Super Mario Bros. 2, Ecco: Tides of Time, Dragon’s Spirit

The game: Super Mario Brothers 2
Its cost: 500 points

What you are looking at is a video game whose popularity single-handedly caused a national silicon shortage in 1988. That’s how popular Mario was in the late 1980’s. Even though it is the third highest selling NES title of all time, Super Mario Bros. 2 is still the least popular of the Super Mario Bros series (Super Mario Bros through Super Mario World). Why is that?

The game started life as the Japanese title Doki Doki Panic (translated: Dream Factory: Heart-Pounding Panic), a Miyamoto-produced game starring then current mascots of Japanese broadcasting company Fuji TV. Super Mario Bros 2. came to be because Nintendo of America needed a stop-gap sequel to fill in the four year gap between the first and third entries in the series, and they felt that the Japanese sequel (which we refer to as “Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels) was too difficult. They swapped the sprites Mario characters, added some extra music, and Super Mario Bros. 2 came to life. Whether the Lost Levels is too difficult lies in the eye of the beholder, but one cannot argue the fact that it is unoriginal. Super Mario Bros. 2 is anything but stale, even if it deviates heavily from the established Super Mario formula.

Mario awakes from a dream in which he was told that he and his crew must save the people of “Subcon” (as in subconscious) from the treachery of the evil Wart (a tyrannical frog) who is stripping the world’s supply of vegetables because he is allergic to them. Rather than hopping and bopping enemies like the previous Mario game, you now jump on them and pick them up to be thrown into other enemies. Picking up and throwing objects is the game’s main mechanic. Each of the four main playable characters (Mario, Luigi, Toad, and Princess Toadstool) began to take on their characteristics in this game. This was the first time Luigi began to take on a role other than “Player 2”, and marked the first appearance of Toad. Each offers different advantages in control. There are only 20 stages, but each is extremely long, so the game is plenty long enough. The graphics are bright and colorful, even with the limitations of 8-bit, and the music is also some of the most catchy and memorable of the whole Mario series. It should be noted that Doki Doki Panic was missing large portions of the music.

For what most people would write off as a simple sprite swap of a pre-existing game, Super Mario Bros. 2, has had a profound influence on the series as a whole. It spawned the classic weekday cartoon The Super Mario Bros Super Show which drove Mario’s popularity in North America to insane heights of popularity. A large majority of the enemies in the game (Bomb-ombs, Pokeys, Ninjis, Pidgits, Snifits, Shy Guys) would make countless later appearances in future Mario titles, as well as serve as the backbone for Miyamoto’s later masterpiece, Yoshi’s Island. The game’s roots are undoubtedly abnormal, but without this game, the Mario Bros. series would likely be completely different altogether. Originality is never a bad thing, and though SMB2 is very unlike its predecessor, it is undeniably an amazing game in its own right and is without a doubt a required purchase.

Sega Genesis

The game: Ecco: Tides of Time
Its cost: 800 points

The original Ecco the Dolphin was one of the most artistically profound games to hit the Genesis, a console that was at the time in heavy need of some variety in its lineup. Developed by Novotrade International (now Appaloosa Interactive) and published by Sega, the game qualifies as one of the few truly artistic projects released in the 16-bit era.

The gameplay consists of you controlling Ecco through underwater environments using his sonar as your main attack. You also use it to move objects. All the controls from the first Ecco are present, but you get some new abilities. Ecco can now gain the ability to transform into other oceanic creatures for a short time including: seagulls, jellyfish, sharks, a school of fish, and the fictional Vortex drone. The original game was noted for its extreme and unbalanced difficulty level. Thankfully, the difficulty level here can be adjusted by the player, though the game still delivers a considerable challenge no matter what level you are set to.

Like the original Ecco, the game hit in an era before pre-rendered graphics had taken the industry in a death grip, and all of the art in the game has a natural and organic look, yet hand drawn feel to it. It looks and feels like an ocean, even though there are only 65 colors on screen at most. Novotrade’s artists must be commended for their work because the game seems like a Christian Lassen painting in motion. The movement can sometimes be a tad fast and jerky, but the animation itself is smooth as silk and mimics real sea life with its fluidity and seamless motion. The beautiful soundtrack for Ecco 2 was composed by game and film music legend Spencer Nilsen (Sonic CD).

Ecco 2 was followed by the exceptionally poor Ecco Jr. in 1995, a game geared towards babies. Apparently Sega thought that the dolphins weren’t cute enough as they are, so Sega dumbed down the series. It wouldn’t return to glory until the franchise restart on Dreamcast in 2000, and then would never be seen again. It’s sad really because Ecco and its sequel we see here are examples of games as interactive art. Ecco 2 is a much more accessible game than its predecessor, and offers a truly unique experience and remains one of the most beautiful games of the 16-bit era.

TurboGrafx-16

The game: Dragon’s Spirit
Its cost: 600 points

Sometimes it seems that practically half the TurboGrafx library has to be comprised of shooters. Some are good, some are bad. Dragon’s Spirit is a mixture of both camps. On one hand, you’ve got a unique concept of shooting down villains with a fire breathing dragon rather than the worn out “alien ship against the universe” concept, and on the other hand, the developers at Namco really did nothing truly unique with the concept.

Gameplay takes place on two planes much like Xevious or Raiden. You’re going to shoot enemies in your upper plane view, and bomb those in the lower plane view. The enemies are pretty sparse for most of the game, but sometimes the game will flog you out of nowhere. All shooters have their hard moments, but this one is drowning in them. You had better come in with a lot of patience because this one requires a lot of pattern memorization to succeed. Otherwise, you’re going to succumb to a lot of cheap deaths. The bosses are of worthy mention though.

There was an NES conversion of this game, but fortunately we got the TurboGrafx/PC Engine version for the Virtual Console as it is obviously vastly superior. The visuals are pretty standard and will probably remind you of Xevious due to the choice of color palette. Its pretty generic looking, which is sad because the idea of Dragons in a shmup in actually pretty cool. You do have to consider that the game came from 1988, but it does have its moments. One particular power-up will cause your dragon to spawn a second (or third) head and form a multi-blaster. If the game has one thing going for it, the soundtrack is waaaay above average for a TurboGrafx-16 game. It’s even got an included sound test to show off the tunes. You would be hard pressed not to enjoy the music.

The game has its highs and lows. The graphics are average, but the sound and music is top-notch. The gameplay though is standard shooters stuff without any real perks to set it apart from the rest of the massive Virtual Console shooter library outside of the creative idea of using dragons instead of ships, though the idea isn’t fully realized. Other than that, it’s the same tried and true stuff and there are much better shooters available for the TurboGrafx-16 and other systems alike.

Screenshots courtesy or vgmuseum.com