How underwear cartridge bandits stole my Super Mario Bros 2 game

Super Mario Bros. 2 (1989)

Super Mario Bros. 2 (1989)

Burkey enthusiasts among you may be interested to note that Super Mario Advance is the one and only game I’ve ever lost. That’s not ‘lost’ as in given away - I give nothing away. Even if a girl was cold and wanted my hoodie, no dice. She’d have a better chance of knitting a new hoodie out of fog than getting one from me.

No, I’m talking about misplacing the game and never, ever finding it again. I’d love to know what I did to it, where it could be right now. If only there was some sort of miniature tracking device wildly available back in 2001 – if there had been, I’d have put that bad boy on everything.

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After all, what if someone had stolen it from me? And I was able to track down the guy who did it? Wouldn’t that be a hell of a plot-twist? Could there be a conspiracy against me? I sometimes read about people having their entire game collections stolen, or oftentimes stolen and sold on by their older brothers to buy drugs.

Now personally, I’d do just about anything for money, but that is going way too far. God almighty, I’ve read about people losing their entire SNES collections, Chrono Trigger and EarthBound and all. If something like that happened to me, I think I’d go on a rampage. I’m serious, I couldn’t be held responsible for my actions.

It certainly wasn’t a problem for Miyamoto and his boys to steal a different video game and try to fence it as a sequel to Super Mario Bros. The real Mario sequel, a game that you and I know today as Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, was initially only released in Japan as a show of hatred towards Mario fans.

I imagine the bods in Nintendo of America baulked when they saw how difficult Super Mario Bros. 2 JP was, and how much their target audience would end up having nightmares about it. They didn’t want angry mothers calling up and complaining that their children had turned into hateful, depressive wrecks. Therefore, I think they needed to act fast.

So, in a similar vein to that dreaded day when your project or presentation is due and all you’ve got to show is an unappealing pile of rubbish, you need an out. Preferably you’d just grab some other fool’s work, top and tail it with your own graphics, slap your own name on it, and hope to get away with it for just long enough that you escape scrutiny.

So that’s what Nintendo did – they took the distinctly Arabian Doki Doki Panic, which was a game about turbans and dreams or something, snakes maybe. Then they gave it only a threadbare graphical makeover, resulting in a Western-friendly Mario sequel that’s ‘experimental’, shall we say.

Hey, their imaginations went wild with Zelda II. Konami threw a curveball with Castlevania II – maybe experimentation was massively in vogue in the late 80s? That’s when Rick Astley got big, after all. Same with The Bangles. Do you know what I mean?

Well, just because this game was a bit of a patch-up job from a completely unrelated game, don’t fall into the trap of thinking that this is a real black sheep, you know, an unsightly boil on the otherwise perfect bum of Mario.

This game, as much of a reskin as it was, did an awful lot for the Mario lore, if you’re interested in all that. Without Mario 2 we’d have no Shy Guys, no Bob-ombs, no Pokeys, and playable versions of the Princess and Toad would look a lot different in, say, Super Mario 3D World.

I would also have to say that this game is significant for bringing Birdo to us, whom the manual gladly tells us is a girl dinosaur trapped in a boy dinosaur’s body, and would rather be called Birdetta. Enemy though they may be, I’ll call them whatever makes them happy.

And speaking of being trapped in a body, you’ll have to beat Birdo in just about every level to make them regurgitate an orb, which in turn opens the mouth of a bird statue on the wall. Throwing yourself down its throat brings you to the next level. Makes sense, right?

But if you managed to pick up a few coins along the way, you can play the slot machine for the chance to grab a few extra lives, although the game’s easy enough that you mightn’t need them. Besides, you never, ever win these slot machines, at least on the NES release, so you might as well not bother.

Yes, this is definitely still a weird game, and there’s still something slightly Arabic about the aesthetic. I suppose having two desert worlds gives that away, but in my defence, there’s also a snow world where you go harassing whales, giving it back that Japanese flavour.

Some of the more Arabian music cues have made way for the regular Mario theme though, and it’s funny that Toad deputises for the squat, Ali Baba type character from the original Doki Doki Panic. If you’re already familiar with Super Mario Bros. 2, then you should definitely have a look at Doki Doki Panic – it’s quite a surreal experience.

But whatever you do, don’t be too quick to dismiss Super Mario Bros. 2. Think about what it added to Mario: a lot more verticality in the levels, if you’ll accept that as a word. A variety of different bosses and enemies, some great music, different ways to play, and the graphics of the NES version are actually nicer than I remember.

Of course, if you go onto the SNES All-Stars version, you’ll find the graphics still better, a proper feast of colour. That version makes things slightly easier, and I’d probably call it the definitive version.

Now I definitely enjoyed the GBA version, until the gods, or more likely the underpants gnomes from South Park, stole it from me. But that one gets a bit of stick for starting the ridiculous trend of adding voice samples where there really didn’t need to be any.

Wasn’t that a strange one? It was a common theme of Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance games at the time, and A Link to the Past GBA really suffered from it as well. Still, who could turn down a bomb-toting Mouser with a Brooklyn accent, voiced by Charles Martinet no less?

The GBA version really gets the maximum wear out of the game – you can beat the game normally, but there’s also the challenge of collecting 5 Red Coins in each level. Then when you’ve done that, you can find two well-hidden Yoshi Eggs per level. Since it was my first GBA game, you better believe I wrung every bit of life from Super Mario Advance – I even played plenty of the rubbish Mario Bros. arcade game included with it.

For my money, Super Mario Bros. 2 has a perfect length, allowing you to sit down and blow through the game in an hour or two. On top of that, there are four different playable characters, giving great replay value, and you can swap characters between levels as well. That said, you’ll always tend to lean towards your favourite character.

I’d love to branch out, but I can’t help it; every time I play this game, it’s got to be Luigi. For a start, his spindly legs get him high enough to skip out entire portions of the level. To be fair, the Princess’s ability to float can achieve this as well.

Mario is just a bit too average – I know the feeling – and Toad is pretty specialised. Fast and strong, which isn’t really how I would have imagined him. But he can barely jump ten inches off the ground, which is a bit more realistic.

There was always a persistent rumour, given the presence of his eggs in Super Mario Advance, that Yoshi could be unlocked as a super-powered character in the GBA release. Wish I had the chance to find out – I had just about gotten to that point when some pirate, some absolute scoundrel, took the game from me. And now he’s out there, using MY lizard, happy as you like. Perhaps he had an accomplice? A plague of Shy Guys o’ both their houses!

13 October 2023