Sunday, October 8, 2017

Shades of Resonance: Emotional Scars - Memory Log #55

Super Mario Bros. 2 / Lost Levels

I can't say it enough, dear reader: The video-game medium's history truly is a wild world of mystery and wonder. Those who seek to become engrossed in it will assuredly discover that within its coffers lay a vast treasure trove filled with a great number of endlessly fascinating artifacts. And any new discovery might hold the potential to shatter your perception of how things were.

That's been my experience in recent years. As I've zealously explored history's glittering mines, I've grown ever-more enlightened. The deeper I've tunneled, the more I've develop as an enthusiast, my lust for unfiltered knowledge and scarcely documented historical data serving as the guiding force in my evolution.

Truly this is a far cry from my younger days, when I was all too happy to remain willfully oblivious as to the true nature of video games--when I viewed their progression as nothing more than a series of predictably linear events. There was nothing more I needed to know, I felt: What I saw in front of me was all there was to it. That's how I viewed the world of games.

Yet even back then, more than a quarter of a century ago, there were visible signs that the video-game scene was a much larger, more wondrous place than I believed. The first inkling of such was my shocking discovery of the "real" Super Mario Bros. 2.

Mario's unpublicized adventure came to my attention one random day late in 1991, when I was out shopping with my mother and her friend Audrey. As they were spending their usual small eternity perusing the clothes and appliances sections (this was in either Walmart or Genovese--I can't remember for sure), I wandered off to the video-game aisle to check up on the latest NES and SNES releases; while I was there, I decided to browse through the magazine headlines and get a sense of what gaming publications were currently focusing their energy on. That's when my eyes happened upon a new arrival called "Mario Mania," whose NES Game Atlas-like paperback cover, stocky build, and unmistakable graphical design were a clear indication that I was looking at the next entry in Nintendo's Player's Guide series, of which I was a big fan. I didn't even need to see the words printed on the cover to know what it was.

No energy went into considering whether or not it was reasonable to ask my mother to buy it for me. There was no time for such rumination; the moment the guide's iconic Mario imagery imprinted upon my reptilian brain, I knew that I needed to have it right now. Fortunately my mother was eager to answer my desperate plea--perhaps because she knew that it would likely shut me up for the day.

Once we were done shopping, we initiated what had become a traditional sequence: On any such day, that is, we'd stop for lunch over at the New Parkway diner over on 13th Avenue, and while those two would yammer on and on about their boring "adult" stuff, I'd flip through a gaming magazine or repeatedly read over a newly purchased game's box description. This time the object of my obsession was the Mario Mania guide, whose pages featured (a) a compelling retrospective on Mario's history and his many cameo appearances and (b) a comprehensive Super Mario World guide, which I knew I'd enjoy poring over even though I'd long since located the game's 96 exits.


So there I was flipping through Mario Mania's guide portion when suddenly I had to stop and backtrack a few pages because I was certain that I'd caught of glimpse of some imagery that seemed familiar yet at the same time oddly alien. The images in question belonged to a specially designed sidebar titled "Super Mariology," which in did-you-know style spoke of a "Japanese version" of Super Mario Bros. 2--not a reworking of the Arabian-themed classic we all knew and loved, mind you, but rather an original work that had never graced our shores! There wasn't much to the article, really--just four small images and maybe five sentences' worth of information--yet no more needed to be said; that tiny sliver of information, alone, was more than enough to absolutely blow my mind!

I had so many questions: "How is it that I've never heard about this game until just now?!" "Why was it never considered for release in the US?!" "Why is it so graphically similar to the original Super Mario Bros.?!" "What the hell is 'Doki Doki Panic,' and what does it have to do with the Super Mario Bros. 2 we've been playing since 1988?!" "And what's going on with that weird, cobbly-looking floor texture?!"

I was ecstatic to learn of its existence, yes, yet my excitement was tempered with a feeling of defeat, since I knew that nothing would ever become of this discovery. After all: There would never be an opportunity for me to play this game. The reality was that Japan was a world away. "There's a zero-percent chance that I'll ever find a way to gain access to its goods," I was certain.


That's why it felt all the more exhilarating when Nintendo Power Volume 52 arrived bearing news of Super Mario All-Stars--a compilation that was said to include 16-bit remakes of the three classic NES Mario titles plus the never-before-seen, curiously named "Lost Levels," which, sure enough, was one in the same with the "Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 2" I'd read about eons earlier (a year and a half before, in actuality)!

The preview put a heavy emphasis on the latter and explained in detail how it was different from the original Super Mario Bros.; expanding upon what the Mario Mania article had revealed, it stressed that Lost Levels' difficulty far exceeded its predecessor's, and it reiterated that the game introduced some new mechanics that worked to turn the original's formula on its head--aspired to gleefully betray its every value. There were poison mushrooms that would "take away Mario and Luigi's powers" (in reality, they inflicted plain-ol' contact damage). Eastward wind-gusts that would push them forward and alter the momentum of their jumps. And warp zones that would send them back to previously conquered worlds.

Additionally Lost Levels featured five extra worlds and some notable differentiation between the brothers. Basically Luigi could jump higher and farther than Mario, just as he could in our version of Super Mario Bros 2. I was thrilled that the two Super Mario Bros. 2-titled games shared this connection; in my mind, this single mechanical similarity confirmed the US version's canonization as a true Super Mario Bros. game. It proved that it had a firm basis in the established Super Mario Bros. mythos and wasn't merely a lazy sprite-swap of this "Doki Doki Panic" game.


I'd always had an aversion to remakes, since I saw them as unnecessary, yet I could find reason to make an exception for All-Stars. I could rationalize that I was buying it for Lost Levels, which despite its aesthetic similarities to Super Mario Bros. was a completely new experience, and the rest of the games were strong "bonus content." I mean, $50 for a compilation that included a fascinating Japan-only release and recreations of three all-time classics? Why, that sounded like a great deal to me--certainly a fine use of my recently accumulated birthday money!

And, really, Lost Levels' difficulty being described as "a natural continuation of what you saw in the original's World 8" didn't sound too bad to me. Hell--if I could blast through those four stages without feeling the least bit stressed, then there was nothing in Lost Levels that could pose a serious challenge to me! "I mean, come on," I stated with such confidence. "This is me we're talking about. I've beaten some of the hardest games ever made!"

Oh, I had no idea what I was about to get myself into.


This game, man.

So the first time I booted up Lost Levels, I did what felt natural: I selected to play as Mario because hey--that's what you did the first time you played a new Super Mario Bros. game. After all: It had always been true that Mario was the "balanced" character around which the series games' basic level design was crafted. Thus the same had to be true of Lost Levels. And then I hit the Start button and learned within moments that I was gravely mistaken--that Lost Levels didn't give a damn about adhering to conventional wisdom. It was rather blunt in advertising that it would be issuing not one shred of mercy--that the player had better possess nothing short of mastery over Mario's maneuverability and jumping mechanics if he or she hoped to clear even a single world while playing as him.


Half the time, I didn't even feel as though he was capable of making required jumps over what at first glance appeared to be an insanely long, unnegotiable gaps; and if he was able to clear them, it was just barely--by maybe a single pixel. To him each stage was like a series of mini-challenges, and so much had to go right if I desired to reach the goal. Usually it didn't. And after enduring about an hour's-worth of agonizingly deflating missed jumps and piranha-plant-inflicted deaths, I said "Screw it"; I decided to reset the game and this time play exclusively as Luigi, because I'd have been crazy not to. Really, if he functioned anything like he did in the US version, then this would be a cakewalk.


But then, to my great horror, I learned the hard way that Luigi had been assigned a particularly obnoxious quirk: Upon breaking his running momentum or landing from a long horizontal jump, he'd skid along the surface at about a distance of two blocks--roughly one and a half more than Mario--before his movement would finally come to a halt. This would often result in his sliding off targeted platforms, likely to his death, or his flying off in a completely uncontrollable manner when I'd attempt to stabilize his movement using a follow-up jump--again, likely toward a bottomless pit. I thought it'd be like the US version, wherein I could joyously hop about and trivialize even the most menacing-looking of jumps; instead I spent the next few hours continuously slipping off every platform in sight and badly miscalculating jumps because I kept overcompensating for potential skidding.

This was turning out to be a nightmarish experience.

Now, I understood that their assigning Luigi this detrimental quirk was done with the intention of limiting his game-breaking propensity and creating a sense of balance between the brothers, but that's not how it was working in practice; instead they created two undesirable options. "There had to be a better solution," I thought.

And it should really tell you something about Mario-style gameplay when I say that Luigi, for all of his shortcomings, was still a far-superior alternative. I mean, seriously--I had no clue how anyone could be expected to finish the game with Mario. I certainly wasn't going to be a willing test subject. No--I decided that it was in my best interest to never play as him. I think I've done it once since then.


What drove me to continue on was the fascination factor. It was obvious, even early on, that Lost Levels was determined to break all of the rules, and I was interested in knowing the limits of its lunacy. It had the normally aquatic Bloopers floating about in the open air. Fire bars in non-castle stages. Koopas and Koopa Paratroopas patrolling underwater stages. And many other wacky occurrences. Lost Levels truly was the bizarro Super Mario Bros., and I couldn't wait to see what it would attempt to pull off next. You know--if I didn't suffer an emotional breakdown before then.

I vividly recall my first experience with Lost Levels not because I was excited to be playing a "lost Mario game" but because of how it almost drove me to the brink of madness. I can remember the scenarios that inflicted the individual wounds: The long, ridiculous jumps that required my threading combinations of fire bars and flying enemies. The narrow openings whose penetration seemed to come down to chance. The insane spring stages, within which I could never seem to land where I wanted because I could never tell where the hell I was. The windy segments that only exacerbated Luigi's sliding quirk and rendered platforming an exercise in soul-sucking frustration.

Those awful maze-based castles, which I imagined were exceedingly difficult to figure out without the remake's kindly provided aural cues. The friggin' omnipresent Hammer Bros., many of which were programmed to unyieldingly march forward and bedevil players who were bereft of fireball power. The millionth time a Paratroopa appeared at the screen's edge just in time to collide with me as I was landing from a lengthy jump. And the 8-4 castle whose absurd wraparound jumps did me in time and time and again and forced me to continuously repeat the previous three stages, which grew to become a tedious exercise, just so I could get another shot at negotiating them (or "fail at them," as it were).


It was all one big ball of frustration, and most of my mental energy was spent wondering what hell was wrong with the people who made this game. Lost Levels was, in every way, the antithesis of Super Mario Bros.. It was designed to be cruel. It was neither accessible nor fun.

Shoot--Worlds A through D were some grade-A Game Genie material, but unfortunately I wasn't aware of such a product.

But I was determined to finish Lost Levels, so I did what was typical of me: I locked myself in my room and put myself through the grinder; I abandoned any sense of restraint and persisted it until it was done, my escalating level of anger the driving force. And it was a mighty struggle, as Lost Levels proved itself to be one of the toughest, meanest games I'd ever played. I was left scarred by the experience.

Thank goodness for the game's generous continue system. Had it been absent of such, I might've punted its cartridge across three boroughs.

I would learn years later that Lost Levels didn't see release in the US because Nintendo of America balked at the idea of bringing an unfairly difficult (not to mention highly derivative and graphically dated) expansion of Super Mario Bros. to the market in 1988. Now, I'm one of the biggest critics of Nintendo of America's decision-making, but I have to give credit where it's due; the company made the right call here. Lost Levels--perhaps Nintendo's most uncharacteristically uninviting big-name sequel--might have tanked the entire series in all other territories. Instead there was a far-more-desirable outcome: We in the West got our own delightfully unique Super Mario Bros. sequel, and later on we'd get the chance to play the original work in a more-palatable form--as a cool bonus in a splendid remake compilation.


It wasn't until the Internet age that I got the opportunity to play Super Mario Bros. 2 in its original 8-bit form. I messed around with it via emulators, but for some reason I never felt compelled to spend more than a few minutes experimenting with it (maybe some form of posttraumatic stress disorder kicked in?). I didn't get serious about playing it until 2014, when I decided to purchase it from the 3DS eShop.



It just felt like the right time. I'd recently started up this blog, and I looked upon Super Mario Bros. 2 as the kind of game that encapsulated all its essential features. I reasoned that if I were to identify as a gaming historian, then it was incumbent upon me play through this game in its original form and get a true sense of what it was. Also, I had to admit that it still held undeniable allure to me despite my distaste for the design philosophy to which it adhered.



I compared it to those like Rockman & Forte and Adventure Island IV--"forbidden" games that were imbued with an indescribably attractive quality that so captivated me though I couldn't adequately articulate why. Even if I didn't particularly enjoy playing a game of its type, I could extract some form of sensory pleasure from it via (a) my fixating over its lost-artifact qualities or (b) my absorbing of its uniquely nostalgic vibes. Super Mario Bros. 2 was loaded with both.



I played through it a bunch of times, albeit usually by taking the short path--particularly during the first week, when I used warp zones to more quickly complete it the eight times necessary to access the special lettered worlds that were otherwise unlocked by default in the All-Stars version. It was right around then that it dawned on me that I really liked Super Mario Bros. 2, though I could provide no sane-sounding explanation for why that was. I mean, look at it: It's not accessible. It's rarely intuitive. It's cruelly designed. And it's just too damn difficult to be enjoyable for any length of time. Super Mario Bros. 2 is an insult to its legendary predecessor; it's a hateful impostor masquerading around in its shell. Yet, so help me, I actually like it.



It's a strangely met equilibrium: I don't particularly enjoy playing it, yet I find great reward in running around its world and observing it. I object to how it endeavors to desecrate the memory of its predecessor, yet I love that it exists. I'm drawn to Super Mario Bros. 2 not for its quality, or lack thereof, but for what it represents: It shows us that medium's history is chock-full of strange and wonderful games and products that are just waiting to be discovered.


It's flush with those like Super Mario Bros. 2, which I'll remember most for how it gave me my first glimpse into a world that was far more expansive than I'd ever imagined. It was the first of many surprises to come.


And, really, who knows what I might discover next?

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