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Did You Know?
North America's second Super Mario Bros. was practically an exact replica of another game...
North America's second Mario platformer for the NES, known to most people as the black sheep of the series, was actually developed as a replica of an older Japanese game called Doki Doki Panic. Here's the full story...
In 1986, Nintendo released a sequel to the original Super Mario Bros. game in Japan. The sequel, shockingly named Super Mario Bros. 2, presented but minor changes to its predecessor, at least as far as the visuals were concerned. The real difference was in the level design, as well as the difficulty. In fact, the game was so hard to beat that Nintendo deemed it too difficult for the North American market and decided to set out and create a Mario game that would be more mellow for the west.
Nintendo needn't look too far to create this new Mario game. In 1987, a game by Fuji TV and Nintendo called Doki Doki Panic was released in Japan. The game featured four playable characters, an alledged family, each with their own special attributes. The father was the strongest of the bunch, the mother had a special, floaty type of jump, the brother had the average attributes, and the sister could float in the air for a second or two. Sound familiar?
 Nintendo took Doki Doki Panic, made some minor changes (none of which affected the gameplay), and dubbed it Super Mario Bros. 2, to be released in North America in 1988. Basically, the family of characters in Doki Doki Panic were changed to characters from the Mario universe. The father became Toad, the mother became Luigi (how fitting), the brother became Mario, and the sister was turned into Princess Toadstool, now known better as Princess Peach. Classic Mario enemies who were born in Super Mario Bros. 2, such as ShyGuy and Birdo, were actually enemies in Doki Doki Panic, made famous thanks to the Mario brand.
A few years later, in 1992, Japan got the North American version of Super Mario Bros. 2 in the form of Super Mario USA. As for North America, the original, difficult sequel to Super Mario Bros. was released as The Lost Levels, packed-in with Super Mario All-Stars for the SNES in 1993. These so-called Lost Levels also made an appearance in Super Mario Bros. DX for the Game Boy Color in 1999.
Below are screenshots and sprites straight from Doki Doki Panic.
Media
Doki Doki Panic Character Sprites
DDP Title Screen
DDP Intro: kids reading a book
DDP Intro: monster grabs kids into the book
DDP Intro: kids call for help, monkey looks for help
DDP Intro: family comes to the rescue
DDP: Select your character and level!
DDP: Gameplay
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