The game saves how many times you finished 8-4 and shows that as stars on the title screen; the eight finishes needed to unlock World A do not need to be from the same session. Also, if World A is unlocked and you die in World 9, the continue code will take you to World A, where multiple lives can be held and continues are infinite. FWIW, the worlds beyond 8 cannot be accessed in SMBDX by normal means, even though the level data exists.

Understanding the context of the release of games like this helps one understand how the Japanese gaming culture formed and the mentality behind it. Dying again and again, trying new things, learning everything you can about your favourite game until you know it as well - or better - than the devs did, until you can claim total mastery, that IS the fun part. The reward is the journey, victory is just the icing on the cake. It goes a long way to explaining why genres like early grind heavy RPGs like Dragon Quest, Ys, or Wizardry, and punishing shmups like Gradius or Touhou got SO popular over there, and sheds a lot of light on how someone like Korone can play 12 hours of a game like NES Dragon's Lair with a smile on her face lol

"Having the ability to make Mario stages basically turns you into a jerk." Yep, pretty much, haha. Perfectly describes all of my Mario Maker levels!

For me, the Lost Levels is kind of like "The Stanley Parable" of Mario. I've just recently finished it(after admitedly openly abusing the rewind function) and I was astounded how much enjoyment and connection I've managed to make wtih the game, and especially after going through what seemed like an interactive meta-commentary in every single stage. Playing Lost Levels feels like engaging a really intimate dialogue between the developer and the player, who are both well aware of the design nuances of the first SMB. And then every level becomes a meta commentary subverting or examining core features of the first game. Every stage the developer engages the player by asking: "Ok, but what if SMB did THIS? [presents]", and it becomes a novel thing where you are allowed to see Mario's gameplay features presented and experimented on in a different light: What if we included the water level enemies in the land levels? What if we can make a spring that launches you super super high up? What if we made a level entirely out of those springs? What if we gave you mushrooms that were an obstacle instead of a power up?. But crucially, you also get areas and experiments that give you a lot of clemency, like: "What if we gave you a starman at this particular spot where you need to jump over a bunch of piranha plants?" Every single addition here was an idea extrapolation and an experimentation of SMB1 that is akin to thought experiments and mental gymnastics. Because of this, I've never seen the Lost Levels as cruel or hard, aside from the really unnecessary oversight that there is no way to save progress in the game. There are far crueler games on the NES: The basic Mega Man games will give you tons of unnecessary stress and I'm convinved Zelda II is for utter masochists. To say nothing of Battletoads or Kaizo Mario hacks. Obviously it hinges on the fact that you're familiar with the first SMB1 and that's a great backdrop to have to make an amazing exploratory meta-game of. After all, Nintendo would only do the exact same thing with Mario Maker. There are a couple of instances where the devs "troll" the player, but they are never cruel jokes and are just very light jests. Like yes, there's a part of the game where you come across a sheer wall and don't know how to proceed, but instead of being roadblocked and waiting for nothing but your timer to run out, you just actually need to jump around and uncover some invisible blocks. There might be rows of koopas underneath you, but you already managed to kick a shell on top of a platform and are now savagely knocking a whole line of enemies. There is always some way out. The devs trick you with a poisonous mushroom the first time, but after its initial use in the first couple of levels, I've noticed that they just become quickly forgotten and discarded. It so rarely gets used after World 1 and I swear that over 90% of the mushrooms in the game are normal, legitimate power-ups. As a last point that this isn't a merciless game, just different, I *swear* that world 8 of Lost Levels is far far easier than world 8 of the original SMB. And world 9 is just fantastic. World 9 especially cements that it's a fun meta-commentary on Mario instead of ever aspiring to be a kaizo game. It just isn't.

This game was so much more like a puzzle game than a traditional Mario game, which I think is something important that tends to get lost when people just describe it as “hard.” It’s kind of a road not taken for the Mario series, in which manipulating and exploiting the game’s physics in this super careful way becomes a much more important part of gameplay than just breezily running and jumping through the levels with reckless abandon.

One of my favorite things about it is that you actually bounce up high from enemies. SMB1 small bump is so sad.

That's the best analysis of SMB2 I've ever heard, I'm now understanding that game in a way I've never thought before

The disk does record your wins in the title screen as little stars. When you get 8 stars, you unlock worlds A-D. Great video. I’m proud to say I’m in the World 9 club without save states or trickery.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone analyze the Super Mario 2 phenomenon so thoughtfully and thoroughly.

The convenience store where we got our NES rentals when I was growing up found a way to get its hands on an assortment of Famicom cart (pirate or legit? Who knows?) with adapters, and one of those was this very Super Mario Bros 2. Oh, can you imagine the delight of my friends and I seeing that we had, apparently, this hyped-but-too-hard-to-buy Mario game in our little town? Such delight! And such frustration once we rented it and all of us couldn't even get past the first level. It did not leave a good impression of the game. We weren't generally very good at regular Super Mario Bros. either, but that game was forgiving enough in the first few stages that you could play it and feel that your eventual loss in World 3 or World 4 was fairly earned. I do have to commend the same store for getting their mitts on a Famicom copy of Super Mario Bros. 3, though. Now THAT was a coveted rental, in the months when the NA release was just a blip on the horizon.

So I have a way too long compared to how interesting it actually is story about SMB2J that I'd like to tell anyway: Sometime around...probably 1988 or 1989, 5 or 6 year old me was watching the local news with my dad because that's just something we did together I guess, and a story came on about a Japanese boy in the general area I lived in (which basically meant "anywhere within a 100-mile radius", given how...extremely rural it was) achieving...something academic, I don't quite remember. As part of the story, there was a brief scene of him playing what initially looked like Super Mario Bros. However, being the absolutely Nintendo-obsessed kid that I was, I quickly noticed that something was...different. Specifically, the ground tiles were not the same ground tiles I was used to seeing in SMB, a game I had spent countless hours playing (much to my video-game-hating father's chagrin). Of course, being so young, and it being the late 80s, there was nothing I could do to figure out what I had just seen. So the memory of that 2-3 seconds from a random local news story stuck in my head for years as a mild curiosity. Fast-forward to 2008, when I purchase SMB2J on the Wii Virtual Console and play it for the first time in its original form (having played the All-Stars version years prior). Immediately upon starting the game, I saw it, and all at once the memory came rushing back. The ground tiles were the same ones I had seen in that news story 20 years prior. I suddenly realized that what I had seen that day had been the true Super Mario Bros. 2, something that young me would have absolutely flipped out over had he known it existed. The Japanese boy's parents must have either imported an FDS and SMB2J for him, or he already owned it when he moved to the US, and he just happened to be playing it when he was filmed for the story. Either way, that's the entirely-too-long story of how I was one of what I assume was a very small number of American kids in the 80s who saw any footage at all of SMB2J, even if it would take me a couple decades to realize it.

I think both the Japanese and USA Mario 2 are very much worth adding to your collection. I have no preference on which one is better.

I love how you put things like this in historical context, really fascinating.

I was afraid that this would be another slander of Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels, but understanding this game and giving its release much needed context makes this a more positive take on SMBTLL. I think this game is the most overhated I've ever seen, as if people didn't actually try playing it well or understand it. I mean, this game is for "Super Players". What makes it different from many hardcore NES games or even modern games? Sure, there are a few trollish moments, but I personally find satisfaction from beating tough stages, especially bowser stages that lack a checkpoint, rather that relief. That being said I would recommend Super Mario All-Stars version for it's convinient save system, saving after each level instead of each world like other games in this collection or not saving at all. This turned out to be a great retrospective of the much maligned sequel to the classic. Thanks for your work!

I think the reputation of this game would be pretty different if it had been as ubiquitous as its predecessor was in the west. So many of the tropes and tricks of Super Mario Bros--the hidden power-ups, the warp zones, the 1-up staircase trick--became common knowledge simply because everyone owned the game and played it to death by virtue of it being the pack-in title. There was never a time in my life when I knew about Super Mario Bros but didn't also know about the world 1-2 warp zone, for example, as my first exposure to the game was watching my more experienced uncle demonstrate it to me. So, like many of my peers, I'd always had the luxury of that wide and deep base of community knowledge to draw from to get a leg up on Super Mario Bros, which never really existed in the US for its direct sequel, and which would have benefited from it so much more. Lost Levels cranks up the difficulty slider quite a bit, but it also throws several bones to the player that I don't think are appreciated by those who never had the patience to really break the game down. Plenty of power-ups do exist, but they're often hidden; even world 8-4 of this game provides two mushrooms/flowers for the player, which is a huge concession that the first game's final stage certainly didn't offer. Like you noted, the infinite 1-up trick is intentional this time around and even shows up exactly one screen length into the first stage, but even beyond that, this also happens to be the first game in the franchise where you can earn a free 1-up at every single flagpole through some "magic number" trickery with the timer + coin counter. The designers did give the players lots of tools; you just really have to work for them this time around. That isn't to say that the game didn't earn its difficult reputation (it's explicitly marketed "for Super Players" after all), but it doesn't even strike me as an outlier among the broader NES line-up when it comes to challenge level. There are plenty of other officially licensed games in the US that played sloppier than this and didn't even have the decency to offer infinite continues to make up for it. Some time ago I came to the same conclusion that you did: the timeline just never made sense for a US release. In Japan, this game was created at least partially to give the FDS some more marquee software to push the add-on's sales, and the original SMB had had enough time on store shelves at that point to be properly digested by the Japanese audience. Neither of those aspects were factors in the US, and by the time people were ready for a sequel, SMB2 arguably looked and felt dated next to much of the high water marks of the 1987-88 NES lineup. This happens to be my favorite platformer of all time, and I'm something of an apologist for the game. I think there's a healthy debate to be had as to whether or not it would have been an appropriate release for the late '80s, but I think its existence is absolutely justified over 30 years later. In a world where the pantheon of mainline Mario games spans dozens of titles designed for players of all stripes, it's nice to have that one release that cuts out all of the training wheels and unapologetically caters to the veterans. And I like how it's often been paired with SMB1 as a bonus game when it has been rereleased. It's a way meatier "hard mode" for SMB1 than the original SMB1's hard mode is, at least. Finally, I have *never* understood why so many people try to draw connections between Lost Levels and kaizo hacks. The Lost Levels might be challenging, but it's still structured like a normal, singular quest, with peaks and valleys of difficulty, a give and take between stress and relief, and some actual consideration for the lives / game over concept. Kaizo hacks are an exercise in maximal frustration and zero relief, often requiring an extremely esoteric and encyclopedic knowledge of game mechanic minutia and tempered only by the existence of save states. That whole design paradigm feels bewilderingly different to me, and I sometimes wonder if people who insist on that connection have really played either style of game much at all. The Lost Levels is absolutely not an IWBTG style savestate platformer. 4:28 There is no headwind in this game. Wind always pushes Mario from left to right. 13:12 This is only true of world 9, which is a sort of special victory lap bonus world. Worlds A-D comprise a proper "second quest" and allow you to continue normally upon game over.

I love me some King Crimson. One the best opening wordplays yet. 😺

I remember from Lost Levels on the SNES All Stars cart, it saved your progress by level as well. That's how I was able to beat it as a 10 year old.

Last I checked, Howard Phillips explained his frustration with SMB2's difficulty way back when he was trying to do a Kickstarter with a game. I only remember because Matthew Taranto, the creator of Brawl in the Family, did a series of comics about Howard Phillips way back when Brawl in the Family was a thing. Also, there's a book called Gamemaster Classified they both collaborated on, apparently.

I may not have nostalgia for playing the original in Japan, but I have it for playing it on SM All-Stars. I remember when that was announced and having the revelation that there was a whole other Mario game that we didn't get. It was like finding secret treasure.

I recall hearing from some interview Phillips saying he frequently got to try new games from Japan and found Super Mario 2 frustrating and not as fun. And the president would ask Phillips for feedback and he said as much. So I infer from that that he used Philips as a mini test-market for the average American player. This would have been around the time that NES was just ramping up in the west. The market had recently crashed due to a flood of bad player experiences, Atari had refused to distribute the NES, and Nintendo who were much smaller then was doing it themselves and it was going well so far. It makes sense to me why Arakawa may have thought then was not the time to release such a game on the recovering market when they themselves were just established in that market and were a much smaller company than today. But long term it found its place.

You note that Lost Levels exists in a space where millions of people have broken Mario down to the pixel, and this leads to a very interesting side story that ties into the Kaizo Mario of today. Specifically, because the FDS is really just a regular floppy disk with some fancy plastic security bits, it meant that anyone with the technical knowledge could, theoretically, make a ROM hack, and people did! There was a special hex editing tool named "Tonkachi Mario" that came with an extensive manual and - most importantly - a full ROM hack of Lost Levels that is even more brutal and crushingly difficult, requiring understanding of specific mechanics that wouldn't be seen regularly until the rise of speedrunning. It's still a mystery who created the Tonkachi Mario disk, but it's astounding that within a year of the game's release, you had this black market tool (which by all accounts is excruciating to use) and a fastidiously thorough ROM hack that stands up today. Mario mania really did inspire a nation. I'd like to post more info, but KZfaq seems to delete comments with links in them, so put "Glitchcat7 tonkachi mario" into a search engine, and click the footnotes for the original JP sources. There's this entire incredible world of ROM hacks back in 1987 that just blows me away.

Awesome video. I never put much thought into it other than "it was just too hard" but after watching this that doesn't make any sense at all because we've all seen the NES library. It's full of insanely challenging games for cryin out loud. Your take on it seems far more logical and likely. Thank you for the great vid :D.

Excellent video! I really appreciate seeing these games in the context of their release time.

5:30 - Funny, I always felt ashamed when I selected Luigi because I thought the height of his jump made the game too much easier.

I can recommend the Japanese Gameboy Advance Famicom Mini version, it does have a (secret) option to save your progress, meaning you can at least start in the same world!

I'm curious how many people bought the game as a stand alone release for the disk system versus from a kiosk. I bought a copy of FDS volleyball and was surprised to see it included SMB2 on the B side (assuming the previous owner didn't rewrite it) and a proper manual.

Absolutely fantastic video, as always, Jeremy. Your diligent research, calm narration style, and no-bullshit approach always deliver. Keep up the excellent work :)

Regarding this game seeming too hard and too similar to its predecessor, something similar happened with Final Doom, particularly The Plutonia Experiment. It was also seen as dated when it first came out, especially with Duke Nukem 3D and Quake being released the same year. Custom Doom level designers, on the other hand, were inspired by Plutonia to make their level sets more difficult. Now Plutonia is largely considered the best commercial Doom level set of the 90s.

Finally, a fair assessment of the Lost Levels! Excellent video!

Excellent video as always!

Damn that was a good one. Jeremy Parish… never stop.

Just discovered the channel and loving the first few videos I’ve watched! Happily subscribed! 👍

I never knew that the springs would send Mario flying up so high for so long. Nintendo was being a real troll with this game lol.

Growing up with this game on the Super Nintendo, I love it far more than the original SMB. Its levels are more memorable and do more unique and interesting things. E.g. the falling platform segment in 1-2, or the level that's nothing but super jump springs (7-3). Or the level where the exit is hidden behind a secret (8-2). There's also far more interesting secrets mentioned in the video like world 9 and worlds A - D. As much as I love it, the first Super Mario game feels downright boring in comparison. I also only play as Luigi because I always thought he was much easier, so I was (and still am) surprised to see many years later online that others came to the conclusion that he's much harder to play as.

Really enjoyed the context you provided here.

I think Kirby's Dream Land was the first time I experienced the "Harder Redux" phenomena explained here. I wonder what other examples there are? 🤔

Wow! That was a fun and very insightful retrospective on this game. It really helps to put games into their proper context and made me re-evaluate my perspective on SMB 2. And on a side note: It seems like the blocks at 13:13 spell out arigatou, i.e. thanks.

Here’s the thing about Luigi, though. Like Mario, you can slow him down in the air by pressing the opposite direction from which you jumped. Learn to master doing that before you hit the ground, and the rewards of a higher jump can outweigh the lack of traction on the ground by a long shot.

Great job recontextualizing the release of the game. Really shows the value of these chronological deep dives.

Superb video

8:48 You handled those Hammer Brothers way better than I do. There are two secret power ups in the level, and I need those to get through.

This is why I'm glad that you can save on each of the game's 52 levels (World 1-1 to World D-4) in the All-Stars version...

Even in Japan Super Mario Bros. 2 is considered to be way too difficult. It inevitably shows up on lists of most difficult video games, and the package's admonishment that it's only "for super players" is well remembered.

I LOVBED the lost levels when it came out. I had played all mario games so much, i really apreciated the challenge.

You explaining the context of this release is absolutely fascinating. I was ready to believe this was a cash-in just like everyone said, but this video made me see Lost Levels in a different light. It's also incredible that this game was Nintendo's attempt at embracing the exploits and bugs of their previous release. It seems so shockingly out of character for the company, considering their behavior towards things like Melee's wave-dashing and removing the iconic BLJ in Super Mario 64 in 3D All-Stars.

The Nintendo tips line had recorded explanations for some games including the original SMB, and one of the explanations was how to access the “minus world” 😊

A King reference within the first 5 seconds? Instant like

I'm not a very good platform gamer generally speaking so I was extremely proud when I finished Japanese SMB2.

That final line makes this episode feel like a shaggy goomba story.

Experienced it as the Super Mode on the GameBoyColor Super Mario Deluxe. Was super happy to find that there were a bunch more levels to play.

I really enjoyed SMB 2 back in the day in the All-Stars compilation but even back then I recognized it was largely thanks to the game saving your progress after each level. Nowadays I think of it as Mario by way of Super Meat Boy, where you really need to be able to record progress for it to make sense.

Never ceases to amaze me how wildly popular the admittedly influential Tower of Druaga was in Japan. However the super popularity of Super Mario 1 and Zelda 1's second quest makes TOTAL sense!

Best closing line ever.

I'm a truck driver and Ive been listening to your opinions on games on my routes. Your insights have helped me figure out which puzzle games on the Gameboy are worth my time. Please do continue and I will gladly help any financial needs you may have. Your work is essesntial......thanks

Great job as always. It's easy to see why Nintendo passed on bringing this sequel to the States, when they were just starting to grow the Super Mario brand.

i feel like the lost levels was the blueprint for kaizo romhacks lol

Love this game. Eventually SMB1 stops feeling challenging but SMB2 always keeps you on your toes. I like the mechanic where you can try to finish the level with your coin counter at a multiple of 11 for an extra life. Makes it easy to start off with a few extra lives without having to rely on the shell trick. The game doesn't save your progress but it does record how many times you finished it. I think you need to complete it 8 times to unlock worlds A-D. The GBA version does also save the last world you finished and the All-Stars version just lets you go straight into World A after finishing the game once.

13:13 アリガトウ!" (Arigatō!)

I'm actually kinda glad they didn't release The Lost Levels outside Japan until the rest of the world was ready. Who knows how much it would've damaged Mario's reputation at the time, since SMB3 hadn't come out yet and this felt like a game even the most dedicated non-Japanese players might rage quit at.

Part of me likes to half-jokingly say that SMB2J was probably too difficult for Japan as well, they were just too polite to say so. In any case, I do think that of SMB2J, Doki Doki Panic, and SMB2US, we got the best game of the three.

Here is a fun fact proving Nintendo' intentionality. Worlds A-D is its separate campaign in the original version, unlocked after beating the game 8 times. And just like 1-1, A-1 also has a place to perform the 1-up trick to stock up on lives before the challenges ahead.

Meanwhile, I'm wishing I could take a peek at an alternate universe where an improved _Super Mario Bros. Special_ was included on the _Super Mario All-Stars_ cartridge :)

@Jeremy Parish: You miss a few think, in Japan Vs. Super mario bros was already made and release, and the arcade sequal Vs. super mario bros.2 was also done but no release yet. They wanted to make a sequal for the console for Super mario Bros. and the sequel plan to be release in japan would have been the one with the tossing vegetable, but they did not have the technology at the time to make one level switch from horizontal scrooling, to vertical scrolling, and it would be boring to toss vegtable at enemie on vertical scrolling level only. So it got delayed, and the solution of the disk system then it was possible to do it at this time, but the creator(producer) already send his Super mario bros.2 plan for Yumi kojo doki doki panic, so they decided to take Vs super mario bros.2 the sequal to the arcade, that was already finish but not release yet, and they turn it, into a console game, and they also took the new level from Vs Super mario bros. and place them into the console release, instead of inventing new level to replace them. And release as Super mario bro. 2 for the Family computer disk system, in 1986, and since it became the official sequal they send it to US to get it tested. But it probebly got tested incorrectly. Maybe the person testing it in the US assume they where the exact machanic as the original Super mario bros. And that is how it got label as too hard for US. and from that on you know the rest.

The version of SMB2j in SMB: Deluxe doesn't contain Worlds 9-D, nor Luigi's physics. They also made a few tricky spots a little easier to traverse. And with the constrained window on the playfield, it's more of a way to "play Mario on GBC" than a desirable way to play in general.

Game Player’s Magazine in their premiere issue in 1989 may have been the first to report on the Japanese SMB2.

Really enjoyed this video! It's nice to see a more positive take on this game that does it justice, you voiced a lot of how I feel about this game. It just has a very different purpose, intended playstyle, and target audience from nearly every other Mario game, which is probably a big reason why it's kinda disliked in the West. It focuses on developing already existing mechanics and challenging seasoned players as much as possible, rather than focusing on novelty and accessibility like nearly every other Mario game. Lately, as I've played Super Mario Bros. 1 so many times that I've gotten really good at it, and 2D Mario in general has kinda gotten too easy for me, Lost Levels has now become one of my favorite 2D Mario games and is one of the most fun for me to play, since it better matches my current skill level. And boy is it a blast when one is finally skilled enough. Apparently, according to Miyamoto in an interview, the levels in this game were actually stages the devs made for themselves while working with the VS system, wondering if they could make hard levels that matched their skill level, and they found them fun enough that they decided to release them publicly for other players to play. Pretty neat! A couple minor corrections though: 4:48 The red piranha plants actually will retreat if Mario stands ON their pipes, they just won't if he stands next to them like the green ones do, but standing right on top of them is safe. Except for the upside-down red ones, those will never retreat no matter where Mario is standing, and they also come in and out even faster than the rightside-up ones. 13:13 You can continue in Worlds A-D. It's only World 9 in which you're done if you game over, but World 9 is honestly pretty easy, the main challenge is that they only give you 1 life to beat it, but you can abuse the flagpole 1-up trick to cheese that lol. 13:35 While this is true on a level-by-level basis, it does at least record something of your progress. Specifically, it records how many times you've beaten World 8, tallied by stars on the title screen, which are saved between play sessions. But yeah, it doesn't record what level you last left off on.

Great video! I got hooked to The Lost Levels around a year ago on NSO's NES library and I'm happy you were fair to it cause honestly I kinda love it? It's absurdly hard but once you learn and memorize the exact path through each level it's just a matter of trying again and again until you slowly improve, and the hundred lives trick helps a ton. I never quite got good enough to beat it from start to finish without save states (uni starting got in the way) and I'm pretty rusty these days but I had a blast with it and I'd love to pick it up again at some point. Wonderful job as always!

I had the most fun with the gbc version of LL. I don't know if it was easier than the mario all stars version but I played the hell outta it

Something else to consider is that to make smb2j work in a cartridge format you need a TS-rom board which has an MMC3 mapper AND additional work ram. If you’d want the game to save how many times you’ve beaten it (to access hidden worlds) you’d also need battery backup. All of this would have increased the cost of cartridge and the tech wasn’t around until 1988. So a sequel that isn’t much different beyond difficulty, coming out in ‘88 AND it would have been more costly just wouldn’t work. Considering how one point of the FDS was to make games less expensive it wouldn’t make sense to have to adapt the game to a more costly format.

One of a handful of nes games I still play but have never beat.

I think if it had infinite lives as a quick fix, it would have been much more bearable. If somebody made a mod with infinite lives, a death count, a timer, and a sped up respawn time then I think it would be a fun Kaizo-style game.

This was the highlight of the recent game and watch for me Infinite lives, Just turn off and turn back on when time to play

The reskinned Doki Doki Panic version of Super Mario Bros 2 will always be the real sequel to me. Not just because I live in the US but because of how it was introduced to us.. it was the cover of the first issue of Nintendo Power and was heavily featured inside of that issue thus building up the hype for us kids. It was so weird and different and awesome.

I mean, I'd hardly call the poison mushroom a power UP, but agreed with everything else. never realized that the extra disk space allowed them to have more unique levels, though. definitely one I doubt I'm ever going to finish, even with the save feature from all-stars! indeed lost levels feels like the original 'kaizo mario' I'm just glad you said it, haha.

Wow, i guess mario 2 is a very different sequel than i realised, more similar to something like doom 2 than a lazy cash grab. Getting a bigger sequel to such a revolutionary and beloved game so soon must have been amazing back then. That's not even accounting for the discounted price

Lost Levels would seem to have planted the seed for kaizo romhacks which would appear after Super Mario World for the Super Famicom. I definitely don't have the skills to play kaizo but watching experts do kaizo Mario stuff is very compelling. Great request by TheyCallMeSleeper.

I agree with you. Excessive difficulty could not be the real reason for not releasing the game in the West, because, well, nobody refrained from releasing hard games on NES, and very often Western versions were made even harder than Japanese originals.

Ummm Stu Gipp now always comes to mind when I think about this game

I'd put forward that the optimal way to play this game in the modern day is on an emulator with a good rewind feature like the NSO version. Picking from straight before you died makes it alot more forgiving and makes it flow more like an indie game from the late 2000s (think Meat Boy). There is honestly a lot of great content to tour here. It's challenging and esoteric for sure, and it's probably fair to say that it comes off as mean spirited, but a lot of love was clearly put into this troll of a game. I really appreciate everything it's trying to do and you can tell that these levels were definitely still designed by the core Mario team, a lot of the athletic levels in Mario 3 for instance feel like easier versions of some of what we see here. Stewart on Retronauts also pointed out that it plays a lot more like an 80s micro computer game than a contemporary console game and I think that probably speaks a lot for why it's so vexing to play blind, but clever and interesting when armed with strategies (or cheats). I love game, a lot, but yeah maybe those levels were lost for a reason lol

It's not like the Super Mario 2 (Doki Doki Panic) that we did get in the US was easy. Maybe less cruel, but certainly not easy.

A couple of people I read suggested that the Japanese Mario 2 could have triggered a backlash from American kids that would have been the undoing of the NES, similar to how Pac-Man and E.T. were partially the undoing of the Atari 2600 a few years earlier. Given that everything about the NES' early years was about distancing it from the pre-crash era in general and Atari in particular (the VCR frontloader design, the "what you see is what you get" black boxes, ROB, the censorship code, the draconian third party-policies), I can see Nintendo at least in part worried that a potentially alienating Mario sequel might undo the goodwill they went out of their way to build up.

I am wondering if the Lost Levels were the first inspiration for the Special world in SMW. Also I wish they decided to make a sequel to SMB USA (or a side series like Donkey Kong '94/Mario vs DK).

I never played the lost levels but it does seem tough

I'm really curious what an international release of this game would have looked like. International ports were usually easier, because developers could implement feedback from the domestic release (kind like a modern patch), so I wonder what tweaks would be made to make SMB2 more palatable overseas?

But on Mario Deluxe they took out the wind levels and it didn’t have the clouds with the little smiley faces

Out of curiosity, was Super Mario 3 in development while the Lost Levels was being worked on?

I always thought this should've been released in the US as an 'expert edition' Super Mario Bros cart. Shame they didn't put it out here... I would've bought it.

I just noticed the suspended platforms in SMB2 that have a different graphic than the steel girder look in SMB1 are made of mushroom faces. Did they need the address space for those graphics for something else and made the platforms out of another asset?

Why doesn't the shell kill the hammer bros on 8-3? I've always hated that glitch!

Didn't SMB1 have a second (ura) loop too? Not one with completely different level designs but IIRC it offers a harder quest if you press start after the ending?

I beat this game with Luigi which was not easy cause he kept sliding around. Good times.

Hey Jeremy! Much enjoyed. Interesting that there wasn't hard info on it "being too hard for Americans". I've heard that repeated ad nauseam on KZfaq for a decade. Also, Is there an ETA on the reprints of virtual and SNES Works?

A couple years ago, I heard someone talk about Lost Levels like it was a puzzle game, something to be solved. I played through the game with that mindset, and had a miserable time. Few things felt intentional or fully planned out, and those that did felt cruel. I wound up writing a whole essay about it (I think it was 8+ pages?), but decided not to post it anywhere because I know so many people do enjoy this game. I felt conflicted, because my experience was lousy, so my writing reflected that, but I kept reading about other people's experiences and how the game was so subversive and thoughtful. I've spent so much time reading reviews and developer interviews from across the decades to figure out what I'm missing, but at the end of the day, all I can say is "I had a bad time with this game. I dont think I like it."

I've only ever beaten the all stars version which I understand is slightly easier than the original,and that was way back in 93 when I was 12. I started a playthru of the original on my switch thanks to this video 😂 it's brutal

I remember playing The Lost Levels on Super Mario All-Stars as a kid. The weird thing is, I don't remember that game being exceptionally hard compared to the original Super Mario Bros. It seemed like in both the original Super Mario Bros. and in The Lost Levels, I could only make it up to about World 4 or so before the game got too hard. I just remember seeing Lost Levels as being a weird alternate version of Super Mario Bros. where you can play as Luigi and the level layouts are different. I do however, remember that I was not a fan of the physics in Super Mario Bros. or Lost Levels and much preferred playing Super Mario Bros. 3. But I swear, I don't remember Lost Levels being that much worse than the original game. I think a big thing that helped is that in the SNES version, the poison mushrooms are very obvious.

Did Championship Lode Runner ever make it to the west?

Was Super Mario Bros: USA released in Japan before All-Stars?

@Jeremy Parish: The NES version of Super mario bros. The lost levels as a lot of missconception. You are disqualified from world 9 even if you used a Warp zone that goes backword. This is only truth for the Super Nintendo version. This is because the NES version did not have the technologie including the disk system version also did not have the technology to have a check to see if a Warp zone as been enter, so the way it check if you used warp zone, if the lv4 as been cleared, so in the NES version of Super mario bros. the lost levels if you finish all the level and accidently warp to world 1, don't panic just go in world 1-2 found the vine and warp back to world 3, you will notice after 8-4 you still have world 9, the same thing will happen if you do all the level untill 8-1 and accidently warp to world 5, then in world 5-2 found the vine for world 8, after you are done world 8-4, World 9 shows up. This is because the castle you already clear does not become unclear when you used Warp zone backward, and/or forward again. Another misconception about Nes Super mario bros. the lost level unlocking World A to D. They are only unlock if you beat the game 8 time in total without using warp zone, this statement is incorrect, since the condition does not even look if you clear lv4 or not. it only look if you clear 8-4. So if you only care about world A to D and you don't care about world 9 in the Nes version just go into 1-2, pass the ending pipe enter first pipe you see, then when you see a pipe near a lake do not enter pipe, make to invisible block stair appear above the lake and keep going on the celing for warp zone to world 4, and in 5-2 found the vine for world 8, and this will speed up the process to beating it 8 times. Then when 8 stars or more are on the title screen hold the jump button before pressing start to start in world A-1 does version will be easier then the Super nintendo version. The Super Nintendo version it is easier to unlock them but the trade-off they made world A throught D harder.

I always found it weird that people simply say "ah, Mario 2 never came here because it was too hard for us, end of story". NES games were not known to be easy; there's a reason we have the term Nintendo Hard. I honestly think the fact that it's basically Mario 1 But Again is more likely as to why we didn't get it. I am no Japanese gamer from the 80s but I imagine they are more than happy with "that game again, but more of it" while Americans I think would've wanted more variety. I think it would have reviewed poorly both because "it's just Mario 1 again" and as if to twist the knife, it's also extremely hard! It's an extremely weird little middle ground between love letter and insult. It was clearly designed with love, to show appreciation for Mario masters, and to show that Nintendo was aware of all the weird secrets and glitches fans were finding. But it's also a slap in the face; things like fake mushrooms and reverse warps feel like Nintendo saying "hey, all that stuff you figured out before and felt really good about? Fuck you, that's all gone, we're punishing you for your previous success now". I always felt Mario 2 was a mean and bitter game, but this video does make me realize there's more to it than that and that I was missing a lot of the culture surrounding it. I still think it's a poor showing _now_ and I think replacing it in US was a great idea, but I do look back on it now with a sense of appreciation for the context of when it came out.

also because its a one side game you could wright the og game on the bside