Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins Review

(Originally published to Glitchwave on 5/7/2025)

 

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): 2D Platformer

Platforms: Game Boy

Release Date: October 21, 1992

How much improvement can one series strive for when it’s being subjugated by primitive technology? That’s the question I’d like everyone to keep in mind when evaluating Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. The “Mario Land” subseries that ran exclusively on the original Game Boy was intended to merely supplement time spent away from its console counterpart, mostly on occasions where the young demographic were whisked away not on their own volition. The little handheld could never possibly hope to compete with the console hardware that it was providing a “cheaper” (in the sense of experience, not price) alternative for, so every game on it had to compensate with creativity. The first Super Mario Land sent our plucky plumber to lands totally removed from the Mushroom Kingdom standby, as well as put him in scenarios that the mainline Super Mario Bros. would never consider. Still, despite its striving to offer something original and succeeding, I suspect that the rudimentary hardware of the Game Boy was the reason why the whole Super Mario Land experience ended as soon as it began. While the sequel to Super Mario Land is still limited by the confines of the same black and white brick as the first game, it’s almost fascinating how much more the developers were able to achieve in terms of broadening a mobile Mario’s expanse and ingenuity. To compound on that, it’s astounding how Super Mario Land 2 is almost the greatest outing in Mario’s early days. Key word: almost.

To make itself discernible from its console counterpart, the Mario Land games deviate greatly from the tired tropes that tend to bog down mainline Mario with overuse. These familiarities include placing Bowser as the primary antagonist, and the executive heads at Nintendo told King Koopa to once again take a much-needed leave of absence for the second Land title. The first Land title supplemented Peach for Daisy to slightly spruce up the exhausted damsel in distress role, but the sequel here also extends Bowser’s mandated vacation time to any and all princesses. The conflict in Super Mario Land 2 instead stems from the shenanigans of a fresh-faced Wario, Mario’s sleazy, slovenly, and stinky anti-self doppelganger. Eventually, he’d become as iconic as the secondary Mario characters who are absent from this title, mostly due to the influx of Mario Parties and various sports games that feature the plumber and the rest of the Mushroom Kingdom’s finest. Here in his debut, Wario is but a rambunctious rascal who has somehow taken control over Mario’s estate located in the center of an island that Mario holds a deed to, or something of that sort. Again, starting further from Mario conventions with a new villain stirring up a totally new conflict is something I commend and encourage for any Mario title.

The recuperation process that Mario must undergo is finding the six golden coins alluded to in the title. Their value will not bring Mario opulent riches beyond comprehension, but rather, they are the keys that unlock the front entrance to Mario’s castle. Whether Wario hid these valuable trinkets for good measure after securing Mario’s property or Mario made his security measure as circuitous as possible cannot be confirmed, but they are the Macguffin rewards unlocked by finishing a world and its climactic boss. Before I discuss the meat of Super Mario Land 2 that is its levels, I feel obliged to detail the nifty way in which these levels are orchestrated. Super Mario Bros. 3 played around with the idea of letting the player select its levels in a non-linear fashion, but the range of selection was still rather restricted on the grid schematic. In Super Mario Land 2, the novel idea that the console Mario games were too reserved to fully flaunt extends its potential to something describable as freeform and nonlinear. Mario can conquer the six worlds and retrieve their circular keys in whichever order he pleases. While I would argue that some worlds provide a more substantial challenge than others, the fact that there are no arbitrary borders between them is exciting. The player can even visit the gambling house a limitless number of times to stock up on lives, provided they have at least a modest amount of coins to spare. The map may not be as expansive as any rendering of Hyrule, but I will accept any inkling of allowing player autonomy in any video game, no matter how small. It’s ironic how the mechanically diminished handheld is the one to unshackle the technical boundaries that limited its console equivalents.

The astounding advancements in the design of Super Mario Land 2 come as a total surprise, but what remains constant from the first game is the heightened creativity on display. The first Super Mario Land game took Mario on an Arabic-inspired journey that involved piloting mechanical contraptions that soared through the skies and swam in the seas above and below the standard platforming in between. It thrust Mario in a setting with scenarios he hadn’t undergone before, and it was a refreshing change of pace for a franchise that tends to be rather formulaic. Its sequel is equally as daring with setting Mario in uncharted territory, but it doesn’t stick to a cohesive theme. Instead, the creativity on display in Super Mario Land 2 is dispersed over the six “worlds.” Each major setting features its own individual themes that are totally unique from one another. “Tree Zone” involves Mario ascending up a colossal oak through its interior, using the sticky sap it excretes as an environmental tool to feasibly hop across wide platforms. Traversing through the inside of a gargantuan tree makes the player feel small, but the size-inverse of the fan favorite “Giant Land” from Super Mario Bros. 3 in “Macro Land” will definitely instill a sense of diminutiveness in the player as they stomp on ants that look big enough to eat Mario whole. When a sperm whale does consume Mario in the water world of “Turtle Zone,” the dank, claustrophobic interior anatomy of the giant sea mammal is quite sublime. It’s no wonder that the Zelda series keeps returning to this fantastical setting, and Mario had already beaten them to the punch. “Pumpkin Zone” plays on my penchant for Halloween-themed levels, but I’m also partial to the lighthearted whimsy of toy-themed levels that comprise “Mario Land.” “Space Zone” seems more separated from the rest of the locales on the map because the trip to it is a level in itself. Still, I suppose it makes sense that a setting located inherently outside the planetary atmosphere would require additional steps to arrive there. Mario’s first venture to the dark depths of space here still evokes that feeling of wonder as his future title, whose entire theme centered around the infinite realm of the cosmos. It goes without saying, but the diversity that Super Mario Land 2 bestows in its level themes is delicious, offering the same range of setpieces as Super Mario Bros. 3 without dipping into any cliches.

However, the number of levels per world in Super Mario Land 2 is unfortunately inconsistent. For some reason or other, some worlds are blessed with five or six levels, while others are given a piddly two or three. One would think the worlds with the smaller level selection would compensate with length, like the songs of a progressive rock album, but they should ideally take the same amount of time to complete. The uneven level distribution probably wouldn’t be an issue if not for the fact that the game is an overall walk in the park, another promising theme for one of the game’s worlds, if it didn’t overlap with each one that was actually included. Add to the fact that extra lives can be stocked in bulk thanks to the end-of-level crane games and the abundance of coins for the slot machine, and Super Mario Land 2 is practically carrying the player to the finish line on a palanquin. Or, at least that’s the impression that I got for the majority of the game. Once all six coins were collected and I was faced with the final level of Wario’s domain, it was the point when this puppy started to gnash its fangs like a wolf. It’s perfectly sensible that the final level should be the apex challenge in any game, but it seems as if Super Mario Land 2 has allocated all traces of difficulty to the final level and the final level alone. Wario must be a master technician in the field of booby traps, for this castle is rigged with battalions of piranha plants shooting waves of fireballs at every angle, giant magnetic balls whose pendulous swing cramps the space of the screen, and platforms between calamitous pits of lava that are so slim that they’re practically spires. The cherry on top of this brutal sundae is the fact that the game doesn’t offer any checkpoints, so one hasty move will send the player right back to the entrance. I suggest that everyone stock up on lives like people stash toilet paper in the event of a pandemic, for it's the only way of ensuring enough trial and error before all of Mario’s lives exhaust in attempting to surpass this demanding excursion. Fortunately, the fight against Wario that follows does not feature the same complications as the journey to his chamber. He’ll copy Mario’s fire flower and bunny-eared glide move, but he’s too predictable in his attack patterns. Perhaps he wouldn’t move so sluggishly if he had some self-control with his food intake, eh? All the same, I’m glad I never had to test whether or not starting the fight finally signaled a checkpoint for this godforsaken finale.

It may still be in black and white, but Super Mario Land 2 is anything but minimal. Admittedly, I see cuts in the game with the brief length of its levels as evidence, but let’s not dwell on its shortcomings in a literal, technical sense. The first Super Mario Land strived for creativity to make itself stand out among its more mechanically gifted peers in lieu of being unable to compete with their more advanced hardware. Super Mario Land 2 broadens the first game’s initiative in spades with its extensive range of level designs, but I’d argue that some aspects, like its freeform level design, outclass the parameters of the console Mario games. Hell, the final level made me sweat profusely at every step, but the fact that the steepest Mario challenge is on a handheld title is telling that there is a hidden strength behind Super Mario Land 2 that the console games lack. In an objective sense, Super Mario Land 2 is still undermined by the Game Boy’s limitations, therefore making it ultimately inferior. Still, the fresh content that the first Super Mario Land title provided in a small sampler has been broadened to something more substantial in its sequel, giving the player enough to chew on to put it on a fairly equal plane with at least some of the mainline Mario titles. I’d rather experience something brimming with buoyancy that was marred by endearing cracks in its foundation rather than a well-oiled machine that offered the standard affair, and I’m certainly not alone in this sentiment.

Super Mario Land Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 1/2/2025)

[Image from igdb.com]

Super Mario Land

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): 2D Platformer

Platforms: Gameboy

Release Date: April 21, 1989

“Mario on the go” was likely a captivating prospect for any wide-eyed gamer in the late 1980s. We take the novelty of mobile gaming for granted these days because of the technology’s mass ubiquity. However, back when playing video games from the comfort and convenience of your living room was still a radical notion we were still trying to mentally process, expanding the player’s gaming autonomy to a portable unit fitting in the palms of their hands was the next logical stride in gaming technology. Mario was the frontrunner in representing the revolutionary NES when it debuted, so Nintendo figured it was obvious to also ignite the reign of the original Game Boy with their trademark tubby plumber in Super Mario Land. Through an objective lens, I’m certain the novelty of it had tons of gamers forming congested lines outside of their local retailers, salivating at the possibility of sinking into hours of gaming during long car rides, Sunday morning church services, and using it as a tool to avoid talking to creepy Uncle Clancy when dragged to a family reunion. While I’m sure the prime age demographic at the time has sweet, nostalgic memories of the grey, stocky rectangle, my younger, non-rose-tinted perspective along with decades of hindsight behind us leads me to claim that mobile gaming has only caught up with the standard of console gaming pretty recently. For several generations, mobile gaming was a graphical and mechanical compromise to efficiently render the transportable equation of the system. The contrast between the capabilities of console gaming and its nomadic equivalent was especially apparent when the mobile game came from a franchise with a console representative, acting as the “inferior version” of its homebound peer. With only the first Super Mario Bros. to compare (because the American SMB 2 is a different breed altogether and SMB 3 was only out in Japan at the time), I can claim with confidence that this relationship is not a relevant factor.

The one inherent downgraded aspect of Super Mario Land is the visuals. The original Game Boy subtracted three-fourths of the NES’ 8-bits to a meager two, which resulted in tarring the primitive pixels in a murky haze of black and white like the earliest of films. Given that every game released on the Game Boy couldn’t ascend over the minimal presentation, factoring it into the quality of Super Mario Land is a moot point. What concerns me is how Mario’s simplistic running and jumping-intensive gameplay translates from Super Mario Bros., and it’s practically identical. However, I still wouldn’t call the successful translation commendable as it carries the same issues that were present in Mario’s older console debut. Mario’s acrobatics are heavily subdued by the rigid controls. Oftentimes, the only way to accurately land Mario on a platform is to mash the directional pad (even though I’m admittedly not playing this game on an original Game Boy) like flattening hard Play-Doh and even then, the result of what was intended isn’t guaranteed to be in your favor. While this is obviously an objective flaw, it’s a “sins of the father” scenario and my stance in evaluating Super Mario Land is how it stacks up with its console cousin. With this in mind, there is no significant decline. Still, the developers desperately need to apply oil to the control scheme for future entries.

While this review includes constant comparisons to Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Land is directed like a spinoff of the core Super Mario titles on the NES. In the nature of a spinoff, Super Mario Land features plenty of stark deviations from the regular course of Super Mario Bros. properties. For one, the setting isn’t the standard stomping grounds of the Mushroom Kingdom. Super Mario Land transports our hero to the kingdom of Sarasaland, a desert realm with pronounced Egyptian iconography. The torrid, sandy environment allows for an entirely different ecosystem of enemies than that of the green, hilly Mushroom Kingdom–including fire-spitting rattlesnakes and sentient miniature versions of The Great Sphinx. The hostile Easter Island heads may throw off the enemy theme’s cohesion, but when is the mainline Mario series ever going to insert something this kooky into the mix of standard enemies? Sarasaland also sees plenty of Mario enemy standbys roaming around like the goombas, koopas, and bullet bills to retain the series’ identity, but the foreign location still alters some attributes of the familiar foes. When a Koopa Troopa exploded after Mario had stomped on it, it certainly caught me off guard. The princess whom Mario excavates a dozen incorrect castles trying to save isn’t the blonde bimbo with the pink dress. Instead, it’s her spunkier brunette counterpart Daisy situated in the damsel in distress position before she solidified a position in the series as Peach’s permanent sporting event partner. On another note, it is so fitting for Luigi that his (non-canonical) girlfriend is simply Mario’s sloppy seconds. Rescuing Sarasaland’s royal highness will have Mario climbing between the dunes on the surface and the ancient crypts underneath, exhibiting the same dichotomy as the overworld and the sewers in his home city. Between platforming through dirt and sand, Super Mario Land incorporates something wild that the series hasn’t dabbled with since. Mario will either fly a biplane or steer a submarine and use their respective projectiles in an auto-scrolling space shooter segment a la Gradius. Not only is the gameplay shift a nice change of pace, but the image of tiny little Mario piloting these military vehicles is adorable. With all of the diversity that Super Mario Land displays, it’s a wonder why Nintendo felt the need to plagiarize another game’s properties to make the American Super Mario Bros. 2 different from the first one.

The biggest surprise I never expected from Super Mario Land is how accommodating the game is, a gameplay attribute that it certainly did not pick up from any Mario game on the NES. Considering that Super Mario Land acts as a primitive version of a game already synonymous with the growing pains of gaming’s history, I fully expected the developers to bombard the player with a merciless streak of challenging obstacles and harsh penalties. To my surprise, Super Mario Land was as sweet and smooth as a strawberry daiquiri. Platforming has its deadly hazards, but is always clear and fair to the player. Enemies are placed modestly around and are manageable to either confront or evade. Even with reasonable obstacles to handle, the game obliges the player with plenty of aid to keep them on their feet. Climbing the top section of the tower at the end of each level is guaranteed to net the player some reward, even if they can’t time the flashing ladder to the position of their liking. Stacking up a whole inventory of lives is one thing, but something accommodating that floored me with its inclusion is a continue system. If the player earns enough points on the field, the game will recognize their achievement and compensate them by respawning Mario at the beginning of the world. I never had to expend my points because the influx of lives kept me afloat, but I’m delighted that this safety net exists on principle. One would think that the game would be especially arduous due to its short length, but the developers decided to treat the experience like a rollercoaster: a brief, yet joyous ride that will ideally warrant another trip around.

Despite the reputation handheld games have garnered, Super Mario Land is definitely not a digression from Super Mario Bros.. Looking past the monochromatic restrictions of the visuals, every other aspect of the game showcases an evolution for the series. It wisely deviates from the arcade difficulty penalties that plagued the Super Mario games on the NES, and there’s far more fresh gameplay and foreground features than what is usually found in modern Mario titles. The game is afflicted by horribly stiff controls like its older Mario brethren, which is still inexcusable. All the same, is it a bold statement to say that Super Mario Land is BETTER than the high-end console counterpart? No, because it should be readily apparent to everyone.

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 2/3/2022)

[Image from igdb.com]

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): 2D Platformer

Platforms: SNES

Release Date: August 5, 1995

Super Mario World on the SNES was a massive success as an early title for the 16-bit system. It quickly became one of the best-selling video games of all time, outselling the previous titles of the series by quite a substantial margin. It ushered in the new era of advanced gaming hardware with flying colors, and I’d be willing to bet that at least a fraction of its success was due to the inclusion of Yoshi. The adorable scamp won over everyone’s hearts as Mario’s disposable, reptilian steed in Super Mario World. Since his debut, the litmus test for an exceptional Mario game is whether or not Yoshi is present. Why do you think many people prefer Galaxy 2 over the first one? I’m convinced Yoshi’s influx of popularity was intentional on the part of Nintendo, using the cute, green dinosaur as a way to increase their sales margin. How else can you explain why Yoshi was featured on the front cover of Super Mario World? Mario usually doesn’t share the space of any box art, even when the plural title of Super Mario Bros. implies that there’s more than one brother with as much precedence in the game as Mario. Luigi’s immortal status as a secondary character was cemented by not appearing on the box art for four straight games, even when his namesake was in the title. Meanwhile, Yoshi is front and center with Mario in his debut. Nintendo ostensibly had high hopes for Yoshi and their ambitious goals to follow his likely success. Mach 1 of the Yoshi cultural takeover was Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island on the SNES, a sequel/prequel/spinoff of the first Super Mario World. While the game may seem like a direct sequel considering the number on the end of the title, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island is a stark deviation from mostly all the familiarities of Super Mario World, except Yoshi. This means that the sequel here feels like an entirely different experience, which comes with varying degrees of quality.

The only aspect of Super Mario World 2 that shares a commonality with the former World title is the setting of Yoshi’s Island. The remote, sunny land of the chubby-cheeked dinosaurs proved to be a stellar location that gave the first Super Mario World a certain brightness never before seen in a Mario game. The brightness displayed in the “sequel” isn’t after the events of Mario dismantling Bowser’s control over the island in the first game. Super Mario World 2 is a prequel filled with lore about the island’s role in the Mario universe and with Mario as a character. A stork loses both Baby Mario and Baby Luigi to a Magikoopa named Kamek on the way to being delivered to his parents, playing out the biggest white lie scenario that will amusingly affirm any child player’s theories about where babies come from. Kamek accidentally drops Baby Mario, and he briskly lands on the back of an unsuspecting Yoshi. The Yoshi and his tribe take it upon themselves to protect this infant from the Koopas and trek through the island to reunite Baby Mario with the stork and his brother.

It’s sometimes difficult to realize that Yoshi is not a singular character. Yoshi is a species of creature in the Mario universe, just like the Goombas and the Koopas. The Yoshi that hatches out of the eggs in Super Mario World is not the same one respawning after falling off the map. The thing that might throw people off in this regard is that these Yoshi's only come in green, their signature color that has become synonymous with the character. It’s much more apparent that Yoshi is a collective character here because we are introduced to a society of them that live on the island. Black, orange, red, green: the different complexions of the Yoshis run the gamut of a box of Crayola crayons. The radiant range of Yoshi skins is a perfect segway into discussing how vibrant this game is. Like the Yoshis that reside here, the island is a variegated slew of bright pigments with the aesthetic tone of a coloring book. Outlines of various things in the background like clouds, hills, and flowers look warbled to emulate the charm of crude animation. The graphics look like the developers colored in the pixel art with crayon, and this unlocks a previously unknown potential of what 16-bit graphics could look like. Everything in Super Mario World 2 looks so clear and vivacious. The crayon aesthetic was meant to make the game appear more juvenile, but the eye-candy visuals are just as appealing to an adult like myself.

The island world depicted here is much more linear this time around. The Yoshi’s journey is more of a straightaway route this time around as opposed to discovering the hidden areas of the island and uncovering Star Road in the first Super Mario World. Six main levels are divided into a menu with eight sublevels per world. The player navigates this menu like a level select and unlocks each sublevel in order until the end of the eighth sublevel when they move onto the next world. Sublevels on the menu come with individual pictures depicting a vague representation of what to expect from the level, like an enemy, and become colored in once the player completes them. For a game that looks so lively and flamboyant, this menu feels quite rigid. Super Mario World 2 is a much larger game than its predecessor, so I can imagine it would’ve been a struggle to replicate the world map of the former game and maintain some kind of geographical consistency per level. The menu here somewhat maintains the colorful brightness of the overall game, but the more streamlined approach to level selection does not match the vibrant tone of the game.

The overall structure of the individual levels is much more familiar. Despite the character change, Super Mario World 2 is another 2D platformer whose objective is to make it to the end of the level without losing every life given to the player. Whether or not the player has played the former game, Yoshi’s control scheme will still seem alien to any Super Mario veteran. Yoshi can jump as high as the Italian plumber, and he can dispose of enemies with his impressive hops as well. Yoshi can also flutter his legs for a short time, acting as a glide move. This makes Yoshi seemingly more agile and more capable than Mario, but it sadly makes him feel all the more slippery to control. At times, the game will offer segments where Yoshi can transform into a smattering of objects and vehicles, including a helicopter, mole, toy train, etc. Baby Mario even gets in on the action by running around with an invincibility star.

Any player of Super Mario World will already be familiar with Yoshi’s ravenous appetite, sticking and dragging other creatures with his tongue like a super mutant frog. Yoshi decides to save his calories this time as eating the numerous enemies on the island would be a waste of resources. Yoshi can either spit enemies out, knocking them into other enemies, or turn them into eggs to use as projectiles. The confusing aspect of Yoshi’s digestive system acting the same as their reproductive system aside, chucking these freshly hatched eggs is the central mechanic of both combat and getting past obstacles in the game. The player will be given a moving cursor that shows the trajectory of an egg and can aim more accurately by holding down a trigger button. The eggs can defeat most enemies on impact or knock some more stubborn enemies off of platforms. The eggs can also cause a chain reaction of damage by hitting several enemies into each other. Additionally, the eggs are thrown at objects either to gain collectibles or to pass obstacles. The egg mechanic is unique and certainly fits Yoshi, but I never found myself mastering it even near the end of the game. Having to defeat enemies with pinpoint accuracy conflicts with the quick-natured pace of the 2D platformer game. I only used the eggs when I had to, opting to swallow enemies instead.

Super Mario World 2 has an interesting concept of pacing for a Mario game. Aiming the eggs consistently interrupt movement, but the game is never in any hurry to get anywhere. One might notice the omission of a timer here, a mechanic in the previous Mario games that caused players to be wary of their pacing. In Super Mario World 2, players can take their sweet time in any of the levels, mostly to look for collectibles. In each level, there are 20 red coins, 30 stars, and five flowers to collect, and the player must thoroughly examine every crevice of the level to gather all of these things. The total amount of all three collectibles combined add up to a score out of 100 that is displayed on the opposite side of the level’s menu icon. I wish there was more of an incentive to collect them. The flowers tend to be in hard-to-reach places and hazardous spots that could result in death. Getting a bad score on a level might conjure up some PTSD from my school days, but that’s the extent of my motivation to collect everything. The lack of a timer lets the player relax as they collect everything, but the caveat is that many levels feel bloated. They extend past a certain run time that works for an individual 2D platformer level and become a bit of a slog. While the timer in previous Mario titles may have caused anxiety to many players, it at least keeps every level at a reasonable length.

The omission of a timer in the levels may also be due to the developers decreasing the overall difficulty. This game was designed with a very young demographic in mind, with the crayon-drawing aesthetic, an infant character at the center of the story, and a cutesy dinosaur as the game's protagonist as evidence. On top of having no timer, checkpoints are more common for the longer levels, and an abundance of coins are everywhere, so the player can easily stock up on extra lives. Super Mario World 2 isn’t an entirely facile experience, however. The primary source of difficulty here pertains to Baby Mario. The entirety of Super Mario World 2 is a glorified escort mission, a common method of gameplay that makes many gamers groan. Carrying Baby Mario through the island is the highest point of contention with this game, even for those who put the game in high regard. When Yoshi gets hit by anything, Baby Mario will detach from his back and float around in a bubble making an ear-piercing crying sound that’s excruciating enough to make someone play the entire game on mute. The sound of a baby crying is enough to strike dread and irritation in most people, and it’s a great motivation to get the player to catch him. However, Baby Mario's crying is not one of my main complaints. I’d like to think I’m a person with normal, human emotions who would react strongly to a baby crying as most non-sociopaths would. It’s grating, but not enough to heavily criticize the game for it. The problem is how lenient the game is with getting hit and losing Baby Mario. The game gives the player more than an ample amount of time to retrieve Baby Mario, and the time can be extended by collecting stars. If Yoshi gets hit while trying to recover Baby Mario, he is only slightly deterred. It would be one thing if having Baby Mario acted as damage insurance, but Yoshi can easily get back up and pop Baby Mario’s bubble after several hits. The only things that will instantly kill Yoshi are spikes, lava, and pits, with or without Baby Mario in his captivity. The whole charade of recapturing Baby Mario left me feeling a bit cheated. I’d be more inclined to keep Baby Mario safe if the penalty for losing him was more strict or the time limit was decreased. Getting hit several times and still recovering Baby Mario with ten whole seconds on the clock becomes disillusioning, and I never felt panicked due to my mistakes in this game.

The one aspect of Super Mario World 2 that triumphs over any preceding Mario game are the bosses. The two fiery, labyrinthian castles that divide each world will always conclude with a boss encounter. The start of each fight will place Yoshi against a common enemy, and Kamek will usually show up and sprinkle his magic to mutate that enemy to a more formidable size. The Mario series, until this point, had an unfortunate habit of repetitive boss fights with a reskinned enemy of a different name as if the player wasn’t bright enough to tell that they were padding the game. All of the bosses in Super Mario World 2 are unique from one another, offering an entirely different challenge for each encounter. Each of them also offers different methods of beating them. Some of my favorites are the tug-of-war match with the ghost pot, the giant, gooey amoeba with its heart as a weakness, and chucking eggs at a giant frog’s uvula from the inside of his throat. Not only are these bosses varied and exciting, but many of them expertly use the egg-throwing mechanic without breaking any pacing. While I cherish most of the bosses in this game for different reasons, the final battle against Baby Bowser is the real tour de force. The first phase against Baby Bowser is enclosed in his playpen as the spoiled brat tries to mount Yoshi with no regard for Yoshi’s personal space. Once Yoshi bats him off enough times, the second phase begins, as does the real meat of the final battle. Kamek once again interrupts the battle to use his Magikoopa dust on Baby Bowser, which results in him erupting through the foundation of the entire castle like the Hulk ripping through his shirt. A luminescent sunset setting is the backdrop of Yoshi facing the now gigantic, behemoth-sized Baby Bowser, who is now slowly closing in on Yoshi with ominous yellow eyes and a dastardly smirk on his face. Yoshi now has to lob eggs at seemingly insurmountable distances at Baby Bowser, all the while avoiding his fireballs and watching his step on the crumbling foundation. This is an intense final battle that throws all painless conventions the game had before out the window, testing the player’s abilities in every way. Not only is this boss the biggest standout battle in any Mario game thus far, but it’s still one of Nintendo’s greatest from their entire run as a video game developer.

I choose to see Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island not as a direct sequel to Super Mario World or any of the Super Mario games. Nintendo was intentionally executing something completely different here, putting Yoshi at the helm with a whole other smattering of new mechanics. The developers simply used the Mario brand and Yoshi’s island setting to support the jumpstart of a new IP. Considering the slew of Yoshi-centric spinoffs this game has inspired, Nintendo’s goal seems pretty obvious to me. As of writing this, I have not played any of those Yoshi games, but my experience with this game makes me apprehensive about playing any of the others. This title is considered the best Yoshi game by a large margin, and some even consider it better than Super Mario World. I’m not sure if it’s due to a difference in preferences, but I was consistently underwhelmed by this game. I much prefer the faster-paced direction of the mainline Mario series to the slower, easier direction presents here. Aspects like the art style and the boss fights are impressive, but it’s only enough to slightly beguile me with its puerile charm. Super Mario World 2 is different from the typical Mario experience, but it wasn’t the change-up I wanted.

Super Mario World Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 11/15/2021)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Super Mario World

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): 2D Platformer

Platforms: SNES

Release Date: November 21, 1990

In the neverending debate on which Mario title deserves the immortal status of the best of the bunch, there is no unanimous pick. Whether the basis of the argument stems from a Mario title's impact, influence, or objective quality, almost all of the early 2D Mario games are steep contenders. For many years, the game I fervently argued for was Super Mario Bros. 3., as it is arguably the most impressive sequel of all time. The level of quality SMB3 greatly surpasses the first game in every single aspect. Its quality level also exceeds every other game released for the NES, extending the system's limits that gamers during the NES era didn't think were possible. The game came out early enough in the series to overshadow the impact of the first game, a difficult feat considering it was the savior of the video game medium. Super Mario Bros. 3 is a gargantuan achievement in so many ways that it seems ludicrous to argue against it. However, that is what I'm going to do in this review in favor of its next-generation follow-up, Super Mario World. This is because I've deeply considered Mario's role as the most notable video game series of all time, as a figurehead for the medium. I thought to myself, for those few who have never played a Mario game before, which one would be the most appropriate to start with? The key to Mario is a worldwide appeal, an accessible game that still offers something to more experienced players who yearn for a challenge. Super Mario World is the most appealing early 2D Mario game, and that's why it reigns supreme over the others.

My evidence to back up this claim can be supported by an early commercial for Super Mario World. The emphatic voice-over claims that Super Mario World is "a bit more" than any Mario game that came before it, relating to several familiar aspects from the NES games. Everything mentioned signaled that this new iteration of Super Mario would be a grander experience, but this isn't just because of its inherent nature as a sequel. Super Mario World was also a launch title for the SNES, the advanced new piece of hardware marketed as a direct sequel to the NES that Nintendo issued in 1990. Super Mario World wasn't only meant to prolong Mario's lifespan with another sequel, but to sell the new system. In many ways, the SNES itself was "a bit more" of everything that the NES was. Nintendo used Super Mario World as an example of what the SNES was capable of and why everyone should buy it. Considering the release of a new console is always a milestone for any video game company, the launch title they highlight needs to catch the attention of the consumer. Given Mario's iconic status in gaming, launching the system with him seemed obvious, but Nintendo wasn't just using Mario's reputation to sell the SNES.

As the advertisement stated, everything about Super Mario World was "a bit more" than what people were familiar with regarding Mario. While the ad tried to sway people into purchasing a product, it is undoubtedly correct. Super Mario World is an enhancement in every aspect of the NES games, especially in the graphics department. Until the 16-bit generation, Mario's sprites had never looked crystal-clear. The revolutionary 16-bit sprites highlighted every feature of Mario's body: his eyes, nose, mustache, and red overalls to his schlubby beer gut. The enhanced graphics add a heaping amount of character to the Italian plumber. In the process, between four games in a short five years, Mario transformed from a rendered blob of reddish pixels into looking almost like a human being. The same transformation applies to the familiar enemies from the previous games. The Goombas look less mushroom-like but have more pronounced facial characteristics. The Koopas are bipedal creatures now and they march around like the soldiers they are intended to be instead of crawling reptiles. Sometimes when Mario bonks them out of their shells, the Koopa will get visibly upset and throw his shell back at Mario if he gets a hold of it. It's a small but amusing detail that couldn't have been executed with 8-bit graphics. The Boos will cover their faces with their arms if they catch Mario glancing at them, and the Thwomps have a range of angry faces that signify their mobile positions to crush Mario. New enemies such as the lava creature Blaarg could not be adequately rendered due to the limited graphical capabilities of the NES, so we wouldn't be able to see its demented facial features. Wigglers could've simply changed colors to signify their anger on the NES, but the steam that they expel from their noses coupled with their downward-facing eyebrows do it justice. The only character that is sadly not given more characteristics is Luigi, who is still simply "green Mario" for the second player. The backgrounds are more exquisitely detailed, with an array of clouds, hills, and blue skies making up the backgrounds of the levels. Darker levels set at night are akin to a realistic nighttime sky rather than simply having a black background color. The cave levels have dimmed lighting with the twinkling of minerals in the background.

The graphics weren't the only aspect of the Super Mario series that was enhanced with Nintendo's new system. Mario has never controlled so smoothly as he did with this leap into the next generation. Mario still jumps under blocks with question marks and on the heads of his enemies, but his movement is so much tighter in Super Mario World. In the NES games, the jump detection tended to falter at times due to the restricted mechanics of the NES, but I never felt cheated by a jump that resulted in Mario's untimely demise here because the control was much more fluid. The game also introduces a spin jump move relegated to another button that disposes of enemies more efficiently. The number of power-up items from Super Mario Bros. 3 has been greatly reduced. The mushroom, fire flower, and star from the first game all appear here, but the frog suit, leaf, tanooki suit, and hammer suit are all gone. Super Mario only includes two new power-ups, the cape, and the balloon. The balloon inflates Mario to a comical size as he soars like powerup just involves being filled with helium. The cape acts as an alternative for the leaf from Super Mario Bros. 3. It allows Mario to glide as well as lets him fly upward for a short period. However, no variation of the cape will allow the player to fly through the level with ease. The player has to flutter the cape in mid-air to do such a thing which takes some practice. Overall, the limited number of items compared to the smorgasbord that was presented in SMB3 is a more streamlined approach. This was a better decision on the developer's part as many of the items in SMB3 were either used only once or could've been relegated to one power-up. A smaller number of powerups ensures that every one of them is useful and they are used frequently.

Another new feature that certainly makes Super Mario World more appealing is the inclusion of Yoshi, everyone's favorite dinosaur with a voracious appetite. Mario discovers his first Yoshi trapped in a question box, and this Yoshi claims that Bowser has kept it and his entire race of Yoshi contained in tight boxes and Mario must save all of them. While saving all of the Yoshis isn't a concise objective in the game, Mario encounters plenty of the cute, colorful creatures by hitting item boxes throughout the game. Mario rides around the island on the Yoshis as if they are his collective, trusted steeds. Not only can the Yoshi stomp on enemies like Mario, but they can also use their long, elastic tongues to grab enemies and eat them. If they weren't so damn cute, this would be disturbing. Depending on the color of the Koopa shell a Yoshi has in its mouth, they obtain special powers like being able to fly and spit three fireballs. Another perk of riding a Yoshi is being able to withstand a hit. If the player gets hit with Yoshi, Yoshi will get upset and scurry off, leaving the player with a small chance to mount him again. Don't get distressed over losing him though as the Yoshis seem disposable. I would hope Mario wouldn't bash the head or sacrifice a true companion by having them fall under normal circumstances. Nevertheless, it's obvious why Yoshi is aesthetically appealing, but his inclusion as a playable character gives the game an extra layer of depth to the gameplay.

With the enhanced graphics and gameplay in mind, I'm glad that a more expertly made world accommodates them. Super Mario World is set on an island called Dinosaur Land, which explains why Yoshis and other prehistoric-looking creatures roam these parts. It's uncertain whether or not this island is a part of the Mushroom Kingdom, but it's definitely unlike any other location from the previous Mario games. The layout of Dinosaur Island is much more widespread and intricately designed than the level maps of SMB3. The sections of Dinosaur Island are not designated by elemental themes, nor are they progressed through as tightly as the levels of SMB3. If the player presses pause at any point on the map, four arrows from all directions will guide the player around the entirety of the game. Dinosaur Island is one big world of levels with sections of it only partially dividing with subtle theming. Yoshi's Island and Donut Plains are sections with sprawling green hills with sunny, tropical backdrops. Vanilla Dome takes place entirely in a twinkling cave, so the levels are danker and confined. Forest of Illusion takes place in the towering treetops of a forest so dense it exudes mystique. Chocolate Island is similar to Yoshi's Island, but the earth of the land is colored brown like chocolate. I suppose it makes sense geographically considering Chocolate Island shares the same longitude as Yoshi Island. All of these sections have a varying number of levels with the bridge section only having a minuscule two. It's a far cry from the sections of SMB3 which would have up to ten or twelve levels as the game progressed. While the number of levels isn't as significant, Super Mario World makes up for it with quality. The overall layout of Dinosaur Island feels meticulously designed, much more so than the grid map that made up the worlds of SMB3. One could argue that the level variety is not as vast as what SMB3 offered, but I much prefer the more succinctly planned world design of Super Mario World because using the elements as themes would go on to be a tired cliche in the platformer genre.

One thing the early commercial did get wrong about Super Mario World was stating that the game was "a bit harder." Super Mario World is much easier than any of the Mario games on the NES. A much-needed save feature that was absent in SMB3 is fully implemented here, and it is so relieving to have. However, the save feature can't be used liberally as one has to progress to a certain point in the game to access it. The player can only save once they finish a ghost house or fortress level, and the save feature will pop up every time one of these is finished, even on repeated plays. While the save feature makes the game comparatively easier, the player still has to proverbially hold their breath and keep their guard up before they get a chance to save. There is also no steep difficulty curve present in Super Mario World. The difficulty curve in SMB3 was steady until world 7 catapulted it into the stratosphere with incredibly punishing levels with obtuse design. In Super Mario World, that difficulty progression never takes that leap and steadily increases at a sufficient rate. Super Mario World does offer a bit of obtuse level design, but not to the same degree as SMB3. The ghost houses are intentionally askew to accentuate the warped eeriness of the setting. Some of the fortress levels have a multitude of paths and exits that can verge on being indirect. Progression through the Forest of Illusion section isn't straightforward as the player needs to unlock more paths through less than simple means. With all of this in mind, exploring off the beaten path to find other routes is fairly simple as they only require a bit of deviation to find. This is unlike the level of difficulty in the later sections of SMB3 which felt like the developers were trolling the player.

Unfortunately, one thing Super Mario World has in common with the previous games is that the bosses are still lackluster. Once again, the boss of each world is one of Bowser's seven snotty, illegitimate children. The fortresses each Koopaling is held in at the end of a world is a swirling maze of varied booby traps with the danger of falling into lava as a consistent hazard. It's a shame that the boss encounters at the end of each fortress aren't treated with the same level of intricacy. There are three types of battles presented here, two for each Koopaling. Iggy and Larry position themselves on the edge of a teetering rock and the goal is to jump on them in one direction to make them fall in. Morton and Roy are fought in a caged-in setting where the cage gets tighter as the fight progresses. They will climb up the walls to drop on Mario which is incredibly easy to avoid. Lemmy and Wendy are found in an array of pipes positioned over lava and use decoys to throw off Mario like a game of Whack-A-Mole while a bouncing fireball ricochets overhead. The only Koopaling encounter that doesn't involve any of these three is with Ludwig who feels like a more realized boss. I'm assuming the developers initially intended Ludwig to be the final Koopaling before Bowser but moved him to the bridge section due to its shorter length. Either or, his boss is still as painfully easy as the others. The one boss encounter in Super Mario World that stands out is Bowser as it eclipses any previous battle with him from the NES games. There is something so menacing about fighting him on a bridge with a black, empty background in the back with the face of his giant clown copter getting more devious as the fight goes on. He's defeated by lobbing his Koopa wind-up toys back at him which might seem a tad silly, but the presentation here makes the fight seem so grand.

From what I've said about Super Mario World, its wide appeal might just come with its general accessibility. It's a game that looks and plays fantastically, includes cuddly creature buddies, and is generally easier than the other Mario titles. Accessibility is a core aspect of Mario's appeal, but all of this just makes Super Mario World sound like the demographic was intended for a younger, more casual audience. This is not the case however as the game's worldwide appeal extends to more experienced gamers as well. I stated in my SMB3 review that I wished that the levels in world 7 were relegated to a special area. Super Mario World answers my wish with a section called Star World. In many of the levels from the base game, there are plenty of secrets located off of the beaten path that is accessed through exploring the levels a little more meticulously. Once they do this, the star road route offers an alternate pathway through the game that offers a more substantial challenge. The player will unlock extra levels, fight bosses that aren't the Koopalings (which are still easy), and gain extra rewards. Star Road will then unlock a series of challenge levels expertly crafted by the developers. These levels are just as hard as the world 7 levels from SMB3 but are optional for those who seek the pinnacle of Mario's difficulty. Star Road is like a roundabout difficulty selection that can only be accessed by those who are worthy of facing it. For those who aren't up to the challenge, the game can be finished regardless. This organic way of providing appropriate difficulty for all players is brilliant, earning its appeal through accessibility instead of watering down the experience.

I can't believe I thought Super Mario Bros. 3 was the supreme Mario title for so long. After reevaluating both games many years after initially playing them, Super Mario World is the clear winner of the crown. Super Mario World almost seems like the dominant 2D Mario game based on a scale of objectivity. The 16-bit graphics, smoother gameplay, better level design, and more varied level of playability are more than enough proof to come to this conclusion. My reasoning for arguing in favor of Super Mario Bros. 3 was on the merits of being impressive for an NES game, but Super Mario World is on a whole other level of quality. Super Mario Bros. 3 might have been the best game in the NES library, but it was merely the top minor league player. Super Mario World brought Mario into the major league and brought about a new exciting chapter in gaming.

Super Mario Bros. 3 Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave 9/11/2021)

[Image from igdb.com]

Super Mario Bros. 3

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): 2D Platformer

Platforms: NES

Release Date: October 23, 1988

While the first Super Mario Bros. was a landmark debut on the NES and the savior of the video game medium, it’s hardly considered the best Mario game. The only people who argue for it are merely crediting its accomplishments and historical significance. The game itself is so rudimentary that I’d be surprised if anyone legitimately enjoyed playing it even a couple of years after the NES’s library expanded. Sure, it’s still a competent game, but to say that the game hasn’t aged gracefully is still fairly diplomatic. This is also not a case of every subsequent Mario game that comes out toppling over the previous entries in quality. A common contender for the greatest Mario game, the one deserving of Super Mario Bros. early legacy, is Super Mario Bros. 3. Unlike the bizarre reskin of another game that was Super Mario Bros. 2 in the USA and the uncanny, blisteringly hard more of the first game that was Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3 was the true successor to the first Super Mario Bros. game. Super Mario Bros. 3 had all of the familiar elements from the first game without seeming derivative. This natural evolution of the series was all the third game needed to cement its stellar reputation. Super Mario Bros. 3 is not only considered the greatest Mario game, but it’s often considered to be the greatest game in the NES library. Popular gaming publication IGN even claimed it as the greatest video game of all time, the one game to represent Mario’s unparalleled, indelible mark on gaming. I’ve even claimed this to be Mario’s finest outing at some point in time. After replaying it again for this review, I have a few new insights about all of this colossal praise for Super Mario Bros. 3. I’ve concluded that the adulation everyone, including myself, has given Super Mario Bros. 3 isn’t 100% fresh.

Could one still argue that Super Mario Bros. 3 is the greatest game of all time? Maybe, but it could easily be many other Mario titles. Putting Mario at the top would make sense on an objective scale, and this is one of the proper games to honor the iconic plumber. It doesn’t have the same historical weight as the first one, but it comes fairly close. Super Mario Bros. 3 didn’t need to save the video game industry from collapsing to eclipse the first game’s impact. It took all of the familiar and gameplay elements from the first game and expanded upon them superbly, and even that’s an understatement. The game begins like any other Mario game, with Princess Peach getting kidnapped by Bowser. It’s a series staple that verges on being the oldest of Mario cliches at this point, but repeating this from the first game meant that this would be a recurring catalyst to a Mario game. Remember that the last time we Americans were treated to a new Mario game, Peach was just as front and center as Mario was. Peach getting kidnapped wasn’t a prime element to the stories of Mario games, but repeating it here most likely set a course for the rest of the series to follow. The first level features Goombas and Koopas instead of Shy Guys and Snifits. Piranha Plants pop out of pipes, and blocks with question marks make up the foreground. When Mario hits those blocks, the familiar mushrooms fire flowers and start to occasionally pop out. Mario’s offensive strategy goes back to jumping on the heads of his enemies instead of picking them up after riding around on them. I’d say this sense of familiarity is enlivening, but I can only claim this in retrospect after so many Mario games with these elements have been released. At this point in the late 1980s, the only distinguishable Mario series identifiers were the characters. The American Super Mario Bros. 2 shook things up enough to the point where using the familiar characters would've been enough to make a Mario game. It was Super Mario Bros. 3 that put its foot down and decided that the world of Mario needed a concrete identity. Most of these characteristics may have been established in the first Super Mario Bros., but it was in Super Mario Bros. 3 which they were solidified. This was the official beginning of the Mario franchise's distinctive properties, and we haven’t deviated too much from this. In fact, the influx of modern 2D Mario games seems to be shameless rehashes of Super Mario Bros. 3 with more animated graphics. Even after generations of progress, the formula laid out by Super Mario Bros. 3 remains strong.

The return to a more recognizable form of the first game was certainly beneficial, but this wasn’t a case of Nintendo giving up on providing variety and an evolution of ideas for the franchise. They didn’t just repackage the first game with a few new features as they did with the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2. Super Mario Bros. 3 is a bonafide sequel with a myriad of new elements that enhance the Mario experience. One of my main criticisms of the first game was that every level throughout the eight different worlds was so similar that it verged on monotony. Super Mario Bros. 3 organizes the eight different worlds by a theme. Suppose anyone wondered where the platformer trope of theming levels by geographical location came from. In that case, it most likely stems from Super Mario Bros. 3. The desert, water, sky, fire, and ice worlds may be one of the most tired cliches in platformers nowadays. Still, they were an invigorating change of pace from the consistent pattern of the overworld, underground, underwater, and castle set that made up the entirety of the first game. These types of level foregrounds are present here but are sprinkled amongst the consistently themed levels. Each world will always end at a castle icon on the map where Mario has to retrieve the power scepter of that world’s king from the clutches of one of Bowser’s children, the final boss of each world. Each Koopaling mans its own airship, complete with a heavy defense system. Once Mario defeats that world’s Koopaling, he’ll move on to the next level. It’s a little more involved than getting siked out by a Toad after encountering Bowser repeatedly. While I say this, the Koopaling bosses are only physically different in design as none of them are any more difficult than the other. It’s a familiar sore spot of repetition in a game that accomplishes so much to deviate away from the repetitive hiccups of the first game. The even worse offender is the Boom Boom encounters in every single castle.

Instead of being presented in a linear pattern, the levels in Super Mario Bros. 3 are organized through a means of a world map. A Mario icon moves in a restricted range of movement through a series of simple, constructed paths. The theme of the world is presented all over, and the order of the levels is represented with numbers. To break the course of linearity even further, the world map is designed so that the player can skip some levels if they so choose. Of course, the player might have to play these levels anyways due to the final level’s airship moving erratically throughout the world map, so there is a bit of strategy to consider with this mechanic. The world map also feels very lively as there are also enemy encounters, toad houses, and warp pipes on the map amongst the level placements. While several other NES games, like the first Super Mario Bros., presented the course of a game through strict linearity, this world map gave players more freedom. The only other NES game I can think of that offers this sense of nonlinearity is Mega Man, but that game’s direction still seems restricted compared to the world map of Super Mario Bros. 3.

The more nuanced approach to level design and direction also carries over to the gameplay of Super Mario Bros 3. Mario’s range of movement in the first game was as rudimentary as every other aspect. He was confined to a single, stilted jump, and his running was difficult to accelerate properly. In Super Mario Bros. 3, Mario had never felt so fluid and capable up to this point. Mario can still only jump once, but his jump feels much smoother to properly navigate when jumping on enemies and or platforms. His running is gauged by a meter and can be halted when needed. Mario can also throw blocks at enemies and slide down steep inclines to dispatch a large array of foes (while this is fun and displays the fluid movement of, Mario, I often had some trouble maintaining Mario’s sliding stance and died as a result). This nuanced level of movement and combat is further supported by the new power-ups that are at Mario’s disposal. The frog suit is a new power-up that allows Mario to swim more gracefully and allows him to jump higher. The green goomba boot lets Mario jump higher and walk over some hazards, but it’s only available on one level. The Hammer Brothers suit acts similarly to the fire flower, launching an array of projectiles from an overhead angle instead of a straight one. The most iconic new powerup (considering Mario has it on the box art of the game) is the tanooki suit. In its most underdeveloped form, the tanooki suit will only take the form of a tail represented with a leaf icon. This allows Mario to glide downward, which is useful enough for traversing the grounds of most levels. With the complete suite, Mario can launch himself up to the sky and uncover the hidden secrets the levels offer, signifying the level of depth the developers implemented. A “P badge” that comes with the Tanooki suit allows Mario to fly at will, giving him the potential to skip entire levels.

Given that Super Mario Bros. 3 is a far more sizable experience than the first game, it’s also much more difficult because of it. This isn’t a case of the levels being consistently more hectic, but rather because the game is sizable to a fault. One unfortunate thing about Super Mario Bros. 3 is that the game does not come with a save feature. Every world has about seven to twelve different levels, so one would think being able to save would be necessary. However, this was obviously not an idea Nintendo had in the game’s development, so NES owners had to leave their console on all night to save their progress. If the player gets a game over, they no longer have to restart the entire game but instead, have to start the world over again. This may seem like a relief until one realizes how many levels there are in each world. It becomes a grind to work up to, especially without a save feature. I think an appropriate time to implement saving in this game would be after defeating Boom Boom in a castle. The castle levels are often right in the middle of a world after three or four stages. Having the player work up to that milestone and relieving them with a chance to save their progress does not mitigate the difficulty. One also has to keep in mind that the player only has a mere five lives to complete all of these levels. Again, this amount seems paltry stacked against the number of levels one has to endure. The game gives the player plenty of chances to earn extra lives in the toad houses, and power-ups can be used before entering a stage, but the game still seems to ask a bit too much from the player.

Besides that aspect, Super Mario Bros. 3 has a fairly consistent difficulty curve that increases appropriately as the game progresses. The first level is an unassuming grassy plain that eases the player into the gameplay. The second and third worlds are more feverish as they add a sort of “stalking mechanic” in which Mario is chased down by an angry sun in the desert and a giant, carnivorous Cheep Cheep dubbed by players as “Big Bertha.” The “Giant World” is a fan favorite where the size of enemies and objects becomes a new gimmick to hurdle over. Worlds five and six add air and ice and are quite extraneous in length. In World 7, known as “Pipe World,” this consistent curve hits a brick wall. This was the one world that made me give up this game as a kid, and I thought I would excel here as an adult. I, however, had the same trouble I did but persisted nonetheless. I realized that this wasn’t due to a larger amount of enemies per level but because the design of most of these levels was unfairly obtuse. I even had to look up what I had to do in one level to complete it because it was so obtuse. I appreciate the variety of level design the developers implemented, but the execution is much too abstract for a Mario game. This would’ve been better implemented in a bonus world for an extra level of difficulty for more incentivized players.

Carrying over the elements of the first Super Mario Bros. isn’t what makes Super Mario Bros. 3 a considerable contender for the best Mario game. Otherwise, everyone would most likely only sing the praises of the first Super Mario Bros. Retaining the same elements from the first game was definitely important to the mix of Super Mario Bros. 3. Still, it’s the changes that made a world of difference, and elevated it in terms of quality. Super Mario Bros. 3 is much more organized, fine-tuned, and vaster than the first game. In fact, this proved to be the case compared to every other NES game at the time. It was groundbreaking because gamers had never experienced a video game with so much graphical polish, fluid control, nuanced level design, and considerably lengthy playtime. Gamers were practically spoiled by the capabilities of Super Mario Bros 3., and it made every other NES title pale in comparison. Its spectacular, timeless presentation, matched with its fluid gameplay and level design, makes it easy to mistake it with the quality of a game from the technically superior SNES. Declaring Super Mario Bros. 3 as the greatest NES game seems like an objective statement, one that can be supported with clear evidence that proves itself. On a more subjective scale, my opinion about Super Mario Bros. 3 standing as the reigning champ of all Mario titles isn’t as concrete as it used to be. I now find fault with being unable to save one’s progress, especially considering how long this game can be. I’m also not a fan of the steep difficulty curve and the obtuse level design in world 7. With all of these new criticisms coming to light for me, Super Mario Bros. 3 is still incredibly impressive in many ways and has aged better than any of its NES contemporaries.

Super Mario Bros. 2 Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 7/11/2021)

[Image from igdb.com]

Super Mario Bros. 2

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): 2D Platformer

Platforms: NES

Release Date: October 9, 1988

The peculiar history of the American Super Mario Bros. 2 has been well documented for decades, garnering the status as the red-headed stepchild of the Mario franchise. In short, the real Super Mario Bros. 2 was considered too difficult by American standards. Considering the content in what we in America know as Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels, they might have had a point. Instead, America was treated to something completely foreign to all of the foundations presented in the groundbreaking Super Mario Bros. Sometime later, it was revealed that the American Super Mario Bros. 2 was a Japanese game called Doki Doki Panic, masquerading as the sequel to Super Mario Bros. It was a case of Doki Doki Panic wearing Mario’s skin with only a few familiar properties to make it marginally discernible. “Super Mario Bros. 2” turned out to be a fraud. This never would have stuck with today's internet-savvy gamers, who would’ve caught onto this as quickly as the wind. In the pre-internet days of 1988, the radical changes to Super Mario Bros. 2 didn’t even raise one skeptical eyebrow. The Mario franchise was still in its infancy, and the elements that make up a Mario game weren’t as concrete. They were too busy enjoying the game to care. Nowadays, people fervently try to discredit the American Super Mario Bros. 2, labeling it as a “fake Mario game,” retrospectively noting that the game sticks out like a sore thumb. Nintendo has paved over the reskinned anomaly that is the American sequel to Super Mario Bros., but they have not erased it from the Mario canon. Nintendo has kept several properties from this version of Super Mario Bros. 2, becoming staples in the Mario universe.

Immediately, something about Super Mario Bros. 2 should ring suspiciously. The player chooses between four characters instead of being catapulted into the action as the titular red plumber. Mario is one of the selectable characters, but who wouldn’t be intrigued by the new options presented here? The other playable characters are Luigi, Toad, and Princess Toadstool/Peach, a few recognizable characters from the first Super Mario Bros. The selection here seems appropriate enough, but I can’t help but think it was slim-picking back in 1988 before the Mario universe expanded. These were the four characters from the first game that weren’t enemies or Bowser. Doki Doki Panic offered four different playable characters, so Super Mario Bros. 2 had to follow suit, I suppose. Each character also comes with their own unique abilities, something also copied and pasted from the Doki Doki Panic source. The recognizable Mario characters are painted over the characters from Doki Doki Panic with the same attributes. Mario is the balanced character with a reasonably high jump radius, Luigi jumps higher but is harder to control, Toad can’t jump as high but seems to be the strongest, and Peach is the wildcard character with a gliding motion.

The moves that Mario characters have here are directly intertwined with their DDP counterparts, but the dynamic between each character has carried over into future Mario games. Luigi was essentially just “green Mario” in the first game with no unique attributes. His swapped color pallet signified that it was the second player’s turn. Luigi was the same as Mario to keep both players on equal standings, but Super Mario Bros. 2 doesn’t offer multiplayer. Here, Luigi’s differences help formulate him into a character that is entirely removed from Mario. In the direct sequels, Luigi is reverted back to a reskinned Mario for the second player. Over time, Luigi formed his own independent personality and moveset. He was the taller, more air-bound younger brother, exactly how he was in Super Mario Bros. 2. The plucky cowardice of Luigi’s personality came later. Toad is confined to an unplayable in subsequent Mario titles, which is a shame because he’s a favorite character in this game due to his strength. One could argue that his inclusion in this game is only due to having a minor presence as an NPC in the first game, but this game proves that Toad can be fully capable of the action. Princess Peach’s character here isn’t implemented much into the main Mario franchise due to her obligatory role as being more catchable than chlamydia at a Vegas whorehouse. The traces from Super Mario Bros. 2 are not lost as they carry over into Peach’s role in Super Smash Bros. Peach can glide in the air for a short time and pull a vegetable out of the ground to use as a projectile. If that’s not enough of a Super Mario Bros. 2 easter egg, plucking from the ground as Peach will net you a bomb on rare occurrences, a happenstance from Super Mario Bros. 2

Nintendo may have carried over different attributes introduced for the playable characters, but the most important inclusion is all of the staple Mario enemies introduced in this game. Unlike the playable characters, these enemies are directly from DDP, so the Mario franchise has adopted these enemies directly from the main source. It’s unbelievable how many recognizable enemies are in this game. The Shy Guys, Pokies, Ninji’s, Bob-omb’s, and even the androgynous Birdo debut here. These are all Mario enemies that have a presence in the franchise, practically to the same degree as Goombas and Koopas from the first game. Yet, they all would have been relegated to an obscure Japanese game if Nintendo hadn’t decided to repaint DDP as a Mario game.

If you start to consider a few things, these enemies more or less fit more appropriately into the lore and background of Doki Doki Panic than any Mario game. The Mario series is inspired by sections of Japanese culture and mythology, namely the villains like the shiitake mushroom-shaped Goombas and the Koopas. Doki Doki Panic is heavily inspired by Arabic mythos. There are many desert-themed levels in Super Mario Bros. 2, and the magic carpet rides are a dead giveaway. The playable characters from DDP that were reskinned as Mario characters are wearing turbans and other middle-eastern garbs. The only aspect of DDP that allows it to be absorbed by the Mario universe without seeming totally unfit is the element of vague psychedelia. The first Super Mario Bros. and Doki Doki Panic take place in a colorful world with a myriad of strange creatures to dismantle their oppressive regime, a rabbit hole of an adventure similar to Alice in Wonderland. The only difference is that DDP opens with a cutscene that explains the story's premise better. The world takes place in an Arabic storybook, and two children have been pulled in and captured by Mamu, or Wart as he is known in the American Super Mario Bros. 2 and the four characters have to rescue them. In Super Mario Bros. 2, there is absolutely no context to the surroundings until the very end.

Besides the enemies and the backgrounds, the most radical shift in the American Super Mario Bros. 2 is the gameplay. I remember playing this game for the first time as a kid and wondering why the enemies weren’t defeated when I jumped on their heads as I rode on top of a Shy Guy for two minutes. The trick that I soon became privy to is that everything in this game is defeated by either picking it up and throwing it or throwing something at an enemy. Every enemy can be easily hoisted up and disposed of, making the game's difficulty always manageable in terms of combat. Some vegetables can be used as projectiles after rooting them from the ground. Mushrooms are not found in boxes but through doors that teleport you to a nocturnal, parallel space to the surrounding area. The mushrooms are not from DDP but a staple item to make the reskinned game feel more like Mario. Many of the more distinctive aspects of DDP were translated to fit the Mario universe, like Koopa shells instead of shrunken heads and going through doors instead of genie lamps. The sound design in Super Mario Bros. 2 is also leagues better than the ear-piercing effects from DDP.

One thing from the original DDP that isn’t translated more effectively into Super Mario Bros. 2 is the difficulty. My biggest grievance is the game’s arcade-style difficulty, in which you go back to the beginning when you get a game over, but I could say this about any game with this direction. Super Mario Bros. 2 has other difficult aspects that make me wonder about the quality of this game. The movement in Super Mario Bros. 2 is very loose and flighty. This may just be because I primarily play as Luigi, but I found this to be the case playing as the other characters as well. Jumping on a foe to pick them up can be inaccurate at times resulting in unfair damage done to the player. Ironically, my biggest gameplay gripe comes with the game demanding too much precision. In the underground sections of the game, the player has to pluck the bombs from the ground and use them to blast open areas in solid dirt barriers to progress. Unfortunately, the bombs have a blast radius of a tepid fart, so the player has to be incredibly accurate to blow up the barriers. The player has a finite number of bombs, so the player will have to restart plenty of times. The dirt-digging sections suck, and while the key chase sections are tense and harrowing, that mask is way too fast for anyone’s convenience.

The biggest improvement from the first Mario game, reskinned from another game regardless, are the boss battles. Getting to the end of Bowser’s castle eight separate times got incredibly stale very quickly, but Super Mario Bros. 2 offers many different, formidable foes at the end of each world. Mowser is a bomb-throwing rodent that will test your bomb-cooking abilities, Tryclyde is a hydra creature that will test your throwing abilities, and Clawgrip is a crab that will test both. Between all of these bosses are the Birdo encounters where she will spit eggs at you to throw them back at her. These occurrences happen at least 15 different times, but Birdo alternates her color and her attack patterns to prevent her encounters from becoming stale like Bowsers. Wart, the final boss of the game, is a portly toad who is defeated by every fat person’s true weakness: healthy food. He’s not more difficult than the other bosses but takes a few more hits to take down. After he chokes on too many garlic cloves, Wart is defeated, and the player rescues some fairy creatures trapped in a vase. All the player characters celebrate, and Wart is dragged off and disposed of by the serfs of the kingdom. The entire game is then revealed to be a dream that Mario is having.

Unbelievable. The game’s premise is one of the most cliche endings any narrative can have. This is the best they could do? After some consideration, however, the American Super Mario Bros. 2’s existence is like a weird fever dream. It’s a reskinned version of an obscure Japanese game with almost every property kept with Mario’s persona at the helm. It holds a bizarre place in the history of gaming’s most iconic franchise, and its further recognition in the Mario canon naturally draws some ire from fans. It doesn't seem as if Nintendo is ashamed of this game. However, as many properties from DDP have been adopted into the Mario universe, such as the enemies and character abilities. The four playable characters in the more modern Super Mario 3D World are the same as they are here, an obvious tribute to Super Mario Bros. 2. It was an interesting idea that people only have discrepancies with retrospective insight. The players in 1988 didn’t care because it was a solid successor to the first Super Mario Bros., and the fact that it was copied from another game didn’t matter in the long run.

Super Mario Bros. Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 9/9/2020)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Super Mario Bros.

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): 2D Platformer

Platforms: NES

Release Date: September 13, 1985

Talking about Super Mario Bros is like talking about The Beatles: what can you say that hasn't already been said a million times over by millions of different people? Although talking about either seems like spouting hot, vapid air, I'm going to take a crack at it:

"Super Mario Bros. impacted my life so much that it made me give up my binding heroin addiction."

"Super Mario Bros. was the gateway into discovering the path to my newfound Muslim faith."

"Super Mario Bros. impregnated me with the new coming of our lord and savior."

Even though I'm just pulling these out of my ass as I type this, someone somewhere has probably attributed these games to all of these different causes. That's how influential this game is. This year, Nintendo is celebrating the 35th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. and the franchise as a whole. It's insane to think that Super Mario Bros. is ONLY 35 years old, all things considered. Mario is the most recognizable video game character of all time. Not only that, but he's up there with the likes of Mickey Mouse and Batman as far as I'm concerned. It's hard to believe that this plumber's unparalleled legacy began in 1985. This was the same year that Back to the Future was released, and Whitney Houston released her first album. I guess comparing where music and film were at the time shows me that video games have come so far in so little time, and we have Nintendo's Italian golden boy to thank for that. Sure, there were plenty of video games before Super Mario Bros., and these games even had some notable icons in the mix as well (Pac-Man probably being the most notable example). There were even home consoles before the NES, so what made Mario so special? Why is talking about the impact of Mario like talking about the immortal Beatles? If you look at the early history of video games during the early 1980s, you can see some parallels between the two.

The video game crash of 1983 seemed like it was going to be the end of video games. Companies didn't have the same regulations that they do now, so many people were taking advantage of penetrating Atari's faulty defenses. Cheap unlicensed games (including several tasteless porn games) were infesting the video game market, inflation was hurting the industry thanks to the shoddy 1980s economy, and PCs were proving to have better capabilities than any video game console (I guess this is the only thing that hasn't changed in 35+ years). Video games would go the wayside of other youth fads like the mood ring and the pet rock. That's exactly what they said about rock and roll before The Beatles. In the late 1950s, this premature nail in rock and roll's coffin was due to a culmination of "the day the music died," Elvis joining the army, and Little Richard becoming a priest. It seemed like rock and roll wasn't going to be a formidable music genre but just something that the kids liked to piss off their parents for a short period. Rock and roll's spirit of rebellion had diminished in favor of keeping the old guard of Jazz for the musically savvy and bubblegum pop for the youths. That is until four lads from Liverpool ignited a revolution in rock and roll and spurred the British Invasion.

Since then, we've hardly looked back. Something very similar happened in the mid-1980s when Nintendo brought back the vigor of the video game industry and saved it from total collapse. They released the Famicom, or the Nintendo Entertainment System as it's known in the USA, in 1985 and ingeniously marketed it as a toy to have people associate with something other than the failing video game market. They also implemented a lock on the console so only companies that held the "Nintendo Seal of Approval" could publish games on their system. Out of the few launch titles for the system, one particular game stood out. Can you guess which one that was? Yeah, of course, it was Super Mario Bros.

As you couldn't already tell, Super Mario Bros. is a game that I have great admiration for. It's a game that essentially serves as the rudimentary fundamentals for what would become the 2D platformer. It's the base of every 2D platformer that would follow, and some 2D platformers are some of my all-time favorite games, so that's where the admiration for this game stems from. It's hard to believe now, but Super Mario Bros. was at the cutting edge of what a video game could do at the time. If you look at the games for the Atari-2600, for example, Super Mario Bros. was leagues ahead of those games. You didn't have to use your imagination to what everything on the screen was, the sound design wasn't reminiscent of a Kraftwerk song being played through a speak and spell, and you could actually finish the game. It seems like something required for every single player experience across all video games, but this was something radical at the time. Hell, there was even a "new game plus" feature in this game before we had a term for it. It definitely felt like a changing of the guard.

In regards to my experience with playing the game, it doesn't really reach to the same heights as my admiration for it. Super Mario Bros. is a very rudimentary game that involves platforming gameplay at the absolute base level, level progression that it quite repetitive, character movement that feels very stilted, and other characteristics that I'm not very fond of that have improved over time. For one, the game sends you back to the very beginning of the game when you die. It's understandable in an arcade format because those games are designed to make the player insert more money into the arcade machine, but in a home console, it's pretty cruel. Secondly, even though this game can be beaten in ten minutes if you know what you're doing, the levels kind of mesh together after the first world into a string of above-ground level, underground level, water level, and a Bowser's castle level. The warp zones weren't implemented to make the game progress quicker but as a way to skip the game's tedium. Lastly, the game's simplicity kind of feels dull. The fire flower power-up is a cool way to break up the jumping aspect of the gameplay, but that is the only other move Mario has besides his regular jump.

We give this game its well-deserved accolades for being (quite literally) a game changer, but this game hasn't aged well in the slightest. As iconic as this game is, is this anyone's favorite Mario game? Is this even anyone's favorite 2D Mario game? As the years go by, everyone (including myself) seems to favor Super Mario Bros. 3, which took the foundations that this game laid out and improved on them in every way. This was even on the same system as the original Super Mario Bros., but in comparing the way the two games look, Super Mario Bros. 3 looks like it was on a much more advanced console. If it weren't for Super Mario Bros. being the savior of the video game industry as we know it, I'd argue that it's Super Mario Bros. 3 that we should be praising as the greatest video game of all time instead. The improvements are just too substantial to ignore.

If you like playing video games (and if you're reading this review on this site that is specifically for video game content, I know that you do), you should say Super Mario Bros. graces every night before going to bed for saving this medium. Other than its place in history, I don't know if I recommend playing this game. Sure, play it for the historical context if you're interested in that kind of thing, but don't expect to get too much out of this game other than that. There are plenty of better Mario games even from the NES era, but the impact of the game is really unparalleled by anything else.