Super Mario Bros. 2

Not to be confused with Mario Bros. II,  Super Mario Bros. 2 aka Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, or New Super Mario Bros. 2.

Super Mario Bros. 2 is a 1988 platform game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System as the North American/European sequel to the 1985 game Super Mario Bros. The game was first released in North America on October 10, 1988. Super Mario Bros. 2 has been remade or re-released for several video game consoles. Super Mario Bros. 2 initially was proposed as a demo for a vertically scrolling, two-player, cooperative-action game entitled Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic which was scrapped. It was intended to be the sequel to Super Mario Bros. but also a radical departure from the previous Mario game, as at the time, the gameplay of the Mario series was not yet significantly standardised. The original Super Mario Bros. itself had already been a radically different sequel to the original arcade game Mario Bros., and this new sequel was proposed as a mixture of the gameplay of both these two successful Mario games. The reasons for the scrapping of the original prototype included the technical limitations of the NES hardware making it difficult to produce a polished game featuring a vertical orientation and multiplayer features conceived for the project. It was decided to add more Mario-like elements, such as horizontal levels, though many vertically oriented levels were retained in the final project. Since the game had gone through some development, Nintendo created the game Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic (夢工場ドキドキパニック Yume Kōjo Doki Doki Panikku?, lit. "Dream Factory: Heart Thumping Panic") for the Family Computer Disk System during its agreement with the Fuji Television company. The game was changed in order to fit with the theme of Nintendo's foremost characters and their adventure. After Nintendo of America had concluded that the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 was too difficult, they chose instead to help the original development staff to redevelop Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic back into a Super Mario Bros. sequel. The game became a commercial success, and eventually the game became well received enough that it was also released in Japan for the Family Computer itself as Super Mario USA. Since its successful sales yield, Super Mario Bros. 2 has been considered a classic Super Mario Bros. game worldwide, including Japan. It has since been rereleased in the Super Mario All-Stars collection, it has been remade as Super Mario Advance for the Game Boy Advance handheld system, and its design elements have been included in Super Mario 3D World for the Wii U system.