Super Mario Bros. 2 & Nintendo Power retrospective: Presstige | NES Works
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- Опубликовано: 5 июл 2022
- If Super Mario Bros. was the culmination of the Famicom's early history in Japan, Super Mario Bros. 2 for NES served the same role here in the U.S. Debuting as the console hit critical mass in time for its first major holiday season in America, SMB2 sent players into a huge, imaginative game world that they could tackle with their choice of four different characters, not just Mario. Despite its complicated history, SMB2 became one of the system's greatest hits and did a great deal to define Mario in the West.
Nintendo took no chances with this one, and this episode also looks at one of the keys to SMB2's staggering success: Nintendo Power magazine.
Production note: NES footage captured from @analogueinc Nt Mini. Video upscaled to 720 with XRGB Mini Framemeister.
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Did you know Super Mario Brothers 2 was released as Final Fantasy IV in Japan?!!??!
I thought it was originally called Puckman?
Wasn’t that the sequel to Dr. Rockman’s Mean Bean Machine?
It was. But it was known as 'Tetris' in Russia.
Was that the one where Mario and Luigi and all the enemies were changed into robots?
I thought it was Doki Doki Literature Club
"a soon-to-be-iconic drawing of Mario making a bold leap from the produce aisle"
Or alternatively, leaping off to sell his homegrown produce at a local market
Because as we know, Mario is a man of the people. Mostly
I think SMB2 USA also needs to be appreciated from a different perspective: it saved Doki Doki Panic from license hell obscurity. It was already a genuinely good game in its original form, especially for a mid-1987 release, and the touched-up Mario makeover means that it can live on forever instead of being a forgotten trivia factoid regarding an obscure licensing tie-in with a random FujiTV media festival.
One must wonder if it was at least considered to give that game a makeover and release it stateside, and the Mario situation kind of fell into place.
@@AintNobodyAtAll By all accounts I've ever heard this certainly seems to be the case. They knew they had something hot on their hands (it's production involved some of their top talent after all, including Miyamoto and Kondo) , and saw the licensing issue in the distance. They'd already been burned by Popeye at this point, as Jeremy mentions in that episode, so it was always a candidate for a retooling and Mario was the obvious choice for an in-house run-and-jump platformer. It's not unthinkable that a Mario reskin for international (and eventually domestic) release would have happened even without the need for an "alternate" Mario 2 in the west, that whole situation just made it nigh inevitable.
It's also better then the Japanese Mario 2, it's just the first game but with super hard levels, poison mushrooms and a slight sprite edit, USA Mario 2 at least offers something new and expands Mario's world and characters.
@@ClassicGamer1983 Japanese Mario 2 is the greatest platformer of all time. Sorry, I don't make the rules.
Good point.
You know what I love about this channel? The context.
You must've dedicated several videos to this game alone, but every time the context is so different, it's absolutely fascinating to listen to.
I was stunned to learn Jeremy doesn't have formal public history training, because the way that he contextualizes information is absolutely spot-on with how museum curators are taught to write
The revelation that Nintendo Power was laid out and illustrated by a Japanese publisher in the style of JP youth rags just expanded my brain to the size of the solar system. Wow, does that answer quite a few questions about my tastes, past and present. Very cool video!
I always wondered how they got so many Japanese illustrators to make comics for the magazine. Now it makes more sense.
Those Japanese guys over there making games won the hearts and minds of American youths and absolutely solidified our love and appreciation for their society more than almost anything else. Even while many of our grandfather's were cursing them and their cars, they cultivated a friendship between our cultures for new generations to enjoy. Maybe that's looking too much into it but that's how I feel.
27:48 - Mario and friends --- and ENEMIES!?!? --- playing sports together?!?! What kind of madness is this?
Nintendo Power, you crazy!
Yeah, nutty idea. It'll never fly.
I remember being terrified of the Phantos (masks) as a 7-year-old. Talk on the schoolyard was that you could defeat them with the fire flower... there was no fire flower in SMB2, Marky.
Yeah because the Phantos stole them all, duh
Those inexorable little bastards. Like Baron von Blubba and Evil Otto, and the patron Saint of terrifying 2D video game villains, Sinistar.
@@vincentgood2234 RUN RUN RUN COWARD. I HUNGER.
the good old school yard nes info talk, the kids that had Nintendo Power gave everyone tips on the playground, word of mouth was big in the 80s,
Oh man, you got footage of how much worse that waterfall stage is in DDP. That thing always hurts my eyes.
It's basically static. Headache city.
I love the idea of integrating Nintendo Power into the series. I would pore over those magazines again and again and again. They were as precious to me as my cartridges themselves.
Listening to the Nintendo Power Panel the Video Game History Foundation Podcast did was amazing and when Gail Tilden said one of the big reasons for the magazine was also an overriding concern that players would not be able to finish or enjoy the games due to the difficulty or ambiguity. This made so much sense. If no one can figure out the games no one will enjoy them. It leaked strategies out to the public that could spread throughout by word of mouth. You didn't want to have kids struggling like they did with ET or Indiana Jones on 2600.
Thank you for alerting me to the existence of this podcast and episode!
Little fun facts about SMB2: Because the game limits the number of entries into subspace each level, there is a theoretical maximum number of lives you can obtain in SMB2. Also, if you manage to *die* in subspace, it doesn't count as one of your attempts! So, the max number of entries per level you can get to subspace is 2, PLUS the number of lives you have. What is the (completely unrealistic) maximum number of lives you can get in SMB2? A dozen years ago, I tried to calculate this, given the following: find the place in each level where you can get the max number of coins per attempt and still die in subspace, assume each coin gets you a 5-up (match 3 cherries at the slot machine), and pretend the game's lives counter isn't limited to one byte. So, what's the MAXIMUM lives you can get in SMB2, then? ...557,396,329,246,882,030,426. ...Give or take a few. To put that number into perspective, if you got the maximum possible lives in the game, got to the last level, then managed to lose one life per second, it would take you... over 17 trillion years to get a game over.
To quote Nintendo Power: "Uh, thanks Flylighter, that was certainly some useful information.."
This is the kind of stuff that I am glad I'm not the only person to think about. Thank you for sharing your thought experiment with us.
In the universe adjacent to the one where an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters has reproduced the works of Shakespeare, the sole inhabitant is a man doomed forever to burn through a 17-trillion-year stock of Mario 2 lives
It seems like there would be a limit on the counter or it would overflow.
"I pray to die in sub-space."
-Marilyn Manson "Apple of Sodom"
I absolutely loved the distinctly Japanese style of those early issues of Nintendo Power and wish it had continued through the magazine's run.
Tons of great art
Agree 100%
as an adult, this is my fav of the first 3 games
I’ve always wondered if the Castlevania II guide was a result of someone at NOA attempting to play through an early version of the English release and realizing We Have A Problem Here
I remember beating that game as a kid with no Nintendo Power subscription. I have no clue how I did it.
Guides in a games magazine was a no brainer as a selling point
@@2Plus2isChicken2013 you almost certainly heard how to progress at school from someone who had a Nintendo Power.
@@steve43ful More than likely. I think the game is way better than it is given credit for. I enjoy it more than the first one for sure.
Oh! I love the idea of the "What Did Nintendo Power Say?" section! The whole back half of this episode made me want to dig back through the Nintendo Power archives. I vaguely remember the magazine covering so many games that I didn't get to play until decades later. Great work as always!
this would be such a natural and awesome addition to the show.
Agreed, same here, thankfully I've got 1 through the mid 70s and another dozen over that into the lower 100s. They're just so much fun to flip through, and spot on, they were full on game guides before such things existed. So well the guides were, so up beat the content, for a kid on a kids allowance (or none waiting on presents) it was like you could experience the game without owning the game. Each jump, each hidden thing to find, how to do the bosses with arrows/comments, all it lacked was the audio and well, actually doing it. Rarely did guides outside their own line of official ones starting in black through the iconic 16bit publications ever match that level of quality.
Anyone else trace the level layout with their finger and pretend they're "playing the levels" as a kid? I know I did.
"Would be"? There's nothing theoretical about it, it's a thing now.
When I was 8-9 years old, I filmed myself playing through SMB2 for a school project (basically, they gave us a camera and told us to improvise). My reasoning was that it would serve as a guide for those stuck on the game, and a way of experiencing it for those who didn't own it. This being rural England, I got a *lot* of strange looks from people...
I think I was born a generation too soon.
“I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet. But your kids are gonna love it.”
Oh, the Dragon Warrior giveaway. I remember getting my parents to re-up the subscription to Nintendo Power months in advance. That worked, too, and it ended up being my introduction to RPGs.
Oh my, this took me way back. Only one kid on my street got Nintendo Power and every time a new issue came out all the neighborhood kids would rush over to her house so we could pour over it. Thanks for that nice hit for childhood nostalgia.
I love that you'll be adding a Nintendo Power segment!
I personally feel the magazine's cultural impact can't be downplayed, I'd go as far to say the prevalence of guides in both video and text form that are widely available for nearly every major game release owe at least a tiny bit to ol' NP
Ah the weird life of this game, where it started its early design phase as a Mario game, became a tie-in game for a TV station's festival midway through development instead, being ported to the west as the Mario game it was always intended to be, before being ported back as SUPER MARIO USA telling Japanese people "This one is America's idea of Mario"
Bold of them to release Mario 2 in Japan, people there had to buy a disk add-on to play Yume Kuji only to find out that America got a better and more refined version of the game on just the base NES hardware with no add-ons needed. The only thing Yume Kuji had over Mario 2 was the save feature, customers who bought the original YK game with the add-on must have been pretty mad.
The Japanese versions of a lot of games were better due to custom mappers, so it's nice to get at least one game in. Stuff like Recca, Lagrange Point, and Mother never even made it to the States.
Aww, don't leave us hanging, what was the first NES game you bought after having only Super Mario for so long? :D
(It was Metroid)
@@JeremyParish and the important question: did you beat it before getting the next game? Or at all at the time?
@@Gernam12 If he beat it, it was probably due to hints and tricks learned in the pages of Nintendo Power magazine.
@@billcook4768 legit the only reason I beat Simon's Quest, and since I had it it was a surprise to me so many people agreed with AVGN all those years ago about how bad it was...it was my favorite of the original 3 because as a kid I could actually beat it! (thanks to Nintendo Power sorting out the terrible translation)
Metroid was the only game I had besides SMB for several months, and I eventually figured it out on my own (slowly and almost accidentally, and learning to make maps in the process). Nintendo Power didn't come along until later! But it was invaluable for stuff like Simon's Quest.
Still remember how the game was announced for release in Europe right after me and my sisters finished each of us SMB. Our parents bought SMB2 for us right on release, and for me It has always been the TRUE Super Mario Bros 2
The Dragon Warrior promotion was quite memorable as a kid even if it was to thin out supply. Filling out the insert in the hopes of winning a prize! Ya, it was a memorable magazine.
That first issue of NP was one hell of a nice surprise for sure. Getting my copy autographed by Howard Phillips a few years back was amazing, too.
Great video, as always! Nintendo Power's free copy of Dragon Warrior is how I talked my mom into buying me the NES. A magazine subscription was a reasonable price, but once I had the free game I had to ask for the console to play it on! Don't want that game to go to waste!
The Nintendo Power sidebar will be an interesting feature going forward for NES games. It definitely was a magazine I had when I was fully onboard with what Nintendo was doing. By the mid-90s, I was reading EGM more often. Great look at two iconic Nintendo products:SMB2 and Nintendo Power.
Yeah, Nintendo Power felt indispensable in the late 80s and early 90s, when it had really deep walkthroughs and game tips. Especially because so many NES games of that era had complex, labyrinthian stage design. But by the mid-90s, more games were getting their own stand-alone strategy guides, and Nintendo Power's walkthroughs had grown less robust than the coverage available in Gamepro and EGM2. And by that time, I was more interested in coverage of other platforms beyond the NES/GB/SNES, especially the arcade.
"The classmate with a Nintendo Power subscription" was an indispensable source of knowledge, a sage with boundless wisdom and guidance to aid countless lost travelers. Literally impossible to convey how big of a deal a crutch like that could be back when game design was quite a bit more opaque and the internet was not yet a thing.
Hm. Just realizing now that SMB 2's health increase can be considered a rogue-like element.
Also...EGM had a TV ad??
@@Sixfortyfive My neighborhood had that kid as well. He was also the "my dad works at Nintendo" kind of smart ass.
If your childhood was anything like mine, it was random kids at school calling you to relay the SimCity money cheat over the phone. Decades later, I landed a call center tech support job.
"No off model Donkey Kong Classics doodle"
Just Mario wearing the wrong colored pants and shirt.
Nintendo Power was so great back in the day, and such a huge part of being a gamer back in the 80s and 90s. A lot of old school gamer culture game from that magazine. It was even the first exposure a lot of us got to manga thanks to the Super Mario World and A Link to the Past manga segments published in the SNES era. And the maps! I used to love looking at those screen capped level maps, and I'd emulate them by drawing my own game levels (which I occasionally sent to Nintendo). Those issues got shared around classrooms and read cover to cover at sleepovers. I am 100% behind a Nintendo Power section in the reviews from this point on.
I know some of the minor enemy characters have been adopted into the Super Mario franchise but it's too bad we never saw bosses like Mouser, Triclyde or Wart again. They were pretty imaginative and a nice break from all the evil turtles.
Miyamoto: Not f**king canon!!!
Wart did show up in at least one other game: Link's Awakening on the Game Boy! But yeah, as expansive as the Mario series has gotten it's surprising that guys like Wart and Tatanga were just discarded. You'd think they'd at least get tossed into Mario Kart or something.
In addition to Fun Club News, The Official Nintendo Player's Guide from 1987 was another forerunner of NP's style.
I was thrilled to get SMB2 for my birthday, it's my favorite Mario game to this day!
I play Super Mario Bothers 2 a lot when I was a kid it's still brilliant and I want a magic flying carpet so I can fly anywhere. 😀👍🎮
You could only fly anywhere for about 10 seconds, though.
There's nothing quite like 90s gaming magazines. I spent hours and hours of my young child life reading and rereading my issues of GamePro, EGM, OPM, and finally Game Informer once GameStop started pushing that with their membership cards. An outsized portion of my modern day vernacular came straight from those pages, for better or for worse
I remember I got the first issue of Nintendo Power for free in the mail because my cousin Jimmy had me sign up for the Nintendo Fun Club newsletter in the summer of 1988. I would read it cover to cover on the bus ride to and from elementary school until the damn thing fell apart. I later got a subscription to it after it went from bi-monthly to monthly in 1990, and stayed subbed until I moved out of state for college in 1996.
I remember the first issue of Nintendo Power since I was about 10 when we first got it, and it has everything that the NES has to offer. Remember the Konami code in “Contra” where you get 30 lives? Remember the full power up in “Athena” with a flaming sword as a weapon where she steps on a mushroom? Remember the stage select in “Ghosts ‘N Goblins” where you can select any stage you want? Those were great memories of Nintendo Power issue 1.
I remember the shortage of this game at the time... I couldn't even find a copy to rent! But I'll never forget one night my dad came home from work a little late and said he had a surprise as he reached for his jacket pocket... and there it was, Super Mario 2! I mistakenly got overly excited thinking he bought it, but he actually had just stumbled across it in stock at the video store (after countless visits I insisted on only to find it was rented out) while he was renting a movie. But still, even after realizing that, I was just as excited to finally play it! I also remember he brought home some Fun Lips, those weird wax lips that taste like candy but you can't swallow them, lol! It was the first time I ever saw them, so that's another memory tied to that particular night! Must've been winter time, I remember it was dark outside when he got home. Damn, amazing how just renting a game can bring back ALL the memories!
I'm pleased to see you including bits of Nintendo Power in upcoming videos. As someone roughly your age, I also got on board the magazine with issue #4 of Fun Club News and then stayed subscribed for Nintendo Power's entire run (later securing the missing 3 issues of FCN as well). That magazine was a rather important part of my youth not just for the coverage of games I might not have heard of before, but also the wildly different art styles like the one represented by that Olympics shot for SMB2. Small details like that made a lot of the issues, especially in the early times, truly stand out and be memorable enough for me to recall layouts for games despite not reading an issue anytime this decade.
3 games fans are up but hated AT FIRST, SUPER MARIO BROS 2, THE LEGEND OF ZELDA 2: LINK'S ADVENTURE and CASTLEVANIA 2: Simon's Quest. All 3 now so much loved games that serve as examples changing the formula is not a bad thing.
I always liked Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA). It didn't seem unusual to me in the 1980s for a video game sequel to play differently from its predecessor. Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., and Donkey Kong 3 were all different. Super Mario Bros. was different from Mario Bros. Pac-Land was different from Pac-Man. Wonder Boy in Monster Land was different from Wonder Boy.
My dad said to me that I wasn't allowed to get Mario 2 until I beat the first one. I think this was more of his way on holding off to get it instantly, and we had to wait some time to get it anyway because it was sold out everywhere.
I really loved the implementation of Nintendo Power. Looking forward to seeing that in future videos! Side nitpick: Nintendo Power was $15 annually, not $20 (it was a little more expensive in Wa State due to taxes). An annual EGM subscription in 1989 cost $19.95. But that was 12 issues a year versus Nintendo Powers six issues annually they did the first couple of years.
I love NES Works, by far my favorite RUclips anything.
1988 was magical. The 80’s were magical. The greatest decade
You're quite professional.
This channel deserves *way more* views & subs.
Incredible as always! Was very excited to see this thumbnail when it popped up, and you surpassed my high expectations! :)
Great Video. Thanks for your NP Magazine coverage. My Mischief Makers envelope art was included in issue 103. Later I won best animation in their Funtography Gameboy Camera contest.
Nice, congrats to your earlier self!
@@JeremyParish Thanks for your interesting videos and your knowledge of videogame history.
SM2 is my favorite NES Mario game. SM3 is a masterpiece, but the Shy Guys, the diverse playable cast, and the whites of Mario's eyes would forever house Super Mario Brothers 2 a special place in my heart.
I tend to argue that the first game in the classic Mario series is actually Donkey Kong, so SMB2's deviation from the mold of SMB would be no stumbling block to anyone. A more plausible stumbling block would be its significant deviation from the blue-collar ideal of Mario, which Nintendo pretty much dropped entirely when Mario went 3D anyway.
Love it! And a shout out to Retronauts East and here’s to hoping you, Ben, Benj and the Chris meister get together again soon!
I've never understood the fanbase ghettoization of SMB2. Sure, there were mechanical differences and a few less turtles, but it felt like an expansion of the SMB physics in all the best ways, looked absolutely gorgeous for the time, and came with a banging soundtrack to boot (seriously, that desert music goes harder than it has any reason to).
Besides, the Princess could float! According to 8 year old me's internal logic, that makes her both best character AND best waifu, and 8 year old me didn't even know what a "waifu" was!
We all played and loved Super Mario 2 back in the day and the idea that people didn't like it or thought it wasn't a Mario game is just revisionist history.
We liked it when as kids. Far more than smb1. Smb3 is better of course, but in a world where you only had access to 2 it was a pretty fun game with a world to explore.
@@karenelizabeth1590 It isn't revisionist history, for the most part. A lot of kids got into the NES late or at least got ahold of most of their games late; few people were lining up to buy games on release day back then. So, it wasn't very uncommon for people to play SMB2 after they already played or at least had some familiarity with SMB3 or even Super Mario Land. For other than the approximate 2-year stretch immediately following its release, SMB2 was always regarded as "the weird one."
Doesn't make it a bad game. It's just always stood out.
What's odd to me is that SMB2 wasn't the odd one out at all for me personally. I was 6 or 7 when the Super Mario Brothers Super Show aired, so the Mario/Luigi/Toad/Princess team dynamic and the SMB2 aesthetic were always the "official" Mario canon for me.
Super Mario Bros 2 was never...ghettoized but it was always the series black sheep. Even as far in as the Nsider Forums it was regarded as the odd one.
The marketing definitely worked on 7 year old me at the time. I never wanted something so badly before then 😂 I remember thinking there was some mistake when I received a whole Nintendo magazine for free!
7:44 - Oh god, the waterfall. Why did you have to show that waterfall? [swallows back vomit]
Don't go chasing waterfalls
Given the mention of Tanabe as the lead on this weird, innovative game that introduced so much to Mario lore, you ever think about how he's nowadays best known for running the era of mandated-New-SMB-inspired blandness in the Paper Mario series?
Like, what the hey happened there...
Absolute masterpiece of a game whose playstyle should be revisited more.
You overlook that the SMB2 USA box art is lifted from the SMB1 Japanese box art.
I'd like to see Super Princess Peach 2: Return to Subcon, revolving around a slumber party with Peach, Daisy, Pauline, Toadette, and Rosalina.
I can't even begin to stress how much Super Mario Bros 2 and Nintendo Power were a part of our lives growing up back in the late 80s. It literally was our way of life. We just didn't play those games we lived them. Nintendo Power only added an extreme passion to gaming. We first experienced Super Mario Bros 2 in 1988 and we were blown away. My brother and my friends and I would play it non-stop and explored every level and leave nothing unturned. Entire weekends were spent exploring Subcon. Here in Canada we did not get Nintendo Power until the Mega Man 2 issue in August / September of 1989 if I remember correctly. We had a free seasonal zene, about four volumes a year called the Nintendo Power Flash for about 2 years prior. But through the opportunity of back ordering back issues I managed to get the first six volumes originally released in the US only. I still have them to this very day.
The new focus on Nintendo Power as a staple in future videos is a surprise but I think that may be my perspective as a British person. There was no single publication that achieved the same kind of reach to specific console owners here. Without the lengthy comparison, the NES and its official magazine were much more successful in the USA. The markets for gaming platforms and magazines were different here because we had more contenders and never had a video games crash.
This game was weird, but I always had a love for it :)
I have a strong core memory involving being on the bus home and a kid having Nintendo Power #1 and showing me all the SMB2 stuff
My brother bought our NES in 1988 as well. I didn’t help pay, but I got to play. Life changing.
Didn't have the Nintendo Power subscription but I was in the right spot for the Super Mario Bros Super Show to entertain me every afternoon and and help blur the line on what Mario "should" be a tad more. Mario 2's "you pick how easy you want it" play style just made it so accessible to young me, and it was a game I'd come back to now and again years later even after newer games came out-- though that also is because it's a lot easier to do that when your whole game selection is about 8 games total. Even still, I remember writing a paper in second grade on how to beat a Mario 2 level for an assignment on "teach someone how to do something you can do", and that was back in 1992! Still, Mario's adventures spanning many bizarre locations and enemies in its early days really did instill a sense of "Mario can do anything, see anything, go anywhere". It's probably why you get so much western eye rolling at "oh, Bowser kidnapped Peach AGAIN and went across 8 worlds of Grass, Desert, Water, Ice, Cloud, Jungle, Pipes, and Lava" repetition the majority of the games feel they are stuck in now.
What a great breakdown, thank you!
4:51 It's funny how iconic that pose has become, yet Mario only has 9 fingers on both this version, and the original Famicom SMB1 version of the pose.
In high school a friend brought the manual to this game (but not the game for some reason) to show off. I remember poring over it in study hall thinking wow... this looks amazing... too bad I don't have a NES. I did eventually rent a console and a copy though, and delighted in discovering secrets like using potions in the right places to turn vases into level warps.
My gaming mag of choice was Videogames and Computer Entertainment which was practically Edge/Next Generation and a sequel to Electronic Games. I found Nintendo Power was mostly just for guides. Which was really really clutch back then.
Wow, I can't wait for the review of Marathon 2 next week! Man I can't tell you how many hours I wasted playing my old NES copy of Marathon 2.
yeah wtf what was that teaser?! There's gotta be a tiny convergence of Jeremy's usual fans of 80s NES games, and people who were Mac addicts in the 90's, but I guess I'm in that Venn.
So weird that at some point smb 2 was considered something of a black sheep of the franchise once the core mechanics of mario were stablished.
In truth I think a lot of people can agree that the game plays better and is more entertaining than the original.
And me personally I think is the best place to start regarding mario on the NES. It is the most accesible of them all, and it is very charming and inviting. The fact that you start the game by falling into this magical world alognside the up beat music always makes me think of exciting adventure. Both the player and the character are thrown into the world to have a good time and save the day.
As a Nintendo Power collector (there’s dozens of us!) this episode was really special to me!
That "Frog Blast the Vent Core!" at the end just completely blindsided me. I didn't play Durandal back in the day, but it does cause call back to an old fan game I played the hell out of - and trying to explain Katawa Crash to an outsider would probably take a video series about as long as Virtual Boy Works. And would cause said outsider to run screaming.
Jeremy's mentioned Pathways and a couple other Mac games. I can't imagine there were more than a dozen people who even understood what they were looking at. I guess "Frog" because Blaster Master? It's a deep cut for sure!
I just realized that whole SMB2 Olympics in Nintendo Power could be considered an early concept of the Mario Olympics design.
My first Nintendo game. My first console game. My first time using a joypad! All thanks to a visit to my friend, Shane's house in fifth grade. I will remember it fondly always.
Didn't expect to see some Marathon 2 footage at the end haha
I found online an english translation and comparison of SMB USA and the Doki Panic reviews in Famitsu. One of the reviewers was disappointed they didn't change the enemies. Kind of funny now that some enemies are now firmly in the Mario continuity.
I have to admit that I loved SM2. I was happy to meet the cast I had only been introduced to in the first game.
These videos are always so good. Thank you so much for making these. It's so wonderful to learn more about my childhood favorites.
Definitely got me hyped for future videos even more so with that Nintendo Power concept. Given this channel is my beloved weekly after work chicken wing fueled ritual it's astonishing that it managed to get even better.
Watching this video; I've just realized how good of a writer you are.
Super Mario Bros. 2 may be the weird outlier in the original series (as many NES era sequels ended up being), but it's probably my favorite of the entire bunch. The fact that you could select your character was by itself absolutely mind blowing to me back then. I didn't get my NES until about 1992 but even then the main reason I wanted an NES was SMB2. I regularly played all three games at my best friend's house, but as much as I liked SMB3 it was always the second game that pulled me in the most.
Cousin had mario 2 and I'd borrow it all the time. I loved subcon and the different traits mario Luigi princess and toad got. I'd mainly use toad and princess.
I wish they'd revisit subcon in a new game
Imagine a DLC expansion of Super Mario Odyssey that flips the levels like a mirror reflection, darkens the color palette to deep shadow, and swarms you with Shyguys, Snifits, and Ninji.
Now I'm envisioning platforming puzzles that require you to move between Subcon and the regular levels to make changes to the topography on each side of the magic door to proceed.
@@vincentgood2234 that would be bad ass
I still own my copies of the Italian versione of the magazine. I have been subscribed for years!
Halcyon days indeed.
Thanks for doing what you do.
(thinking back on it, the lack of the save/progression system the game was designed around from the ground up was the biggest obstacle to enjoying this game as much as I could have, and I'm sure that's true for most anyone. As a child it always felt like something was off with the design, how complicated and expansive and puzzle-like the levels got for a linear platformer, and how it felt impossible, for me anyway, to get through the game normally, not only because of difficulty but sheer length, and getting to the end by looking up what sequence of warps to follow wasn't any more satisfying, because it was just skipping the entire game. What a marvelous, magical experience this could have been as a child to truly explore, patiently and methodically, with that save system and incentives to replay levels as each character? Whoever chose to not include a battery in the cartridge to save costs really killed the magic of this game for non-Japanese kids. Imagine trying to play Super Mario World or Yoshi's Island without the ability to save!)
But I wouldn't want to live in a wold where Birdo and Shyguy don't have the cultural relevance they do : )
The first issue of Nintendo Power was life changing. I personally wore my copy out perusing the spreads and dreaming of playing Super Mario 2.
I have fond memories of Nintendo Power, even though I never subscribed myself as a Sony kid. My cousin had a ton of issues in the early 2000s and I was always rather taken by the production value and insider knowledge about the latest Nintendo games. I should go back and read early issues; I bet it looked real different in a time before Nintendo's big franchises were such established icons. I always lamented not having something like it for PlayStation, but in hindsight Xbox and Nintendo both had magazines so PlayStation probably did too and I just missed out.
My first rental was this game, on the first day the local video store made videogames available to rent. $3 for as many days. I'm pretty sure the B&W ad copy of its box was my first reveal that there was a sequel.
Looking forward to the Nintendo Power segments! I had the first 50 issues and sold them all a few years ago. It was so much fun to revisit them back then, but it was with the thought that I'd never see them again. I'm ready for another revisit!
SMB2 was my favorite. Sure, I enjoyed SMB on the NES, but SMB2 was just such an excellent platformer, IMO.
I get that Mario 1 is iconic, but I always preferred this game and 3 to it. 3 had the benefit of refining the style 1 was going for, but I love how 2 took things in a different direction and expanded on the characterisation of the main cast, including giving Toad and Peach their now iconic personal game mechanics.
The removal of the clock, and the greater encouragement to explore each stage was fantastic for me; the time limit is easily one of my least favourite gaming features.
I’ve never played SMB USA before, but I got Doki Doki Panic in the mail last week. I think it’ll be interesting to play that first and see how SMB USA feels after since most people outside of Japan do that in reverse
I can at least guarantee that the U.S. game will give you 100% fewer waterfall-animation-induced seizures
@@JeremyParish I just look forward to the cute pink cartridge. When I tested the disk out the waterfall was actually the first level it was on. I looked up how to erase a previous save and it turns out… you can’t. But I also think I read that it starts with a few levels available. It came with a cute sticker in the box with Mario and Imajin though! Tempted to use it.
@@JeremyParish Heh, we had Bubble Man's stage in Mega Man 2 for all our waterfall-based seizure needs.
DDP had a cart release? You mentioned a pink cart, but that was Super Mario USA, a cart version of what we got here for the Famicom. Edit: nevermind, I realized you were referencing each one separately between both comments.
No, DDP didn't get a cart release, only Super Mario USA.
Get the Power!
Nintendo Power!
Get the clues that you can use, Nintendo Power!!
Though SMB3 is my favorite game, 2 has my favorite art style of the NES trilogy. I first played them on Allstars, but I was really impressed at how lively this looked in its 8 bit iteration when I got it on Virtual Console
The Nintendo Power illustration of the Mario cast doing Olympic sports ended up being entirely prophetic. It's not really surprising that Mario eventually made it to the Olympics considering his long history with sports dates all the way back to the NES era (although usually officiating rather than playing).
I've always appreciated the kind of non-arcadey approach this game takes, compared to its peers. The central idea of being able to pick up and use almost anything as a projectile, and the fun little manipulations and skips you can do by also using enemies as platforms that you can reposition.
Mario 3 always felt like a harsh game to me that develops SMB more as a precision game that requires you to quickly react to and handle new elements, while SMB 2 seemed to be more of an evolution of the cryptic nature of the first game, the sense of mystery that its open-ended secrets and small but modular design vocabulary provide.
It's trying to take as much of a leap from SMB as that game took from Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong. I don't think it quite succeeds at that scale, but it's so cool for trying!
This game has one of my favorite misspellings. I will always call him Clawglip.
LOVE these videos! I am so happy I got to grow up in the era and experience all of this firsthand! I still remember getting Super Mario 2 at SEARS in Louisville, KY, the week it came out!!
Good get. I remember seeing SMB2 the week it came out, coming back the next day to find it sold out, and not being able to find a copy until January. Alas.
@@JeremyParish Part of the fun back then was the QUEST to find the games haha! Getting the NES newsletter and later Nintendo Power felt like we were in a secret insider club!
It took my older brother's encouragement/force of will to get an 8 year old me to stand with him in a Kay Bee toy store full of other games, and wait for hours until the delivery truck arrived with fresh copies of Super Mario 2. If it hadn't been for him, I'd have likely gone home with M.U.S.C.L.E. instead. Sometimes the older sibling just HAS to bully the younger one into a better decision.
For some reason, I was scared the SMB2 coverage was gonna stop at "reskinned Doki Doki Panic"
but I should've known better. Of course you _would_ mention what most don't even treat as a sidenote.
Speaking of, the deep-dive on Nintendo Power was illuminating. And the new segment is so brilliant
I bet you were like "Given my approach, how come I never thought of this before? Silly, silly me."
Brilliant video as always, Jeremy. Really looking forward to the release of the NES Works Zelda II video!
I always loved this game. It tripped me out when my parents bought it for me, because it was different. But I ended up loving it.
Nintendo Power magazine still kick ass and it should come back one day. 😀👍🎮
My local rental store got 93 copies of Mario 2 when it came out.
As someone who grew up with SMB2 well after its initial release (Super Mario Advance was one of the first games I ever owned as a kid), I've always been fascinated by the contempt that some gamers had for it because it "wasn't the *real* SMB2." The evolution of the game's legacy and reception that you described has been very interesting to witness, and I'd love to hear your take on just why Western gamers of a certain age felt so betrayed and turned on SMB2 after the release of the Lost Levels. Was SMB2 just a punching bag for gamer angst about the information gap between the West and Japan?
I think it's as simple as the fact that gamers of the late '80s / early '90s really, *really* liked (what would eventually be codified as) the standard Mario platformer experience, and the idea that we were "robbed" of a tentpole release just bred resentment toward the designated substitute, regardless of its quality. Also the idea that Japanese SMB2 was "too difficult" really felt like gatekeeping BS even more so then than now because we were all acutely aware of how difficult the NES library was at large to begin with.
@@Sixfortyfive That makes sense! I imagine the rise of Magazines like EGM and GamePro also led to a lot more awareness that there were games/consoles being released in Japan that came out much later in the West - if they came out at all - and pulled back the curtain on the carefully constructed filter that Nintendo placed over all the games released on its consoles. Did that contribute to the feeling of being "robbed" by Nintendo?
I had that first issue of Nintendo Power. Me and my friends read that over and over waiting for Super Mario Bros 2 to come out.
Funny hearing that video game magazines barely existed in the US in 1988. In the UK there were dozens by that point. Every single format had multiple magazines and it was a major industry.
Game magazines originally got their start in the U.S., but the Atari market collapse drove them out of business or caused them to change focus to PCa.
@@JeremyParish With the way that the western markets have become so interchangeable I miss the days when they were totally different. The games magazines of the 80s and 90s were huge in setting the agenda in the UK.