The overall decision as to which Famicom titles to bring to America fell to Minoru Arakawa, president of Nintendo of America. He relied partially on the opinion of Howard Phillips, who played the new batches of games coming from Japan to be able to advise which would be good to localize.

In the summer of 1986, Howard’s new batch included the sequel to Super Mario Bros. In his own words:

I was immediately killed by a mushroom that, unlike the mushrooms in Super Mario Bros., was now poisonous. Chagrined but undaunted, I continued playing only to be taken by a strong, unpredictable wind and tossed into a chasm. Soon after, I succumbed to the jaws of a red piranha plant that uncharacteristically rose from a pipe that I was already standing on—a platform that in Super Mario Bros. had always been safe.

He found it had “punishment” rather than “fun gameplay”.

Howard “lobbied hard” against the game; there are no public documents showing he was the tipping point, but there’s no reason to doubt he had influence. The other problem, other than difficulty, was the “visual resemblance” to the previous game; it did nothing to show advances past what was a launch title for the US.

Howard was busy besides pushing for a quick stateside localization of another release, for a game he already played earlier that same year: The Legend of Zelda.

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Altice, N. (2015) I Am Error: The Nintendo Family Computer / Entertainment System Platform. MIT Press.

Irwin, J. (2014) Super Mario Bros 2. Boss Fight Books.