Super Mario Bros. 2

And now both you and Paul mentioned that.

It's kind of cool to know that that was a launch title for it, because that would have been a good way to get people to buy a Game Boy if they liked the Castlevania stuff, since the series has a pretty storied history with Nintendo consoles.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, cool.

I'm not 100% sure when I first became aware of series.

It's kind of one of those cases where it's sort of like with SNK and like, like Terry Bogard, where I've just always kind of known about them, but I couldn't really pinpoint.

where i first learned about it but if i had to guess i would probably assume that i found about castlevania uh back on the day thanks to nintendo power uh when the nintendo 64 days were going on when the when there were the two n64 games that were coming out so i can kind of vaguely remember glancing through articles about the two games uh from different copy or from different like monthly magazines you know just kind of flipping through i was more interested in like the stuff actually coming from nintendo like mario and zelda and that but i do remember seeing pictures of them because when i eventually saw some like gameplay footage um i think it was through the angry video game nerd one of his retrospectives on the series i'm like i recognize this And then I was kind of piecing it together there.

So while it was one of those things, so while I never played any of the games, I did recognize some of the characters and stuff years later.

But, Velvet, you mentioned this on your stream.

and that is that the Nintendo R&D team felt a little annoyed that they kept having to work on like Mario games and they also did Return of Samus and like the spin-offs of the main series they couldn't create characters themselves and so Wario is basically the embodiment of disdain for Mario they like created him for Mario Brothers 2 and I would say in Mario Brothers 2 and Mario in Wario Land Mario's personality is like a little bit uh I would say jerkier like Even in Mario Land 2, in which you play as him, he has a whole island and castle and, like, theme park dedicated to himself.

And, like, he's a bit more of a brash kind of capitalist sort of...

He's like the

Was that the first Nintendo Power Cover?

Super Mario 2.

Super Mario 2.

Okay.

So I think you're right in that this style of development where there's some almost like gate-kept secrets or really progression that you really have to struggle to find, I think was... intended to help sell some Nintendo Power magazines.

We have Super Mario Advance for any...

For anyone not in the know, it's Super Mario Bros. 2 on the NES, now in handheld form.

Wow.

Twisted Metal Black also was released, Bomberman Tournament, and Final Fantasy Chronicles.