Super Mario Advance

This article is about the Game Boy Advance remake of Super Mario Bros. 2. For the Super Mario Advance series as a whole, see Super Mario Advance (series). For the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book based on this game, see Super Mario Advance (book).

"SMA" redirects here. For Super Mario Adventures, the Nintendo Power comic, see Super Mario Adventures.

Template:Infobox Super Mario Advance (Japanese: スーパーマリオアドバンス Sūpā Mario Adobansu) is the port remake of Super Mario Bros. 2 developed by Nintendo Research & Development 2 as a launch title for the handheld Game Boy Advance, released in Japan in March 2001 and in North America and Europe in June of the same year. It is based on the Super Mario All-Stars remaster for the SNES, and also contains a remake of the original Mario Bros. game. Advance includes many new features, gameplay mechanic changes, graphical and audio enhancements, and stylistic and aesthetic alterations from the All-Stars edition, with the most significant changes being the addition of the enemy Robirdo, a robotic Birdo, replacing Mouser as the boss of World 3; the addition of the "Yoshi Challenge", in which players may revisit stages to search for Yoshi Eggs; a new point-scoring system; multiple hit combos; enlarged sprites; and digital voice acting.

The game was re-released on the Wii U's Virtual Console in Japan on July 16, 2014, in North America on November 6 of the same year, and in Europe and Australia in March 2016.

List of changes

Changes to Super Mario Bros. 2 from the original

Gameplay changes

• Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Toad now start the game and each life in their Small forms with only one hit point of the current maximum remaining, and their Small forms persist between levels (as in the other 2D Mario platformers), whereas in the original and All-Stars remaster, they always start each life and level in their Super forms with full health regardless of whether they were in their Small or Super forms upon completion of the previous level. An extra Mushroom was added to each level, raising the maximum hit points per level to five.
  • A "Try Again" feature was added to the Pause Screen that allows the player to restart levels from the beginning in Small form.
• The boss order is slightly altered: a new enemy named Robirdo, a robotic Birdo, acts as the new boss of World 3; and the second Mouser is moved to World 6, where he replaces Tryclyde.
• The controls are slightly different:
  • can be used as an additional run button.
  • and can be used to pan the camera vertically and horizontally, respectively, though the latter button can only be used in vertical sections.
• In horizontal sections, the camera is usually panned ahead of the playable character, rather than centered.
• After the game is beaten, a "Yoshi Challenge" mode is added; the player may revisit the levels to search for two Yoshi Eggs per stage, hidden in Subspace where they replace two of the Mushrooms, and is allowed to select any level to play regardless of whether or not they played them before beating the final boss.
• An all-new scoring system is introduced, similar to that used in the BS Super Mario USA Power Challenge; players get more points for making one thrown object hit lots of enemies, and are awarded an extra life if they hit enough foes.
• This game features "giant" variants of vegetables, enemies, and POW Blocks, with enlarged sprites and larger areas of reach. The giant POW Blocks bounce around and shake enemies off the screen four times as opposed to just once.
  • Red Shells are enlarged as well, and are now capable of bouncing off walls and hurting the player.
• Hearts (here resized) appear much more frequently than in the original; they appear when two or more objects are involved in a collision, when giant enemies are thrown to the ground or beaten, when Red Shells defeat enemies, simply floating in midair (mainly in boss rooms), and as special radishes that can be pulled up from the ground.
• Two new items are introduced in Advance: the Roulette, which gives the player either a heart, a bomb, or a Super Star after being thrown; and the "Spark Chaser," located inside vases, which clears Sparks on the walls, ground, and ceiling.
• Five red Ace Coins are added to each level, which reward an extra life if all are collected in a single play.
• The level intro screen is now preceded by a level chart (like that of Super Mario Bros. Deluxe's Challenge Mode) which shows what levels the player has cleared; when all five Ace Coins have been collected in a certain level, a star is added to the corresponding panel.
• Enemies do not respawn unless the player leaves and reenters the area.
• Large carrots are added to the first and third levels, which spring from under hills to catapult the player to higher places.
• The ribbons of red and green Birdos are removable.
• Players can now bet more than one coin per spin in the Bonus Chance game to earn more extra lives (the coin amount used times the normal amount of lives gained). Lining up three "7" symbols now gives five extra lives, rather than ten.

Level design changes

• Nearly all levels have extra items and enemies added to them, and some (mainly World 1-1) also undergo minor design alterations.
• The placement of certain 1-Up Mushrooms is changed, and there are also 1-Up Mushrooms sitting on the surface; these ones are usually contained within bubbles, which the player can pop with three hits.
• Some vases incorporate Ferris wheel platforms with Shy Guys riding them.

Graphical changes

• The developers reduced the display resolution to fit better on the GBA screen, and brightened most of the original color palettes to combat the handheld's lack of a backlight. In the process, Subspace lost its original dark-blue tint.
• Luigi's overalls were changed to the standard blue, and Toad's vest was recolored purple like in some of his vintage hand-drawn artworks.
• Front- and back-view "door entry" sprites, backflipping sprites for the Power Squat Jump, and skidding sprites were added for the player characters.
• The Super Mario Bros. 2 title screen is removed, and the character select screen is changed to a three-dimensional circular screen similar to that used for the tag barrels in Donkey Kong 64.
  • On the Bonus Chance, Warp, and Game Over screens (which reuse the old title screen's design), the character and item sprites on the bottom are now gold, like the border, and the black background now fades to blue on the bottom.
• The slots on the Bonus Chance screen are now shaded to look more 3D.
• The enemies Pidgit, Hoopster, and Autobomb were recolored purple, yellow, and gray, respectively; and there are no red Beezos, only yellow.
• The original forms of the bosses Fryguy and Clawgrip (respectively, a simple pair of eyes and a normal Sidestepper) are seen before the heroes battle them; four giant bubbles transform them before their fights.
• A "flash" effect appears when the player touches a Spark.
• An enlarged sprite for the Phantos appears in full size when they exit the screen upon the player's throwing the key or losing a life.
• The areas within vases are completely revamped, gaining a new background.

Textual changes

• The character select screen now displays "Choose a Player" instead of "Please Select Player."
• Princess Toadstool is now simply referred to as "Peach" (her original Japanese name and the current universal standard, as introduced in Yoshi's Safari and retained by Super Mario 64 onwards) as opposed to just simply "Princess".
• Toad regains his original Japanese name in that country's version.
• Misspellings and the Ostro/Birdo mix-up are corrected in the international version of the cast list.
• During the ending sequence, where the heroes are standing before the crowd of Subcon people, the character used the most times is declared the "MVP" rather than the "Contributor," and the number of times each character was used does not appear until after Wart passes across the screen.

Audio changes

• The entire soundtrack has its quality downgraded for the GBA's sound chip.
• Digital voice acting is added for the four playable characters, who are given voice samples for such situations as being chosen, picking up items like Mushrooms or Crystal Balls, gaining an extra life, clearing a level, and losing a life; and the bosses, who are given lines of dialogue for when they begin their respective battles and when they are defeated.
• The final levels of Worlds 1 through 5 use the boss theme for the section immediately preceding the battles, and whenever the player enters a boss room, a new track plays, switching to the main boss theme once the battle begins.
• A chime is added to announce Super Stars.
• Vase interiors have new music, instead of the underground theme.
• Phantos now make the same noises as the larger Phanto in the background of the key rooms as they move around.
  • The Mask Gate in World 7-2 also makes this sound as it turns around.
• Tryclyde and Fryguy's "fireball spit" sound and Clawgrip's "rock throw" sound are both changed to Birdo's "egg spit" sound.

Mario Bros. remake

The game features a Mario Bros. remake that carries over into the other Advance games and the RPG Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. The remake features a "Classic Mode" based on the original game's co-op mode, and a "Battle Mode" similar to that used in the All-Stars remake of Super Mario Bros. 3. Changes to the original game come in the form of enhanced graphics, the addition of music where it was originally absent, an extra POW Block in every stage, the addition of the Power Squat Jump, and the replacement of Shellcreepers with Spinies.

Development

Super Mario Advance was developed due to the success of Super Mario Bros. Deluxe for the Game Boy Color in 1999. Despite the use of most graphical and audio assets from the All-Stars remaster, the game was coded from scratch; new sprites and audio cues were created because their existing counterparts were "not good enough". The development team purposefully decided to add "large" versions of enemies and increase the number of enemies on-screen as a means of highlighting the Game Boy Advance's processing power. The Mario Bros. remake was initially a separate project designed to experiment with the Game Boy Advance's link cable feature, but it was eventually decided to include it as an extra.

The main staff for this game includes directors Satoru Iwata and Toshiaki Suzuki, producer Masayuki Uemura, and assistant director Hiroaki Sakagami.

Reception

Super Mario Advance received generally positive reviews, garnering an aggregate score of 84% on Metacritic. When GameSpot reviewed the game, it thought that Super Mario Bros. 3 or Super Mario World would have been a better choice for a launch game considering their respective popularity; both titles were eventually also remade as part of the Super Mario Advance series. Conversely, IGN praised the choice, calling it "one of the most polished and creative platformers of the era".

References to and in other games

For references also present in the original game, see here.

• Mario Bros.: Clawgrip is revealed to be a Sidestepper. A remake of this game is included.
• WarioWare: D.I.Y. Showcase: One of 18-Volt's microgames is directly based on Super Mario Advance.

Pre-release and unused content

Main article: List of Super Mario Advance pre-release and unused content

The game's graphics data contains smaller versions of the slot machine icons and two unused Vegetables, which also went unused in Super Mario All-Stars. A mouse, possibly intended for Mouser's boss intro with a blue Cobrat, possibly intended for Tryclyde's boss intro were also found in the game's data. Also, an early screenshot of the game, shown on a GBA on the cover of Nintendo Power Issue #143, shows one of the two "hills at night" backgrounds brightened like all the others; in the final game, these retain their original color palette.

Glitches

Main article: List of Super Mario Advance glitches

• When playing World 2-2, World 3-1, or World 6-3 as Luigi, the player can pick up a Spark Chaser out of its vase, hitting a Spark at the top and trying to get to one side or the other in the process; once the player leaves the vase, the Spark Chaser becomes a Yoshi Egg, with no change in behavior.
• In World 2-3, if the player does a Power Squat Jump to the ceiling in the digging area with the Key in hand, their character can get stuck in the wall.
• In Fryguy's boss fight area, if the player slides underneath one of the Flying Mushroom Blocks and releases the down button the character's body will be stuck inside the block; the player can get out of it by sliding again.
• In World 5-1, if the player jumps on the rightmost log, jumps on top of the wall to the right, picks up the first mushroom block and throws it right before landing, the block will float in mid-air.
• In World 6-1, if the player navigates the Pokey off of the ledge, it will float in mid air, with no change in behavior. The player can navigate the Pokey back onto the ledge.

Gallery

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  Artwork of Mario as seen on the box

• Prima Guide-SMA.jpg

  Prima Games official guide

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  International logo

• 

  Chinese logo

• Box JP - Super Mario Advance.png

  Japanese game cover

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  Player's Choice

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  The title screen for the Mario Bros. remake, featuring Mario and Luigi with the enemies they encounter in-game.

Media

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