Super Mario Bros. 2
If you're looking for the game titled Super Mario Bros. 2 in Japan, see Super Mario Bros the Lost Levels.
Describe Doki Doki Panic, uh...Super Mario USA, um...Super Mario Bros. 2 here.
For some reason, Nintendo felt that Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels just wouldn't work for American gamers. Perhaps they didn't feel that a Mission Pack Sequel would be accepted in the United States, or maybe they thought it was just too Nintendo Hard.
Either way, they wanted something different. But they didn't have the time to make an entirely new game, so they redid the sprites for an unrelated game, Doki Doki Panic (also produced by Shigeru Miyamoto), to match the Super Mario Bros. characters, and did a few more nips and tucks. The result wasn't quite as radical as Zelda II the Adventure of Link, and for many fans, it's still an excellent part of the series. In addition, the game introduced many of the Mario series' iconic enemies (such as Shy Guys and Bob-ombs) and abilities (such as picking up and carrying items and enemies), and it further developed and differentiated the four main characters (providing Luigi with a taller, lankier appearance, giving Peach her ability to float, and actually codifying Mario as the Jack of All Stats for the first time).
Eventually, this version was released in Japan as Super Mario USA. So, by changing sprites, Nintendo made three titles out of one, and sold the same game to the Japanese twice. This method was used again on the good, but girlishly themed, puzzle game Panel de Pon to make Tetris Attack (which has nothing to do with Tetris) and later Pokémon Puzzle League, selling it with already well-known and popular characters. (And then AGAIN with Planet Puzzle League for the DS, except that one used no characters at all.) Marketing genius or shameless seller? You decide.
Super Mario Bros. 2 was later remade with SNES graphics as part of the Super Mario All-Stars Compilation Rerelease, and then with further updates as the first of the Super Mario Advance remakes.
- Achilles' Heel: Wart hates vegetables.
- Action Bomb: This is Bob-omb's debut.
- All Just a Dream: Doubly subverted! The instruction manual implies that Mario first dreams up Subcon, then sees it for real on a picnic with his friends. But the game's ending explicitly shows that he dreamed it all.
- Always Night: World 5.
- Animated Adaptation: The Super Mario Bros Super Show adapts this and Super Mario Bros.
- Asteroids Monster: Fryguy.
- Big Bad: Wart.
- Big No: In the Advance version: Tryclyde when you hit him the first two times, Wart when you defeat him.
- Bootstrapped Theme: The Subspace theme is the Super Mario Bros. main overworld theme, minus the recognizable seven-note intro.
- Also, the title screen theme is a remix of the "underwater" theme from Super Mario Bros.
- Bubbly Clouds: World 7.
- Canon Immigrant: Any monster or object from this game that shows up in another Mario game, considering they're all from DDP. Birdo, Bob-ombs, Pokeys and the Shy Guys? Not Mario characters... at least, not originally.
- Snifits to a lesser extent.
- Ninjis appear in the very last corridor of Super Mario World before Bowser, though they become an enemy you can simply stomp on to defeat.
- Ninjis do however get a lot of use in rom hacks of the above.
- Pansers, which resemble fire-spitting Piranha Plants, are the first of four Piranha Plant-like fire-spitting enemy seen in the Mario series, even if these particular enemies aren't seen again. (Arguably, they're the most dangerous of the four, as some of them can walk.)
- Cartoon Bomb: Mousers throw these and you can occasionally throw them too.
- Cranium Ride: Since this is the one game in the series that lacks the Goomba Stomp, you could do this on most of the Mooks. Several areas required you to do this. [1]
- Darker and Edgier: It arguably has a MUCH higher concentration of Nightmare Fuel than Mario 1. Phantos especially.
- Directionally Solid Platforms: Quite a few. Surprisingly, sand is an example too.
- Divergent Character Evolution: Luigi's higher jumping skills conveniently are also introduced here, but this game also gives him his characteristic flutter jump to go with them.
- Dolled-Up Installment: One of the most famous examples. Incidentally, Shigeru Miyamoto was the one who made Doki Doki Panic, which helps explain why that game of all games was used for the dolling up.
- Dream Land: Sub-Con may or may not really exist.
- Edible Ammunition: Various vegetables that can be unearthed and thrown.
- Flash of Pain: Bosses when damaged.
- Floating Mask: Phantos
- Gas Mask Mooks: The bullet-spitting Snifits.
- Giant Enemy Crab: Clawgrip, the boss of World 5.
- Giant Mook: In the Advance remake, you can find giant Shy Guys. Picking one up will cause them to drop a heart, effectively turning them into infinite sources of Hit Points.
- Glass Cannon: Toad
- Grievous Harm with a Body: Throwing enemies at other enemies is the main method of attack, along with throwing vegetables (and keys, and bombs, and almost everything else you can get your hands on) at them.
- Hearts Are Health: In the remakes. In the original game your hit points are Hexagons instead.
- Jack of All Stats: The debut of Mario being the evenly balanced character (The Lost Levels was just him compared to Luigi).
- Koosh Bomb: All the explosions look like this, with "BOMB" written in the center.
- Lightning Bruiser: Luigi
- Meaningful Name: Subcon... subconscious...
- Nightmare Face: Phantos, in contrast to their counterparts from Doki Doki Panic.
- Oddball in the Series: One of the first video game examples. However, it was well enough received that many of the gameplay elements and enemies were incorporated into following games.
- Original Character: Clawgrip; unlike the other bosses, he was designed specifically for this version and did not appear in Doki Doki Panic.
- Parachute Petticoat: Peach, enabling long jumps.
- Princesses Prefer Pink: The debut of Peach's pink dress in an actual game (she's always had a pink dress in official artwork).
- Recurring Boss:
- Mouser, who appears at the end of Worlds 1 and 3. In Doki Doki Panic, Mouser also appears as the boss of World 5, but was replaced in this instance by Clawgrip for Super Mario Bros. 2.
- Triclyde is the boss of World 2 and World 6.
- In the Game Boy Advance remake, Triclyde's second appearance was replaced with the second Mouser appearance, whose place was taken by the new boss Robirdo, leaving Mouser as the only recurring boss.
- Recursive Import: This game would come back to Japan under the title "Super Mario USA".
- Remake Difficulty Drop: The SNES version is a lot easier compared to the NES version due to the fact that you can save. The Game Boy Advance version is even easier due to the floating hearts, random large enemies that drop hearts when you throw them... as well as the fact that you can save. The levels themselves aren't any easier, though.
- Rouge Angles of Satin: In the end credits, "Hoopster" is misspelled "Hoopstar", "Clawgrip" is spelled "Clawglip", and both "Birdo" and "Ostro" have their names switched around. All of these mistakes are fixed in the GBA remake.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: This was the first game in which Peach was a playable character, and she's quite useful.
- She's a Man In Japan: The beginning of the bizarre saga of Birdo, though its appearance in this game is actually an aversion.
- Shifting Sand Land: The second and sixth worlds.
- Sleep Mode Size: Mario becomes smaller when he's down to his last hit point.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: World 4.
- Smart Bomb: The old POW Block is back, and now you can carry it around and deploy it at will. And it was in DDP. Shigeru Miyamoto did make DDP, after all.
- Spikes of Doom: Here, they make appearances.
- Stone Wall: Peach, technically.
- The Spiny: Porcupo.
- Tennis Boss: Birdo spits eggs that you have to jump on and throw back. Mouser and Clawgrip are also defeated by catching their ammunition and throwing it back.
- Unique Enemy: There's exactly one red Snifit in the entire game.
- Unsound Effect: "BOMB!"
- Wrap Around: A few of the vertical sequences in the game.