Nintendo has revealed the two NES titles coming to Nintendo Switch Online this month, adding to their library of classics accessible from the Switch app. This month, players can download Super Mario Bros. 2 and Kirby’s Adventure, two major games for some of Nintendo’s most iconic series starting on February 13.
For the second month in a row, Japan is getting three games while other regions only get two, with Japan also getting a sumo title. For the first few months of the service, Nintendo had put out three games a month, but seems to be in a pattern of only doing so for the Japanese region at this point. It hearkens back to Nintendo’s regional releases for the Wii Virtual Console where Japan would get a number of releases that either came months later or not at all to America.
Super Mario Bros. 2 was originally a licensed platformer named Doki Doki Panic. Fearing that the real Super Mario Bros. 2 was too hard for American fans, Nintendo reshaped Doki Doki Panic into a Mario sequel, making for an extremely strange sequel. To avoid confusion, fans either call this release Super Mario USA or refer to the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 as Lost Levels, based on its name from Super Mario All-Stars.
Kirby’s Adventure is commonly considered the game that really launched the series. It gave the (now) pink puffball an enemy absorption mechanic that defined most of his games from then on out. The story has Kirby trying to retrieve pieces of the Dream Rod broken up by King DeDeDe and might be one of the first games I can recall with a twist ending.
Both games will be available on February 13 as part of the Switch paid online service.