10 Things Nintendo Wants You To Forget About Mario

9. Super Mario Bros 2 Is Actually Doki Doki Panic

When Nintendo were originally designing Super Mario Bros 2, they realized that massively raising the difficulty might scare off western gamers who were fans of the original. As a result, Japan's Super Mario Bros 2 is what was known as Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels in the U.S. The game released in the U.S as Super Mario Bros 2 was actually a game already released in Japan known as Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic released for the Super Famicon. Nintendo re-skinned the game removing all mention of Fuji TV's characters, replacing them with Mario, Peach, Luigi and Toad. Ultimately, this is why the western version of Super Mario Bros 2 feels like such a graphical and functional departure from the first game. As it was not initially designed as a Mario game, it featured many different mechanics such as both horizontal and vertical scrolling, items that could be picked up and thrown and of course four different characters to choose from. As a positive, this was the first game to differentiate Luigi from his brother, as the Fuji character Mama was much taller and had far greater jumping ability. While the origin of Super Mario Bros. 2 isn't incredibly important, Nintendo would still rather you regard it as a Mario game, rather than one they simply modified in order to provide an easier game for the U.S and European markets.