“NOT A BAD GAME, JUST NOTHING I WANTED”
I’ll be honest, I’ve never really given Super Mario Bros. 2 a fair shake. I tried Super Mario Advance and the Mario All Stars version of SMB2 but wrote it off as uninteresting. “This isn’t the real Super Mario Bros. 2, after all,” I told myself.
I’ve never played Super Mario Bros. 2 front to back until now.
The first half of this game is actually pretty good! I think if you can handle that it’s not 1:1 mechanically with the first game you’ll have a good time with it. There was even a point during my playthrough where I considered myself a Super Mario Bros. 2 truther. I mean, my God, I really enjoyed my first hour with it. Maybe Dunkey was right all along.
But then I, uh… quit having fun, I guess?
I started this game in February and played fervently, blasting through the first few worlds with relative ease. And then I just started coming back less and less. Playing through the game at a snail’s pace, piecemeal. Maybe finished a few levels every once in a while. Some days I could only stomach one level at a time. I almost didn’t play at all in April.
Admittedly I think a lot of my displeasure stems from the fact that I am not good at most retro games. And as much as I try to steer clear of abusing save states to progress, I was saving almost every other screen in this one. A lot of the later levels’ tricks and traps were major mood killers.
And like, not to put too fine of a point on it, I feel as though I’m just an outlier at this point? Are we all playing with save states on here or are we really just raw dogging these games without safety nets? Or are we playing the updated All Stars / Advance versions and logging it as the NES one?
This game is absurdly hard. I couldn’t imagine trying to get through all this in one go, even with warp zones.
Sometimes the game just gives you a hit point (heart) back, but there’s no way to get an extra hit point (mushroom) without finding a magic potion first, and even then you have to guess where the mushroom will appear. It’s a pretty unfair guessing game. Also, I think I only won the post-level slot machine for extra lives a few times. It’s maybe the least generous slot machine minigame I’ve played in a long while, and that sucks cause those extra lives would have definitely come in handy later. Instead I was just loading save states constantly.
I don’t know. I’m sorry this is such a negative review. I just didn’t feel great playing this one and I don’t think it’s one I’d come back to anytime soon.
I’ll be honest, I’ve never really given Super Mario Bros. 2 a fair shake. I tried Super Mario Advance and the Mario All Stars version of SMB2 but wrote it off as uninteresting. “This isn’t the real Super Mario Bros. 2, after all,” I told myself.
I’ve never played Super Mario Bros. 2 front to back until now.
The first half of this game is actually pretty good! I think if you can handle that it’s not 1:1 mechanically with the first game you’ll have a good time with it. There was even a point during my playthrough where I considered myself a Super Mario Bros. 2 truther. I mean, my God, I really enjoyed my first hour with it. Maybe Dunkey was right all along.
But then I, uh… quit having fun, I guess?
I started this game in February and played fervently, blasting through the first few worlds with relative ease. And then I just started coming back less and less. Playing through the game at a snail’s pace, piecemeal. Maybe finished a few levels every once in a while. Some days I could only stomach one level at a time. I almost didn’t play at all in April.
Admittedly I think a lot of my displeasure stems from the fact that I am not good at most retro games. And as much as I try to steer clear of abusing save states to progress, I was saving almost every other screen in this one. A lot of the later levels’ tricks and traps were major mood killers.
And like, not to put too fine of a point on it, I feel as though I’m just an outlier at this point? Are we all playing with save states on here or are we really just raw dogging these games without safety nets? Or are we playing the updated All Stars / Advance versions and logging it as the NES one?
This game is absurdly hard. I couldn’t imagine trying to get through all this in one go, even with warp zones.
Sometimes the game just gives you a hit point (heart) back, but there’s no way to get an extra hit point (mushroom) without finding a magic potion first, and even then you have to guess where the mushroom will appear. It’s a pretty unfair guessing game. Also, I think I only won the post-level slot machine for extra lives a few times. It’s maybe the least generous slot machine minigame I’ve played in a long while, and that sucks cause those extra lives would have definitely come in handy later. Instead I was just loading save states constantly.
I don’t know. I’m sorry this is such a negative review. I just didn’t feel great playing this one and I don’t think it’s one I’d come back to anytime soon.