Later this week, VIZ Media will be reissuing the "Super Mario Adventures" comics collected from Nintendo Power in the early '90s. It'll be exciting to have a complete collection without having to track down each issue. It wasn't the only Mario comic series out there, however.

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From 1989 to 1998, Kodansha Media published weekly comics in Japan based on the current Mario game of time. Even games not in the main Mario seires, like Wario's Woods - which didn't have Mario at all - had stories about them. Starting with Super Mario Land and ending with Yoshi's Story, Bon Bon Magazine featured the adventures of Mario, Luigi, and all the rest. After each story was completed an individual book was published, and by the end there were over 40 volumes printed.

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The comics themselves were cute and funny, and like most manga were also very strange, and sometimes risqué. Some scenes include characters smoking or flirting with each other. They are also filled with obscure in-jokes from other games and pop culture from the time. All in all it was great fun, but it makes you wonder what age the comics were intended fo,r or how Nintendo let some of these things pass, as you'd never see these kinds of scenes in Nintendo Power.

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Today, 10th October, is also the anniversary of the release of Super Mario Bros. 2 in English, which was released in 1988. Of course, it's well known that the game stems from Doki Doki Panic, but it was released also in Japan in 1992 as Super Mario USA. In honour of today's date, let's take a look at the Japanese comic adventure of Super Mario Bros. 2 / USA. If you have Super Mario Adventures on preorder coming this week, its a good warm up for that and an interesting look at yet another Mario adventure left behind in Japan.

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