Super Mario Bros. 2: The Lost Levels



Just rewatched Cardcaptor Sakura: The Movie, signaling the halfway mark through the series run. One of my favorite anime series ever, which prompts an annual session every Spring. Little early this year, but with the PS3 MIA I'm hitting the Netflix and TV series discs hard.

Now on to a cop-out of a review brief mention on an expansion:



Such a kind smile for a soul-crushing game...



Super Mario Bros. 2 (or Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels) is the first sequel to the original NES classic initially released in Japan that was eventually brought overseas via the Super NES compilation Super Mario All-Stars. It's more akin to a 1.5 or add-on DLC than a real sequel, since it's basically the same game with its difficulty cranked up to eleven.

One significant change included what would be a recurring difference in physics between brothers Mario and Luigi that would endure to this day. Mario, ever the everyman, controls exactly the same as in the first game, while green-clan younger brother Luigi could now jump higher and have less traction than his big brother. The levels themselves were hellishly more haphazard and devious, requiring an acute sense of the game's controls, physics and good memorization. Enemies are everywhere, pitfalls are plentiful and hope is all but murdered by pure skill awaiting you to challenge it.

To this day, it's the only main Mario title that I have yet to beat, though the Nintendo Hard difficulty spike is a welcome albeit cruel challenge to my gamer cred. I've gotten only as far as World 3 on both my All-Stars and Virtual Console files, and this game allows Game Overs to restart on the World when the plumber fell instead of starting back on 1-1 as in the original. It's a helpful, if a bit ego-damaging, feature as far as borderline-taunting gestures go.

Other than that, I don't actually rank the title with the other main installments, as I take the International version of Super Mario Bros. 2 over The Lost Levels. Our remodelled version of Doki Doki Panic was much more influential in the series as a whole, and is also much more enjoyable as the black sheep of the Main Series games. So nyeah.

Back to properly reviewing Wrecking Crew next week. Fun being an Ambassador!