Between the 80's and 90's many titles were released for the Famicom and NES, some of them were unnoticed by consumers, others were lucky enough to be very successful, the last mentioned is the case of one of my favorite games, but this one in particular has a little history in its development, due to differences between branches of the company, Super Mario Bros 2.
The beginning of an adventure
Since the successful release of the first Super Mario Bros, we all knew that at any moment there would be a second part, where we could continue with the adventures of the great plumber, however, personally I was a little surprised the first time I had the opportunity to play it, because something told me that this universe did not belong to the first part.
What I found quite attractive as soon as I started the game was the possibility of choosing several characters, among them the pioneers Mario and Luigi, Princess Peach and Toad, each of them have unique skills and abilities that will allow us to have different experiences throughout the game, however, they have common movements such as running, jumping, being able to grab objects, among other things.
As it is to be expected thanks to the choice of characters, in this game we do not have the mission to save the princess, it seems that our plumber has premonitions when he sleeps, because in one of those dreams he observed a door in which he could hear a person asking for help, he told this to his friends at a picnic, who decided to enter a cave and saw the same door that Mario dreamed, all entered to start a new adventure (a bit far-fetched this argument).
The gameplay does have a great advance with respect to the previous game, since, as mentioned above, we can enjoy different game experiences depending on the character we choose, in addition, we can grab different objects from the ground to throw them at the enemies, also the classic mushrooms that will make us bigger and be able to resist an additional blow, and we could not miss the classic star that makes us immortal for a short period of time.
There are a total of 7 levels, each of them has its own design, although visually you can find common things between them, for example, if we compare world 1 with world 3 we observe that they are made of grass, or world 2 with world 6 that belong to a desert. Each of these worlds has 3 sublevels, except the last one that only has 2, this makes a total of 20 levels.
One of the things that I found really strange in this game is that one of the most relevant enemies of the Mario saga, Bowser, does not appear, instead a giant frog named Wart appears, and we will not see the classic enemies like Koopas and Goombas, this was one of the main reasons that made me understand that something did not fit with the theme of the plumber.
The truth about Super Mario Bros 2
Years later I had the opportunity to play a classic Snes game called Super Mario All-Stars, a videogame that contained several famous titles of this franchise in a single cartridge, it is here where a title called "The Lost Levels" caught my attention, when I played it, I realized that it was very similar to the first Super Mario Bros game, but with the particularity that it was much more difficult.
It was thanks to the internet in mid-2005 that I could know the whole truth, that my suspicions in those years were true, this game that was sold to us as Super Mario Bros 2 never was, thanks to the American branch of Nintendo, as it seemed that the real game was too difficult for this audience, so Nintendo Japan decided to grab an already created game called "Yume Koujou Doki Doki Panic!" and replace several of its sprites by the ones we already know, in addition to modify certain elements so that they could "make sense" with the story of Mario.
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Yume Koujou Doki Doki Panic!
The real Super Mario Bros 2, which at the time did not leave Japan, has great similarities to its predecessor, only have small differences, among them we can mention the possibility of choosing between Luigi or Mario, having a small variant in the gameplay depending on who we choose, the enemies that only appeared in surface levels will be found in water levels and vice versa.
Here was the debut of one of the most tedious traps in the Mario universe, the Poison Mushroom, which could make you lose a life, its appearance is very different from the red mushroom, just by seeing it we already know that it is something bad, but we were all caught off guard the first time we saw Mario die from eating it.
Sometimes we can get air currents that prevent us from moving smoothly, so we must pay close attention to be able to jump on certain occasions, as we can die if our jump is not powerful enough because of these currents. These and other details is what makes this game a challenge for many players.
Despite all the odyssey that took the development of Super Mario Bros for the West, it is not considered a bad game, but personally I would have liked to have the first experience with the game that did not leave Japan in those years, but this is the history of video games, and especially the beginning of one of the best characters that could be created over the years.