Super Mario Bros. 2 from Yume Kōjō Doki Doki Panic (both games compared)

IGN's history says Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Toad were built on the models of Doki Doki Panic's Brother, Mama, Sister, and Papa. The two manuals describe the four in parallel terms: Mario and Imajin jump lower with an item; Luigi and Mama jump high and far but slowly; Toad and Papa jump lowest, but an item changes neither their jump nor their running speed; and the Princess and Lina, third in jumping power, float for about 1.5 seconds while A is held. The manuals disagree on the highest jump: Doki Doki Panic's gives it to Imajin (いちばん高く), with Mama as high, where Super Mario Bros. 2's calls Mario average and gives it to Luigi. super-mario-bros-2-ddp/characters

IGN gives family roles, not names: pairing Mario with Imajin and the Princess with Lina rests on its "Brother" and "Sister" and on the manuals' matching descriptions. The stats table (stats-table) matches each SMB2 character's block to one on the Doki disk. The five Doki manual quotes were checked in the audit (2026-10-26) against an OCR of the page image, PDF p. 14 (printed p. 14).

Cited by: Super Mario Bros. 2

Doki Doki Panic's disk holds Super Mario Bros. 2's character stats table, 92 bytes in the same layout. Mario's, Toad's, and the Princess's 23 bytes each equal the first, second, and fourth blocks on the disk. Luigi's block, the third, differs only in its six take-off speeds, each $02 lower in SMB2, so read as SMB2 reads them, Luigi leaves the ground 0.125 px/frame faster than the disk's block would. The four offsets before the table hold the same values, with the last two swapped. super-mario-bros-2-ddp/stats-table

About: Super Mario Bros. 2 Jump

{
 "equalBlocks": 3,
 "changedBytes": 6,
 "step": 2
}

Which of Doki Doki Panic's characters each block belongs to comes from the manuals (characters), not from Doki's code: the fourth block holds the only floating time, $3C, and the third the low gravities of Luigi's (Mama's slow jump).

Cited by: Super Mario Bros. 2

Super Mario Bros. 2's manual gives B a third use, running faster, and its code raises the top speed by half while B is held (smb2/run-cap). Doki Doki Panic's manual gives B only lifting and throwing. Both manuals say every character runs at the same speed. super-mario-bros-2-ddp/run-button

About: Super Mario Bros. 2 Running

SMB2's B test, BIT Player1JoypadHeld and BVC (bytes 24 F7 50), occurs nowhere on either Doki disk, but Doki's code could test B another way, so the disk alone doesn't show the button is absent. Both disks hold the run speeds themselves unchanged (stats-table). The "same speed" both manuals give is the top speed without B, $18 for all four.

Cited by: Super Mario Bros. 2

Both games have the charged crouch jump. Doki Doki Panic's manual says the character flashes while Down is held and then jumps about 1.5 times as high as a standing jump, and Super Mario Bros. 2's manual says the same of its power squat jump. SMB2's code charges it after 60 frames of crouching on the ground (smb2/jump-start). super-mario-bros-2-ddp/crouch-jump

About: Super Mario Bros. 2 Jump

The disk's stats table holds the same charged take-off speeds for three of the four characters (stats-table); Luigi's charged speed is one of the six that changed.

Cited by: Super Mario Bros. 2

Both games start the life meter at two marks and let it grow to four. Doki Doki Panic's manual says so, as does Super Mario Bros. 2's, whose code sets health from a table of three values, two to four marks, by the number of extra marks found, and sets two marks again when a level ends, on a game over, and on a warp. super-mario-bros-2-ddp/life-meter

About: Super Mario Bros. 2 Hit points

Cited by: Super Mario Bros. 2

Super Mario Bros. 2 shrinks a character whose life meter is down to one mark. Chris Kohler's report on Kensuke Tanabe's talk says it was added because growing and shrinking was one of Mario's best-known traits. SMB2's cartridge keeps a full-size and a small tile bank for each character; Doki Doki Panic's disk has one tile file for each of its four, IMAJIN-C, LINA-C, MAMA-C, and PAPA-C, of 832 bytes. super-mario-bros-2-ddp/shrinking

About: Super Mario Bros. 2 Hit points

The files' tiles: of their 199 non-blank tiles, 2 (both in IMAJIN-C) appear anywhere in SMB2's CHR ROM. Tanabe also said the small characters' heads were drawn bigger so they couldn't slip through gaps (ars-technica-kohler-2011-smb2).

Cited by: Super Mario Bros. 2

Doki Doki Panic's manual says the two children are saved only if the whole family beats Mamu, so each of the four must clear the last page. In Super Mario Bros. 2 the last level leads to the ending whichever character clears it; the end of each level adds one to the character's count of levels cleared, which the ending shows. super-mario-bros-2-ddp/completion

Cited by: Super Mario Bros. 2

Super Mario Bros. 2's magic potion is Doki Doki Panic's magic lamp: in both manuals, the item thrown makes a door appear, and Up at the door enters the other side, Subspace in SMB2. SMB2's code turns a thrown potion into a door where it lands, except in a vertical area, where it puffs away. super-mario-bros-2-ddp/lamp-potion

Cited by: Super Mario Bros. 2

Both games turn the grass on the other side into money for only two visits an area: medals in Doki Doki Panic's manual, coins in Super Mario Bros. 2's. SMB2's code counts a Subspace visit that pulled at least one coin, and after two, grass in Subspace gives small vegetables. super-mario-bros-2-ddp/subspace-coins

Cited by: Super Mario Bros. 2

Super Mario Bros. 2's code puts a mushroom in Subspace that adds a mark to the life meter and refills it, where Doki Doki Panic's manual describes a heart. SMB2's manual names the mushroom in its item list, but its Subspace paragraph still calls it a heart that increases the life meter. super-mario-bros-2-ddp/subspace-heart

About: Super Mario Bros. 2 Health upgrade

Cited by: Super Mario Bros. 2

Both games end a level with a Bonus Chance, and Doki Doki Panic's disk holds Super Mario Bros. 2's 24 bytes of slot-machine reels with two exceptions. Where SMB2's first reel has a turnip (its second symbol) and a Snifit (its fifth), the disk has $00, the value SMB2's code reads as a cherry, so that reel holds three of SMB2's cherry values on the disk and one in SMB2. A cherry on the first reel wins a life. super-mario-bros-2-ddp/bonus-chance

About: Super Mario Bros. 2 Bonus stage

{
 "equal": 22,
 "bytes": 24
}

How Doki Doki Panic's code reads its reels is unread, so the disk's three $00 bytes are cherries only if it reads them as SMB2 does. The SMB2 manual mentions the Bonus Chance too (super-mario-bros-2-manual-us, "A Bonus Chance at the end of an Area").

Cited by: Super Mario Bros. 2

Both games have 20 levels in seven parts: Doki Doki Panic's manual calls them pages in seven chapters, and Super Mario Bros. 2's calls them areas in seven worlds. SMB2's table of each world's first level, three levels a world and two in the last, is on Doki Doki Panic's disk byte for byte. super-mario-bros-2-ddp/worlds

Cited by: Super Mario Bros. 2

Doki Doki Panic's final boss, Mamu, is Super Mario Bros. 2's Wart; each manual names its own. Kensuke Tanabe's team added enemy characters and visual nods to the Mario games for the American release, Chris Kohler reported. super-mario-bros-2-ddp/boss

Cited by: Super Mario Bros. 2

Most of Super Mario Bros. 2's enemy tiles occur on Doki Doki Panic's disk: 234 of the 244 non-blank tiles in its four banks of world enemies occur in the disk's tile files, byte for byte, and 80 of the 122 in its two banks of common enemies. Of the 199 non-blank tiles in Doki's four character files, 2 occur in SMB2's CHR ROM. Tiles are counted as often as they occur. super-mario-bros-2-ddp/enemy-tiles

{
 "worldEnemies": {
  "found": 234,
  "tiles": 244
 },
 "commonEnemies": {
  "found": 80,
  "tiles": 122
 },
 "characters": {
  "found": 2,
  "tiles": 199
 }
}

Cited by: Super Mario Bros. 2

Super Mario Bros. 2's song data shares no run of more than 5 bytes with either Doki Doki Panic disk: that is the longest run found for the twelve data regions of the ROM map's music part (the songs, their pointers and headers, and the level music indexes). The sound engine's six regions share none of more than 17 bytes and the sound effects' three none of more than 14, while the two routines that pick an area's music share a run of 24 bytes. Tanabe's team greatly enhanced the sound effects, Chris Kohler reported. super-mario-bros-2-ddp/music

{
 "songs": 5,
 "songRegions": 12,
 "musicCode": 24,
 "engine": 17,
 "sfx": 14,
 "otherRegions": 236,
 "otherShared": 68
}

The probe finds, for each region cited, the longest run of its bytes anywhere on either disk image; for contrast, 68 of the cartridge's 236 regions outside the audio, tile, free, and unused parts share a run of 50 bytes or more. Short runs of 5 bytes or so turn up by chance in a disk of 130 KB. Different bytes need not mean different songs: the same tunes could be encoded anew, and whether the melodies match is unread.

Cited by: Super Mario Bros. 2

Super Mario Bros. 2's cartridge keeps Doki Doki Panic data that it never shows. The 24 bytes the disassembly calls MysteryData14439, copied to RAM and unused, are on Doki's disk unchanged, and so are the 32 bytes of sprite entries it labels as the heads of Imajin, Lina, Mama, and Papa. After the heads, SMB2 has a PPU write of 20 blank tiles ($FB) at $20C6, which the disassembly labels BonusChanceUnused_BONUS_CHANCE; the disk's write at the same place holds text (bonus-chance-text). super-mario-bros-2-ddp/leftover-data

What Doki Doki Panic's own code does with these bytes is unread.

Cited by: Super Mario Bros. 2

Where Super Mario Bros. 2 writes 20 blank tiles at $20C6, Doki Doki Panic's disk writes 20 tiles that, decoded through SMB2's own letter codes, read "--- BONUS CHANCE ---", the text the disassembly's comment guessed from the write's place and length. This is a decode, not a byte match: the letters are SMB2's codes from its "NO BONUS", "PUSH (A) BUTTON", and title-card text, and how Doki Doki Panic draws its own text is unread. super-mario-bros-2-ddp/bonus-chance-text

Every code but one is in SMB2's text: C, $DC, is inferred, as the code between B ($DB) and D ($DD). The leading and trailing $F3 are read as dashes from WORLD 1-1.

Cited by: Super Mario Bros. 2

Super Mario Bros. 2's ending still writes $80 to $4080, a sound register of the Famicom Disk System, which a cartridge game has no use for; the disassembly marks it as a leftover. super-mario-bros-2-ddp/fds-leftover

Cited by: Super Mario Bros. 2