© NintendoSoap box features allow our individual writers to express their own opinions about hot games, trends and topics – ideas that may not be the voice of the site. In this piece, Jon Irwin talks about how it looks like Nintendo is willing to return to the mechanics of Super Mario Bros. 2 …
When Super Mario 3D World originally released for the Wii U in 2013, the world was a very different place. Brexit was years away, Donald Trump was just another reality TV guest, and Nintendo had its back against the wall in a way it has never had since it entered the video game industry. The previous year it had lost money for the first time in its modern history.
It may have been this crisis, therefore, that led the company to finally try what they had neglected for twenty-five years: repeat to Super Mario Bros. 2.
Well, not exactly. Super Mario 3D World was a pseudo-sequel to Wii U. Super Mario 3D Domain on the 3DS – even the creators themselves say that. “To be positive about it, ever since we started developing Super Mario 3D Land, we thought about making Super Mario 3D World after that,” said Koichi Hayashida of what was then EAD Tokyo, the studio that is tasked with making 3D Mario games. .
But more than in any Mario game in the meantime, 3D World borrows key elements from Mario 2 on the NES, including the ability to choose four different characters, each with their own abilities. Luigi rolls his legs and jumps higher. Peach hovers in the air for a few extra tics. Toads run fastest. There are bonus levels that mirror the SMB2 post-slot machine, with a resolution of that same song. If you go far enough, a rocket will move you to the next collection of levels; the spacecraft is modeled directly on the Rocketship found in SMB2. And while you can’t pick turnips out of the ground, certain levels feature a “Captain” toad on the ground that would go on to pluck and throw the veggies in the star title. based largely on World 3D standards, Captain Toad: Treasure Finder.
© NintendoIn a way, this is nothing new: Nintendo ‘s’ poaching’ from Nintendo has been a long – standing philosophy. But then why has the main idea of Super Mario Bros. 2 – four special characters, dragging and throwing instead of jumping and stomping – never been used? Mario games include an extended timeline of flying; from game to game to game, an unstoppable series of modifications transforms old ideas into seemingly new things, as a river turns rocks into smooth stones. 3D World could be seen as a result of this thinking. Kenta Motokura, co-director of the game, had a simple policy: “Let’s put it all in! ”So it’s probably no surprise that so many aspects of Mario 2 were going to the surface during the development of 3D World.
Why was the main idea of Super Mario Bros. 2 – four special characters, dragging and throwing instead of jumping and stomping – never used?
Mario 2 itself is just a change from a previous concept. As any reader of this site knows, the Super Mario Bros 2 we got in the West is a revamped and modified version of the Japanese game Yume Kōjō: Panic Doki Doki from one year earlier. Surprisingly, it took a quarter of a year for another Mario game to build SMB2 ‘s main tenet; when you look back over thirty years, the most amazing thing about Mario 2 is that it was not a success – which, no doubt, sold over seven million copies – but to a completely repetitive game for the North American market infiltrated and has impacted Mario’s overall production ever since.
Features first seen in the NES follow-up series up everywhere the plumber does, from the introduction of Birdo into Mario tennis to Shy Guys driving a kartan in Mario Kart 7. (The masked introverts are even the basic racer when playing a two-player game using Download Only play… but this is probably a sign of their low cache.) The second time was Super Mario even adorns the first cover of the company ‘s official magazine in the West, reaffirming its status as not a flash in the pan but a hero throwing turnips to be admired for decades to come . But he never threw them again.
Mario’s other series and spin-offs became complete series in their own right: Super Mario Domain 2 on the Game Boy was a new villain named Wario who would go on to appear in his own stage series before turning to more bizarre schemes involving microgames and making money. Super Mario Kart, in fact, it turned out to be a system sales tool that we know today. Namely Mario teaches typing I got a direct follow.
The closest thing to the Mario 2 sequel was the eReader levels for the Game Boy Advance port of Super Mario Bros.3, which fell into SMB2 play elements as a turnaround into the classic SMB3 formats. It’s not just a high-profile publication. And a great Wart boss? Called to the Super Smash Bros. award.
© NintendoNintendo’s reliance on getting into the heart of Mario 2 is a strange omission. The company has a talent for mining nostalgia for cold hard cash, but nonetheless they have noticed a loving intruder who seized their famous franchise into the Western stratosphere. Other unique features from classic entries have become the main sites: Yoshi is accessible in games from Sunshine Super Mario to U Super Mario Bros. new U., although aircraft power has repeatedly returned in a number of ways from the SMB3 raccoon tail. But the simple ability to pick something up and throw it away – so important in Mario 2 identity, but despite such obvious and anticipated action – has remained limitless.
Beyond the veggie-plucking mechanics, the four playable characters of Mario 2 have gone unnoticed for weird reasons. Even when New Super Mario Bros. Wii. added the ability to play with four at once, Nintendo criticized the retrieval of the Mario 2 roster. NSMBU director Masataka Takemoto explained that they wanted every character to feel the same. For a company that values the constant development of endless flights, that response never felt satisfying. When Super Mario 3D World brought back the classic characters and their signature skill set, it brought with it twenty-five years of design experience, advanced technology, and a trademark dose of nostalgia.
The Motokura director joined Nintendo in 2000 and was a kid when Super Mario Bros. 2, re-released in Japan as Super Mario and SA, came out. “The fact that I was brought up playing Mario games in my youth has had a huge impact on how I make games,” he told the Guardian last year.
© NintendoPlaying 3D World again in anticipation of the Switch version reminds me how similar it is to the 1988 NES game, at least in spirit. In the first stage of Super Mario Bros. 2, you fall from a door in the sky without much explanation. During the opening cinematic of 3D World, you watch as Mario and company are transported through clear pipes to unknown lands. In each case the gang is far from the Mussel Kingdom.
Playing 3D World again in anticipation of the Switch version reminds me how similar it is to the 1988 NES game, at least in spirit.
Each game plays with a vertical in similar ways. But the original Super Mario Bros. whether the mysterious wine from time to time awaited your transport to a cloud platform, Mario 2 if you were constantly climbing up or digging down to get to new areas. 3D World reinforces that style with its Cat-Suit power-ups, allowing each player to climb walls and reach new heights. Another new powerhouse, the Double Cherry, also feels snatched directly from Mario 2, where they provided in-level health and extra lives through the slot machine bonus game. Between 1988 and 2013, no other Mario game featured cherries in any significant way.
Now, more than seven years later, Real Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury allowing Switch owners to experience the closest thing to a Mario 2 sequel we are likely to ever experience. Nintendo was probably right not to dip its toes back into Sub-con waters for so long. In the meantime since 3D World was originally launched, the world has collapsed. A pandemic rages. Global alliances have broken down. Our political systems are under pressure to the point of bankruptcy. Nintendo may have known that the Mario 2 formula was special, or tainted, a broken thing that was never meant to exist and would solve something horrible if revisited. Was it worth it for another chance to get down on the Peach parasol? Does Captain Toad throw a turnip thrown from the ground to our general pain?
Or perhaps the uproar that ensued came in simply because of their ‘half-hearted’ effort back in 2013. Our only hope is that the 2021 news will end the things that are not they never finished. Bowser’s Fury, a new stand-alone division dedicated to the Switch port, seems to be a strong chapter in Mario’s forever war against King Koopa. And while Wart is no longer visible, I can’t help but see this side story as a nod to Mario 2 and his dream factory, but turned into something completely different: nightmare.
Could Mario wake up at the end of Bowser’s Fury, as he did in 1988? We could all use a fresh start. We hope that he, and the rest of us, will find a closure and a way forward. Even if we don’t return again to Sub-con.
© NintendoIf you like Super Mario Bros. 2 on the NES, Jon’s book may be of interest on that very topic.