Development
Nintendo of Japan's official sequel to Super Mario Bros. was released in Japan as Super Mario Bros. 2 in 1986. Visually, it looked like Super Mario Bros., with the same basic game format but with a completely different level design that delivers a higher difficulty setting. Nintendo of America disliked the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2, which they found to be frustratingly difficult and otherwise little more than a modification of Super Mario Bros. As they did not want to risk the franchise's popularity, they canceled its stateside release and eventually decided on helping the original Japanese developers to revise a Japanese Family Computer Disk System game titled Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic (夢工場ドキドキパニック?, lit. "Dream Factory: Heart-Pounding Panic") into Super Mario Bros. 2.
Doki Doki Panic originally started as a prototype developed by Kensuke Tanabe. The prototype emphasized vertically scrolling levels and throwing blocks. Notably, it was originally intended to be a two player co-op game allowing players to toss each other around. The gameplay was considered not fun enough at the time and was scrapped until later when Tanabe received instruction to use the Yume Kōjō mascots in a game, at which point he expanded the gameplay and developed Doki Doki Panic.
Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic is a platforming game that follows a family of four, each with different abilities, on a quest to rescue kidnapped kids in a fantasy world. The title was a license cooperation between Nintendo and Fuji Television to promote the broadcaster's Yume Kōjō '87 event, which showcased several of their latest TV shows and other products at the time. The game features the mascots of the Yume Kōjō festival – a family consisting of siblings Imajin and Lina and their parents, Papa and Mama – as protagonists. The rest of the characters, including the main villain, Mamu, are creations by Nintendo for the game. Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic takes place within a book with an Arabian setting. All four characters are playable, and the game is not fully completed until the player clears all levels with each protagonist. In the American version of Super Mario Bros. 2, Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool, and Toad were built on Imajin, Mama, Lina, and Papa's models, respectively, marking the first time that Mario and Luigi had noticeably different heights. Because Tanabe's original prototype already contained Mario-like features, Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic naturally features many elements from the Mario universe, such as Starmen, coin and jumping sound effects, POW blocks, and warp zones. Additionally, the game's soundtrack was composed by Koji Kondo, the original Super Mario Bros. composer, and needed only a few alterations and new compositions throughout the conversion. Both Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic and Super Mario Bros. 2 were directed by Kensuke Tanabe.
The Western version of Super Mario Bros. 2 was such a success that it was eventually released in Japan in 1992 under the title Super Mario USA.
Read more about this topic: Super Mario Bros. 2
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)