Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 161: Super Mario Bros. 2

Episode Date: July 23, 2018

We celebrate five years of rebooted Retronauts by getting the original band back together! Ray Barnholt and Dr. Sparkle return to discuss Mario Madness: The U.S. version of Super Mario Bros.

This week in Retronauts, a little of the old dokey-dokey panic. Hi, everyone, and welcome to another fantastic episode of Retronauts. I am Jeremy Parrish, and with me in this room full of middle-aged white men, we have... Wow, middle-aged. I guess that's true now. Well, you're approaching middle-aged. You're not quite there. I'm there.

Hey, it's Bob Mackey, and I was going to reveal the secret of what SMB2 is called in Japan, but Jeremy ruined it. Oh, I'm so sorry. We were going to reveal this for the first time in Internet history, what is called in Japanese. Sorry. You can give it the proper pronunciation, the full title if you want. Oh, you may... You may... Kojo.

Doki-doky-Doky Pannock. Dream something? Dream factory. Dream factory. Heartbounding panic. Yes. That's more exciting than Mario Brothers. I know, right?

Anyway, right? Sorry, I spoiled it. Damn, I keep spoiling it. Spoiling dokey, dokey, Ray Barnhol. That's the dating sim. That's my favorite. I'm probably the furthest away from middle age here. That's true.

You're just a baby. And finally. This is Dr. Sparkle, who's getting a little dokey-dokey from driving on the dam San Francisco freeways today. I see. So, yes, it's a group. full of people who know about old video games. And here we are to talk about one, possibly two or three, I don't know.

It's Super Mario Brothers 2. And of course, you, it's sitting at home, being part of the classic video game literati are saying, but Jeremy, which Super Mario Bros. 2? And the answer is, maybe both. But we'll see. The original plan here was to cover both Super Mario Brothers 2's, but that's even the title I put on my notes,

the Super Mario Brothers 2's. But we got a little bit of a late start, And honestly, there's a lot to say about the American version because I'm sure all of us played it back in the day and have a lot of memories of it. And I know definitely based on the letters we've gotten, lots of you like it. So we may just talk about the American version and circle back at some point to the Japanese one. But it could be that I'm getting optimistic here and thinking we can actually talk a lot about a video game, which I know that's crazy. So we may end up covering Japan's Super Mario Brothers 2. as well. We're going to find out. We're playing this one by ear. We're flying by the seat of our pants. We are all experiencing dokey dokey. So, we did a full episode on Super Mario Brothers, the original, back in 2015. Yeah. Dear God.

And I don't even remember doing that, but I've seen it on the site, and I found artwork that I drew for it, so I know it did exist. It was a dark time. Super Remember there's three. We've also covered Mario World, Mario 64, Mario Sunshine. We haven't done Mario Galaxy yet, though, have we? We're getting there, though. No.

Bye, golly. So, yeah, we've basically covered the gamut of classic Super Mario Bros. Games, except Super Mario Bros. 2, which is really sad because it's my favorite of the NES Mario games. Really? It is. I really love that game. It was, you know, okay, yeah. We'll talk about it.

You'll make your case. I will make my case. So, anyway, of course, well, let's go through the history here. there were two Super Mario Brothers, two games called Super Mario Brothers, too, depending on which region you were in. And I've been talking a lot, so I'm picking Ray. Actually, you're going to be on the next episode. Dr. Sparkle drove all the way down here.

So I'm going to let him explain it. He's the real special gift. You're it. Make him do all the work. Come on. So I'm going to explain the double Super Mario Brothers too. A double Mario standard, yes. So I'm sure as everyone knows by now, probably the first time you guys learned this was when

Super Mario All-Stars came out on the Super Nintendo, and there was that mysterious game, The Lost Levels. Yeah, Nintendo Power was very, very silent on the existence of a Japanese Super Mario Brothers, too. And they liked to do the, hey, here's what's happening in Japan. Kids, Dragon Quest 3, kids are lining up around the blocks. Well, I would say. But nothing about the Famicom Disc System ever mentioned in Nintendo Power that I can remember. Not in Nintendo Power, but the Mario Mania Players Guide for Super Mario World.

That's right. Had a little box out. That's right. That finally revealed it. Yeah, that's where I knew about it. So when I saw Mario also, I was like, lost levels. That's bullshit. I know what this is.

So, yeah, that's how we found out. And as we all know, they probably should have stayed lost. Oh, that's my opinion. Ray disagrees. I say bury those levels and salt the earth. I have been working on trying to beat Superboy Brothers to Japan over the past few days. And you hate it. I hate it, but I also really respect it for being so hateable.

Like, it's a game that makes you want to hate it. And it does a great job of that. And I salute them for being like, F, you and your love of video games. That's a really bold statement for Nintendo. They don't use the F word. It is the, I want to be the guy of 1986. It is. I mean, Super Mario Maker is just, like, here is the Super Mario Brothers 2 Japan toolkit for you.

with which to make everyone on the internet hate you. Yes. I think the one virtue, I don't like this game. I don't like playing it. But I think the one virtue of it is it's fun to watch speed runs of it, especially at like Awesome Games Done Quick or Summer Games That Quick. Those are really fun to watch people and they're pure mastery of this horror show. Right.

So, yeah, the original Super Mario Brothers came out in September 1985 in Japan. And it was meant by Miyamoto and Tezica and all the people who worked on it. That was pretty much all the people who worked on it. to be the ultimate expression of what a cartridge-based video game could be because of the time cartridges had very limited storage space and, you know, they were bringing out the Famicom disk system soon after as, you know, an expansion on what the hardware was capable of doing. And that became moot because of mapper chips and, you know, expanding capabilities within cartridges.

But at the time that they made Supermer Brothers, they didn't know that. So it was like the ultimate expression of what you could do within the finite limits of a cartridge. So then, like, six months later, they said, all right, or nine months later, they put together Superby Brothers 2 for the disc system. And I don't know that it was necessarily the ultimate expression of what you could do with the disc system, but it was certainly different. It had like, we can talk about it later. But anyway, it was basically like the expansion version of Supermary Brothers, but it didn't

come to the U.S. And why do you think that is? Why would it? That's not helpful. The story that we all heard was that, you know, it arrived from Japan and Howard Phillips, whoever looked at it and go, oh, my God, this is too hard for American players. This makes my bow tie curdle. In reality, though, I'm sure they probably just thought it wouldn't really interest players that much, I would think. Well, I think even logistically, the NES went into nationwide distribution in the summer of 1986 in America.

So as that game was hitting Japan, Americans were just first starting to discover Super Mario Brothers, the first one. And, you know, the system didn't really achieve, like, full traction until sometime in 1980, late 87, early 88. Right. So, like, up until that point, people were still buying the original Super Mario Brothers. So it would have been, I feel like it would have been counterproductive for them to bring out a sequel to a game that was still selling like gangbusters. It's one of the best selling games ever. also think that they were trying to restore the reputation of video games with VNES. And there are a lot of games that are harder than SMB2, Japan, because they're broken.

But I feel like they did not release this because it was too derivative. Like people would buy expecting a new game and feel sort of like, oh, these are just like the same kind of experience in different levels. Yeah, I think that was still pretty common among lots of video games at that point. I don't know that that's necessarily. It could be. There could be some, I mean, certainly by the time, you know, America was really. ready for a Super Mario Brothers sequel, like if they had brought out this 1986 vintage game that was much less complex and much less visually sophisticated than what was coming out

in 88, I don't think that would have done them any favors. So basically the big delay between the U.S. and Japanese Famicom in E.S. launches, I think that's what killed Superman Brothers 2 most at all. So what did happen instead? Turn it back to Dr. Spark. Well, as we all know, Super Mario Brothers 2, USA was originally called Yuma Kojo dokey dokey panic, which was based on an electronics expo, I guess you'd call it.

Sort of an electronics entertainment expo. Something like that. Yeah, it was called Yume Kojo, Dream Factory. It was hosted by a Fuji television. And it had this theme based on, I want to say, I keep getting this mixed up, was it carnival? Carnaval. Yeah, Brazilian carnival.

But with like Venetian style. masks added in? Sort of, yeah. Yeah, there's actually a really good video about this that does a better job of explaining it than we are by a guy on YouTube named Gigillionaire. Yes, and it's a very in-depth. He dug up a lot of stuff on this. I mean, all kinds of photos, videos, it's actually pretty impressive.

I've seen this video. That's good. And this is a tie-in with this particular exposition, and that's why they use the mascot carriers from the expedition. who, for some reason, were sort of Arabian Knight-style characters. Yeah, it's really strange that it's Brazilian, and then there's like these... Ray, you look like you're going to say something. No, I don't.

Okay. Yeah, so this game was designed for the Famicom Disc System and feels much more like an expression of a Mario-style game within the context of the disc system. It has... In the Japanese version, it has a... save feature and persistence, and it has multiple characters you can play as, each of which are different. And in a lot of ways, it really does feel like an evolution of what Nintendo did with Super Mario Brothers to Japan. But at the same time, it was also very different. Like, when

you jump on an enemy, you don't squish the enemy and cause them to drop off the screen. You just like walk around or ride around on top of the enemy. And that becomes, you know, kind of one of the key design elements of it. Right. And more expansive levels, like more verticality and stuff. Right. And it feels like a Mario game, but at the same time it doesn't. Like, for example, the PAL blocks from the old Mario Brothers make a rather surprise reappearance. And there are the stars also come up, the invincibility stars.

So it definitely borrows stuff from Mario Brothers, or Super Mario Brothers, and it's made by more or less the same, a similar team. It's a similar team. The lead designer on it, the director, I think, was Kinskaya. Tanabe, who had now worked on the previous Mario games. And he actually didn't work on very many Mario games now that I think about it. He kind of became like the guy who helps out with more Western-facing projects. And so he's been heavily involved in the Donkey Kong country games, the revival by Retro Studios.

He was, I'm pretty sure, involved in other stuff by Retro, like Metroid Prime, right? Yeah, he was the producer, I think, most of the Metroid Prime games. So, yeah, kind of like this, yeah, as you said, there were a lot of, you know, staff in common, but at the same time, there were some critical team members who were different. So it is kind of like, you know, like, let's do the Mario thing, but get a different take on it. And it's definitely a different take. Yeah, so there's some construction happening next door. That's great. Pardon the noise. Super Mario Brothers 2 USA has, let's just call it Super Mario Brothers 2 from now on. The other one, let's call it loss levels. Let's just make it easy.

So Mario 2 does have something of a controversial place in the Nintendo Mario Pantheon like some people don't think that it really belongs to the Mario universe and some they're like this is not really a Mario game but I feel like that perspective is kind of fading I don't know

Yeah I mean almost everything from that series has been incorporated into mainline Mario games at this point I feel like all those people that are still hanging on to this idea Until Wart shows up again in Mario games, they're holding out. He showed up in a Zelda game. Isn't that good enough?

He did, yeah. But I don't think that counts for them. It was just a dream. Yeah, that's right. That's right. These are the Yoshi's Island isn't a Mario game, people. And you know what? I feel very strongly about this.

I feel that they're very wrong. They're extremely wrong. Yeah, there's probably some crossover there. All right, so let's see. A little more on the history of Super Mario Brothers, too. Apparently, there have been a lot of articles about this, and there's some fan lore. It's kind of hard to distinguish.

what is fan lore versus what is actually truth. But from what I've read, the game that became dokey dokey panic and later became Mario 2 was kind of created as an experiment for different ideas with for Mario. Like, it was not necessarily designed as a Mario game to begin with, but was kind of like created with the thought in mind, like, what ideas can we experiment with here that we could incorporate into future Mario games? and one of those was verticality. And as you mentioned, it has much more verticality in the stages.

And to the point where it's got an interesting approach because you don't have like free scrolling up and down. You have free scrolling left and right like in Mario. But when you travel up, then it's kind of like that pan, that screen panning like you get in Zelda. And I think that's down to a technical limitation of the disk system. I don't know. But even so, like you have. of entire areas of the game, most stages have some element in them that goes up and down

in addition to left and right. And the first stage you have, you actually begin the game by dropping out of a doorway in the sky and falling several stages. So right there from the beginning, it's like, hey, this is a little different. And then later in the stage you have to climb up on vines. And then there are stages where you're ascending towers. There are stages where you're digging through the sand. So yeah, or just falling down waterfalls.

Every stage almost has some element of that that you have to kind of adjust to. So that was a big part of the design of the game was let's go up and down in addition to left and right. And if I understand, I mean, Nintendo often took that approach to developing a game. They would start with some kind of core idea with the game and then worry about exactly what the game would be later. Like Kirby, for example, was the character was originally going to be something else, if I understand correctly.

Yeah, he was like Kirby himself as a placeholder. Right. And eventually they were like, what a cute placeholder. He would look great. 20 years from now driving around in a robot. Let's call him Twinkle-Popo. Yeah, perfect name. Yeah, so the idea was sort of, you know, whereas, I mean,

the really impressive thing about Super Mario Brothers when it first came out was just how much horizontal movement there was. I mean, most video games didn't have this sort of continuous scrolling in it. So, logically, it makes sense, let's try vertical stuff now. And obviously, Mario didn't really go in that direction in the long run, but it still feels very much like a Mario game, even though it wasn't officially released as one. And I think, if I understand correctly, that the people, that the Japanese team who designed Doki-Doki Panic were the ones who actually converted into Super Mario Brothers

too. And they didn't have to do that much to convert it. They kept like the sort of Arabian Knights elements of it. But they changed the characters and we'll talk about that. But yeah, you mentioned that it was kind of impressive to see that sort of horizontal free scrolling. And it's true. Like this is unusual among classic Mario games in that there is a lot of back and forth movement. There is, you know, some exploration within stages.

It is not kind of what you expected from Mario games at the time. I've made this point in some of my Game Boy videos before. But if you look at the evolution of Mario games, just on the Japan side, you have Mario Bros., Super Mario Brothers, 2, which is very much just like more of Mario Brothers but harder, and then Super Mario Bros. 3. And so there's like this very clear line of progression. So when you get to something kind of offbeat and strange, like Super Mario Land, it seems like a little bit like, wow, this is unusual. But in America, you have Mario Brothers, Super Mario Brothers, America's Super Mario Brothers 2, Super Mario Brothers 3. So then you get to Super Mario Land and you're like, okay, yeah, it's another one. weird game like Mario 2, but no Mario game is kind of the same as any other.

They're all over the place. So I feel like American kids in the 80s, 90s had a different perception of what Mario meant to a certain degree than the kids who were playing in Japan. I wonder if it seemed strange to kids back then when they first played it. I don't recall it. Mario 2? Mario 2, yeah. I don't recall it really not seeming like a Mario game.

I mean, I don't recall like thinking this is nothing at all like Mario. It seemed perfectly natural to me when I first played it. Yeah, I mean, I was a little confused at the very beginning when I jumped on it. I mean, it didn't die. But then I was like, okay, I get what I'm supposed to do. And I just rolled with it. And I know, it never struck me as being out of place or inappropriate. Like, nothing about Super Mario 2 made me think, like, this game should not have Mario in it.

This is a lie. I was just like, oh, okay, cool. Like, Mario, you know, Nintendo's sequels or, you know, they do. different things, but it still feels like Mario himself is still running around and you press the B button and he runs and jumps and yeah, like that's cool and it's nice that, you know,

Luigi's a different character and the little mushroom retainers you can play as them and Princess Peach isn't just an ugly sprite at the end of the game that you're trying to save. I think we were all just blown away about how much more stuff there was and like, oh, I can play as all these characters now and it was just like we didn't really think

twice about it. Yeah, and the free-roaming element of it that exist within stages. It's not like an exploratory game like Metroid, but I did play it after Metroid. And so to me, it seemed natural that, you know, games would stop being just run from left to right and reach the end of the stage, but that even Mario, which was very much about that in Super Mario Brothers and kind of, you know, created that template would also go beyond that and be like, hey, here's a world to run around in. And yeah, you still got stages, but now you don't have

a time limit. Now it's just about like finding the end of the stage and surviving to get there. I'm sorry, there was no score either. Nope. No score. That was big for 1987. I mean, you still wanted to collect coins, but they had a different function instead of 100 coins giving you an extra life.

They sent you to a casino and you could spend your coins to, like they became a precious commodity and there was like a semi-skill-based game. Mario teaches gambling. Yes, exactly. That's how you can tell it was developed in Japan. Because there's a gambling minigame in there. Yeah.

If there were a fishing mini game, that would just be like a knockout. It's weird how that raised the eyebrows of no parents. Like, no one cares like our kids are gambling for lives. Yeah, I mean, the slot machine is like it's got stars and beats and stuff on it. They're radishes. So it's not exactly like living the Vegas lifestyle there. It's true. I mean, there were all those gambling games with the Atari 2,600.

I mean, there's like poker and gambling video games. I don't think anyone cared about them back then. Yeah, it's not like you were gambling for money. Is that like an ESRB thing now? Like you have to list like gambling. I believe so, yeah. Tobacco use. Noddy humor.

That's like the two things on every Dragon Quest game is like alcohol use and also gambling. Yeah. Pretty much. Oh, there's also suggestive themes thanks to puff puff. Yes. Can't forget about those. Yeah, so I don't know. Speaking for myself, I did not see Super Mario 2 as like a.

a violation of the Mario concept. In fact, I was really bored of Super Mario Brothers at that point. Like, I thought Mario was... Wow. So you were already jaded at that time? I just, you know, played so much of Mario. I was like, I'm tired of this game. And I wasn't initially interested in Mario 2, but then I saw, like, the graphics and saw that it did have a different style to it.

And that got me interested. I was like, oh, okay, this is not just like another version of that game. I was the kid who would not have bought Super Mario Brothers to Japan. I would not have bought the last longs if they brought it over. I would have said, oh, I don't want more of that. But doing something kind of weird with a fun art style. I liked how everything in Mario 2 was cartoony. And the enemies, you know, you had like Mouser and what else, Tri-Clyde.

Like they're cute, fun cartoon enemies and they seemed interesting. And, you know, the shy guys were really more interesting to me than Gumbas because what's behind those masks? They're like little weird cultists or something that I'm throwing at birds. It's really strange. You're stealing like magic carpets. It's a kooky, weird, fun, unexpected game. You pull up a beet, you know, a root vegetable and it turns into a rocket ship that takes you to a whale land.

What's going on here? This is so weird. I like that. That really appealed to me. So I was really happy with Mario 2. And I was honestly, as great as Mario 3 is, I was a little disappointed when it went back to sort of the SMB1 style, just because I was like, I've done that. And this is a better way of doing it, but I've done that.

Yeah, it's like the whole classic trilogy thing where there's like the original, the second one goes off in a different direction, and then the third one's like the Return to Roots. Oh, yeah, just like the Godfather trilogy. Sorry, that was inappropriate. I was thinking more of like Star Wars. Okay, sure. Well, yeah, that is a weird phenomenon, too.

I mean, it happened with Castlevania and Delta, of course. So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that was definitely the NES way of things at the time. Yeah. It's very weird. Yeah. I mean, I kind of, I got an NES, like,

after Mario 2 was out. So I didn't even really know about it. So I had to find out about it, like, a cousin's house. I was just like, what's going on? So that was very weird. You were kind of like, you know, like living the experience of your Japanese counterparts at that point because they didn't get Super Mario Brothers 2 USA until 1992. And it was released side by side with the revised smaller model, the AV Famicom.

I think also Castlevania came to cartridge at that point. Yeah. Yeah, like there were a few different games came from disk system to cartridge at that point. And those games are mostly, except Mario USA, are very expensive now. Yeah. I had been playing at like NES at People's Houses on and off since like 1986, but I think I got one in 1988. And this felt like the first big game that everyone had before Mario 3. And I think we're neglecting one thing.

The full title of this game is Super Mario Brothers 2, Mario Madness. No, it's not. It's official. It's official. Don't try and wedge it in. It's not official. That's the hell I'm dying on. Okay.

I want Mario Madness to be recognized. Come on. I think that's like, you know, the tagline, like Player's Choice Edition, except it's just the Mario Madness Edition. This is the one where he loses his mind. But if you're wondering why the game is so crazy, it just says it on the box. That's true. You can't complain. I will say about the box.

The box art was actually one of the things that made me want the game. I know that's super shallow of me, but it was so striking compared to all the other boxes out there. Like, it has no border on. on it. It is Mario leaping through the air, literally like it's, he's against a blue sky with clouds, and there's the title and there's the Mario Madness banner at the bottom and the Nintendo seal of quality. And that's it. It's otherwise just like Mario joyfully leaping into the sky. And it really, really, like, you'd have to have seen it, you know, in its original context on shelves in 1988. But I was a little lukewarm on it until I saw it in a, you know, a rack of games at Walmart. And I was like, that looks really cool. Like, this is enticing. I want this game. So I, you know, came back a few weeks later when I had money for it.

And it was gone because everyone else was like, I want that game. So I had to wait. I had to wait a few months to get the game. But it was worth the wait. Was he holding like a Ruta Bega or something? Yeah. It's only one of the radishes that he throws. I'm looking at it now.

In retrospect, it's kind of an off-model Mario compared to what they would do in the future. But they had no like... It was more on-model than a lot of Mario art at the time. They kind of traced it from their art. Yeah. But there was no. I don't know like Kenska Tanabe existing cover to steal from, so they had to make one

up themselves, I guess. So whose idea was it to use root vegetables to sell video games to children? Well, you know, this probably ties back to dokey dokey panic somehow, but hell if I know, like what do radishes have to do with carnival? Is that like a big export in Brazil? I honestly don't know. Yeah, the whole vegetable theme is pretty strange. I mean, I don't know if radages are considered to be like a tasty tree.

eat in Japan or why there's so much vegetables he'd pull out of the ground. Dekon are pretty common over there. It's something you eat or like a garnish for your meals at restaurants. You know, grated radish on your fish or whatever. Like that's, it's all,

yeah, it's a pretty common thing. Yeah, and you could pull one out of the ground and hurt somebody. They are pretty hard. It gives a natural progression. I associate this game with one of the first Mario games just to put faces on everything. I mean, the last game had faces on clouds right? Yeah. That was basically and the Star Man, but this is this, like, everything has a face.

Everything you touch has a face. That's how Nintendo influenced my doodling. I do that with everything, too. Everything is alive. Animism exists in the Mario universe. And people point it out. Sometimes I'll do it. I've done, like, pictonary type stuff before.

It's like, you always draw faces on things. Yeah, well, we trace back to Shinto is for something. It's just my Shinto beliefs right there. There you go. We figured it out. Yep. Yeah. Okay, so let's talk a little more about dokey, dokey panic.

Just to kind of describe what. what that game is and how it's different than Mario 2. The most important thing, obviously, the most obvious thing is that the main cast is not Mario Luigi Toad and Princess Peach or Toadstool. It is Imajin, Papa, Mama, and Lena, who are the mascot characters, as Dr. Sparkle said, for the Yumeiko event. And for whatever reason, they're like a family of Arabian Nights type people. And I think the goal of the game is to rescue two children who became trapped in a storybook. In the American game, those kids are completely wiped out. Did I put the names down?

Oh, I didn't. It's like, I don't know, tinkle-popo. There's like an intro where you see them get sucked into the storybook, as I recall. That's right, yes. As one does with a good book. Yeah, and so otherwise, you know, you're still fighting the evil emperor of dreams, Mamu, who is the same character as Wart. And like all the enemies are the same as in Mario.

But you're traveling through like grasslands and then a desert and then waterfalls and then snow. You know, this is one of the first games that started the whole, like, each world has its own theme and has its own mechanics. the ice world is slippery and also has whales and you sometimes have to ride on their water spot, their spume in order to reach

new levels. But the spume can also hurt you if you run into it from the side. It's interesting it's that whole like stand on top of things and it's safe. I guess everyone's wearing insulated shoes. And you know in the desert levels you're actually digging into the sand and that gets to the biggest mechanical

difference between this game and standard Mario games which is that again, jumping on things does not kill them. When you jump on an enemy, the enemy is just like, okay, and you walk around on top of them. And there's only a handful of enemies you can't jump on. The bosses you can't jump on, they will hurt you. You can jump on Berto, right? I thought you could jump on Berto.

You can jump on Berto? I always try to jump over Berto. My God, this changes everything. So I can just jump right onto an egg when it's ready. But you can't jump on Claw Glipp. No, he will hurt you. Don't do that. Or Mouser.

He's too cool. Yes. He throws bombs. The big boss. And also, there's like some flying sprites or fairies or something that you can't jump on. You'll just like fall through them because I always try to use them to get up to this high room and it never seems to work. So that's always a bummer. But anyway, each of the four characters was different than the others.

You had Imogene, the main character, who was the balanced character. He could jump a normal height and run a normal speed and had normal strength when plucking vegetables. out of the ground. He was just boring. Like Mario. Yes. He would be the template for Mario in future multiplayer type games. And that is why I never play as Mario because he

is boring. And then you have Papa who looks like Mario, but he is not. He is not the Mario analog here. He is towed. He runs faster. He's strong, which translates into being able to pull vegetables out of the ground really quickly.

and he... Toe doesn't look strong, though. I know, but Toad is like, I guess he's short to the ground so he can pull things out really fast. He is like, you know, the domestic help. So I guess he's just got, you know, he's used to working in the garden or whatever, like doing the topiary for Princess Peaches, mushroom garden. I don't know. But also, like, how many of our dads can run faster than us?

I haven't raised him recently. I don't know. I think it's going to be a wash, a tie with my father. And then he toad, or sorry, Papa has extremely poor jumping skills. He, I guess because he's heavier, he can't jump as high or as far. So it's a trade-off. Then you have... It looks more like the little well-bounded version of Mario.

Yes. Yes, definitely. He's got some heft. Then there's Mama, the mother of the family, whose main ability is that she can jump really high. and it's kind of like a floaty jump. Yeah, one of those virtu fighter jumps. I can see it right now. Yeah.

That's amazing. And then, let's see, what else about Mama? Oh, she's a little weaker than Imogene, but not a lot. So she's a little slower pulling vegetables out, but not too badly. And then there's Lena who has the best jumping abilities because she can't quite clear as much ground as Mama, but she hovers. So you have more control over her movement, and it can be really valuable, especially if you're, you know, in a stage where the ground is full of dangerous things, you can hover over it or you can hover above enemies and drop in on them. It's great. But she's very, very weak.

She's very slow up pulling things up because Nintendo is above all sexist. That's true. I feel like this is all an implicit difficulty setting, all of these characters in a way. I even included an image from the instruction manual of Lena in the notes I put together for this episode where she's pulling. a vegetable out of the ground and she's like shaking at the knees and sweating and panicking just from holding a vegetable.

Well, it has a face. It does have a face and it seems a little nonplussed that she's like freaking out so much. It's just like, hey, I'm a vegetable. What do you want? Maybe they have higher gravity in their world. It could be.

We don't know. But do you, I mean, I was going to say that like it feels like these are like difficulty levels. Like if you want, you choose the floating character if you're sort of newer to platform games. Like my friend was always better than me at this game. And he always chose Luigi. talking about the American game, of course.

But I was like, you're crazy. Like, what are you doing? I stick with Toad or in this case, Papa. I like the picking up things faster is really good. And you can always jump higher if you need to with the squat jump. Yeah, it's, I don't know that it's necessarily. I mean, I can sort of see what you're saying about it being a difficulty select. But every character has tradeoffs.

Like, they have an advantage or they have a disadvantage, except imaging because he's boring. So it's like, what do you want to do best in this stage? So there are some stages, like, you know, which one is? It's like World Four something where Luigi and Princess Peach, or sorry, it's okay. Luna and Mama. All right. Okay. They can actually do a shortcut through the level and skip over an entire area.

Oh, yeah. By just leaping across a gap in the ground to get to something that you can't initially see. It's off screen. Mario and Toad can't do that. But, you know, there's a stage like 3-1. where there is just a treasure trove of coins that you can pull up if you know where to go

and if you take toad into that then you have like 20 casino opportunities so if you got really lucky in the casino you could end up with dozens of lives if you take totem to dust There's always like one or two characters that are really good for certain worlds you see the ice world

you really just don't want to be on the ice so much and the sand you want to dig through the sand lot. I hate the digging levels they give me so much anxiety so I need toad for those just like give me to the bottom You do not want Princess Peach in those stages. Oh, God, no.

So you mentioned that, you know, each character has the stage at which they excel, the stages at which they excel. But the interesting thing about the Japanese version of the game about doki-doki panic is that in order to reach the end of the game, you need to beat the game with every character. And I don't think you have to clear every single stage with every character. You can warp if you – there are warps in this game, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Like skips, yeah. So I think you just have to, you know, beat Mamu at the end. but because it has the persistent save in it, the save file system, then it tracks how many characters you've beaten the game with, and you can't actually finish the game until you beat it with all four characters. You know, it's an interesting coincidence

that just thought about, but the original Japanese Super Mario Brothers 2 had a similar thing where in order to get to those last levels, you had to beat the main game, like a whole bunch of times. Are those like A through D? You know whatever? Yeah.

Oh, God. Yeah, and that was their way of saying, how can we... Screw you? Yes, that's exactly right. Now, how can we make use of the persistent save features of the Fem and Com disk system within the context of a linear action game? How can we balance out that we're losing a bit more money on these discs than we are the coverage? Right.

So, yeah, and, you know, because dokey, dokey panic was not a Mario game in its original release, that kind of freed the designers, I think, to take a different approach to the world design. I mean, we mentioned how each stage is more kind of free-roaming, and there are elements where you have to, like, solve puzzles or get keys or something. But also, each world is only three stages, except World Seven, which is only two stages. So there's only, what, 20 worlds in this game, as opposed to 32 in Mario 1 and dozens and dozens in Mario 3. So it has fewer worlds, but there's a lot more to do in each world. They're more of a kind of like a long-term commitment. And I think that works really well with the disk system design

because you know, you kind of have to go on an adventure through these stages and each one of them can take a while to beat. Interestingly, they took away the save feature for the American version and they also took away the infinite continue feature. So you have to get through all of these stages with just one character or like just once with a combination of characters but you have to get through all of these stages

in two continues which is like three lives each unless you are really good at the casino, really lucky. But you don't have to beat it four times. Right, but you know. There is a part of me that really wishes, not that they kept the beat it with four characters thing, but that there were more persistence

like a save feature or something in the game so you don't have to play it in all in one sitting. And also I wish there were more than one or more than two continues because last time I played this, I recorded a play-through last year. And I got all the way to Wart and died, and that was my last life. And I was like, really, we're beyond this in our lives. Come on, I'm doing for this.

We were talking about how different this game is for Mario 1. What I find interesting is that by the time Mario 2 USA was coming out in America, that is when all of the merchandise was hitting hard. So all of the first Mario merchandise that was everywhere was all based on Mario 2, including the cartoon. The cartoon was all Mario 2 based. Everything was all Mario 2 all the time. That's very true.

Yeah, so let's take a break and come back and talk about Mario 2. No matter who are brushing your teeth is one of the most important parts of your day to stay healthy. Quip knows that, and their team of dentists and designers is focused on helping you take care of your mouth better. Quip is an electric toothbrush that costs a fraction of bulkier brushes, but still packs just the right amount of vibrations to help clean your teeth. Quip has a built-in timer to help you clean the dentist's recommended way, and they offer new brushheads on a dentist. has recommended schedule. Every three months for just $5, including free shipping worldwide. With Quip, you don't have to worry about getting new brushheads or toothpaste. They're delivered right to your door on schedule, so you replace your brush on time and have better oral hygiene

at an affordable price. It's not just for convenience, it's for your health, too. Quip has appeared on Oprah's O list, was named one of Time's Best Inventions, and is the first subscription electric toothbrush accepted by the American Dental Association. Quip starts at just $25, and if you go to getquip.com slash retro, right now, you'll get your first refill pack free, with a quip electric toothbrush. That's your first refill pack free at get quip.com slash retro. G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash R-E-T-R-O. I want to take a minute and talk about underwear.

Yes, underwear. Everybody needs it and new is better than old. And they have to be comfortable. So you should get some meundies. Folks, I know what you're saying, Bob. You keep bothering us about underwear every week. You know what? I've made it my mission in life that every listener out there

will be comfortable in their gendies. groinel regions with a nice pair of me undies underpants and if you like high pressure sales tactics i have an offer for you a no risk offer if you're not happy me undies will refund the cost and you get to keep them and because you're listening to retronauts you'll get 15% off your first pair and free shipping if that sounds good to you go to meundies dot com slash retro that's meundies dot com slash retro and here's an extra gift for you order a pair take a screenshot of your your transaction and send it to me and I'll send you another pair and by I I mean me undies because I'm not going to be sending you people underwear I have better things to do you get one for 15%

off and another pair for me for free and by me I mean me undies I can't stress that enough the first 25 people to send a proof of purchase a screenshot of your purchase or of the receipt I'll send you another pair free again I I say I mean me undies the company me undies will send you the underwear I will not be touching them in any way just send your proof to gift at podcast1.com and put retro in the subject line, and you will soon have another pair in your collection. Let's do this. Meundies.com slash retro. If you dig retronauts, you're not going to want to miss No Excuse with John Taffer. Shut it down and listen to John, the award-winning hospitality legend, as he brings his straight talk and unapologetic approach to daily topics

and current events. You don't want to miss his latest interview with Adam Carolla, so download No Excuses every Tuesday on Podcast One, Podcast1.com, and Apple Podcasts. And don't forget to rate and review. Life is full of those moments. Like right up to our first stretch and yaw in the morning. Or like standing in the forest alone amid the stillness.

The beauty hits you like the crisp air. And suddenly everything makes sense and you're one with the earth and stars. Ah. Or like dollar drinks at McDonald's. Keep those awe moments going with one dollar any seismic cafe brewed coffee. and $1 any size soft drinks on the $1,2, $3 menu.

Price and participation may vary. Cannot be combined with combo meal. So, as we all know, Umi-Kojo doki-doki panic did not come to America. Instead, we got Super Mario Brothers 2. And the game changed in the process of being converted to Super Mario Brothers 2. And I feel like this whole thing was like a really sort of lucky coincidence for Nintendo. they needed a timely version of Mario for the U.S.

and I guess they could have brought over Mario 3 because it came out around the same time in Japan as Mario 2 did. But they also had this other game that was very well made and was a lot of fun but had licensed characters that were no longer, you know, like relevant because it was for like a very limited time event. So this gave them an opportunity to sort of, you know, make use of all the parts of the bison

and, you know, repurposed this excellent game into something that they could, you know, repackage in America and then bring back into Japan a few years later. So that became Super Mario Brothers, too. And I've talked about my first experiences with it and, like, my encounters with it. Ray talked a little bit about that. But how did you guys all first come across Mario II? Was it with the Nintendo Power number one that was sent to five million children across America or whatever? Or was it later? I certainly never subscribed or even read Nintendo Power.

I was probably not really the... Oh, you didn't have to subscribe to that one. You got it free? Yeah, if you had signed up for the free Fun Club newsletter. Ah, right. Then they sent you Nintendo Power number one. And probably they sent other people that they had on their mailing list too. But, yeah, everyone.

Like, it was an Oprah experience. You get a Nintendo Power One and you get a Nintendo Power One. I think I probably didn't play it until a... couple years after it came out. And it seemed fine. I mean, it just seemed like a regular video game at the time. It didn't raise any eyebrows as to being, like,

I certainly did not suspect it was not the real Mario Brothers, too. It was the counterfeit. Bob yourself? Like I said, it was sort of in the child zeitgeist at the time. It was the big game. And I didn't start reading Nintendo Power until maybe

the second year of Nintendo Power, but I think I account of this game. My friend Adam, as a little boy, he had it. I think this is the one game we played for like months and months on end. So that's what made this game a big deal for me. And of course, all the kids were talking about it and the secrets and things like that. So it was just sort of in the air. Like this was the big game. And of course, like the next year would be, for me at least, would be Mario 3 because I think I started playing Mario 2 in like 1989. Okay. Yeah, so it came out at the end of 88, and I can't remember if I got it at the end of 88 or very early 89, but it was sometime around in there. You said you had to wait for it. Yeah, but I mean, I don't know.

It seemed like a long time, but it might have been just a few weeks. I honestly don't know. The other thing was for me, it was like I said before the break, it was like the indoctrination, I think, where everything Mario related, like pillowcases and lunchboxes and the toys and everything like that, it was all Mario 2, which made it seem like an even bigger deal. Like, this is the, this is the Mario thing. Forget what you know. This is what Mario is now. And the cartoon, of course, too.

Like, the cartoon was all Mario 2 stuff. I had a lot of that crap, too. It is crap. Yeah, I was just like, I'm kind of sick of seeing the turnips, you know? Yeah. Like, I don't like Mario 2 that much because, you know, I got into this from Mario 1 and those visuals

and the bricks and the gumbas and stuff. And it's like, it's not showing up on the pillowcase. What the hell? And we're the Valiant comics, were those Mario 2 air or the Mario 3 No, they also mixed a lot of stuff in. As one should. I mean, the ultimate Mario game would just be like

a little of everything. I guess that's why Super Mario 3D world is so good. You might call it Super Mario All-Stars. You might. Although that's not a mix. They're all in their little silence. There's a bad joke saying, it's a crossover game.

It's more like a bento box. Oh, there you go. With radishes even. Yummy. No, no. What? I don't like those. Let's move on.

So there are some notable game design elements that make Mario 2 stand out from the other Mario games. We've talked about the radishes, but we haven't really explained the fact that the radishes grow in the ground as grass. And every stage has grass growing in it, even, you know, like the desert stages and the ice stages. And the same ability you use to stand on an enemy and pick up the enemy and throw the enemy, you use to pull plants out of the ground. And you don't know what you're going to find in the little tufts of grass that are in the ground. It could be anything. It could be a one-up. It could be a radish, a small radish or a big radish.

It could be a pow block. It could be, are there any enemies that you can pull out of the ground? I don't think so. But there are like the turtle shells. Yeah. Which is something that were changed. Yes. In the American version, yes.

I don't know if you can call them Kupa shells necessarily, but yeah. They're definitely turtle shells. And in Yumae Kojo Doki-Doki Panic, they were these strange little black faces. And I really don't know what those were about. They looked like gollywogs. Yeah. They really had to change that for the U.S. And it's good that they did.

But yeah, like there can even be a rocket ship inside the grass. And there's two stages where you pull a tuft of grass and all of a sudden a rocket ship appears and you're inside of it. And it takes you to another part of the stage. You have to do this. It's not like a surprise. Oh, guess what? You just got. It's not like Super Mario Brothers two.

Japan, loss levels, where you're like, oh, I found a shortcut. Oh, it sent me back to the beginning of the game. So that's unusual. And there's also the whole subspace thing. And that's worth talking about. Sometimes the tufts of grass have this little red potion in them. And I think it's like a magic lantern in dokey, dokey panic. You might be right, yeah.

Yeah. But you run around with this potion or magic lamp, and when you throw it down, a door appears where it lands. Yeah, you're in the upside down. Mm-hmm. Pretty much, yeah. But there's no, there's no, what the hell is that thing called? The bad guy. Oh.

Yeah. Anyway, there's no horrible monster inside. It's just like the backstage. Like this actually did sort of the, you know, the Mario is a stage play thing before Super Mario Brothers 3 made everyone say, hey, it's a stage play. Sure. So you're like, go through the door and you're on the back side of the world. And everything is in silhouette. So they did like the silhouette platformer thing, you know, years before, wow.

Before, what was... Limbo? Not limbo. It's... Oh, God. Nicholas published it. You know, Mario... Donkey Kong did it.

Yes, Night Sky. Yeah. Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, I think, did it. And then you hear the Mario one theme, like a remix of that. And Koji Kondo had to write a tiny bit of new music for this game, too. Right. And that's not the music in Dokey, Dokey Panic. Right.

And, like, the Starman theme is different. Actually, now if I think about it, is the Starman theme the same in Dokey, Dokey, Panic? I wouldn't want to say authoritatively. Yeah. Yeah, I think someone will correct us in the notes and tell us it was stupid. Also, the overall theme might be more complex in Mario 2. I think he might have added something to it. I don't, I think the music is pretty much the same.

So that's something interesting is that, you know, you've got this Arabian Nights theme for a game based on Brasilia carnival. And the music is all ragtime. It's like peppy Scott Joplin jazz. And it doesn't make sense, but it works. There were actually two bands that came out of the actual exposition, the actual dream machine. We were like standard Japanese J-pop, but I guess apparently a couple of these bands had a substantial career after the fact. That is true, and I did not write those down because it's kind of a side note, but you are... No one would probably want to look them up anyway.

But, yeah, like the music is, you know, aside from the Mario throwbacks, it's like a... beat jazz and very kind of ragtime, fun, maple leaf rag sort of stuff. And that's interesting because that is now sort of the default musical style for Mario games. Like, you know, the big band style is very much sort of a Mario Odyssey, Mario Galaxy, and there's, you know, it varies into other musical genres. But that's sort of the baseline. And it's great.

It works. And you kind of see it here in this game that wasn't a Mario game. Yeah. It's one of those things that got kind of grandfathered into the franchise. But anyway, the subspace, the backstage or whatever, is important because there are two things that come from those doors. And one of them is that if you throw the potions in the right place, you will find a mushroom. And this is the one acknowledgement of the power mechanic in the original Super Mario Brothers, which is that your characters in Mario 2 start out very tiny. They have two health points.

No, they start at normal size. Yeah, but you have like health point. You have a health meter on the side. They can shrink. And if you get hit, then you will shrink when you're knocked down to a single health point. But if you pick up a mushroom, then you gain an extra health point. So you can have up to four health points per stage. There are two mushrooms hit in each stage.

When you go to the next stage, your health resets. So basically the mushrooms work here by giving you the ability to take an extra hit, which is a new mechanic and is really kind of necessary given the more complex roaming style of the stage design. If it were like two hits to death, then you'd be in trouble. To gain back health, that happens after you collect a certain number of cherries, right? There's like cherries floating around. And once you collect, I think, five cherries, a heart will float up on the side of the screen.

And if you get that, then you'll gain back a health point. It's like a little tiny heart, though. It's like the ones from Popeye. Yeah, exactly. Except they're going the wrong direction. I was going to this conflated. So you get a heart from collecting cherries, but you get the star from killing enemies. Yeah.

That's how that works. Yeah. Yeah, you kill like 10 enemies, I think, and a star will come out. Something like that, yeah. Or maybe it's the other one. No, I think cherries are health. Five, ten. All numbers.

Yeah. You get numbers and do things and stuff will happen. It's fun is the point. Right. And the other thing that you get in the subspace areas or whatever. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, Subspace, right? That's where that...

Subcon. Subcon is the land. Subspace is the back stage area. And that's where that entered the video game lexicon, I think. Yeah, probably. And, yeah, like, when you pull grass out of the ground in subspace, it will, instead of giving you something to carry around or throw, it will give you coins. And those are used again in the casino.

But there's a limitation on these, which is that you can only gather coins. the first two times you go into subspace. So if you like, you know, stuff responds when you go into a door and come back out. So if you try to farm coins, it's not going to work. So it's really, it really behooves you to find a place where, you know, there's as many pieces of grass showing as possible. Throw down the potion and then pluck out the grass. And if you pluck out grass before you throw out the potion in the main world, that grass will be missing in subspace. So, yes, screwed yourself over.

So it's really important to know where the potions are because, you know, they're in grass. So you have to pull them up. And if you're like, I think it's in this one. Oh, no, it's not that one. Then you've just lost a lot of coin opportunities. So unlike the first Super Mario Brothers, there is a certain amount of decision-making that you have to do in this game. It's not completely linear at all, the same way the first one is. Yeah, in the early going, you're almost always going to find the health mushrooms right next to the potion.

But, you know, after you get to like World Three, it starts getting a lot less connected. And you have to start looking at the layout of the stage. and thinking, you know, this seems like an interesting structure. What happens if I go into subspace here? And, you know, you'll find the mushrooms and kind of out-of-the-way places. And, you know, even later in the game, you start, actually, I guess, around the same time, you start finding the mushrooms in places where there aren't a lot of pieces of grass showing. So it becomes a question of, like, do I, you know, do I, like, find grassy places first

and throw out a potion and try to, you know, gather as many. any coins as possible, or do I go straight for the mushroom, even knowing that by going in a subspace this time, I've shorted myself out an opportunity to gather coins. So there is like this sort of balance that you have to manage. And, you know, I'm sure there are optimal strategies, but it's, it is definitely something that sort of provides a little bit of replay value, I think. Like, you know, you can take a more strategic approach next time. You can play better even though there's no score.

even though there's no timer, there's still the opportunity to do a better job of the game. And that's also how you get the warp zones by carrying the potion to a very unlikely place and then going down a pipe or a vase or whatever in subspace. Yeah, I don't remember the last time I actually used a warp zone in Mario 2. I forgot how they worked. Yeah, you have to. I know at least where one of them is, I think it's in 1-3, where you carry a potion all the way to the end where there's just like one vase with like one of those cobra things in it.

You go in a subspace and you just go down the vaws in subspace and it's just do-da-da-da-da-da-da. Yeah, that's pretty much it. It does tickle a vague, distant memory for me, yes. Yeah, it's not super obvious, as I recall. They are sort of well hidden in something you just sort of have to have kind of discovered almost by accident. Or red Nintendo Power. Right. I think that's where I saw it.

Again, these are games designed for kids who have a lot of time on their hands and are going to keep replaying over and over again. And, you know, after a while, I think you start to get curious and say, like, how can I do things different? Like, what happens if I poke over here? This kind of game, you know, where there is sort of the ability to wander around and find stuff, I think that fosters curiosity and makes you wonder, you know, like, what can I do? What are some opportunities here? And there's some other interesting mechanics that sort of play into the sort of openness of the level design, unlike in previous Mario games or actually any other Mario game, if your character crouches for a few seconds, they'll start to flash. And then when you stand up and jump, you'll do a super high jump, which it's kind of an odd. Like, Luigi jumps really damn high when you do that. So there's like certain doors you can only reach in the world by doing a super jump as Luigi.

Yeah, it's like crackdown. Yeah, pretty much. And you can do like super jumps off the backs of enemies. So there becomes like some technique to this and some, you know, like, oh, what if I did this? What if I combined these abilities? What if I, you know, make use of these play mechanics in sort of emergent ways, although as an eight-year-old you were not thinking the word emergent? I do want to talk about the shared mental trauma people of a certain age have when it comes to being chased by Fanto. I feel like that's all like a very troubling memory we all have.

Yeah, I mean, it's one of my favorite things about the game. Yeah, but it was my first, like, flirtation with anxiety, like, oh. Yeah, it's a very anxious game, that's for sure. I mean, it's – yeah, I think even being even a year younger than Bob, I think, like, it's kind of freaky. You know, you have this kind of weird music as well. And then like these enemies with their vapid black eyes, the masks, you know, just chasing you around. They can move anywhere on the screen. Yeah.

Yeah, basically. I wonder if anyone had ever done sort of like a Freudian analysis of Super Mario, too, because it's so odd and so creepy in a lot of ways. Like, you are correct. Fanto, it is terrifying when he suddenly comes to life and starts chasing him. Yeah, we should actually explain what we mean by Fanto coming to life. I can explain. Yeah, go for it. So in Mario 2, you often have to pick up a key somewhere in the stage and bring it to the door.

And a lot of that involves as soon as you pick up the key, this mask creature will fly off the wall and start chasing you even after you leave the room. Yeah, it's just like a mask in the background. And then it shakes and comes to life and flies off in this sort of wild. lighty lips. Yeah. And then after a few seconds, it'll come back onto the screen. And I think you can throw the key and it'll go away, but as soon as you pick it back up, it'll show up again.

So you can give yourself some breaks, but it is stressful. It's like a very stressful gameplay segment. Yeah, and there's some notable parts like the Tower and World 4-1 or 4-2, where you have to carry the key down a long way. You have to be careful with that because you can throw the key and it'll drop down. and if it drops down to another screen and you're not on the other screen with it, then it will vanish, you don't have to go back.

And there's like stages with conveyor belts where if you throw the key to get Fanto off your case, the conveyor belt may like drop the key into a pit or something. So you always have to be mindful of what you're doing. But you can also use the key as a weapon. It's indestructible. So you're carrying this key and if there's enemies, you can just chuck it at them.

But you don't always want to do that because there's some places where you need to jump on an enemy and then do a super jump off of the enemy to get to the next platform above you. So, yeah, so there's a lot of technique and sort of like figuring out how these pieces fit together to the stage design. It's a really well-designed game.

And I really, like, as I'm sitting here talking about, I'm thinking, like, these things that I take for granted because, you know, I played this game as a kid and it was just like, oh, this is video games. Like, I'm looking back and saying, this has done a lot of really interesting things and really combines a lot of its unique elements in great ways.

I think probably the biggest surprise in the game, not to spoil a 30-year-old video game, but you go from level to level through like a – you grab a little globe and then opens up the mouth of an eagle or a hawk and you walk through it to the next level. Near the end of the game, one of those eagle portals – it's in the final stage, yeah. It comes to life and attacks you. And again, I'm sure that was totally shocking the first time you ever encountered it. Yeah, because, okay, that's in 7-2, the final stage. It is the door to Wart's layer. And so, like, it's, you know you're getting close to the end of the game. You just know, like, you're almost to the final boss.

And then all of a sudden, this door comes to life, the door that has always been your friend taking you to the next place. You're like, okay, I'm going to go on to the final stage and fight Wart. No, you are going to beat up a door that swoops around the room trying to attack you. It's really big and really hard to dodge. and if it bumps into you, you'll take damage. So you have to use, like, blocks to throw at it. There is that certain element of drama to it where I think, like, some of the other Mario games don't have because, like, you obviously go to Bowser's Castle and you know where you are, you know, it's going to go on.

Or Wario's Castle or whatever. And it's just like, yeah, you don't, it's not too obvious, like, the first time or, you know, in World Seven, where it's just like, is this going to be it? This is it? I'm not so sure. And then, yeah. Yeah, and the final stage in. Mario 2 is very non-linear, and there are two things you have to do, like two doors you have to open or something.

But you can go about it in different ways, and it's actually possible to get lost. There's all these conveyor belts and spikes and chains that you have to climb. You have to fight Mouser, I think, or no, Berto, like twice, just as a normal enemy. We haven't even mentioned Berto except in passing, but each stage in this game, every single stage has a boss. And that's different than Mario one also because, you know, you'd fight Bowser at the end of world whatever for. But here, the, you know, stage blank one and blank two always have Berto. And he becomes, or sorry, she becomes more dangerous the further you get into the game.

Like, initially she just shoots eggs at you and you jump on an egg and grab it out of the air and throw it at her to hit her three times. But toward the end, like, you'll get one egg and then three fireballs. And you can't jump on the fireball, obviously. So she becomes really dangerous. What is the official Berto canon? because I want to say, I used to notice. Her name is Catherine. Catherine, that's right.

That's weird. Okay, so, but that was based on a line in the instruction book, and Burdo was retcon from being a, I guess, a cross-dresser into a female character? Well, in the Japanese game, she's named Catherine. Yeah. Like, that is her Japanese name. But they play with the American canon in Japanese games now. Right, but yeah, she's in the Japanese, or the American manual says,

Berto thinks he's a girl and likes to be called Bredetta. Bredata, right. Now, in the game itself, and I think of the manual, Berto is actually called Ostro. They mixed up the name. Yeah, that's in the ending credits. Is it not in the manual then? I think it's definitely in the credits. It goes hand in hand because one of them kind of confuses the others.

Yeah, the Ostro is the bird that you have to fly out, like jump on the back of. It looks like an ostrich. Yeah, big gaps. But I think they mix that up in the credits. There's a few, like, errors in the course. credits. And Berto is obviously not a bird but a dinosaur. A very weird-looking dinosaur.

A very weird-looking dinosaur. They're the same thing. They give them feathers, you cowards. Oh, yeah, yeah. And this is also just a disturbing that Berto shoots eggs at you from her nose, I hope. She's like a reverse Cubert instead of shooting obscenities at you. She's shooting eggs. Yeah.

I assume those aren't actually Berto's eggs, but rather eggs that she's eaten and are in process She's probably related to Yoshi, honestly. Yeah. Because Yoshi swallows enemies and poops eggs. So I feel like there's just some sort of reverse digestion happening here. I don't know how it works. Yoshi, in some cases, can also spitfire. Yoshi's also a dinosaur.

Yeah. There we go. I feel like as a tax on it. He's a horse. Oh, that's right. Yoshi's a horse. We just tapped into some really deep levels of hidden Mario Canon, I think. It's funny, not to sound like a hack, but like as you revisit these, by the way,

I'm writing a 1998 webcomic. As you revisit these Mario ideas, as an adult, they do seem insane. And I didn't even think twice about them as a kid. Like, we were talking about, like, yeah, when you beat a level, you walk into a bird's mouth. Duh, that's what you do. It's just like revisiting that, like, why? Like, it's a cool idea, but it has nothing to do with anything. I'm just like, yeah, you walk into a bird's mouth.

I guess it's supposed to be like a mask that you're walking into a bird mask. Yeah, the sentient bird mask because it does, like, eat you when you come to the mouth. Just that last one. Yeah. Otherwise, they're built into a wall. And so it's like a portal or something. But it opens and then you walk. walk in, and it goes, and it closes, yeah.

So those are, yeah, the burdo is always the standard boss, but at the end of a blank three world, there's a different boss, and they're all different, and they're interesting. There's Mouser, who once again fuels my question, like, why do Japanese games always associate mice with bombs? Mouser is a big mouse with sunglasses, and he runs back and forth and throws bombs at you, and you have to pick up the bombs and throw them back to land on this platform so that he'll, like, walk into it when it explodes. But there's so many games that have mice with bombs.

There's Wonderboy, there's Little Samson, there's a few others. What is this thing? Like, I don't get it. Is it some sort of lore or something like rabbits on the moon? Does anyone know? Could it be a pun, perhaps? I don't know. Like, bomb mouse.

Like, mouse is Nezhu in Japanese. I don't know. And Zelda has bomb chues. Yeah. Yeah, right. Bomb choo. Yeah. Maybe one of the retronauts loyal listeners will actually know this.

Please do, because it's driving me crazy. I've wondered about this for years. I might need that guy, Genealiener guy, to make a new video about it. Maybe. Let's ping him on Twitter. Explore that bomb thing. All right. So there's also claw glip, which is a crab that throws rocks at you.

I think it's supposed to be claw grip. I think so. But another, that's one of those credit rolls things where they, I guess they transposed an L instead of an R. But he's a big crab and he just throws rocks and the rocks bounce around and you have to jump on them as they're bouncing and pick them up and throw them. Yeah, that's a really tough battle. There's Triclide who is actually probably the easiest of the enemies. He's like a hydra Cerberus basically, like a three-headed hydra that shoots fire at you and you have these blocks that you can pick up and throw at them. And you can use those to build a little barrier.

I think everyone very quickly figured out to like sort of stack them so that his fireballs or whatever don't hit you. Yeah, they shoot at a specific angle, right? It's a very meticulous way to beat the boss, but if you don't want to, if you absolutely don't want to die and you want to spend a few minutes making that little shield, you can do it. Right. There's Fry guy who I don't actually remember how he works.

He just goes around a platform and little baby fires come out of him. It's almost the same. You still have the mushroom blocks and you just kind of throw those out. I remember him being very easy. It splits apart and then gets kind of annoying because those other mini fry guys or else can hop around and be hard to hit. That's correct. And then there's finally Wart, who is an indestructible toad, whose only weakness is eating vegetables.

But because he's a very, very smart bad guy with a great sense of self-preservation, he has a machine in his throne room that does nothing but generates vegetables for you to feed to him. So it doesn't make any sense, but it's a fun game mechanic because instead of taking three hits, you have to throw six vegetables into his mouth. And he, like, shoots the spray of bubbles at you that you have to avoid. while also trying to get these vegetables that are being belched out of the machine, pick those up, throw them into his mouth as he opens his mouth to belch bubbles. You have to be careful because if a vegetable hits a bubble, it'll destroy the vegetable as well as the bubble. So there's like very careful timing here.

It's a very skill-based battle. It's challenging. He likes playing the game. Let's do this dance. I think Wart is like the big dragon and Mega Man 2. One of the sprites they would always show you in magazines as like, oh, a really cool sprite for a boss, like a really big, colorful spright. It's the best sprite.

They always show you the best sprite. Yeah. It's a really cool-looking boss. So Super Mario 2 is the first Mario game with anything that resembles a real boss battle. Since in Super Mario 1, you could pretty much just run under, Bowser. Or just like take a hit and run through him and say, yeah. Unless you die in 8-4 and there's no mushrooms in 8-4, so you have to really work on that one. But you didn't really fight Bowser.

I mean, you simply had to get around him and then dump him into the lava word. You could fireball his ass and discover, oh, my goodness, it's just an imposter. Right, yeah. It's one of his own players. Yeah, no, that's a good point, I think. But, yes, you're right. And these are all, yeah, each boss battle sort of has its own sort of distinct, distinctive strategy. Whereas, again, with Super Mario 1, it was simply the same guy over and over again.

Yeah. That's something, of course, that developed up into later Super Mario games, or even, actually had a real boss fight. We didn't mention bombs. I was thinking about bombs with Mouser, and that was a whole new, like, timing-based projectile, where you could really screw yourself if you did not learn that timing. It feels almost like a Zelda nod. Oh, yeah, for sure.

Yeah, so sometimes bombs would come out of the grass, or sometimes they'd just be sitting around, or enemies would throw them at you, and you basically had, like, a five-second fuse. So there were, I think, as early as World One-2, you have to use bombs to, break through walls. It's like destructible walls. And the only way to get through them is to break the walls. And then there's little sniffets who are shooting bullets at you. So you have to, you know, you can't just take it easy.

You have to always be on your toes. But another interesting thing is that they actually turn the bombs into dynamic characters, the ba-bombs. Yeah, that's right. Who are, I think, the first characters to enter, like, standard Mario Canon. Those guys show up in Mario 3. So they were like the beginning of Mario 2's infiltration. into the mushroom kingdom.

But they are little bombs that will walk around. And if you jump on them, and I think if you get too close to them, they'll hunker down and then they'll have like a five or three second fuse and explode. But you can actually pick them up and throw them and use them as standard bombs. So it adds that kind of extra element of danger and stress but also strategy to the game. And the whole gimmick or the whole mechanic of picking things up was I think something that was originally in the original sort of experimental tech demo game they made, which you would pick up like the other character and throw them.

And when they eventually decided to make a game out of all this stuff, it ended up, you know, picking up vegetables, picking up bombs, picking up enemies, that kind of stuff. Right. And that's like a favorite thing for Kinska Tanabe. Like he loves the plucking mechanic. I interviewed him about Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze. and I mentioned something about like, oh, I see a lot of the spirit of Mario 2 in Nintendo's lineup this year, and I was really talking about Super Mario 3D world, but to like a lesser degree talking about Tropical Freeze,

but he beamed and he was like, yes, the plucking mechanic. I think it's such a great game design idea, and I always try to bring it back when I can, and we brought that into Tropical Freeze. So he really likes that concept, like that element. It's something that's really resonated with him for whatever reason. Does he like gardening or? No, I think that's Miyamoto. That's where Pikmin came from.

Maybe Tanabe's family was there, you know, like dicone farmers. Okay, sure. No, why not? I like it. It's possible. Yeah, so what else is there? Oh, you know, we haven't talked about how the cast of characters changed from Yumekojo's crew to the Mario crew, because there were some tweaks made to not only their appearances, but also how they play,

especially the mama character, who actually plays a little bit differently as Luigi. I think Luigi can jump higher and is a little floatier than her jump. Yeah. I mean, well, we kind of touched on also like how they made a bunch of improvements to the game graphically and in some ways in gameplay as well.

Like there's more animations on some of the sprites. Yeah, the tops of grass actually sway. Yeah, dokie dokey panic is more of a static game. Like the casino screen isn't that interesting. Yeah. The stage start screen where it's like a book metaphor is not as interesting. It's kind of bland.

Yeah. Maybe Ray might know this. Was this the first depiction of, Luigi as taller than Mario, even like predating any arts work or anything like that? Yeah, pretty much. Because before that, he was really just a mirrored version

of Mario. Yeah. In the art, yeah. And in the Mario manual, Luigi was never, super Mario manual. Lidji was never shown in the manual, as I recall. He was not depicted, no. In the arcade Mario Brothers, he was basically just like a different, I mean, he had a different mustache, but he was still

just squat and weird looking. But yeah, I guess this is officially the first appearance of tall Luigi. Paul Luigi. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, and the play mechanic that he shows here was carried over from Super Mario Brothers to the loss levels, where

his physics were a little slipperier and a little floaterer than Mario's. So that was one of the things we'll talk about in that episode, because it ain't happening here. But, yeah, there are a lot of changes. Maybe the most interesting and memorable change is the

ending. The ending of Super Mario Brothers 2 is was at the time maybe the most visually impressive thing on the NES which you know seems kind of sad now

because it's really just a single screen with a little bit of animation like five frames but boy howdy but yeah like it was a full screen illustration of Mario

sleeping in his bed I'm like you see okay so you beat Wart and he's not dead he's just stunned but they like roll him off the screen with the little fairies that you're trying to save

and everyone celebrates hooray it's a victory him up off screen because you see like those like pain symbols. Yeah, yeah. They're torturing him. He got Mussolini.

So while he gets tortured, Mario and Luigi and Toad and Princess Toadstool, get their Chewbacca medals and are like, yay, we won. And then the scene changes and you see Mario asleep. And that whole screen that you just saw is now sort of abstracted in a tiny version in a thought bubble above Mario's head. He's just like he wakes up and looks around. blinks and then goes back to sleep and then the credits

roll which are actually just like a list of all the enemies in the game and then it says the end and he just keeps sleeping while his music plays forever and ever then you have to reset knowing what I know now about Nintendo development and other games like Puncha they most definitely got like Tanabe

or some other anime guy like make five frames of like make five cells of Mario sleeping and we'll digitize those or we'll turn them into sprites I feel like that's what they did with that ending I feel like they consulted one of their anime friends because it's very well done. Yeah, and this gets into the whole, like,

it was a dream cliche, but that works because, one, like the game tells you at the outset, that one time Mario had a dream and then went off with his friends to go on a picnic and they found a weird door. So, like, yeah, of course it's a dream. And also subcon is referred to as the dream kingdom.

So I think there's like a big surprise happening. And I'm just getting this now for the first time, but subcon is also like your subconscious. Yep. Uh, call me an idiot, please. No, that's okay. I deserve it. You probably haven't put that much thought to the subtext of, um, of Super

Mario Brothers 2's plot. But I always thought like, what an odd name, sub-con. What does that even mean? Yep. And, uh, yeah, so that's pretty much Mario 2. And my, my longstanding theory is that all the Mario games, with the exception of the original Mario brothers and maybe, uh, wrecking crew are actually dreams. And that Super Mario 2 is the only one that ever explicitly shows this.

Because if it was a dream, how could, for example, Bob Bombs that he dreamed about appear in the real world of Super Mario 3? So I think the whole thing is just a series of dreams he's having. But Mario 3 is a stage play, not a dream. He's dreaming about a stage play. He got the idea for the play from his dream. Or it's a very Jungie and they're all sharing this consciousness. They all have the same. Well, lots of things about Mario 2 have trickled out into the Mario series.

I talked about the music, but, you know, again, the characterization of all these characters has become the standard. Like Luigi is always the high jumping tall guy, Princess Peach when, you know, she has like an alternate play mode. Toad has become a pretty recurring character. He was just the mushroom retainer before that. Was he male, female? I don't know. But now he has like his little Arabian Nights vest and herring. And that comes from this game's very distinctive art style.

Because that's not really what he looked like in Mario 1. They gave him a name, too. It was the first named mushroom guy. Yep. Now, Princess Peach looked a lot different in Super Mario Brothers 2 than she did in the original one. But also the Japanese Super Mario Brothers 2 had a more modern style Princess Peach design. Yeah.

The biggest graphical change to that game was that Princess Peach. looked a lot better. Even they recognized it looked like a child's drawing. It was not a good spray in the first game. But let's see. What else? There's all kinds of little elements that show up sometimes. Like the Mario Maker did not have a Super Mario Brothers two sandbox,

but the little red doors did show up as things that you could use to link different parts of stages. You know, I mentioned before the recording that Mario Odyssey in one of the stages, there's like the rocket ship that takes you to a different section that seems very, much like the one in Mario 2. What else is there? Yeah, I don't know.

I just feel like, you know, Yoshi's Island is basically like all the Yoshi games. They pretty much take the enemies from this sandbox and have made them their own. Shy guys don't show up in a lot of Mario games, but they show up all over the place in Yoshi's Island. They're a big part of it. Yep. So despite the kind of like weird semi-canon status of this game, it's definitely canon. It's, you know, been embraced by other Mario games. and designers, and so despite the kind of weirdness of this whole thing and the fact that

it didn't come out in Japan until, as Mario, until 92, it's still been very influential in the design and evolution of Mario games. I really wonder what Japanese gamers think of this, and I also wonder, was doki-doki Panic a big game in Japan? Did people care about it? I guess it did okay. Like, it's not hard to find. It's not super expensive.

So that tells me that it sold well and is moderately popular. I don't know if the perspective was as it would be in the U.S. Oh, this is a cheap tie-in to some media thing, and I don't really – I'm not on board with this. I don't know if they had that perception or not. Right. And then people would be more familiar with it when it was Mario USA. Right. Yeah, I don't know.

Like the nice thing is, okay, you can't buy any version of dokey-doki panic aside from the original disk system version because it's limited by the license. It was never republished by Nintendo, and they're never going to, like, go to Fuji TV and say, hey, can we, can we, you know, re-up this license? Because they reworked the game into dokey, dokey panic, which I think, you know, they probably were somewhat influenced by the fact that the Popeye license dropped, and they couldn't republish that game ever again. So I feel like that must have been a consideration, a sort of, like, sticking point for them. Here's one of our trademark games, and we can't do anything with it. So they just retooled this one and said, you know what, we're going to keep our work, we're just going to file off the serial numbers. So you can buy this game all over the place. It's on virtual console, every virtual console.

It's on the NES mini. There was Super Mario Advance, which is also available on virtual console, and that was a sort of 16-bit style skin remake of the game, which was based on Super Mario Bros. Or Super Mario All-Stars for Super NES, but added new elements. It added voice clips. Yeah, what were the new thing? I could not stand that game. I bought it with my Game Boy Advance. It was just like, it was rough.

They added, like, giant vegetables and just kind of some weird stuff. It's pretty much the same game, but there'll be little things that you do, and you're like, I don't remember this. What hell? What the hell? And Toad becomes unplayable because he's like, thank you. Everybody needs to shut up in that game. Showcase for the system. 32-bit.

We have audio capabilities. Finally, they can talk and they won't stop. Oh, and then Mario Advance 4 had a bunch of levels that mixed in Mario 2 stuff. Yeah, yep, yep, yep. Yeah, those were pretty cool. They were not great levels. They were, I think, probably designed by Tosei, but they were... The greatest acknowledgment of that game.

All right, so I do want to wrap this episode with a few minutes of listener mail because listeners wrote, and they have some things to say about Mario 2. I was going to read them to you now. I was kind of hoping there'd be like a big mail bag that you'd be like pulling letters out. I'm afraid not. It's an iPad. I'm sorry. It's just email.

From Fight Club, our friend, Super Mario Brothers 2, Mario Madness. This is the first Mario game. Here you go, Bob. First Mario game I ever completed. Smb1 had come as a pack-in with my N-E-S and I had played it for hours but never managed to achieve victory. Confession I still have into this day, not without save states. I'm with you to... Yeah, yeah. I'm with you.

Mario 2 was so different, though. A much calmer game thinks to a lack of a timer or any relentlessly aggressive enemies like Lackie 2 or the Hammer Brothers. Even the UI is relaxed, reduced to just a few ovals in the corner to indicate your health. Speaking of health, in Mario 2, you start each level big, which means you always have at least

one hit point to spare. This makes all the difference in tackling the game's varied bosses. If you screw up a fight, you get to try again right away, and you can still afford one mistake. All these kindnesses, plus a playable cast of four characters, made Mario two my favorite Mario title on the NES. Oh, we're like of the same mind. I could have written that letter. All the way down to the fact that I've never beaten Super Mario Bros. 1 without save states. I've gotten to Bowser in 8-4 and spent like half an hour trying to get past

him, but because there's no mushrooms in 8-4, I can never beat him. It's really embarrassing. Let's see. What are some other Mario 2? messages from Alfonso Rivera. My earliest memory of Super Mario Brothers 2 involves going to my local video rental store and seeing the NES cartridge with Mario holding a vegetable in his hand and the number two and immediately begging my dad to rent it. I already owned and played the original Super Mario in Mario 3, but my six-year-old self was curious to see how Mario played in this unknown game. After starting up the game and learning that you could pick your choice of four characters, I was instantly and completely absorbed and hooked with the unconventional

world, enemies, and mechanics. Princess Toadstool became my go-to character since her flying jump gave me the freedom to go anywhere that I pleased, something I hadn't experienced in any other game to that point. I'm very thankful NOA decided to release the USA version because otherwise there would be a generation of players very pissed at Mario. I skipped over a part where he talked about poison mushrooms in Mario 2 Japan. From Jerry Felsk Fieldstead. My mother promised me that I could get a game for my fourth birthday and she had ordered Super Mario Brothers to through a local Sears catalog for me. When it arrived, we went to pick it up. The entry into the store is still very strongly supplanted into my brain. The low-lit room was filled with appliances ranging

from washers to refrigerators. It seemingly took forever to get up to the counter despite it being a relatively small room. My mom talked to the clerk. The relative darkness and general silence were unsettling and the only thing really keeping my sanity in check was that I was on the verge of getting a brand new game. The transaction was then done. The box put into my waiting hands, Mario gleefully jumping a turnip in his hand surrounded by clouds. See, this is like a very evocative memory for a lot of people. That box really worked. Everyone remembers the turnip. Yeah. And the clouds and the sky. And Mario happy. jumping. I had my second NES cartridge. I poured my early reading knowledge at the box,

admired the manual, held the cartridge like a holy relic. It immediately slid into the NES the moment I walked into our house. Good times were had. I still had this cartridge to this very day, the very first game I ever bought for myself. From Juan Guterres, I love Smb2. Listening to the ending music takes me back to what I first discovered that it was all a dream, one of my favorites in the series. I played Smb2 more than S&B1 since I could select Luigi and Princess Toadstool. With no timer, you can enjoy it at your own pace. While at the first, the mechanics confused me, I came to like them. I've also played doki-doki panic, and it's cool that all the characters have to defeat Mamu to see the ending.

Nintendo made the right decision to skip the Japanese Smb2. From Eric. I've always found Mario 2 underrated. It's easily my favorite of the 8-bit Mario's. The huge levels, the whimsical enemies and settings, the four playable characters with special and well-balanced abilities, and the grabbing and throwing mechanic all make for a unique, and uniquely enjoyable experience. I love exploring its big, varied worlds.

It makes for a better overall experience to me than Mario 3's bite-sized levels. One element that maybe doesn't get disgust that much stands out to me, the bosses. In terms of with character design and gameplay, they were to me the high watermark for any Mario game until Yoshi's island. I love throwing Mouser's bombs back at them,

the different iterations of the burdo fights, the tough final battle against wart, and especially stacking mushrooms to build a protection wall against Tri Clyde. So there you go, guys. I feel like we touched on everything. And here's someone complaining that I like Super Mario Wii U.

How'd that slip in there? It's the snarky post text. From James Irish. I was eight going on nine when the mania for the game we got here in the U.S. as Super Mario 2 was at its highest, and the game utterly captivated me. It was also the very first Mario game I ever managed to defeat. When Mario 3 came along, my dad observed

that it had much more in common with the first game than the second. I don't remember how I replied, but I think I had in the back of my head how different Nintendo's and sequels frequently were. If we only knew then how close to the truth he was. Either way, even if this isn't the proper Mario 2, the Mario Canon is

that much richer for the elements from this games that were brought on in future games and spin-offs. And I'll read one more. From Hightani. I always saw the Mario games as a franchise that reinvented themselves with every game. That idea was kick-started with Super Mario Bros. 2. But a while ago, I realized

that's not the case at all. Dokey, dokey, dokey. Mario was a kind of freak exception. SMB3 kind of went back to a tweak Mario 1. Never since Mario 64, they stuck to the same formula with only adding gimmicks and polishing the heck out of it more every game, which isn't a bad thing. But it's funny how that one Mario game,

which wasn't initially even a Mario game, gave birth to a big amount of franchise standards and characters. But then again, these were the beginning years of Mario, so everything goes. I think everything goes is a great way to describe Super Mario 2. It was just a game that was like, here's some crazy stuff

and Mario's here. Have fun. And it stands out, but in a good way. I still really love it and, yeah, it's a game I can go back and play and not necessarily beat apparently, but I can play anytime. So guys, any final thoughts on Mario 2?

Dr. Sparkle. Well, I think we all agree now that Super Mario Brothers 2 USA is the true, correct Super Mario sequel and that Super Mario Brothers of loss levels is the fake impostor.

Oh, Ray. Ray counterpoint? I mean, agreed. You might have to have me back, but I think it's a great game. You mean, lost levels? Yeah. Yeah, we'll get you back for the Lost Levels episode. Because there's going to be one, because it wasn't in here.

Yeah. But what do you think about Mario to America? You would say it? No, it's also very good. I think also that it was really kind of validating to have 3D world sort of bring back the four players and also like, and also the big band The music was just a huge validation. It was like all those past 20 years of Mario games.

Yeah, I love 3D world because it really does feel like four-player Mario 2. Yeah. It's like New Super Mario Brothers 2 if that weren't a game about getting quirks. Yeah, it doesn't have the same kind of quirkiness, but, you know, just the acknowledgement of that is really fun. Right. And Bob, finally, you. I am very glad that they did not let this license game just linger in Japan. and, you know, for us to never get it.

I'm especially glad that the vile, repugnant Mario 2 Japan never came here. Okay. I'm rubbing it in. I don't actually, I don't feel that strongly. I just never play it because... Typical Bob Mac. I'm starting up shit again on the Internet. But, yeah, I mean, I'm just, I'm really glad that they recognize that this awesome game they made for, you know, weird reasons.

They decided, like, let's make this a Mario game and let's get it out there instead of, you know, bearing. Let's not hide our gifts in a bushel. or whatever that sends. I don't go to church. Right, yeah. I don't know. Don't look a gift egg in the... Yeah, and don't buy the horse bite you.

Right. So anyway, now that we're done being bitten by horses, this has been a lovely episode of Retronauts. Thanks everyone for listening. Thank you, Dr. Sparkle, for driving all the way down from, like, Oregon or where you're live. Way out there. Utah, I don't know.

Now, I guess I realize something is that this is sort of like the official reunion of the first Kickstarter Yeah, and actually the Kickstarter we launched that five years ago. Today? Not today, it was like two days ago. Oh, wow. Wow. Five years ago this week. I think it was yesterday. I think it was the 23rd of March of 2013. It's been a while. Yeah. So yeah, that's a good call. Yeah. So kind of bringing it back together. We'll get together again in five years. Have another episode.

Assuming we're all still alive. Yeah. Sure, we will be. Everybody at home, place your bets. Yeah, right. But yes, thanks for coming down. Where can people find you on the internet? They can find me on YouTube. A channel's name is Cron Tendo.

They can find me on Twitter at, I think it's at Cron Tendo. I hope. It is indeed. Still is. Still is. And I used to have a blog spot that has not been updated in years. So don't look at that. And there actually is going to be a new episode of Croncindo before.

or too long. It will almost certainly be out before this episode. I'm still working on that. This is a few months away. That Castlevania 3. All right. It's a worthy endeavor, though. Uh, Ray.

Yeah, great. I'm on Twitter, RDB, AAA. I'm also making games. Get my game BlastRush on iOS or Android. It's good. It's great. Visit blastrush.com or follow my company as well. At buypedal dog on Twitter.

And Bob. I've been very busy since the last time I recorded. I am now more podcast than man, but I've been doing a lot of extra stuff on the side, and a lot of that, actually all of it is under the Talking Simpsons network. If you go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons, you can check it out. We do two free shows. One is Talking Simpsons. That's a chronological exploration of the Simpsons. By the time this goes live, we'll probably be in season eight, maybe the end of season seven.

And we also do the weekly show, What a Cartoon, which is featuring a different episode of a different cartoon every week. And we do the Talking Simpsons treatment with clips and talking about references and special guests and stuff like that. And if you go to the Patreon, you can get each of those episodes a week ahead of time in at free. And we have a ton of exclusive podcasts on that, like all of Talking Critic, probably all of Talking Futurama by this point, if not most of it. And tons of interviews and specials and things like that. And it's how I live. I do a little bit of work for Retronauts, but I do most of the work for the Talking Simpsons stuff. So if you're interested in me and what I feel about cartoons, just go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons or just look for those podcasts I mentioned in your MP3 player of choice.

Thank you. So, Bob, when are you going to get me on to It's a cartoon to talk about the greatest G.I. Joe episode of all time. I've been thinking about it, Jeremy. I've been thinking about getting you on. For G.I. Joe. Yes. For anything.

I mean, I feel like you could be on a Futurama, but I know your time is, you're pressed for time on the weekend sometimes. I would love to be on a Futurama episode. I love that show. We will figure it out next time. Cool. Okay. Folks, you are seeing podcast magic happening right here live in real time.

I'll pencil you in for G. God. Yes. Word is fun. It's got to be that one about Spree. Ringfield, The Alternate Reality. I love that one. Anyway, Simpsons? Oh, no, no, no. Okay.

Okay, yeah, we definitely have to do this. All right. So, anyway, this is me, Jeremy Parrish. You can find me on Twitter as Gamesbyte. I have a YouTube channel also. It's called Toasty Frog because I can't stick to a single alias. And, of course, you can find me at Retronauts doing Retronauts things every freaking day. So go to Retronauts.com.

And, of course, the podcast, you can find on your favorite podcast. applications such as iTunes and not Google Play. Well, maybe a Google Play. I don't know. You can find us on the Internet. It's Retronauts. And we are finally supported through

Patreon. Patreon.com slash Retronauts is how I buy food. And Bob does too. So please listen to our podcast. And if you enjoy it, consider supporting us for $3 a month.

You get a early access to episodes a week in advance and higher quality episodes with no ads. in my opinion that's a heck of a deal it's way cheaper than YouTube bread and probably better

I'm probably not actually but anyway thanks for listening we'll be back someday with a micro episode about Super Mario Brothers to the other one because Ray needs to have his day

that's my opinion so thanks so thanks We're going to be able to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be able to be. Life is full of those. Moments.

Like right after the first stretch and y'all in the morning. Or like standing in the forest alone amid the stillness. The beauty hits you like the crisp air and suddenly everything makes sense and you're one with the earth and stars. Or like dollar drinks at McDonald's.

Keep those awe moments going with $1 any seismic cafe brewed coffee and $1 any size soft drinks on the $1,2,3 dollar menu. Price and participation may vary cannot be combined with combo meal. The Mueller Report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute.

President Trump was asked at the White House if special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand, that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine, Susan Collins, says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire

was among the mourners. his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout, have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.