Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • Some of you are probably expecting me to take some hard-nosed stance regarding this game

  • and refuse to call it anything other than Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic. But that’d be

  • wrong. This is - or at the very least, has become - integral to the Mario mythos. Shyguys,

  • Pokeys, Birdo - originally named Catherine, take that Atlus - are now just as important

  • as black magic and field horsehair plants. (Ask your parents.) So I’m not going to

  • get all pedantic. This is about the PlayChoice-10 version of Super Mario Bros. 2, AKA Super

  • Mario USA, AKA The Reason We Didn’t Learn About That WholeLost LevelsBS Until

  • 1993.

  • But say what you will about the hubris of Nintendo Co. Ltd. and their decision to Mario-ize

  • this thing rather than subject the west to the true Mario 2. What we ended up with was

  • a character-diverse, radish-throwing, dream-hopping good time. It doesn’t matter that the plot

  • uses the biggest cop-out in literary history. It doesn’t matter that, for whatever reason,

  • you can ride an egg across a mile of open sea without losing any altitude whatsoever.

  • The game itself makes next-to-no sense. But, regardless, it’s an awesome platformer,

  • and one that really helped to flesh out some of the classic Mario cast. This is where Peach

  • learned her weird levitation trick that keeps popping up whenever she’s in Smash Bros.,

  • as well as codifying Luigi’s improved jumping prowess... which is actually from Lost Levels,

  • but that’s on another cart. Mario’s the classic all-rounder, while Toad... well, Toad

  • gets the power to lift things really fast, be they hostiles or plants. Mostly plants.

  • Kinda makes you want to relegate the poor mushroom to Harvest Moon or something.

  • The conversion to arcade controls is largely painless, aside from the rather weird position

  • of the pause button on the PC10 cabinet. I also noticed that the joystick seemed to be

  • very sensitive to the crouch command, which took a little while to get used to... but

  • that sensitivity made getting through that freakinBeezo-slalom in level 4-2 a right

  • breeze. (I’m also fairly certain that’s the first time the phraseBeezo-slalom

  • has ever been uttered in the course of human history.) This isn’t an arcade game like

  • Turtles 2 or Punch-Out are, but Nintendo’s priority was to get people to play this thing.

  • Y’know, ‘cuz apparently slamming Mario imagery all over it wasn’t enough. Needed

  • more turtles. Always needs more turtles. I like turtles.

Some of you are probably expecting me to take some hard-nosed stance regarding this game

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it