Worldly Weekend: Mega Man 2

Okay, we're getting warmer: Mega Man 2's American boxart is no prize, but maligned as it is, I like to think it's not the catastrophe that was the original. Say what you will about inaccurate character design, but as they feature something resembling actual proportion, I think of it as a relative success in that patented 80's way of box arts fulfilling the template for our imaginations. This fantastic Eurogamer interview with artist Marc Erickson reveals it was a uncoordinated hodgepodge of circumstances -- a hapless art director's interpretation of Mega Man ("he's obviously shooting, so he must be using a pistol"), Erickson simply assuming the character was an actual man, and an overall lack of cooperation between the various Capcom branches in conserving the original character design. Simply put: let us not judge Erickson for simply doing his job.

Nay, we are here to judge Mega Man 2, otherwise known as one of the finest classics of the 8-bit era and what truly etched our Blue Bomber into gaming history. By the same token of the former, it's no stretch declaring it one of the NES's masterworks, and for my money, I consider it the system's finest third-party effort. When considering how many Mario knock-offs stumbled and fell in their ill-fated attempts to capture the golden goose, that it can stand arm-in-arm with the actual Marios and Kirby's Adventure is a miracle I cherish dearly. There's no slippery controls, no projectiles nonsensically thrown in arcs, no absurd difficulty for the sake of absurd difficulty -- it's just a damn good video game, one I'd dare even say reaches the vertigo of perfection.

Super Mario Bros. 3

Before I begin this review proper, I must confess there exist two factors that've always dumbfounded me regarding Super Mario Bros. 3, the NES game revered as the system's masterwork. Admittedly, one bears little on the game's quality in itself; mainly, the shock that its original Japanese release was a whole two years earlier in 1988 than its 1990 American release. Technically speaking, that's more so a year-and-a-half (Japan's October 23, 1988 to America's February 12, 1990 -- and that's to say nothing of Europe's August 29, 1991!), but the point is, I just think it's silly 1988 America was busy greeting a reassembled black sheep in Super Mario Bros. 2 while Japan was living it up with the Holy Grail of 8-Bit Gaming. As always with the medium, The Land of the Rising Sun really does have it good.

The other cause -- one immediately more relevant and, as evidenced by this Koji Kondo interview, has certainly confounded others -- is how I am never not baffled by the silent title screen. Anyone who's played the Super Mario All-Stars remake should certainly recall the jubilant ragtime remix of the classic Underwater Theme, perfectly accompanying the game's curtain-raising opening via choreography: the subdued drone introducing Mario and Luigi, the trumpeting eruption of delight greeting not only both the title and the theater's showers of enemies and power-ups, but our joy in playing one of the greatest 2D platformers ever crafted. A disorientation perhaps exclusive to those who played the SNES/GBA versions first (including yours truly), this aural absence unveils our first impressions of Super Mario Bros. 3 as a stunning retcon, its reduction to silent pantomime a bewildering relic.

Worldly Weekend: Final Fantasy II (NES/Famicom)

Not even one game later, and we've already arrived at Final Fantasy's infamous identity crisis. The game we are reviewing today is not the Final Fantasy II hailed as a SNES classic, but the Famicom's Final Fantasy II that released in 1988, never left Japan's shores, and is often cited as one of those experimental black sheep sequels that plagued the NES. For the moment, let us put aside the fact Western fans wouldn't experience the same frustration bestowed by Zelda II and Castlevania II until roughly a decade's time, and hone in on a more well-known source of frustration -- that, of course, being the name discrepancies exchanged among the first six Final Fantasys. With three Final Fantasy games -- Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy III, and Final Fantasy V -- skipped over at release, Square had no choice but to dub their Western localizations of Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy VI as Final Fantasy II and III, respectively.

Needless to say, what resulted was an endless source of confusion regarding Square's retconning as they made their Western debuts via PlayStation, Game Boy Advance and DS incarnations, be they altered ports or elaborate remakes. And yet, in the case of Final Fantasy II, I cannot help but feel this was the correct decision: whereas Final Fantasy IV is a series masterpiece, II is certainly its retro nadir, filled with antagonistic design decisions that smother any goodwill it sought to bring. While hardly the worst JRPG, said decisions render it a slog of mediocrity as opposed to the prestigious, glorified adventure established from the very first game.

Super Mario Bros. 2

And now, to reiterate gaming's most famous switcheroo: what we know as Super Mario Bros. 2 in Western territories is not the actual Super Mario Bros. 2, which was deemed too difficult and too similar for foreign audiences. The solution: take an unrelated platformer (Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic, a Fuji TV collaboration that originally featured an Arabian cast), repackage it with Mario characters, get Shigeru Miyamoto and co. to polish up the gameplay, and voila -- you have gaming's greatest magic trick. It wouldn't be until five years later with the remake collection that was Super Mario All-Stars that rumors and urban legends whispered about Western audiences, with internet inertia finally dawning what would place among Nintendo's most historic fun facts.

In other words, this is why Mario and the gang are suddenly throwing vegetables at bad guys rather than stomping them. Without this knowledge, it becomes all too easy to label Super Mario Bros. 2 as one of the many infamous "black sheep sequel" so dreaded on NES -- sequels in the vein of Zelda II: Adventure of Link, Castlevania II: Simon's Quest or even the Japan-only Final Fantasy II, all which were being divisive experiments that messed with their predecessor's formulas a tad too much -- but even knowing that, is it really the game's fault it doesn't live up to the Super Mario name? Adding to the confusion is how despite the Japanese version being called "Super Mario USA," Nintendo has been all too quick to brush Super Mario Bros. 2 under the rug and not only inducting this localized version into series canon, but has since referred to this game as the real Super Mario Bros. 2 (as recently as being heavily referenced in Super Mario 3D World, in fact).