In my hype for Odyssey, I decided it was finally tackle the one official Mario platformer I'd never played, SMB2(JP)/the Lost Levels.
And... Man, it pretty much set the Mario ROM hack standards more than anything else, huh? Like, it just feels... off. It's designed to be hard, definitely, but... in kind of a cheap way. Like, I'll admit that I save stated at the start of levels for a more direct continue option, because... man, I don't really have time to put up with this game's BS. If nothing else, by the time I got to the stupid stage (7-3, I think?) where it's those super springs+wind and you've gotta land on tiny platforms over and over (with the note that those springs send you off the screen and, at least to someone unfamiliar with the mechanics, where you come down feels really imprecise), and that's most of the stage, I felt totally justified in my cheating there. Because that's... frankly just kind of poor level design, and feels like the worst kind of "hard". On top of that, the game apparently has a hard time handling what it's trying to do, because I got a good number of times where stuff just didn't spawn right. Most notably, it happened a LOT with the fire bars.
All in all, it's... frankly just kind of frustrating more than anything else. I plowed through all the stages, then actually managed World 9 "legit" in that I never died, presumably because it's so much easier, even with the one life thing. Though that wouldn't be true had I not come in with a shroom by fortunate random chance, because in 9-3, the Blue Bowser spawned stuck in the floor awkwardly in such a way that I didn't seem to be able to get around him, so I needed to tank a hit. If nothing else, those "arigatou" blocks at the end give this game SOME minor legacy, in that I guess it's technically the first Mario to do that whole "thank you" thing (putting it after some super hard bs, aka this entire game, too, which is how it pops up lately, too...)
And then... there would be World A-D, but maaaan... I really, really don't feel like playing through the game 7 more times, even if I could use warps. Especially when some of the "reward" stages are apparently just remixes anyway. Just out of curiousity: it was a disk system game, right? So... did it at least save those stars? Or did the poor Japanese kids back in the day have to grind that all out in one sitting if they wanted to play those stages?
Anyway, yeah... this is really, really not the most impressive Mario game. Kind of a shame to figure out it's as awkward as it is. I guess in the end, the US kind of got the better Mario 2 in the end, ultimately, via Doki Doki Panic (and yes, I know they went back and released Mario USA or whatever in Japan, so they got everything regardless).
And... Man, it pretty much set the Mario ROM hack standards more than anything else, huh? Like, it just feels... off. It's designed to be hard, definitely, but... in kind of a cheap way. Like, I'll admit that I save stated at the start of levels for a more direct continue option, because... man, I don't really have time to put up with this game's BS. If nothing else, by the time I got to the stupid stage (7-3, I think?) where it's those super springs+wind and you've gotta land on tiny platforms over and over (with the note that those springs send you off the screen and, at least to someone unfamiliar with the mechanics, where you come down feels really imprecise), and that's most of the stage, I felt totally justified in my cheating there. Because that's... frankly just kind of poor level design, and feels like the worst kind of "hard". On top of that, the game apparently has a hard time handling what it's trying to do, because I got a good number of times where stuff just didn't spawn right. Most notably, it happened a LOT with the fire bars.
All in all, it's... frankly just kind of frustrating more than anything else. I plowed through all the stages, then actually managed World 9 "legit" in that I never died, presumably because it's so much easier, even with the one life thing. Though that wouldn't be true had I not come in with a shroom by fortunate random chance, because in 9-3, the Blue Bowser spawned stuck in the floor awkwardly in such a way that I didn't seem to be able to get around him, so I needed to tank a hit. If nothing else, those "arigatou" blocks at the end give this game SOME minor legacy, in that I guess it's technically the first Mario to do that whole "thank you" thing (putting it after some super hard bs, aka this entire game, too, which is how it pops up lately, too...)
And then... there would be World A-D, but maaaan... I really, really don't feel like playing through the game 7 more times, even if I could use warps. Especially when some of the "reward" stages are apparently just remixes anyway. Just out of curiousity: it was a disk system game, right? So... did it at least save those stars? Or did the poor Japanese kids back in the day have to grind that all out in one sitting if they wanted to play those stages?
Anyway, yeah... this is really, really not the most impressive Mario game. Kind of a shame to figure out it's as awkward as it is. I guess in the end, the US kind of got the better Mario 2 in the end, ultimately, via Doki Doki Panic (and yes, I know they went back and released Mario USA or whatever in Japan, so they got everything regardless).
