Super Mario Bros 2 (1988/1993) [SNES]

Super Mario Bros. 2, often abbreviated SMB2, is a platform game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System as a sequel to the 1985 game Super Mario Bros. The game was also remade as part of the Super Mario All-Stars collection for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), released on August 1, 1993 in North America and December 16, 1993 in Europe. It was rereleased on the Wii's Virtual Console in Europe, Australia and New Zealand on May 25, 2007 and the U.S. on July 2, 2007.

Unlike the majority of other Mario titles, Super Mario Bros. 2 was not developed from the ground up. Rather, it is a redesign of the Japanese Family Computer Disk System game Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic (夢工場ドキドキパニック Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panikku?, "Dream Factory: Heart-Pounding Panic"). Nintendo's original sequel to Super Mario Bros. was released in Japan as Super Mario Bros. 2 in 1986; however, because of that game's difficulty and its close similarities to the original game, Nintendo decided not to release it in the West at that time. Because Super Mario Bros. 2 is a redesign of a non-Mario game, the game differs greatly from the original Super Mario Bros., though many elements from the game have since become part of the Mario series canon. The redesigned Western version of Super Mario Bros. 2 was released in Japan in 1992 under the title Super Mario USA (スーパーマリオUSA Sūpā Mario USA?), and in 1993 a 16-bit remake of the original Japanese version was released to the rest of the world as Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels as part of Super Mario All-Stars.

Super Mario Bros. 2 is set in the dream-land known as Subcon. Mario's task is to free Subcon from Wart, the game's final boss.

The game is a side-scrolling platform game. At the beginning of each stage, the player is given a choice of four protagonists to control: Mario, Luigi, Toad, and Princess Peach. Each character has different strengths; Mario runs faster; Luigi can jump the highest of the four; Toad can run and pluck vegetables the fastest but can't jump well; and Peach can jump the farthest, due to her ability to hover for a short time, though she is the slowest runner and slowest at plucking items from the ground. All characters have the ability to increase the height of their jump by ducking briefly before they jump.

Unlike the previous and following Mario games, no enemies can be defeated by jumping on them. Instead, the player character must throw objects at enemies, such as vegetables plucked from the ground. Certain opponents can be picked up and thrown as well, and several levels feature blocks marked with the word "POW", which when picked up and thrown kill all the enemies on screen at impact, similar to the one in Mario Bros.

The game features a life meter, a then-unusual feature in the series. The player begins each stage with two points of health, represented by red hexagons (in remakes, they are shaped like hearts), and can increase the number of health points in the meter by collecting mushrooms. Health can be replenished by floating hearts, which appear after a certain number of opponents have been defeated. The invincibility star from the previous game appears, with a player needing to collect five pairs of cherries to acquire it.

Each stage contains one or more hidden flasks of potion. When plucked and thrown, a potion creates a door to Sub-Space, an alternate world in which coins are collected instead of vegetables when plucked. The mushrooms used to increase the health meter can also be found here. The player automatically leaves Sub-Space after a short time. The coins collected are used in a slot machine mini-game played between stages. This mini-game is the chief means of obtaining additional lives. In addition to the mushrooms and slot machine coins, several Sub-Spaces are also used as warp zones; these involve the use of vases as pipes.