4th April 2011, 12:48 AM
I never had a problem with it being "so different" as a kid. It still felt like Mario to me, but then again who as a kid would have had all the future Mario games to compare it to in order to say it was different? All there was was SMB1, and that was "so different" from Mario Bros. The biggest thing I enjoyed was that the screen could scroll both ways unlike the first one.
I will say this though. It was a disappointment that multi player wasn't in it. That's also true of Lost Levels though. Sure, multi player in those old Mario games was just alternating, but that didn't stop my siblings and friends from enjoying taking turns in the games that had it. Apparently technical issues prevented them from using the simultaneous multi player mode, but it's still an interesting thought, and an interesting project for a fan mod.
I remember seeing some gaming site or another recently review SMB2 since it was put on the Virtual Console. They rated it "low" (8 is considered low these days as we all know) because, as they put it, it was "insulting to American players to think they couldn't handle the difficulty of Lost Levels". Is a perceived insult really worth bashing the game over? It sounds pretty stupid, considering the rest of the review was generally positive. All I can say is SMB2 is certainly not as hard as Lost Levels, but it's no push over itself. Partly due to the continue limit added to the US version (easier here huh?), it can be a pretty challenging game in it's own right. That, and from what I've read it was less about difficulty and more about Lost Levels being too similar to the first game, which is a pretty good argument really. Considering that Lost Levels is ALSO on Virtual Console, which is the format they were reviewing the game in, they had no business complaining about it for that reason. However, big name news sites these days care more about catering to public opinion than actually being fair about reviews. The recent Splatterhouse game actually turned out, to me at least, a lot better than all the hate reviewers gave it led me to believe. Also, let's not forget how every single time FF6 and FF4 are brought up, they seem to forget the countless times since the SNES days those games have been brought over here, always once again claiming that the game is "known in the US as FF3/FF2", which realistically, it isn't, and hasn't been for longer than they ever were known as that here.
I will say this though. It was a disappointment that multi player wasn't in it. That's also true of Lost Levels though. Sure, multi player in those old Mario games was just alternating, but that didn't stop my siblings and friends from enjoying taking turns in the games that had it. Apparently technical issues prevented them from using the simultaneous multi player mode, but it's still an interesting thought, and an interesting project for a fan mod.
I remember seeing some gaming site or another recently review SMB2 since it was put on the Virtual Console. They rated it "low" (8 is considered low these days as we all know) because, as they put it, it was "insulting to American players to think they couldn't handle the difficulty of Lost Levels". Is a perceived insult really worth bashing the game over? It sounds pretty stupid, considering the rest of the review was generally positive. All I can say is SMB2 is certainly not as hard as Lost Levels, but it's no push over itself. Partly due to the continue limit added to the US version (easier here huh?), it can be a pretty challenging game in it's own right. That, and from what I've read it was less about difficulty and more about Lost Levels being too similar to the first game, which is a pretty good argument really. Considering that Lost Levels is ALSO on Virtual Console, which is the format they were reviewing the game in, they had no business complaining about it for that reason. However, big name news sites these days care more about catering to public opinion than actually being fair about reviews. The recent Splatterhouse game actually turned out, to me at least, a lot better than all the hate reviewers gave it led me to believe. Also, let's not forget how every single time FF6 and FF4 are brought up, they seem to forget the countless times since the SNES days those games have been brought over here, always once again claiming that the game is "known in the US as FF3/FF2", which realistically, it isn't, and hasn't been for longer than they ever were known as that here.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)