Super Mario Bros. 2 review by Tyson
Overall
Rent
Super Mario Bros. 2 is a huge difference in design from Super Mario Bros. in some ways this makes the game really good but sadly this is by far my least favorite Super Mario game.
Gameplay
So Super Mario Bros. 2 starts out with Mario and the gang finding a door inside a cave that takes him to the
world of Subcon. Once they arrive in Subcon they find out that an evil frog king Wart and its up to everyone
to stop Wart and restore piece to Subcon. I found this story to be pretty good and its nice to have something
different then the standard save the kidnapped lady storyline that many games use.
What makes this game so different then Super Mario Bros is that the screen can scroll in any direction. This
means that levels can go up, down, left, and right. You can also walk backwards in the levels as well which I found
to be pretty neat. The game also includes all new enemies. So your Goombas and Koopas have been replaced with enemies
like Shy Guys and Birdo's. Unlike Super Mario Bros. you have the ability to choose a character before each stage. I really
liked how each character (Mario, Luigi, Toad, and Peach) have their own unique stregnths and weakness. For exmaple
Peach can float during her jumps while say Luigi can jump the highest. This makes the difficulty of each level change a bit
when playing with a different character. I have to give the game some props for letting me play as Peach.
Now you are probably wondering why this game is my least favorite mario game when I have given the game some
good praise. Well for starters there are really no power ups when compared to Super Mario Bros. While you can pick up bombs
or get invicbility stars there is also no powerups like the fire flower. Also fighting Birdo over and over again throughout the
game gets boring. I also didn't enjoy the many segments of the game where you need to carry a key around and avoid this floating mask
like face gets a bit old. Also I really hated the digging sections of the game. These reasons might sound like I am whining or complaining but they really did lower the quality of
the game for me.
Control
Like many NES games I didn't have any problems with the control. You have your standard control scheme of move, pickup\throw, and jump.
Graphics
I feel that the graphics are a decent improvement over Super Mario Bros. Everything had a nice colorful look and I never noticed any weird sprite flickering that you can see in many other NES games. Though I did experience some slowdown when a lot of stuff was happening on the screen.
Sound
Overall I had no problems with the games audio. I liked the theme music that played when you turned on the game. The throwing noises were pretty good as well. So I came away enjoying the audio with this game.