I Can’t Believe Nintendo Got Away With Such a Dumb Ending 37 Years Ago

by

As a gamer, I can tell you Nintendo is legendary. They’ve been making incredibly fun and creative games for ages, stuff that just feels magical. Usually, we fans happily go along with whatever crazy ideas they come up with. But every now and then, they throw us a real curveball. There was one game in the late 80s that perfectly captures this – it was brilliant, but also totally baffling. It completely flipped the script right at the end, and honestly, I still don’t understand why they did it!

In 1988, Nintendo released Super Mario Bros. 2 in North America, originally known as Super Mario USA in Japan. This sequel was a vibrant and colorful game, but it felt very different from the original Super Mario Bros. It introduced some new and wonderfully creative ideas, though I found the ending to be quite strange.

A Bold Experiment Disguised as a Sequel

The story of how Super Mario Bros. 2 came to be is quite interesting. After the first Super Mario Bros. became a huge hit, Nintendo wanted a quick sequel. They actually did make one in Japan, called Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels, but it was considered too hard and too similar to the original for players in America. So, Nintendo of America took a completely different game – Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic – and cleverly re-skinned it with Mario characters, effectively turning it into the Super Mario Bros. 2 we know today.

The game many kids remember as the follow-up to the original Mario wasn’t initially a Mario game at all. It started as a Japanese game about a family lost in a dream, and was completely reworked with Mario characters, enemies, music, and names to feel like a proper sequel. Despite this unusual beginning, it was a huge success, selling millions of copies and introducing beloved characters like Birdo and Shy Guy. It also showed that the Mario world could handle different kinds of gameplay.

Players were puzzled when the game first came out, despite its popularity. The world felt completely unlike the original game – it didn’t resemble the familiar Mushroom Kingdom at all. Enemies acted strangely, and everything had a surreal, dreamlike atmosphere. These questions lingered with players until they finally reached the ending, which remains surprisingly bold even now.

The Ending That Made Everyone Go “Wait, What?”

After a long journey through strange lands filled with sand, ladders, and floating masks, I finally confronted Wart, the wicked frog king of Subcon. Beating him felt amazing, but then Nintendo revealed it was all a dream—both for me and for Mario. The final scene showed Mario sleeping soundly in bed with a smile. That’s when it dawned on me: everything I’d experienced had been happening inside Mario’s dream.

All the strange events, quirky characters, and exciting moments in Subcon? They weren’t real – Mario had imagined it all. While it didn’t ruin my enjoyment of Super Mario Bros. 2, it was a surprising and unexpected ending from Nintendo. I was genuinely shocked that such a great game would finish with something so silly.

Despite the cliché of it all being a dream – a tired trope in games and other media – Nintendo somehow pulled it off. The game received fantastic reviews and generated a lot of excitement among fans. It’s still hard to believe they went with such a bizarre ending, but it ultimately worked for what became their most important series, likely due to Nintendo’s playful style.

Nintendo’s Strange Genius for Left-Field Storytelling

In retrospect, Nintendo subtly foreshadowed this surprising turn of events. The phrase “Welcome to Subcon, the land of dreams” really should have clued me in, but I missed it as a child. It’s typical for Nintendo games to take storytelling in unexpected directions. One game might have you rescuing Princess Peach, while the next asks you to save a bizarre dream world from an unusual villain. Even now, this playful disregard for traditional logic remains a defining characteristic of Nintendo’s games.

A few years after, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening used a similar storytelling device, also framing its events as a dream. The world of Kirby is almost always set in Dreamland, which makes you wonder if everything that happens in those games is just a dream. The series often takes unexpected turns into complex, even cosmic, storylines, despite its generally cute and cheerful appearance. More recent games sometimes feel surreal, or feature odd surprises, like the twists in The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom.

As a huge Mario fan, I’ll never forget how shocking it was when Super Mario Bros. 2 came out! Nintendo basically threw out everything we knew and started over, telling us none of the previous story mattered. Even now, it feels wild to me! But honestly, despite how strange the whole thing was—and I still think it’s a bit silly—the game itself was fantastic. The gameplay was just as solid as any other Mario game, then and now.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!

Read More

2025-10-26 16:15