You know, thinking about Super Mario Bros. 2, specifically the US release, and how it was so different from the first game... part of me wonders if that helped the series overall. Hell, perhaps the gaming industry as a whole?

What do you guys think would have happened if what is now commonly known as "Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels" came out in the US as "Super Mario Bros. 2"? How would the US audience react to a game that was so similar only a year later? Especially after just coming out of an era where clones of other games dominated the market and killed mainstream popularity of video games.
Would the Mario series be as big as it is today? Would there even be a Super Mario Bros. 3 or any other Mario games afterwards? Would Nintendo have been as successful? Would the Super Nintendo have ever seen the light of day?

It's impossible to know for sure, but... to me, I feel like the US version of Super Mario Bros. 2 was just as instrumental in re-gaining the trust of consumers of video games just as much as the first game was.
What is everybody's opinion on this?

I'd bet the Mario universe would be largely the same, but without Birdo. So yeah, the world would have been a better place.

Mario 2 would've probably turned off a portion of the fans from the first game due to its much higher difficulty. Which, not coincidentally, is a large part of the reason that Nintendo chose not to release it here. The theory that it would've felt like too much of a clone is also reasonable, when it was basically just a "master levels" expansion with a few small tweaks.

I don't know if I can reasonably try to assume what would've happened in this alternate reality, but my wild guess is that Mario 3 and the rest of the Mario series still probably would've happened, but SMB3 might not have seen as much widespread success as it did, since the more casual players were previously driven away. Those people would still eventually come back for World, I'd guess.

This largely feels like what might have happened.

I think the real loss though would have not been the casual player since games were hard across the board back then, but the image of the Mario series as being "innovative" which helped cement it as a premier franchise for decades.

That is also why people have such a dissappointed attitude towards the New Super Series since until then (in America) the Mario games usually trotted out big new mechanical ideas with each major release.

But Birdo is awesome. So, like you're wrong man.

Lost Levels might not have been well received, reviewers might have given a "More of the same" verdict. I don't really like Lost Levels because it's basically just a ROM hack of Super Mario Bros. anyway. But SMB2 is something special.

#teamprincess

I don't want to live in a world where Peach can't float.