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by aliens known as Quintessons. 01/07/2019, 4:28pm PST |
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If you took away everything that defined a hit game before the NES, and everything that would go on to define a hit game afterward, what you'd be left with would look very much like Super Mario Bros 2. It lacked both the fast action of the arcade era - the immediate challenge, the high scores, the timer, all present to at least some extent in the original Super Mario Bros - as well as the incremental progression of more modern examples - Super Mario Bros 3 introduced a world map, persistent inventory, and an emphasis on finding optional secrets that, by the turn of the millennium, would see the term platformer become synonymous with collectathon.
Super Mario Bros 2 was a plodding game of simple puzzles, limited exploration, and infrequent dexterity checks. It also sold over seven million copies, more than any other NES game that didn't come with the system; it would take another fifteen years and an information revolution for a PC game to finally match those sales. And, since this is the American Super Mario Bros 2 we're talking about, the overwhelming majority of its sales were, atypically for a Nintendo game, outside Japan. (Suggestions for the definitive Famicom game are welcome. It's got to be Dragon Quest, though, hasn't it?) The game was such a cultural phenomenon that it had its own cartoon super show, breakfast cereal system, and foaming bath soap. If you want to see where the notion that video games are for babies reached its ultimate expression, look no further than Super Mario Bros 2.
If there were an island nation somewhere with as many dodos as kids who played Super Mario Bros 2, not only would it be their state bird, they would put one on the goddamn flag. Super Mario Bros 2 is the dodo of the NES. |
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