Super Mario 2 in Japan was called 'the Lost Levels'. It looked more in line with the first Mario game than what we saw in NA. Nintendo was always looking at ways to differentiate its games from other games. Metroid we saw them force you you to move to the left from the start screen when up to then almost all games scrolled left to right. Zelda we saw an open world game, the character starts with no weapon which was different. You needed to aquire the weapon before proceeding thus informing the player of how this game is different right away. A Nintendo hallmark if you will. Now in the Lost Levels Nintendo wanted to let the player know in no uncertain terms that this game is different than the first game. The game looks the same, Mario moves left to right and the blocks break. The blocks sometimes reveal a mushroom and the mushrooms in the first game make you big. You break a block and you reveal a mushroom only it looks a bit different but the first game taught you that mushrooms are good. So you grab the mushroom aaaand you die you lose a man. Its a harsh way of telling you its a different game, that the rules have changed. I think its safe to say %100 of people who played that game grabbed that poison mushroom and died.

Super Mario 2 in Japan was called 'the Lost Levels'. It looked more in line with the first Mario game than what we saw in NA. Nintendo was always looking at ways to differentiate its games from other games. Metroid we saw them force you you to move to the left from the start screen when up to then almost all games scrolled left to right. Zelda we saw an open world game, the character starts with no weapon which was different. You needed to aquire the sword before proceeding thus informing the player of how this game is different right away. A Nintendo hallmark if you will. Now in the Lost Levels Nintendo wanted to let the player know in no uncertain terms that this game is different than the first game. The game looks the same, Mario moves the same and the blocks break. The player moves left to right and so thats what you do. The blocks break so you break the blocks. The blocks sometimes reveal a mushroom and the mushrooms in the first game make you big. You break a block and you reveal a mushroom only it looks a bit different but the first game taught you that mushrooms are good. So you grab the mushroom aaaand you die you lose a man. Its a harsh way of telling you its a different game, that the rules have changed. I think its safe to say %100 of people who played that game grabbed that poison mushroom and died.