Super Mario Bros 2 (NES) Quick Review
Okay, so this one was suggested by my buddy Jonathan Polan because of a comment I made in my game room tour video, about Super Mario Bros 2 being the worst of the three SMB games on NES. So I busted this one back out and played it some more to sort of refresh, before diving in to talk about it.
The Good
- Character Selection. In the first game, you only had the option of playing as Mario, unless you were player two then you got Luigi. In the sequel, you get to choose to play as either Mario, Luigi, Toad, or Princess Peach, and what's even cooler is if you want you can change it every level, since the first thing you do before entering a new level is select your character again. And they each bring something different to the gameplay too. This is actually the game where Luigi and Peach get their "signature" moves (Luigi gets his flutter jump, and Peach gets her dress hover jump).
- New Grab Mechanic. Now you can pick up objects throughout the levels as well. There's various "plants" scattered through all stages that when you're standing over, you can press B to uproot them and then hurl as weapons. This move can also be used on your enemies, so you can literally pick one up and toss him into the next one, eliminating them both. The grab mechanic also features in digging sections of the game where you're faced with levels of sand that you must descend through.
The Bad
- Doesn't Completely Feel Like a Mario Game. Now bear with me on this one, might be a bit longer but that's because the few points I had all are under the umbrella of this point. First off, you don't get a lot of opportunities to collect coins, and the few you do get are put to a slot machine mini-game at the end of each level. You don't get any suit power-ups, you have an actual health bar which is effectively pointless because it works the same way it did in the previous game. I could go on and on listing things, but the point is still the same, this doesn't feel like the same game. Now, there's a reason for this, and I'm well aware of why so I'll explain it here, but it's something I mentioned during my Let's Play of Super Mario All-Stars on SNES.
Back after Super Mario Bros came out, due to the huge popularity of it, a sequel was obviously produced. This sequel featured a huge jump in the difficulty from the original game. Due to this jump in difficulty, at the time it wasn't released in the United States because it was deemed to be "too hard" of a game. So instead, we got our Americanized version of Super Mario Bros 2. Eventually, when the Super Mario Trilogy was upscaled from 8 to 16-bit graphics and put out on SNES, the actual Super Mario Bros 2 (Renamed as Super Mario Bros : Lost Levels so as to avoid confusion in the States) was added to the cartridge giving us our first look at the actual sequel).
So...
Is it Worth it?
The game itself? Yes, it's fun and fairly enjoyable. My own issue with this one, however, is the fact that it was never really meant to be a Super Mario game. This one really only exists because it was assumed we couldn't handle the actual SMB2, and that's where this dumbed down version comes into play. So while it is enjoyable in and of itself, now that Lost Levels exists on our side of the water, it's just hard to look at this one as Super Mario Bros. Biased opinion aside though, this one is still fun. I never say this one is a bad game, just that it's the worst of the Super Mario NES trilogy. It's not going to feel or look completely like the other Super Mario's we've grown familiar with, but you will still have fun playing this one. The cartridge itself will only set you back about $15 (by online value standards, but retro stores tend to have it priced a bit cheaper from what I've seen, at least in my area), and a CIB copy can be fetched for about double that.
The Good
- Character Selection. In the first game, you only had the option of playing as Mario, unless you were player two then you got Luigi. In the sequel, you get to choose to play as either Mario, Luigi, Toad, or Princess Peach, and what's even cooler is if you want you can change it every level, since the first thing you do before entering a new level is select your character again. And they each bring something different to the gameplay too. This is actually the game where Luigi and Peach get their "signature" moves (Luigi gets his flutter jump, and Peach gets her dress hover jump).
- New Grab Mechanic. Now you can pick up objects throughout the levels as well. There's various "plants" scattered through all stages that when you're standing over, you can press B to uproot them and then hurl as weapons. This move can also be used on your enemies, so you can literally pick one up and toss him into the next one, eliminating them both. The grab mechanic also features in digging sections of the game where you're faced with levels of sand that you must descend through.
The Bad
- Doesn't Completely Feel Like a Mario Game. Now bear with me on this one, might be a bit longer but that's because the few points I had all are under the umbrella of this point. First off, you don't get a lot of opportunities to collect coins, and the few you do get are put to a slot machine mini-game at the end of each level. You don't get any suit power-ups, you have an actual health bar which is effectively pointless because it works the same way it did in the previous game. I could go on and on listing things, but the point is still the same, this doesn't feel like the same game. Now, there's a reason for this, and I'm well aware of why so I'll explain it here, but it's something I mentioned during my Let's Play of Super Mario All-Stars on SNES.
Back after Super Mario Bros came out, due to the huge popularity of it, a sequel was obviously produced. This sequel featured a huge jump in the difficulty from the original game. Due to this jump in difficulty, at the time it wasn't released in the United States because it was deemed to be "too hard" of a game. So instead, we got our Americanized version of Super Mario Bros 2. Eventually, when the Super Mario Trilogy was upscaled from 8 to 16-bit graphics and put out on SNES, the actual Super Mario Bros 2 (Renamed as Super Mario Bros : Lost Levels so as to avoid confusion in the States) was added to the cartridge giving us our first look at the actual sequel).
So...
Is it Worth it?
The game itself? Yes, it's fun and fairly enjoyable. My own issue with this one, however, is the fact that it was never really meant to be a Super Mario game. This one really only exists because it was assumed we couldn't handle the actual SMB2, and that's where this dumbed down version comes into play. So while it is enjoyable in and of itself, now that Lost Levels exists on our side of the water, it's just hard to look at this one as Super Mario Bros. Biased opinion aside though, this one is still fun. I never say this one is a bad game, just that it's the worst of the Super Mario NES trilogy. It's not going to feel or look completely like the other Super Mario's we've grown familiar with, but you will still have fun playing this one. The cartridge itself will only set you back about $15 (by online value standards, but retro stores tend to have it priced a bit cheaper from what I've seen, at least in my area), and a CIB copy can be fetched for about double that.
