After playing through the full game for the first time, it reminds me more of Super Mario Land 1 than anything. Like that game, and unlike Super Mario Bros. 1, every level has a semi-unique visual theme and gamefeel—as long as you ignore the desert levels, which all pull from the same dreadful bucket of enemies and gimmicks.

The collision is really bad. The shrunken player appears to be about a tile tall but is actually a bit over, even while crouching; maybe a third of the hits I took came from stuff that looked like it should've gone over my head (Birdo eggs, etc.). Also, projectiles that bounce off walls are still quite alive, despite looking dead (and, in other games, being dead). And for some reason, I kept getting wedged into walls. I could just jump out, but it was a bit distracting. Pretty buggy by Mario standards!

Beat with warps and continues (but no cheats, and I beat every level at least once).

While Super Mario Bros. 2 has many of the same NES-related failures as its predecessor, it has a great deal of unique mechanics that set it apart from even modern-day installments in the series, giving players a reason to come back to this fun, well-crafted platformer.

While it may be little more than a reskin of an existing game, this serves it well, as it has a whole new wealth of options when it comes to movement and combat, distinguishing itself from the series' norms while still staying within the theme of a Mario game. It still plays exactly like Mario, with satisfying jumping and creatively intuitive platforming, but the newly-introduced grabbing mechanic reinvigorated the franchise's gameplay with much the same intensity as other, more well-known moves, like the Spin Jump or the Hover Nozzle.

I think this is an underrated game, and is worth playing for any fan of good platformers. I love the game's catchy music, it's distinct worlds and environments, and it's addicting platforming. I do wish that they had done away with the shoddy NES save system, but it's much more forgiving in this game. You should only game-over once or twice before you get the hang of things, and by then you can have fun cruising through the rest of the game.

There are still a few drawbacks. I feel that the power-up system is incredibly confusing in this game, and it should have been modified to fit more within the Mario theme. Bland, repetitive health buffs aren't nearly as fun as the Fire Flower from the previous game, or the wealth of fun power-ups in the sequel. The gameplay is fun, so it's somewhat forgivable, but lacking power-ups and having to play with largely the same abilities for the entire game can cause challenges to feel repetitive, with one set way to approach most situations.

Overall, I enjoyed this game. I wish it could have kept the typical Mario power-up system, and removed full-game restarts, but I can say with certainty that it's a solid platformer nonetheless and has aged impressively for being built for NES hardware.

I may have taken a few breaks during my playing of this but as someone who admittedly isn't the best gamer in the world, this was pretty fucking tough. There are some fun quirky bits here and there but it feels like such an outlier in these early Mario games, and yes I know it's basically a different game and all but there are some elements here that found their way into Mario canon and it still feels really alien. Mario wasn't the thing it is now back then I suppose. Either way between the frustration and feeling like a totally different experience to 1 and 3, I have to say it's confidently my least favourite of the group and the one i'd have the least interest in returning to. At the same time, happy I beat it. One of those things you just have to do at some point. Well you don't really have to but still. Bring back Wart.

Super Mario USA! This review might be a bit scatterbrained, as I wasn't really thinking about how I was gonna properly rank this game coming out of it.. it feels like it's one of the first Mario titles where they really heightened the complexity overall and tried to experiment with something more mechanically rich and less straight forward..Literally, considering the fact this is the first title in the series that included both horizontal AND vertical sections. It's a good thing then, that the sense of character control truly starts to resemble something we'd consider 'modern' by today's standards, making these picturesque skyscrapers a breeze to navigate.. well, at least if your character has a high enough jump, that is. Along with the addition of multiple playable characters comes stats unique to them, as well as a base move set that is a smidge more diverse from the standard run and jump Mario had before this point... sporting a high jump each character can use by holding crouch, or the iconic ability to unearth and toss both vegetables and oncoming enemies! It definitely feels a bit more complex with all the brand new variables to take account of, whether it be your character's stats, or the way enemys interact.. and this isn't an inherently bad change, nor directly preferable to what came before. It's just Different.
The worlds can be a bit of a struggle to survive in with only a handful of lives and continues, especially when you jumped around characters as much as I did, but once you stock up as many coins as you can from the Subspace areas it's not too hard amass a large amount of lives from the Bonus Slots... And even so, the secret warps also help if you don't wanna keep running through the same levels that are whittling away at you.
I honestly struggled with this game a lot until I started abusing the subspace zones. I kept getting my lives drained and having to run through the same levels over and over, but I truly did feel myself improving with each run, learning the best places to get mushrooms, exploit the Subspace zones, etc. The game is never quite unfair, just fairly bare knuckled. The only honest frustrations come from some Old Game Jank™ and some of the early levels feeling a tad repetitive... I dislike the removal of the Save feature from Doki Doki Panic, as well as the fact you do not have unlimited continues upon game over ala Super Mario Bros. and it's sequel for Super Players. The inability to switch characters after losing a life to try a new strategy for certain levels was also a bit of a frustration at times, though I eventually settled on just using Mario as my 'contributor', feeling his balanced stats and lack of any particularly glaring downsides best suited my playstyle.
After I got to grips with my character of choice, I felt this game's creativity and strong design really start to shine in the latter worlds, where it presents fair and interesting challenges for the player... which are also much easier to appreciate when you're a character that is fairly equipped to deal with pretty anything the game throws at them. I found other characters like Toad, Peach and even Luigi far too volatile and undesirable in certain situations due to things like their digging speed, throwing speed, and ESPECIALLY jump height. As they say in Goldilocks, Mario was like the porridge that was "just right!", and I found myself much more successful and less grumpy upon sticking to him.
Some of the highlights of the playthrough for me were how they iterated on each consecutive Birdetta fight... creating a new arena to tussle in each time, and forcing you to wrangle her in a different way than you would normally expect. They get a surprising amount of mileage out of this seemingly simple enemy type.
The final clash with Wart I also found especially cool, as it truly felt like a battle that rewarded bravery and skill with how not only the arena was laid out, but how Wart's bubbles deflect vegetables; making it difficult to hit him from the higher area of the room, which can feel 'safer' when you first start the fight. Rather than slinking away and trying to cheap out Wart from a distance, the best strategy is to weave around his bubbles on the lower stage and hit him where it's hurts. It's a really simple, but well designed encounter!
All in all, I enjoyed my time with Super Mario USA, but early on I felt myself getting a bit frustrated when I was struggling to get to grips with certain quirks of the game. It's also certainly a bit different from it's more standard brethren... but it still has enough of the platforming goodness that Mario is known for that fans of the series shouldn't feel alienated.
For any additional crumbs you might want about this game, check out the Doki Doki Panic review on my profile!

“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.

Improves on the first in terms of level and enemy variety. Boss variety is an issue though, as you’ll fight the same birdo boss 10+ times.

Great platforming for the time. More colourful and pretty that it’s predecessor.

Hated the way you couldn’t jump on things to kill them though.

mario if it took everything fucking enjoyable out of it

It did debut shy guy tho

GooeyScale: 55/100

The black sheep of the Mario platformers. I could give you the usual, trite spiel about the Lost Levels being too hard for westerners so we got a reskinned Doki Doki Panic and blah blah blah. Honestly, I don't think this game is good or interesting enough to warrant that, nor is its supposed "real" Japanese counterpart. Both SMB2s represent a turning point, the videogame equivalent of an awkward, hesitant pause. Unsure of how to follow up such a smash hit as the first Super Mario Bros, Nintendo opted for a bullshit troll level pack for Japan and some reskinned crap for the West.

What's curious is how much of this game has survived in Mario's canon, but in such minor roles. Shy Guys and Birdo haven't gone away, but you can't say they've ever taken the centre stage in a way like this again. There's an air of begrudging duty forcing Nintendo to acknowledge this game, but never to give it any more than that, and perhaps that's for the best. The first and third SMB games are still innovative, fantastic pioneers for the genre, but both versions of the second entry are little more than historical curios. Their legacy will always be an overshared anecdote about the bizarreness of 80s games localisations and little more than that.

What an odd specimen of a title. It started life as "Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic" in Japan. Then it got brought to the US rebranded as a sequel to the iconic Super Mario Bros., and then it got sent back to Japan as Super Mario USA.

Evidently, it's a very different game than its "prequel". Almost no power-ups, you can pick up enemies and throw them, you fight Wart instead of Bowser at the end.
This is also the first time you can play as Princess Toadstool (Peach) or Toad. Each of them also control slightly different, which is a neat touch. The controls in general are fairly polished, they feel a bit less stiff than Super Mario Bros. No complaints here.

The presentation is pretty nice for an NES title. Vibrant colors, lively sprites, the game doesn't have too much music but what's there is great.

The gameplay is the biggest complaint I have with it. Specifically the level design. It starts off well-designed, but as you go on, some parts seem to be intentionally designed to waste your time. Like the vertical castle-esque areas that make you fall all the way down if you mess up too much. Or that one level with the ridiculous amount of jars you have to scour. Enemy placement gets very unfair sometime near the midpoint. I'm looking at you World 4, with your Beezo swarms and snow golem things.

The ending is also very disappointing, making your entire adventure null and void. Even in a story-light game such as this.

Overall, Super Mario Bros 2. is a perfectly fine game, but it's not one I'd go back to often.

Even if it wasn't originally designed as a sequel to Super Mario Bros., upon comparing the two, I appreciate how much this game improves on SMB1. The four playable characters add a great variety and improve replayability. More varied environments, including vertical platforming sections, help to mix up the proceedings. There's a greater variety of boss fights. And overall, the pace of the platforming is more varied, with some levels still focused on quickly running to the exit but others having more exploration involved.

And hey, if its non-Mario origins show through a bit too much for you, there's always the other SMB2, I guess. For me, though, this is by far the better game.