Initially unreleased in the United States because of the difficulty, we ended up with a hack of Doki Doki Panic instead for Super Mario Bros 2. I wouldn't really call this a sequel but more of an updated version of the first Mario Bros. but you know the story by now., Mushroom Kingdom was once a peaceful land where Princess Toadstool (Peach) rules over her subjects called Toads (Kinopios) with a gentle heart. As with all peaceful  settings there is always going to be an evil being to come around to take it all away. In this case, the evil King Koopa (Bowser) has kidnapped the princess in hopes of making him his unwilling bride. He then turns everyone in the Mushroom Kingdom to blocks. That is everyone except to recent outsiders named Mario Mario and Luigi Mario whom are better known as the Mario Bros. They mysteriously ended up in Mushroom Kingdom by getting sucked down the drain and now it's up to them to rescue everyone once more.

 

GRAPHICS - A+

 

The only changes is this game are basically the flooring in the overworld and the underworld as instead of stones, you are running across crushed rubble. I still applaud the excellent use of backgrounds and sprites used to create a level. As I've said before, from a programmer's standpoint you'll notice how everything is technically the same size regardless of if its a background tile, character or enemies because everything is drawn within a bounding box. Almost everything is drawn within a 16 x 16 bounding box. The only two notable exceptions are Big Mario and Bowser who are 16 (w) x 32 (h) and 32 x 32. Guess you can add fireballs (and to an extent, the firebar) as the flames are 8 x 8. A bonus at the ending of the game is that Princess Toadstool no longer looks like an ugly dog when you rescue her, she looks like an actual princess and says a wonderful poem at the end. The mushrooms have also been updated to look a little bit thinner. There is even a new item that actually serves as a power down instead of a powerup. It is a Poison Mushroom that turns big Mario into small Mario. If you were small Mario already, I'll play TAPS for you. Another added feature is the wind that occurs in some levels. Leaves will blow by you at various speeds to indicate the wind is blowing. You will also meet Red Piranha plants, Grey Koopas, Mushroom sinking platforms, and sometimes cloudy platforms.

 

SOUND - A

 

With Nintendo putting in some early elbow grease during this time, the sound is top of the line. The sound comes out immediately after certain actions are made such as when you gain a power-up or kill an enemy. Matter of fact, just about every sound that was produced in this game was used within everybody's imagination whenever they did or saw something fancy or stupid. On a personal note, the invincibility theme usually comes to mind when watching a football game during a play that results in touchdown from far away but I'll talk about music in the next section since it will give a small lesson.

  

MUSIC - A

 

The only thing that has changed as far as the music goes is that, at the end when you rescue Princess Toadstool (Peach), the ending theme gets an actual extension which makes the sound more full. You can hear the 16-bit version of the song on Super Mario All-Stars.

 

CONTROLS - A-

 

The controls were the only part of the first game that hurt it. There were times when you were in a tight situation and the control failed to respond to the press of the button and thus you ended up biting the dust. It didn't hurt too bad but a split second can determine the difference between life and death especially when trying to hop over pits and you end up running off into the abyss to your doom. This led to tremendous frustration when far into the game.

 

But guess what? The controls hurt even more in this game and it has everything to do with Mario and Luigi having different jumping abilities that serve as a differential separator between the two. Mario doesn't jump very high or far but the good part is that he can stop on the dime when he lands from a horizontal jump but Luigi, on the other hand, can jump long distances but unlike Mario he has no traction so when he lands from a horizontal jump, he will take a few extra steps before stopping and that can lead to him waltzing right into a pit or an enemy and that's not good.

 

REPLAYABILITY - A+

 

Replayability is surprisingly the selling factor for this game. You don't have to worry about begging for more for this game as this game gives you so much more than those eight levels. The blessing part about this game being on the Famicom Disk System is it saves your progress when you beat the game. Some people have a hard time beating the game without using a single warp zone but lo and behold, there is a special reward for beating all eight levels in one shot without using a warp zone. You get a free trip to World 9 where you pretty much play a bonus game of surviving 4 sub-levels that loop over and over this you die once. The extra stuff doesn't stop there folks. If you beat the game just once, you get a star on the title screen. Beat the game eight times (you'll have eight stars) then enter a code and you will get to play through worlds A-D. Some are even updated versions of previous worlds.

 

OVERALL - A+

 

As you noticed, I started using the grading system for ratings. The reason that I have given the overall score of 9.7 is the reason I didn't give the first Super Mario Bros a 10. The controls can make or break you in this game and now it is more evident as Mario and Luigi having more different physics than each other. Other than that the game is flawless and is a real good gem to have if you can get your hands on it or its Lost Levels incarnation which is updated graphics into 16-bit mode.