Finishing Super Mario Bros 2

[T-Pac | 8,443]

Today I beat the original NES Super Mario Bros 2! I grew up on the Gameboy Advance port, so this was a bit of a trial to get through with limited continues and no saves. I'm super happy to check it off my list after making attempts at it for the past week, though. I played with my trusty arcade stick and used the Princess the whole time to take advantage of the floating-jump. 

I'd like to go back and try out more of the stages and boss fights, since I've just been using warp-tunnels to fast-track my playthroughs ever since I stumbled across them a few days ago.

Does anyone else have any thoughts or fond memories of SMB2?

-CasualCart

[Tulpa | 3,771]

We had a thread on NA about which character to use. It got a bit heated, IIRC.

Toad is fast and digs coins like a mofo, but his jumps suck.

Luigi's jumps can clear a lot of BS, but it's hard to master.

Princess can float forever, but her weak digging can make maxing coins tough.

Mario is Mario. It started the trend of him being the all around average character.

[LostLevel83 | 87]

Great game and a satisfying one to beat. Congrats!

Had a cartridge since childhood and played through it again several years ago with my brother. Definite replay value.

[TDIRunner | 2,999]

I consider SMB2 to be my favorite video game of all time.  I absolutely love that game.  I've probably played and beaten it more than any other game.  I prefer Toad myself.  I typically use him 100% of the time, but I will occasionally switch to someone else every once and a while just for fun.  The copy I have today is still the same copy that my Dad bought the week it was released.  I remember being so excited for a new Mario game.  I was a little surprised at how different it was, but I grew to love it very quickly.  The US definitely got the better end of the deal with SMB2.  The "lost levels" are fun, but they are no true sequel in my eyes.  The Japenese SMB2 is really just SMB1.5 as far as I'm concerned.  

[TDIRunner | 2,999]

Also, to this day, I still don't understand why Wart keeps a machine that generates infinite vegetables in his palace.  

[TheBiRD | 137]

I guess you mean Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic because it's the real way to name that game.. not Super Mario Bros 2...

  

[TDIRunner | 2,999]

2 hours ago, TheBiRD said:

I guess you mean Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic because it's the real way to name that game.. not Super Mario Bros 2...

 

Nah.  I'm sure he meant Super Mario Bros. 2 since that's the official name.  He even said :

Quote

NES Super Mario Bros 2

so there could be no confusion.  

 

As far as the Famicom Super Mario Bros. 2, that's a fun game and all, but the US got the much better end of that deal.  

[OptOut | 9,271]

This was the first game I ever had, well this and Isolated Warrior. For a long time it was the only Mario game I could beat, as I found Mario 1 way harder and Mario 3 was too long for me as a kid. I think it's a great game, I'd love to see this one get a true sequel one day actually, with the same lifting and tossing mechanics and bring back WART!!!!

I know it was just Mario's dream, or whatever, but imagine how great a New Super Mario Bros style Mario 2 sequel could be, with all the modern advances! Throw a few new power ups and enemies in there, it would be great!!!

[Tulpa | 3,771]

16 minutes ago, TDIRunner said:

As far as the Famicom Super Mario Bros. 2, that's a fun game and all, but the US got the much better end of that deal.  

I don't particularly care for the Japanese SMB2. Aside from being too much like the original, it also seems like you should pop it in immediately after you play SMB, as the game comes out swinging. I like a challenge and all, but damn.

[Tulpa | 3,771]

5 minutes ago, OptOut said:

 I think it's a great game, I'd love to see this one get a true sequel one day actually, with the same lifting and tossing mechanics and bring back WART!!!!

 

It is strange that they brought back Shy Guys, Sniffits, Birdo, and a few others, but never Wart.

I mean, I like Bowser and all, but mix up the big bads once in a while, or have a Bowser/Wart team-up or something.

[OptOut | 9,271]

19 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

It is strange that they brought back Shy Guys, Sniffits, Birdo, and a few others, but never Wart.

I mean, I like Bowser and all, but mix up the big bads once in a while, or have a Bowser/Wart team-up or something.

Hell yeah, a Bowser/Wart team up would be an excellent premise for a sequel! Or, heck, why not even a Bowser/Wart rivalry with the Mario squad caught up in the middle of it! The forces of subcon verses the Koopa troop? Yeah, this idea got legs... I think I saw a flash animation about that once, lol!

[Tanooki | 5,257]

Well that's my age, but I remember 'MARIO MADNESS' as Nintendo played up a pretty decent bit of hype about the game and went crazy on that nice box art to really have it stand out, second to that was the fire they spit to push the Zelda sequel in the same general time frame.  I guess it was location and luck, but the chip shortage didn't harm me other than reading about it in Nintendo Power for others issues.  I got that (and Zelda 2 too) without much issue.  The game was and still is in a way thinking back mind blowing what they accomplished and being able to look back inspiring to see how much that game did for the franchise even to date.

So many enemies were lifted and used ever since, but the secondary hard core basics of Mario play came from this, not the the shroom, running, jumping, coins, and stars...but the largest mechanic ever added, pick up-carry-throw which was adopted ever since for so many puzzles and moments of offense and defense.  Later yet with the NSMB spinoff, the ability to pick which player you want and using those originally different mechanics too which have retained their place like Luigi being a huge jumper.  It always and still bothers me, despite being Subcon creatures, why the hell they've never brought back Wart and his goons as they're amazingly good and unique characters.  Have Mario eat some bad cheese or something and do it again, or a hellish nightmare that pops out of his subconscious into the real mushroom world and go for it.

I can see why a decade ago why a decade ago in a translated interview with Miyamoto why the guy then said it was his favorite Mario game to play and develop, even after all those years.  The facts that came out gave it a long development from a Mario alpha/early beta, into a buy out for marketing as Doki Doki Panic, to then due to them thinking US gamers were wimpy making it a Mario game again, and one so good they then jammed it out as Mario USA in the homeland.  IT's a great title, a unique one too, something that deserves to be enjoyed and respected and clearly Nintendo felt as such picking it of all the old games to kick the GBA off in 2001.

[MeganJoanne | 365]

Sadly after playing and loving SMB2 so much and expecting the next Mario game to sorta be like that, I was disappointed when SMB3 came out and it went back to the same type of game play of the original game. Of course this was during a time I had no idea that our SMB2 was not a Mario game originally and that we hadn't gotten the real one, yet. I actually had the same disappointments with Zelda and Castlevania as well because I loved the second games in those series so much too that like with SMB2 was expecting, hoping that those departures from their first outings would continue, but instead they like SMB went back to the same gameplay the series started out at with the second games being at the time more of an experiment either loved or hated by gamers.

SMB2 is still my favorite for ease of playing, you can take your time as you progress since there is no timer, I like that there are HP (extra that can be found) which make it more forgiving, can jump on but not crush enemies, instead riding on them changes up the gameplay, plenty of ammo around with vegetables, keys to search for to open locked doors adds some exploration to it, multiple paths sometimes and shortcuts depending on the character you are using, speaking of which, multiple characters, love this most of all, Mario and Luigi are completely different looking and play differently, and Princess is not a kidnapped victim, she can fight along side them, and even Toad is here, each character so very different from one another that there is someone for everyone. The cast of enemy characters and bosses are much better than in the first game and even better still than the third, and while it was nice to see many of the enemies reused in later Mario games, still disappoints me that the bosses never make a return other than Birdo, I wanted more Wart. Actually after SMB2 and it having a completely different game than the first Mario as well as a new main villain I had at the time wished they come up with new main villains all the time, and I do know they have, but still Bowser remains the main threat and continues with the same antics, kidnap the Princess and hold her hostage until Mario beats him up and saves her. And Super Mario Brothers 2 was the first video game that I got to play as a female character (and then Nintendo turned into into a helpless @#$%@ again, pissed me off) that wasn't a Mrs. Pac-Man or a Kangaroo, until I got Metroid, but that is another story.

Years later enter Super Mario All-Stars, the real SMB2 is revealed and coming to America on the SNES... What?! Huh? For several years I thought I was playing the real SMB2 and all those years then find out it was originally another game from Japan, just changed into a Mario game when brought over here. Was curious about this Lost Levels, played, hated it, same thing as the first game with just a few new things in the gameplay, but much much harder than the original. I did love the first game, played the hell out of it back then, but I didn't want, wouldn't have wanted more of the same thing that is for sure, so Nintendo made a good move when they hacked Doki doki panic and turned it into SMB2 for the US of A.

[Strikezone1 | 158]

Love me some SMB2. I give it the slight edge over SMB3 as my favorite NES SMB game. Peach is always my go-to, but I also mix it up on at least a few of the levels by choosing someone else.

I've never played the Japanese version of SMB2, and TBH from the sounds of it I'm not in any hurry to play it. 

[Chuppa | 60]

I have such great memories of playing SMB2 with my mom.  She loved this game and just loved that she could select princess and she could float, lol. 

I remember some days where I was playing with my mom, I went to bed, and my mom was continued to play, sitting on my bedroom floor playing SMB2/Tetris/Dr. Mario while I was going to sleep/sleeping.  You had to power through with no save feature lol.

[TDIRunner | 2,999]

 

11 hours ago, OptOut said:

 bring back WART!!!!

 

11 hours ago, Tulpa said:

It is strange that they brought back Shy Guys, Sniffits, Birdo, and a few others, but never Wart.

 

10 hours ago, Tanooki said:

why the hell they've never brought back Wart

 

I know it's not exactly what you are all talking about, but don't forget that Wart did technically come back in Link's Awakening.  

[OptOut | 9,271]

10 hours ago, TDIRunner said:

 

 

 

 

I know it's not exactly what you are all talking about, but don't forget that Wart did technically come back in Link's Awakening.  

[Tanooki | 5,257]

^That image entirely.

I'd love nothing more than seeing Wart as the big bad ass boss at the end of a Mario game again.  Even as a sick warped twist of fate, start chopping away at Bowser, and then the real final boss appears type stuff perhaps.  Mouser, Triclyde, the rest are just horribly left disused in the dust and I think they'd make fantastic bosses on a return either in a 2D style title yet again or even in the third dimension.  It kind of surprises me no one has ever taken a stab at a SMB2 sequel all these years with the increasing amount of near commercial style fan based projects.

[Estil | 1,297]

It was interesting how the Super Mario Bros Super Show was able to so seamlessly put SMB1 and SMB2 characters and such in the same universe.

[DoctorEncore | 3,693]

Congrats! I've still never beaten this game. I was an SMB and SMB3 kid, so this weird detour to another dimension always confused me. I agree that it has some very cool mechanics and I love the way it shook up the Mario universe. Perhaps someday I'll go back and finish it. Heck I didn't finish SMB until I was in college, so there's still a chance.

[RegularGuyGamer | 2,094]

The last time I beat this game was on the All Stars bundle around 2014-2015. Such a great and unusual Mario experience. I played every world since the All Stars version has save states. 

That damn ice world still is nightmare fuel for me. 

[Foochie776 | 1,081]

Good work! I recently completed this for the first time also. 5-3 had me stuck for a damn long time!

[phart010 | 1,808]

My older brother beat this game when he was 4 or 5. My mom took a photo of him smiling in front of the ending screen. Unbelievable what kids in the NES era were able to do. My 4 year old daughter can’t even hold a DS right side up

[StanJr | 7]

Yeah, the ice world still crushes me.  I don't remember it being that hard when I was a kid and could run through this game in a relatively short amount of time.  Now I'm lucky to get to Wart at all without a warp.  I still love it though and I play it regularly.  You'll never convince me that it's not SMB2.  I like Lost Levels for the crushing challenge, but this is SMB2 in my heart.    I used Luigi most of the time!  Rarely use Mario.  I used to have a trick to get lots of 1UPs from the slot machine, but I've lost since lost the knack.