Super Mario Advance (book)

Super Mario Advance is a book based on Super Mario Bros. 2 and, as its name implies, Super Mario Advance. As such, it stars Luigi, Mario, Princess Peach, and Toad. It is the first of four Game Boy books and was published in September, 2001. It is an interactive gamebook which allows the reader to make choices that affect the outcome of the story as Mario and his friends battle Wart and his minions to rescue the fairies of Subcon.

The book begins with Mario having a dream about climbing a staircase, until he reaches the top, which has a closed door. Mario opens the door, and he sees the land of Subcon before him. The next day, he goes on a picnic with Toad, Luigi, and Peach, and they all find a door, which leads them to the world of Subcon. However, their guide book, which they randomly find, gets blown away. The heroes, minus Peach, debate over who should retrieve the guide book. The reader must then select a character to do so, starting the adventure.

After selecting a character, the player must flip to many different pages in the book to correspond with the choices at the bottom of each page, until they reach one of the endings.

If the player gets a bad ending, the book will tell the player to flip to another page, where the actual ending is described; Mario, Peach, Toad, or Luigi wake up and wonder what happened. However, something will then happen that will let them start their day, and they will head out of their room, forgetting about Subcon.

The book's good ending involves reaching Wart for the final battle. However, Mario, Toad, and Luigi are easily trapped by Wart's bubbles. While this occurs, Peach manages to retrieve a vegetable from the Nightmare Machine (simply called a vegetable machine), and throws it into Wart's mouth, to which he reacts negatively. She repeats this several more times, dodging Wart's bubbles all the while, and he eventually disappears.