Super Mario
Super Mario Bros. fra i 1985 var en overvældende succes. I 1986 udgav Nintendo et nyt Super Mario Bros. spil i Japan. Spillet var grundlæggende en lidt anderledes version af det originale spil. Bare med mere udfordrende baner.
Ledelsen af den amerikanske afdeling hos Nintendo mente ikke, at spillet ville appellere til et vestligt publikum. De bad derfor om et spil med et koncept, der bedre kunne sælges i USA. Nintendo satte deres spiludvikler Kensuke Tanabe på opgaven. Tanabe arbejdede på en prototype til et nyt platformspil kaldet Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic. For at spare tid og penge på produktionen af spillet blev karaktererne fra Super Mario Bros.-universet implementeret henover designet på hovedkaraktererne fra Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic.
Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic blev udgivet i Japan i 1987. Derfor er elementer af det vestlige Super Mario Bros. 2 levn fra de originale designs fra Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic. For eksempel foregår Super Mario Bros. 2 ikke i Mushroom Kingdom, men i drømmeverdenen Subcon. Hovedskurken er desuden ikke den ellers velkendte fjende, Bowser, men en ond frø kaldet Wart.
With the overwhelming success of Super Mario Bros. in 1985, fans of the game pleaded with Nintendo for a sequel. In 1986, Nintendo released a new Super Mario Bros. game in Japan that was basically a minor variation of the original game, but with harder levels.
Executives at Nintendo of America felt that the game would not appeal to Western audiences and requested a whole new concept. Nintendo turned to their designer Kensuke Tanabe for help. He had been working on a prototype for a new platform game that could be adapted into a Super Mario Bros. adventure.
The game was called Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic, which was released in Japan in 1987. To save time and money on the game’s production, characters from the Super Mario Bros. universe were superimposed over the main figures from Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic. In addition, Super Mario Bros. 2 is not set in the Mushroom Kingdom, but in the dreamworld of Subcon.
The main villain is not the well-known baddie Bowser, but an evil frog named Wart. These irregular elements of the game were survivals from the original designs included in Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic.