Spudd 64’s Top Ten Favorite Video Games of All Time: 8
Talented artist and incredible friend, Spudd 64 will be counting down his top ten favorite video games in the next ten weeks. Enjoy!
- Kyle
“Thank you Mario, but our Princess is in another castle!”
I think I just got a little bit frustrated with that line. In any case, I never did actually finish Super Mario Bros. I played it. A lot. Who didn’t, really? I mean, nearly every kid growing up in the 80s had a Nintendo and a copy of Super Mario Bros. But something about castle after castle after castle…and still no Princess. Well, I gave up somewhere around World 6 or 7.
But along came Super Mario Bros. 2 and things felt a little…no, actually, a LOT different.
First, what was up with that box cover? Sure, there was Mario, but why was he holding some kind of gleaming turnip? Even the title screen looked a little funny…
What was with all those people? Toad and Luigi and the Princess and more turnips and…those sure didn’t look like Goombas and Koopas. So, in the cartridge went (remember those gigantic old cartridges?) and the game began.
Sure enough, nothing, and I mean nothing, in this game resembled anything I had seen in any other Mario game. The music was different. The landscape looked different. Where were the cute little smiley faces that were plastered all over every cloud, hill, mountain and tree in the first Super Mario Bros.? I wasn’t sure if I would even like this game. And then, creeping forward from the right edge of the screen, I saw it. Only I didn’t know what “it” was. Some kind of squat little robed lump inching forward wearing a creepy hockey mask. Only later did I come to know and love these things as the Shy Guys that they were.
Fortunately they were about as easy to deal with as the Goombas, and later I had great fun playing as Toad, picking them up, and throwing them all over the place. Soon the Shy Guys were joined by Snifits…
…and I was now completely immersed in this new Mario world that I eventually learned was called Subcon. There were so many things about this new game that, to me, seemed to position it head and shoulders above previous Mario outings. The ability to pluck, something Toad excelled at. The chance for the player to run through the game as either Mario, Luigi, Toad or the Princess, each of whom had slightly different abilities. This level of strategizing was something very new to me, and probably relatively new to the world of 8-bit platform jumpers as well. And who could forget those bizarre little beakers of red liquid that you could (somehow) pluck out of the ground, throw down, and make a magical doorway to a parallel dimension appear…
Refreshingly, Super Mario Bros. 2 offered a lot more interesting bosses as well. Instead of the same tedious jumping and dodging against Bowser, players were treated to duels with Birdo, Mouser, Tryclyde, Clawglip, Fryguy, and, in a move rare for a Mario Bros. game, a single game ending duel with the biggest boss of them all, King Wart…
Finally, after battling your way through desert worlds, river worlds, electric worlds, worlds inside jars, and more…after beating King Wart (who hates vegetables!) deep in his lair, the player finally frees the mysterious Subcon fairies who carry King Wart’s corpse (!) off the screen to a presumably grisly end. And here, my friends, is where the game really tugs at my heartstrings. After it is all said and done, instead of a simple credit sequence at the end we learn…it was all a dream!
The entire adventure, whether you played as Mario, Luigi, the Princess, Toad, or a combination of them all, was all a dream Mario had while sleeping peacefully in bed. I especially love the peaceful, almost lullaby-like music playing while Mario, colored in deep blue tones to show the depths of night, snores peacefully in his bed. And after the cast of the game has been introduced, Mario wakes up very briefly, looks around for a moment, and drifts back to sleep while the rest of the credits roll. Wonderful! I mean, every gamer is aware of the nature of entering and interacting with what more or less amounts to a dream world since the world of the videogame does not, in physical reality, exist. But at the end of Super Mario Bros. 2 the realization that it was all a dream within a dream just blew me away. It seems quaint now, but for the 80s, this was deep stuff in terms of games.
It was only after finishing this game that I read more about it and figured out that Subcon was indeed a shortening of the word subconscious. And it was many many years later that I learned why this game seemed so damn weird, so unlike any Mario Bros. game, and remains my favorite Mario Bros. game of all time. Once upon a time, it was a Japanese game named Doki Doki Panic…
…and Nintendo simply pasted a few different sprites over the characters and shipped it out as Super Mario Bros. 2. That story is well worth reading, and you can probably find decent articles about it on either Wikipedia or the delightful Super Mario Wiki. Check ‘em out.
Alright, one last confession. I saved this for the end so it wouldn’t be too embarrassing. Probably the biggest reason that Super Mario Bros. 2 has such a special place in my heart is that it was the very first videogame that I ever beat. The only game I had completed, on my own, all the way to the credits. And I was almost 20 years when it finally happened. Still, I remember the thrill of sitting in my room very late at night, putting down the controller after throwing that final vegetable at King Wart, and watching the rest of the story unfold. I had done it. Me! I had finally been able to get to the end of a story after starting and abandoning so many others. It was just an awesome experience, and this is the game that really turned me into a video game lover for life. Now if I could only stop having nightmares about Birdo…
- Spudd 64