bonus Chance minigame between the levels.[5]
Mario has a dream of a staircase leading to a mysterious door to a mysterious place. A voice identifies the world as the dreamland of Subcon, and asks for Mario's help in defeating the villainous frog named Wart, a tyrant who has cursed Subcon and its people. Mario suddenly awakes and decides to tell Luigi, Toad, and Princess Toadstool, who all report experiencing the same dream. The group goes on a picnic, but discovers a cave with a long staircase. Through a door at the top, they are transported to Subcon, revealing their dreams to have been real. After defeating Wart, the people of Subcon are freed and everyone celebrates. Mario suddenly awakes in his bed, unsure if these events were a dream. He soon goes back to sleep.
The idea was that you would have people vertically ascending, and you would have items and blocks that you could pile up to go higher, or you could grab your friend that you were playing with and throw them to try and continue to ascend ... the vertical-scrolling gimmick wasn't enough to get us interesting gameplay.
Nintendo originally released a different game called Super Mario Bros. 2 on Japan's Family Computer Disk System in 1986 (later released as Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels for Super NES as part of Super Mario All-Stars). Its engine is an enhanced Super Mario Bros., with the same gameplay and more complex level designs, character features, and weather features. Some of the advanced level content had been culled from Vs. Super Mario Bros., a 1986 coin-operated arcade version of the original Super Mario Bros. for NES.[6][7] All of these factors combined to yield an incremental game design with significantly higher difficulty.
An early prototype with vertical scrolling was developed by Kensuke Tanabe,[8][9] designed by a team led by Shigeru Miyamoto, and programmed by Nintendo's frequent partner, SRD, shortly after Tanabe was hired in April 1986.[6] The first prototype's gameplay emphasizes vertically scrolling levels with two-player cooperative action: lifting, carrying, and throwing each other; lifting, carrying, throwing, stacking, and climbing objects; and incrementally scrolling the screen upward when reaching the top. Dissatisfied so far, Miyamoto then added the traditional horizontal scrolling, saying to "make something a little bit more Mario-like",[10] and saying "Maybe we need to change this up ... As long as it's fun, anything goes". However, the prototype software was too complex for Famicom hardware at the time, and the gameplay was still considered lacking, especially in single-player mode.[6]
Unwilling to compromise on gameplay, Tanabe suspended development of the prototype until eventually receiving instruction to use the Yume Kōjō festival mascots in a game. He recalls, "I remember being pulled over to Fuji Television one day, being handed a sheet with game characters on it and being told, 'I want you to make a game with this'." Tanabe re-implemented that prototype's elements in his new game, and released the advergame-themed Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic for the Family Computer Disk System[6] in Japan on July 10, 1987.[11]
The title Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic[c] is derived from "doki doki", a Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound of a quickly beating heart. The title and character concept were inspired by a license cooperation between Nintendo and Fuji Television to promote the broadcaster's Yume Kōjō '87 event, which showcased several of its latest TV shows and consumer products.[6] The Yume Kōjō festival's mascots became the game's protagonists: a family consisting of the boy Imajin, his girlfriend Lina, and his parents Mama and Papa. The rest of the game's characters, including the main villain named Mamu, were created by Nintendo for the project. Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic takes place within a book with an Arabian setting. All four characters are optionally playable, though the game is not fully completed until the player clears all levels using each protagonist.
Nintendo of America's Gail Tilden recalls that president Minoru Arakawa's request to convert the thematically unrelated Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic into a Mario sequel was "odd" at first but not unusual for Nintendo, which had already converted a canceled Popeye prototype into Donkey Kong and reconceived that into Donkey Kong Jr. and Donkey Kong 3.[12] Summarizing Tanabe's recollections within a 2011 interview, Wired said "Although the initial concept for the game had been scrapped, the development of that original two-player cooperative prototype inspired all the innovative gameplay of Super Mario Bros. 2".[6]
For the international conversion into Super Mario Bros. 2, many graphical changes were made to the scenery and characters' look, animation, and identity.[13][14] The R&D4 staff modified the character likenesses of Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool, and Toad, building them over their respective counterpart models of Imajin, Mama, Lina, and Papa. This marked the first time that Mario and Luigi had noticeably different heights,[7] and Miyamoto originated the scuttling animation of Luigi's legs, to justify the enhanced jumping ability seen in the corresponding Mama character.[15] Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic needed only a few alterations for its conversion into the Mario series because its gameplay elements were already so heavily rooted in it: Starman for invincibility, the sound effects of coins and jumps, POW blocks, warp zones, and a soundtrack by Super Mario Bros. composer Koji Kondo.[16][17] To reduce the game's overall difficulty, the designers made minor technical changes. They opted not to retain Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic's ultimate requirement to complete each level using each protagonist; therefore, this new Super Mario Bros. 2 can be completed in only one pass by any combination of characters. A late prototype of the game covering these changes was exhibited in the first issue of Nintendo Power, dated July/August 1988.[18] In the tradition of the Mario series, they added the ability to run by holding the B button.
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