Super Mario Bros. 2 – The Commercial

Awhile back, I was looking at ways to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Super Mario Bros. 2. Unfortunately, I was rather sick at the time, and wasn’t able to make a timely contribution. However, I’d rather put in something good late than nothing at all. And hey, SMB2 will be 20 years old for a whole year, so why focus on one day?

In the spirit of the gaming scene back then, when launch dates were all but irrelevant and the game was effectively “out” whenever you saw it in your local store, I’m spreading things out a little big. I doubt too many people got the game on the day it was shipped from Nintendo’s warehouses, so why be bound by it?

I have a few plans, a few ideas I hope to put into action, and we’ll see how that goes. For now, to kick things off, here’s one blast from the past: The television commercial which initially got me excited for the game in the first place (among other promotional materials):

It’s hard to describe the main attraction here. Super Mario Bros. was groundbreaking, and did a fine job of roping me into video games for what may very well be the rest of my life. Sure, I liked games before that, but Mario was the one who really did it. This commercial, though, seemed to take him into more of an actual world of some kind; the first game had a very sort of abstract landscape, where the ground was made of blocks, bricks and coins floated in the air, and most structures were stone forts or pipes.

Super Mario Bros. 2 showed off caves, deserts, waterfalls, pyramids, and a host of characters that carried a more cartoon-like styling about them, including Mario himself, who looked more like the art I’d seen in magazines than the original SMB sprite. And the announcer really helped to hype things up nicely.

Maybe a lot of this is just nostalgia speaking, but nonetheless, I love this commercial as much now as I did then, and I wish more game commercials today were like this.

–LBD “Nytetrayn”

David Oxford

David Oxford, or “LBD ‘Nytetrayn’,” as he is sometimes also known, is a freelance writer of many varied interests who resides in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. If you’re interested in hiring him, please drop him a line at david.oxford (at) nyteworks.net.

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