PixlBit

Two games in one part! Can you guess which one I like better?

Mario Madness

SMB2 USA, as you should already know, was never a Mario game to begin with. Nintendo's little switch-a-roo turned all of the established conventions from Super Mario Bros. upside down: four selectable characters with different abilities, turnips and enemies can be picked up and thrown, there are locked doors, you have an expandable health meter and all the time in the world to complete a level. Everything amounts to you, the player, having more freedom to do what you want in this Mario game.

 

Let’s take a look at the overall game design. On the outset, the most negative comment leveled toward the game is that it has fewer levels than Super Mario Bros., which is a valid complaint. True, the original had thirty-two levels, so that means it’s the longer game, right? Wrong. SMB's levels are actually much shorter to go through if you are not hunting for secrets, and they all have a time limit and a fixed scrolling mechanic. SMB2 USA’s levels, at a count of twenty, are much longer and often can be easy or difficult depending on the choice you make with the game’s four selectable characters.

It is quite a pity no other Mario games carried the selectable character mechanic henceforth, because it works so well. Mario is good all-around, Luigi can jump high but is physically weaker than Mario, Peach can float for a few seconds but is slow and physically the weakest of the bunch, Toad is the fastest and strongest out of the bunch but can’t jump well. Once you pick a character in the NES version, you have that character for the rest of the level. If you lose a life you cannot select a new character, which was later changed in the All-Stars version. Out of all the characters I have played, my favorites are Luigi and Toad. Toad is extremely useful in the desert levels and Luigi’s jump is just plain awesome for finding shortcuts. Each character has a super jump which is done by crouching and then jumping.

Each of the seven worlds except the last one are divided into three levels. All of these levels are divided into different sections. In world 1-1, you fall from the sky and land on a giant hill. At the bottom of the hill, while avoiding ShyGuys, you find your first red door which leads to another part of the level. Grabbing veggies and tossing them at enemies is not a hard concept to grasp and will easily become a second nature to the player, but near the end you are faced with a choice: If you are Luigi, you can stand on a jumping Tweeter (an enemy) and super jump to a higher ridge to climb up to the sky portion of the stage. Or you can take the door on the ground below and enter a short underground portion; when you climb the vine, you can either go left and take a shortcut to the end stage boss (Birdo) or go right and continue the level as it was. Every stage can be tackled in a unique way, which is beneficial for tackling difficult routes.

 

Hidden underground in each stage are Red Potions. Throwing these potions create a door leading to a mirror portion of the level that may have coins, a health-extending mushroom, or a warp pipe. Coins themselves are used for unlocking the bonus rounds at the end of each level. Winning at the slots earns extra lives, a mini-game that was carried over to Super Mario Bros. 3.

Judging on looks alone, SMB2 USA wears Super Mario Bros. (and The Lost Levels) as slippers and runs around with them. The simple pixelated look of SMB cannot hold a candle to SMB2 USA’s much more striking in-game character art and level settings. Mario and his friends resemble their then-official artwork of the time, and everything looks alive. Also, some of the night levels have stars in the sky, which I think is pretty rad. The sound is… slightly less memorable than its predecessor. While the overworld theme is infectious, the rest of the sound track isn’t quite as good.

 

As for The Lost Levels, my opinion is that it isn’t worth it unless you are really interested in playing a harder version of Super Mario Bros. While I can find difficult games fun (see Contra series, Mega Man series, DKC trilogy and Returns on Wii), I don’t know how people can find this game fun. Let’s do a comparison. Super Mario Galaxy got a direct sequel in the form of Super Mario Galaxy 2. The games look and control the same, but Galaxy 2 had better levels, Yoshi, new items, and a nicer soundtrack that made it feel fresh. Lost Levels doesn’t have any of this. It's basically what would happen if you took Super Mario Bros.' levels, put them in a blender and added rotten veggies and fruit into the mix; that fruit being Pirahna Plants that didn’t behave like Pirahna Plants, backwards warp zones, and maddening precision platforming.

 

Unlike their predecessor, both SMB2 USA and Lost Levels have not seen as many re-releases. Both were on the All-Stars remake on SNES and Wii, and both are in their original form on Virtual Console, but the most notable ones are easily the Super Mario Advance port (SMB2 USA) and the extra inclusion of Lost Levels in Super Mario Bros. DX for the Game Boy Color. Outside of some redesigns, a new boss battle and new features here and there, the Super Mario Advance port is mostly the same. I appreciated the five hidden red coins feature (carried over from SMB: DX) and an added score counter, but one thing I did not need was the addition of Peach and Toad's voices. Mario and Luigi having voices? I’m fine with that, they have wonderful voices. Peach and Toad, however, do not. Their voices are akin to listening to badly voiced cutscenes in the Sonic Adventure games, but here their voices are much worse and exclaim with every little action you do.

In addition, Mario got his own cartoon around the time SMB2 USA was originally released. I honestly don’t know what to even think of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show. Part of me thought the idea of Mario’s live-action actor and voice actor being (the sadly recently deceased) Captain Lou Albino was awesome, the other part of me wondered what the hell was even going on. The animation was terrible, the voices were largly hit and miss, and an actual storyline was almost non-existent; every episode had our heroes in a different land making lame jokes. People may like this cartoon for the nostalgia but I can’t bring myself to watch a full episode.