The Legacy of Doki Doki Panic

My mind has been on Doki Doki Panic for some reason lately.

italy meets arabia... by way of brooklyn and japan?

I love the idea of a technically non-Mario game being retroactively steamrolled into the series. Of course, many of us have heard that Shigeru Miyamoto was more heavily involved with Doki Doki Panic than he was in the Japanese sequel to Super Mario Bros., so there's always the theory that what was eventually absorbed into the Marioverse was always supposed to be there. After all, that's Miyamoto's name in the end credits. And those tossable Koopa Shells and POW Boxes weren't in Doki Doki Panic by coincidence.

as in the same "miyahon" who shows up the legend of zelda credits

Anyway, even though Doki's heroes Imajin, Lina, Mama and Papa are no longer among Nintendo's brightest — proving that the family that adventures together does not, apparently, stay together — I thought I'd take a look at what the Mario series took away from its turnip-plucking, Shyguy-chucking black sheep.

Shyguys

And since I kind of broke the ice with the mention of Shyguys, why not start with them? These masked baddies — anonymously evil Subcon equivalents of Goombas and members of the mysterious Eight Bits Club — are Mario staples now. They didn't initially get "mainstay" status until they re-appeared en masse in Yoshi's Island and Super Mario RPG. They may be the most famous Mario baddie to not yet show up as a playable character in a Paper Mario title, but they've been causing mischief for Mushroom Kingdom inhabitants ever since.

Bob-Ombs

Arguably the most famous of the Doki Doki Panic originals, the Bob-Omb was the only Super Mario Bros. 2 baddie to appear again in Super Mario Bros. 3. Generally not much for conversation — excepting the pink and boss varieties — let's not forget that the most basic unit of Marioverse explosive artillery blew up in the face of Imajin and company before it ever did in Mario's.

Pokeys

Pokey's fame has been long-lived as well. Though perhaps he's changed the most from his original incarnation — the green, wobbly, ambling plant monster of the old days versus the towering, yellow, stationary flower-topped obstacles of recent Mario Kart days — Pokey has reminds us that ripping somebody's head off will only make another one develop in their torso. Freaky. Since Doki Doki Panic/Super Mario Bros. 2, Pokey took a break from Super Mario Bros. 3 before returning in Super Mario World. He hasn't stopped making a pain of himself yet.

Birdo

Ol' Bazooka Beak needs no real introduction; she's the one Doki Doki original who's become a full-on character sure to star in whatever spin-off adventure Mario and his friends take on. Debate about her gender identity aside, Birdo — then known as "Catherine" or "Cassie," depending on who you ask — was firing eggs in Imajin's face long, long before many of the other current Mario stars even existed.

Wart

mario version on left, zelda version on right

As I've noted before on this blog, Wart has the unusual distinction of having been only technically been the boss of one game, Doki Doki Panic, but by virtue of that game having been remade three times — as Super Mario Bros. 2, as the Super Mario All-Stars version of Super Mario Bros. 2, and Super Mario Advance — he's gotten four times the exposure. Rather than being a mere footnote in gaming history, most people with an awareness of anything Mario know Wart. Even more oddly, Wart should be familiar to those with an awareness of anything Zelda as well. Wart appeared in The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening as "Mamu," his Japanese name. He was considerably more benevolent in his Zelda reincarnation. Maybe back-to-back whompings by Imajin and Mario reformed him.

Lina and the Feminine Glide

I know, I know. "Who the hell is Lina?" Imajin's sister might seem as obscure as anybody else from Doki Doki Panic, but I'd wager that Lina's spirit lingers on while the rest of her family has all but vanished. Everyone knows how the cast of Doki Doki Panic corresponds to that of Super Mario Bros. 2: Imajin and Mario are the well-rounded ones, Mama and Luigi are the high-jumpers, Papa and Toad are the strong-but-slow ones, and Lina and Peach can hover in midair, allowing them to easily cross over gaps and enemies. But Luigi's jumping prowess was nothing new — the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2, which came out well before the American sequel, already had Luigi jumping higher than the less squirrelly Mario. And while Toad might have established his disproportionate upper arm strength in the American Super Mario Bros. 2, no one would know today, as Nintendo hasn't hardly given him a chance to lift anything since. (Wario's Woods comes to mind, but even that game came out in 1994.)

pink hero, pink room

pink hero, pink sky

No, while the other Super Mario Bros. 2 heroes either had their characteristics set in stone or fade into obscurity, Peach — who had never previously done anything besides sit motionless in Bowser's Castle — stole Lina's moves and has been passing them off as her own ever since. Peach showed off her now trademark hover-and-glide in Super Princess Peach, Super Paper Mario, Super Smash Bros. Melee, and even Yoshi's Island DS, if sometimes with the aid of a parasol. I'd wager that because this ability debuted specifically in Doki Doki Panic and is still alive and well in Mario games today, Lina found away to linger on when the rest of her family didn't.

Shame on you, Peach, passing your lady glide off as your own.

And the rest!

Okay, so Snifits, Ninjs, Pidgits and Beezos haven't gained the level of fame that other Doki Doki Panic originals have, but Nintendo hasn't let these guys out in the cold. Snifits, of course, held a prominent role in Super Mario RPG as Booster's right-hand men. Ninjis, while prominent and plentiful in Doki Doki Panic, have only made the rarest of appearances since their days in Super Mario Bros. 2: hopping madly in Bowser's Castle at the end of Super Mario World and peacefully residing in Starborn Valley in Paper Mario. The magic carpet-flying Pidgits have slowly began to populate the Marioverse in high levels: after obscurity like Wario's Woods and the post-Special World Super Mario World, strangely replacing Bullet Bills, Pidgits can now be seen even in games like Super Smash Bros. Melee. Finally, the Beezos: Perhaps the least-known of the long-lived Doki Doki Panic baddies, Beezos have appeared twice again, to my knowledge — in Super Mario RPG, though called the Shy Away, and in Luigi's Mansion, as the Super Mario Wiki points out, as referenced by the fork-toting Shy Guy ghosts.

Yes, they're not the most famous among the Marioverse grunts, but they're certainly a step ahead of the likes of Porcupo, Panser, Ostro and Autobomb, none of whom have seen the light of day outside of a Super Mario Bros. 2 remake.

Beyond Familiar Faces

While enemies may be the a more recognizable video game aspect to carry on from one title to the next — they are, after all, the things who are trying to kill you — there's a few more aspects of Doki Doki Panic that preceded implementation into later Mario games. Back-tracking, and vertical scrolling, for example. And whereas Super Mario Bros. and its Japanese sequel both concluded each set of levels with a Bowser clone who guarded the bridge key a little differently, Doki Doki Panic offered more variation: the bomb-tossing Mouser, the three-headed fire snake Triclyde, and to a smaller degree, Birdo and the possessed mask gate before Wart's room. (The third Mouser in Doki Doki Panic's fifth world has switched out for an original creation, Clawgrip the crab, for the American remake, making Clawgrip the first Mario character ever created specifically for American gamers.)

Then there's the fact that Imajin's life depended on the status of his health meter, a feature which Mario games aside from Super Mario Bros. 2 altogether shunned until Super Mario 64. Doki Doki Panic didn't invent the notion of a health meter, of course, but it's interesting to note the concept eventually replaced the power-up system that the original Super Mario Bros. was so famous for.

Another biggie that soon became a staple of platformer video games, Mario-affiliated or not: ice and desert levels, or as some call them, "Slide Into a Hole and Die Land" and "Stand Too Long in One Place and Die Land." While the original Super Mario Bros. had level variation as far above ground-underground-water-lifts-dungeon, Doki Doki Panic smartly offered levels the terrain of which affected how you played. Super Mario Bros. 3 quickly followed suit, and I can remember there being a time when platformers ruled the video game world and you couldn't find a sidescroller that didn't force you through the prerequisite desert and ice stages. Mario's world is no different today, and such stages are still par for the course.

The Subspace Emissary

Of course, I couldn't end this post without noting my suspicions that Smash Bros. Brawl's The Subspace Emissary simply must have something to do with Super Mario Bros. 2/Doki Doki Panic. The above excerpt from the Super Mario Bros. 2 instruction manual notes that the weird alternate realities that Mario and crew — or, I suppose, Imajin and crew — can slip into are known as "Sub-Space." (And which brings up an odd point. Since the setting of Super Mario Bros. 2 is Subcon, the land of dreams, are the strange nighttime universes within Subcon therefore a dream-within-a-dream?) Could the hyphen-less Subspace in Brawl be one and the same? I sure hope there's some connection. After all, with all the Nintendo nostalgia coming in to life in Brawl, I'd hope there might be some room for Doki Doki Panic to squeak in and remind people that it did, after all exist.

That's what I have to say about Doki Doki Panic. I really enjoy this strange, complicated footnote in Nintendo and Mario history. Whenever someone posits that The Lost Levels is a "truer" bridge between Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3, I like to recall just how much Doki Doki Panic gave the series at large. And what, then, did The Lost Levels give us in the long run? Wind and poisonous mushrooms. Oh, and stress headaches. Whee.

Bonus Doki-abilia: the original Japanese commercial for the game that gave us all this wonderful stuff.

And in case you've ever wondered what the original looked like in motion, check out this speedrun.