Well, at least it isn't a bad game
User Rating: 7 | Super Mario USA NES
Super Mario Bros. 2 is the sequel to quite possibly the biggest game of all time. However, SMB2 does a poor job at holding the greatness of the original which happens quite often with media, especially NES games.(Looking at Zelda II, Castlevania II, and StarTropics II)But that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad game. Super Mario Bros. 2 is a remake of a game in Japan called Doki Doki Panic, only with Mario characters. You can choose between 4 characters. They are Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool, and Toad. The sad part is that Mario, the main character, has no special ability that sets him apart. Luigi can jump really high which comes in handy in a lot of situations. Princess Toadstool is probably the best to use for beginners since she has the ability to fly for a few seconds. I'm not really sure if Toad has one either. If he does it's a very unnoticeable one. The game has 7 levels compared to the originals 8. However, the worlds are a lot larger and more detailed than the originals. Unlike the first one, Bowser makes no appearance in the game. He is instead, replaced by a creature called Wart. But you don't fight Wart all 7 levels. You have 6 different bosses before him, each with their own unique strategies. One boss you will be fighting over and over again throughout the game is Birdo, the feminine lizard. Is it a boy or a girl? We really have no idea. But Birdo has made a lasting impression and has made appearances in later Mario games like Mario Party and Mario Baseball. You didn't kill enemies by jumping on them in this game. You had to pick them up, and throw them. It really changed up the formula for the game. Quite possibly the best upgrade in the game though was the super awesome POW Block. Every time you got this item you always got a rush of excitement as you killed every enemy on the screen. Another problem in this game was that finding mushrooms to power-up was more of a hassle than it should have been. You had to find a bottle with some kind of formula in it, and you'd throw that somewhere and walk inside the door it created. If you got lucky, there'd be a mushroom there. But if you didn't pick the right location, then it was just a waste. It's really annoying. But the pain doesn't stop there. There's absolutely no fire flowers or coins. WTF!? Coins are replaced by cherries though which isn't that bad, but I really don't feel like I'm rich carrying around a bunch of cherries. The difficulty in SMB2 is high. Some of the enemies act pretty smart making it difficult to defeat some levels. Level 4-2 comes to mind when I think of absolute hell. The controls are very bad. One jump will send you flying in the air giving you little control over your character. Your character also skids a lot. Sometimes it seems like the computer is controlling your character. It makes this game a lot harder than it should be. All in all, SMB2 is a good game that is ruined by crappy controls and the fact that it had a lot to live up to. If you love Mario then you should get this but if you're a casual gamer stay away.
