All Night Nippon: Super Mario Bros. and Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic (Famicom Disk System Reviews)

All Night Nippon: Super Mario Bros.
Platform: Famicom Disk System
Released December 20, 1986
Developed by Nintendo
Published by Fuji Television
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Listing at Mario Wiki

Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic
Platform: Famicom Disk System
Released July 10, 1987
Directed by Kensuke Tanabe
Developed by Nintendo
Published by Fuji Television
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Listing at Mario Wiki

The 1up trick: masochists edition.

Between 1986 and 1987, Fuji Television and the Nippon Broadcasting System partnered with Nintendo for two games, one of which is fairly inconsequential, and the other is, well, consequential. Before there was Doki Doki Panic, there was All Night Nippon: Super Mario Bros. It’s based on a popular radio program called All Night Nippon that dates back to 1967 and still runs to this day. It’s a cultural institution in Japan on the level of, say, Saturday Night Live here in the United States. Hell, BIGGER than SNL, actually. So big that people lined up for days to snag one of the limited 1,000 copies that would be sold of this on December 20, 1986. Two-thousand copies were won by people who sent postcards to the station, while a pair of gaming magazines each gave away twenty copies, bringing the grand total to 3,040 total copies and making it a cherished collector’s item today that fetches $1,000 or more a copy on the open market. For a ROM hack. Hmph.

The Toads are replaced with the hosts, who were arguably among the biggest celebrities in Japan at the time.

Okay, so it’s not just a Super Mario Bros. 1 with the Goombas, Piranha Plants, and Toads replaced by the hosts of All Night Nippon. Three stages from the coin-op Vs. Super Mario Bros. and three stages from Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels were substituted for six other levels in the standard Super Mario 1 roster of thirty-two stages. Hell, level 8 – 4 is level 8 – 4 from Lost Levels. Additionally, the graphics are mostly taken from the original Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2, with some small alterations to add a bit of a radio theme to a few bushes. There’s really only one reason to seek out this build of Super Mario and that’s the ability to play as Luigi, with all his quirks from Super Mario Bros. 2, in a game that’s mostly made out of Super Mario 1 stages. It makes for a genuinely fun novelty. For about twenty minutes, but hell, how much more Super Mario 1 can you possibly want?
All Night Nippon: Super Mario Bros. Verdict: YES!

You can hit that question mark from a standing flat jump off the ground. Alright, go have fun cheesing (most) of the original game with Luigi’s jump. Not that it matters. The odds of this thing ever getting a re-release are probably lower than even something like Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker.

Okay, okay. Nobody came here to read about an obscure version of Super Mario 1 so let’s get to Doki Doki Panic. When the original version of Super Mario Bros. 2 was sent to America, a guy named Howard Phillips (aka the guy from Nintendo Power magazine’s Howard & Nester), who was basically the best gamer on Nintendo of America’s staff, is credited with convincing NOA that it was too similar to the original game and too hard for American audiences and they should just ask for something else.

By this point, Nintendo of America knew Super Mario 3 was coming, but they didn’t want to waste at least a year waiting for it. Nintendo was arguably the hottest property in America and they knew they would need a lot more Mario to keep the NES’ momentum going. Instead of making a new game from the ground-up, they decided to take a game that was developed as part of a promotional event held by Fuji Television that was kind of like a World’s Fair or a carnival, replace the theme of masks with Mario-themed stuff, and swap out the Arabian-themed main characters created for the event with Mario, Luigi, Toad, and the Princess. If you want to know more, the Video Game Historian has you covered. I want to talk about the gameplay.

Despite looking like the character that evolved into Mario, Papa is actually the character that became Toad. By the way, due to the flashiness of exploding bombs and the speed at which the water is animated, I had to take full precautions playing Doki Doki Panic. I don’t advise this game for people who are photosensitive.

Doki Doki Panic might look exactly like Super Mario Bros. 2, but in terms of gameplay, this might actually still be the best build of it. Lately, I’ve been on a “games as a challenge” versus “games as an experience” kick. Lucky me that Doki Doki Panic and Super Mario Bros. 2, two versions of one game, exemplifies the difference between those two mindsets. I’ll be reviewing Super Mario Advance next (it’s up, click here), which is almost certainly the better EXPERIENCE. They added a lot of content, including a new boss and new stuff to find, plus it looks fantastic. But it’s also not exactly the most challenging game. In fact, you might look at the ability of Luigi and Princess Peach and shake your head, because they’re so clearly overpowered that they nullify entire segments of the game. Well, actually THEY don’t, but what you can do with them in Super Mario Bros. 2 does. Doki Doki Panic was NEVER meant to have B-running and jumping. The addition of that alone fundamentally changes the entire game experience for literally all four characters.

Besides B-running, the biggest missing element from Super Mario 2 is Clawgrip the Crab. Instead, you fight a third Mouser at the end of World 5. Since the Clawgrip fight is fantastic and the Mouser fight is the same one you’ve already done twice, only spongier, this was the right call. Nintendo would later change Super Mario Advance’s boss order, adding a new Robo-Birdo fight to the end of world three, but instead of doing a new boss for the end of world six, not only did they dump the second Tryclyde fight but they replaced him with Mouser. Sigh.

Now, I already love Super Mario Bros. 2. It’s my favorite 2D Mario game (well, unless you count ROM hacks) and it’s clearly a milestone in level design. Seriously, the twenty stages found in this game, each offering unique platforming challenges, are some of the most well designed Nintendo ever did in 8-bits. But, I also acknowledge it’s a very problematic game thanks to the ability to circumvent so much of that elegant level design by just B-running to higher platforms. Well, you can’t do that sh*t in Doki Doki Panic, and it’s transformative. Now, you have to make use of the FULL level layouts. Almost every single platform matters for at least one character. A door is well above your head? Better start stacking blocks or hitching a ride on an enemy. Want to make it across that waterfall? You’ll need every log or fish to do it, especially if you’re using Imajin (Mario) or Papa (Toad).

Peach’s floating trick obviously covers a lot less ground, and if you have it activated, any enemy who touches you will damage you. You have to let go of the jump button to be able to stand on enemies. Smart.

Yes, Lina (Princess Peach) and Mama (Luigi) can still use their abilities to bypass SOME relatively small sections (and the Luigi proxy’s jump somehow feels floatier but that might be just an illusion because of the sprite’s animation), but you’ll still need to actually use most of the terrain most of the time. Playing Doki Doki Panic is revealing of what a truly generational masterpiece Super Mario Bros. 2 is. You really do have to play this version of the game to appreciate how fine-tuned the levels are. Platforms that made no sense in Super Mario 2 are essential to finishing Doki Doki Panic, and thus the challenge is significantly increased. Mario 2’s difficulty scaling feels pretty wonky. Doki Doki scales much more naturally. By the way, if it sounds like the game’s pace is significantly slower, while it might be technically true, it never really feels like it. Weird, right? But it’s true because you’re having to pay closer attention. Slower movement doesn’t matter because Doki Doki has a faster happenings-tempo.

Like these things here? I didn’t get a picture of it, but there’s a moment during this sequence where you have a small space to build up a duck-jump that you have to do WHILE moving and WHILE dodging an enemy. It has no stakes at all in Mario 2 if you hold the B button down. Here, only the Luigi character can skip the ducking part.

Okay, so you can’t completely recreate the experience with a US copy just by avoiding running. There’s other small changes. Like, you know how satisfying it is to throw an enemy and have their dead body take out the next four or five enemies? That doesn’t work in Doki Doki Panic. While items like the vegetables can still take out multiple baddies, thrown enemies only kill the first enemy they make contact with. That doesn’t make that big a difference. There’s no sections built around the combo technique, probably because it was never meant to be a thing. You also don’t shrink when you’re down to your final hit and some of the enemy attack patterns are slightly modified. But, yeah, you’ll get 95% of the Doki Doki experience just by stopping yourself from using B-running. Give it a try!

Right up until the final two levels, you still feel the difference and might find your finger reaching for that B-button only to say “oh right!” I just beat Doki Doki Panic four times today and I was still doing it right up until the bitter end.

Also, similar to how you have to beat Lost Levels eight times to see everything, you have to beat Doki Doki Panic once with all four characters to unlock the “true ending.” While I would never have enjoyed putting that much work into the version of Super Mario Bros. 2 Japan got, I had no problem doing that with their quirky little FDS game that eventually became the whole world’s Super Mario Bros. 2. I have to assume someone at Nintendo, around the time Doki Doki Panic finished development, said “why the f*ck did we waste this on Fuji Television?” And it would have been a good question, because up to that point, I don’t think Nintendo had ever made a better game. I might enjoy the experience of playing Super Mario Advance more, but Doki Doki Panic is still the best all-encompassing package this specific game ever got. The version that offers both an experience and a challenge.

For all the credit Super Mario 1 gets, Doki Doki Panic feels like it takes the platforming genre in an even bolder direction. You can remove the timer and make a possibly slower exploration-based adventure that still retains all the tricky jumping and satisfying combat fans want out of the genre. Doki Doki Panic represented a leap in design logic that left gaming better for everyone. Will it ever get a re-release? I’d hope that Nintendo and Fuji Television could work something out. It’s been almost forty years and it’s the most important re-spriting in gaming history. Sure, we celebrate Super Mario Bros. 2 today, but that doesn’t mean we celebrate Doki Doki Panic at the same time. Instead, it’s been relegated to the status of being an answer to a trivia question. A historic footnote and nothing more, and I think that’s tragic. Really, you can play any version of this game and have a lot of fun, but you can only play one version that still does that while putting up a fight, and that’s Doki Doki Panic.
Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic Verdict: YES!

Don’t worry, Wart. The rest of them won’t show up again, either.