Not a mario game but, surprisingly good as one.
Now, i know what your thinking, your just thinking that i'm gonna sit here and attack Mario 2. Well, with all due respect, i don't hate Mario Bros 2 at all, it's a pretty good game. I'm just saying it's very, VERY different from the other mario games. And also, i'm sure that by now you all know that this isn't really Super Mario Bros 2, that it's actually Japan's Doki Doki panic. Let me just tell you in greater depth, those of you that didn't know...
After the success of Shigeru Miyamoto's work with Nintendo (Super Mario Bros, Legend of Zelda), Miyamoto began work on a Japanese exclusive game called Doki Doki Panic. Shortly after it was released, the real Super mario bros 2 was released in Japan entitled "Super Mario Bros 2: the lost worlds". Miyamoto thought that the second mario bros would disappoint worldwide audiences out of Japan, so Nintendo simply took Doki Doki Panic, changed a few sprites and there you go, that`s where we got our Super Mario Bros 2. There are many rummoured reasons why the real one wasen't released out of Japan: some say that it was too much like the first. Another one is that it was too hard. Either way, we didn't see the real SMB2 until we got "Super Mario all-stars" on the SNES which was simply a collection of all the NES Mario games, which now had upgraded graphics and music, where the real SMB2 was included as "Super Mario Bros: the lost levels"
Onto the actual review now. Straight away, you'll notice a HUGE improvement in graphics. It's absolutly amazing compared to the original. Well, you get to choose to play as Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach or Toad (you know, the little b****** from the original who always said "Our princess is in another castle"). Each has their own abilities: Mario is the regular guy, Luigi is the high jumper, Peach can hover in the air for a short time and Toad can pick up anything almost instantly (and if your wondering what i mean about picking stuff up, you'll find out about that in a second).
So you pick your character and the game begins as you fall out of a door in the sky. Precisly how a door got up there in the first place is beyond me. But when you land and go through another door, you'll find out the gameplay is very different from the first SMB. First off, there is nothing remotly farmilliar from the original: no goombas, no koopa troopers, no mushrooms, no fire flower and the worst thing, the ending boss isn't even Bowser!! (Remember, this was back in the 80's, when we had no idea this wasen't really SMB2). In this one, we are introduced to new characters as enemies like shyguys, sniffets, and ba-bombs, i don't remember these from the original!
You also can't kill enemies by jumping on them, you now have to jump on them, pick them up and throw them at other enemies, or you could pick up weeds for different vegtables that you could throw at them, or maybe bombs to blast through walls, or 1-up mushrooms (at least they kept the 1-up mushroom!) or, if your lucky, you can pick up a bottle and throw it down for a door to appear, which if you enter, you will get the original SMB theme playing and other weeds which you can pick for coins for some wierd mini-game at the end of the level and if you pick up the mushroom in that door, you get an increase to you life bar (yes, your life bar, which we will cover in a second) or if you lucky and throw the bottle down in the right spot, you'll access a warp zone. There`s also the koopa shell which you cna roll and knock down enemies.
Also, there's a life bar now, which only starts as 2 hearts and if you get hit, they take away an entire heart. The only way to get another heart is to kill a certain ammout of enemies, then a heart will float up from the bottom of the screen.
Oh and remember that invincibility star? To get it now, you have to collect five of the many cherries scattered around the level. And once you pick up that fifth cherry, you have to WAIT for it! It moves so slow up from the bottom of the screen!
At the end of each level, you run into a character that would be in later mario games and was even Yoshi's girlfriend in a few of them (i think if i remember), Birdo. All you have to do to get past her is to throw a few eggs at her that she spits at you.
At the end of the game, you finally meet up with the last boss, wort, this giant toad thing. All you just do is throw vegtables at him when is mouth is open and he'll chock on them and die. And that's why, parents, is you want your kids to eat their vegtables, it probably a bad idea to let them play this game. It then shows how many times you used each character to pass a stage and then it switches over to Mario who's in bed and it turns out he just dreamed up this entire game!
So overall, despite not being a Mario game, it's actually a pretty good game. I'd say check it out.
Final score:
Graphics: 4/5
Sound: 3/5
Gameplay: 3/5
Entertainment: 4/5
Overall: 14/20