Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels

This article is about the Japanese sequel to Super Mario Bros. For the international sequel, see Super Mario Bros. 2.

Super Mario Bros.:
The Lost Levels
The Lost Levels box art shows Mario holding the two-finger V sign inside an inscribed circle. Above, red Japanese text reads the title text: "Super Mario Bros. 2". The Nintendo logo and an award ribbon are displayed in opposite corners.
Japanese cover art
Developer(s)Nintendo R&D4
Publisher(s)Nintendo
Director(s)
Producer(s)Shigeru Miyamoto
Designer(s)Shigeru Miyamoto[1]
Programmer(s)
  • Toshihiko Nakago
  • Kazuaki Morita
Composer(s)Koji Kondo
SeriesSuper Mario
Platform(s)Family Computer Disk System
Release
  • JP: June 3, 1986
Genre(s)Platformer
Mode(s)Single-player

Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels is a 1986 platform game developed and published by Nintendo. A sequel to Super Mario Bros. (1985), it was originally released in Japan for the Family Computer Disk System as Super Mario Bros. 2[a] on June 3, 1986. Nintendo of America deemed it too difficult for its North American audience and instead released an alternative sequel, also titled Super Mario Bros. 2, in 1988. It was remade and renamed The Lost Levels for the 1993 Super Nintendo Entertainment System compilation Super Mario All-Stars, serving as its first international release. It has been rereleased for Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Wii, Wii U, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch.

The Lost Levels is similar to Super Mario Bros, with players controlling Mario or Luigi to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser. It adds a greater level of difficulty and Luigi controls slightly differently from Mario, with reduced ground friction and increased jump height. The Lost Levels also introduces obstacles such as poison mushroom power-ups, counterproductive level warps, and mid-air wind gusts. It has 32 levels across eight worlds and 20 bonus levels.

Reviewers viewed The Lost Levels as an extension of Super Mario Bros, especially its difficulty progression. Journalists appreciated the challenge when spectating speedruns and recognized the game as a precursor to the franchise's Kaizo subculture in which fans create and share ROM hacks featuring nearly impossible levels. This sequel gave Luigi his first character traits and introduced the poison mushroom item, which has since been used throughout the Mario franchise. The Lost Levels was the most popular game on the Disk System, for which it sold about 2.5 million copies. It is remembered among the most difficult Nintendo games.

Gameplay

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Mario, viewed in profile, faces to the right of the screen, with question mark blocks and a dark mushroom floating overhead and a green pipe in the ground nearby. The screen is mostly blue sky.
Screenshot of gameplay from the 1986 Japanese release, showing a poison mushroom

The Lost Levels is a 2D side-scrolling platform game similar in style and gameplay to the original 1985 Super Mario Bros., save for an increase in difficulty.[2][3][4][5] As in the original, Mario (or Luigi) ventures to rescue the Princess from Bowser.[4] The player jumps between platforms, avoids enemies and obstacles, finds secrets (such as warp zones and vertical vines) and collects power-ups such as the mushroom (which makes Mario grow), the Fire Flower (which lets Mario throw fireballs), and the Invincibility Star.[2] Unlike the original, there is no two-player mode,[6] but at the title screen the player chooses between Mario or Luigi. Their abilities are differentiated for the first time: Luigi, designed for skilled players, has a longer time accelerating and slowing down, but has a higher jump height,[2] while Mario is the opposite; he has a faster time accelerating and slowing down, but has a lower jump height.[6]

The Lost Levels continues the difficulty progression from Super Mario Bros.[2] It introduces obstacles including poison mushrooms, warps that return the player to previous levels, and gusts that redirect the player midair.[3] The poison mushroom, in particular, works as an anti-mushroom, shrinking or killing the player character.[7] Some levels require "split-second" precision[3] and others require the player to jump on invisible blocks.[8] There were also some graphical changes,[5][9] though their soundtracks are identical.[2] After each boss fight, Toad tells Mario that "[their] princess is in another castle".[3] The main game has 32 levels[1] across eight worlds and five bonus worlds. A hidden World 9 is accessible if the player does not use a warp zone. Bonus worlds A through D are accessible when the player plays through the game eight times, for a total of 52 levels.[2]

Development

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The game's director, designer, and composer pictured together in 2015: Takashi Tezuka, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Koji Kondo.

The original Super Mario Bros. was released in North America in October 1985. When developing a version of the game for Nintendo's coin-operated arcade machine, the VS. System, the team experimented with new, challenging level designs. They enjoyed these new levels, and thought that Super Mario devotees would too.[10] Shigeru Miyamoto, who created the Mario franchise and directed Super Mario Bros., no longer had time to design games by himself, given his responsibilities leading Nintendo's Nintendo R&D4 division and their work on The Legend of Zelda (1986).[3] The Super Mario sequel was delegated to its predecessor's assistant director, Takashi Tezuka, as his directorial debut.[11][12] He worked with Miyamoto and the R&D4 team[13][2] to develop a sequel based on the same underlying technology,[7] including some levels directly from Vs. Super Mario Bros.[3]

The Lost Levels, originally released in Japan as Super Mario Bros. 2[4] on June 3, 1986, was similar in style to Super Mario Bros. but much more difficult in gameplay – "nails-from-diamonds hard", as Jon Irwin described it in his book on the sequels.[11] Tezuka felt that Japanese players had mastered the original game, and so needed a more challenging sequel.[11] Recognizing that the game might be too difficult for newcomers, the team labeled the packaging with "For Super Players".[10] They also added a trick to earn infinite lives as preparation for the difficulty.[10] Japanese commercials for The Lost Levels featured players screaming in frustration at their televisions.[11] After Zelda, The Lost Levels was the ninth release for the Famicom Disk System, an add-on external disk drive with more spacious and less expensive disks than the Famicom cartridges.[3]

As I continued to play, I found that Super Mario Bros. 2 asked me again and again to take a leap of faith, and each of those leaps resulted in my immediate death. This was not a fun game to play. It was punishment – undeserved punishment. I put down my controller, astonished that Mr. Miyamoto had chosen to design such a painful game.

Howard Phillips on his test playthrough of The Lost Levels[11]

When evaluated for release outside of Japan, Nintendo of America believed The Lost Levels was too difficult and frustrating for the recovering American market and declined its release.[3][14] Howard Phillips, who evaluated games for Nintendo of America President Minoru Arakawa, felt it was unfairly difficult, even beyond the unofficial moniker of "Nintendo Hard" that the company's other games sometimes garnered.[11] His opinion was that The Lost Levels would not sell well in the American market.[13][11] He later recalled that "few games were more stymieing. Not having fun is bad when you're a company selling fun".[11]

Nintendo instead released a retrofitted version of Fujisankei Communications Group's Doki Doki Panic as the region's Super Mario Bros. 2 in October 1988.[15] Doki Doki Panic had originally been developed by Kensuke Tanabe. Tanabe was instructed to use characters from Yūme Kojo '87 and was released in Japan as a standalone game on July 10, 1987. Doki Doki Panic's characters and artwork were modified to match Super Mario Bros. before being released in America, and the re-skinned release became known as the "big aberration" in the Super Mario series.[3] The American Super Mario Bros. 2 was later released in Japan as Super Mario USA.[15]

Rereleases

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A white and red Famicom unit sits atop a candy red Famicom Disk System unit with black insertable disk drive. Two rectangular controllers, each with a D-pad and two black buttons, fit into the Famicom.
The Lost Levels was the ninth game released for the Famicom Disk System (attached below the Famicom, as pictured).

Nintendo "cleaned up" parts of the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 and released it in later Super Mario collections as The Lost Levels.[3] Its North American debut in the 1993 Super Mario All-Stars collection for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System[4] featured updated graphics (including increased visibility for the poison mushroom[6]) and more frequent checkpoints to save player progress.[7] According to All-Stars developers, the compilation was created because Miyamoto felt The Lost Levels had not reached a wide audience and wanted more players to experience it.[16] All-Stars was rereleased as a Limited Edition for the Nintendo Wii console in remembrance of Super Mario Bros.'s 25th anniversary in 2010.[15] The Lost Levels was edited to fit the handheld Game Boy Color screen as an unlockable bonus in the 1999 Super Mario Bros. Deluxe: the visible screen is cropped and some features are omitted, such as the wind and five bonus worlds.[17][18] The Lost Levels was rereleased in 2004 for the Game Boy Advance on the third volume of Nintendo's Japan-only Famicom Mini compilation cartridges.[19]

Nintendo's Virtual Console digital platform introduced North America and Europe to the unedited 1986 Japanese release.[2][6] The Lost Levels was released for multiple Nintendo platforms: the Wii's Virtual Console in 2007 (partially in support of Nintendo's Hanabi Festival[6]), the 3DS's in 2012,[20][2] the Wii U's in 2013,[20] and the Switch's NES catalog in 2019.[21] Nintendo's 2014 classic game compilations NES Remix 2 (Wii U) and Ultimate NES Remix (3DS) included selections from The Lost Levels.[22][23] For the series' 35th anniversary, in late 2020, Nintendo included The Lost Levels in a limited edition Game & Watch device.[24][25]

Reception and legacy

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The Lost Levels topped Famicom Tsūshin's charts.[11] It was the most popular game on the Disk System, for which it sold about 2.5 million copies.[1] Retrospective critics viewed The Lost Levels as an expansion of the original,[2][1][5][6] akin to extra challenge levels tacked on its end.[2] Despite their similarities, the sequel is distinguished by its notorious difficulty.[20] 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die summarized it as both "familiar and mysterious" and "simply rather unfair".[8] The Lost Levels replaced the original's accessible level designs with "insanely tough obstacle courses"[3] as if designed to intentionally frustrate and punish players beginning with its first poison mushroom.[26][20][2]

Retrospective reviewers recommended The Lost Levels for those who mastered the original, or those who would appreciate a painful challenge.[20][6][27] Casual Mario fans, GameZone wrote, would not find much to enjoy.[27] Nintendo Life's reviewer felt that while Super Mario Bros. was designed for recklessness, The Lost Levels taught patience, and despite its difficulty remained fun and "fiendishly clever".[20] On the other hand, GamesRadar felt it was an unoriginal, boring retread, and apart from its "pointlessly cruel" difficulty, not worthy of the player's time.[28] GamesRadar and IGN agreed with Nintendo of America's choice against releasing the harder game in the 1980s,[28][2] though Eurogamer thought that The Lost Levels was "technically a much better game" than the Doki Doki Panic-based Super Mario Bros. 2 the American market received instead.[6]

The Lost Levels is remembered as among the most difficult video games.[29][30] In 2015, Kotaku wrote that the precision required in The Lost Levels made fast playthroughs (speedruns) "remarkably fun" to spectate.[14] NES Remix 2 (2014), a compilation for the Wii U, similarly segmented The Lost Levels into speedrun challenges, which made the challenging gameplay more palatable.[22] Many years after the release of The Lost Levels, fans of the series would modify Mario games to challenge each other with nearly impossible levels. The challenges of The Lost Levels presaged this Kaizo community, and according to IGN, The Lost Levels shares more in common with this subculture than with the Mario series itself.[2] Indeed, the sequel is remembered as a black sheep in the franchise[8][20] and a reminder of imbalanced gameplay in Nintendo's history.[8]

Luigi received his first distinctive character traits in The Lost Levels: less ground friction, and the ability to jump farther.[3] IGN considered this the most significant change, though the controls remained "cramped" and "crippled" with either character.[2] The poison mushroom item, with its character-impairing effects, became a staple of the Mario franchise.[b] Some of the Lost Levels appeared in a 1986 promotional release of Super Mario Bros., in which Nintendo modified in-game assets to fit themes from the Japanese radio show All Night Nippon.[39] Journalists have ranked The Lost Levels among the least important in the Mario series[40][41] and of Nintendo's top games.[26]

Notes

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  1. ^ Japanese: スーパーマリオブラザーズ2, Hepburn: Sūpā Mario Burazāzu Tsū
  2. ^ Games that featured the mushroom include Super Mario Kart (1992),[31][32] Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (2004),[33] Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time (2005),[34] Mario Kart Arcade GP 2 (2007),[31] Super Mario 3D Land (2011),[35] and Mario Party: Star Rush (2016).[36] It also appears in Mario-themed games outside the franchise, such as Puzzle & Dragons Super Mario Bros. Edition[37] and the Wii U version of Tekken Tag Tournament 2.[38]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d "Super Mario Bros. 2". Atari HQ. May 4, 1999. Archived from the original on March 11, 2015. Retrieved April 1, 2015.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Thomas, Lucas M. (October 3, 2007). "Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels Review". IGN. Archived from the original on May 16, 2022. Retrieved June 2, 2022.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l McLaughlin, Rus (September 13, 2010). "IGN Presents: The History of Super Mario Bros". IGN. Archived from the original on March 20, 2022. Retrieved June 1, 2022.
  4. ^ a b c d Farokhmanesh, Megan (March 16, 2014). "Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels hits Wii U Virtual Console". Polygon. Archived from the original on May 16, 2022. Retrieved June 2, 2022.
  5. ^ a b c Miller, Skyler. "Super Mario Bros. 2". AllGame. Archived from the original on November 14, 2014. Retrieved April 1, 2015.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Whitehead, Dan (September 15, 2007). "Virtual Console Roundup". Eurogamer. Archived from the original on October 4, 2021. Retrieved June 1, 2022.
  7. ^ a b c d Provo, Frank (October 5, 2007). "Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels Review". GameSpot. Archived from the original on August 24, 2015. Retrieved August 24, 2015.
  8. ^ a b c d Donlan, Christian (2010). "Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels". In Mott, Tony (ed.). 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die. New York: Universe. p. 129. ISBN 978-0-7893-2090-2. OCLC 754142901.
  9. ^ Thomas, Lucas M. (June 1, 2012). "Building to New Super Mario Bros". IGN. Archived from the original on May 26, 2022. Retrieved June 1, 2022.
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  21. ^ Gera, Emily (April 3, 2019). "'Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels' Coming to Nintendo Switch Online". Variety. Archived from the original on March 29, 2020. Retrieved March 29, 2020.
  22. ^ a b Claiborn, Samuel (April 23, 2014). "NES Remix 2 Review". IGN. Archived from the original on October 9, 2021. Retrieved June 2, 2022.
  23. ^ Blake, Vikki (October 16, 2014). "Ultimate NES Remix Coming to 2DS and 3DS November 7". IGN. Archived from the original on November 12, 2020. Retrieved June 2, 2022.
  24. ^ Faulkner, Cameron (September 10, 2020). "Here's a better look at the Game & Watch handheld launching in November". The Verge. Retrieved November 15, 2020.
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  30. ^ Oxford, Nadia (July 22, 2015). "What are the Hardest Video Games?". USgamer. Archived from the original on May 10, 2017. Retrieved May 31, 2017.
  31. ^ a b Doolan, Liam (May 28, 2014). "Mario Kart Month: A Brief History Of Mario Kart Item Evolution: Mighty Mushroom". Nintendo Life. Archived from the original on November 24, 2021. Retrieved June 2, 2022.
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  33. ^ Rorie, Gamespot (January 18, 2006). "Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Walkthrough". GameSpot. Archived from the original on June 22, 2016. Retrieved March 25, 2017.
  34. ^ "Top 20 Galactic Moments". GamesRadar. November 12, 2007. Archived from the original on September 21, 2016. Retrieved April 1, 2015.
  35. ^ Totilo, Stephen (November 22, 2011). "Super Mario Bros. 2 Was a Tiny, Tiny Influence on Super Mario 3D Land". Kotaku. Archived from the original on April 9, 2022. Retrieved June 2, 2022.
  36. ^ Koopman, Daan (October 5, 2016). "Mario Party: Star Rush Review". Nintendo World Report. Archived from the original on March 13, 2017. Retrieved March 25, 2017.
  37. ^ Splechta, Mike (January 8, 2015). "Puzzle & Dragons expanding to the Mushroom Kingdom". GameZone. Archived from the original on March 23, 2016. Retrieved March 26, 2017.
  38. ^ Clements, Ryan (October 14, 2012). "NYCC: Doin' Mushrooms in Tekken Tag 2". IGN. Archived from the original on October 26, 2020. Retrieved June 2, 2022.
  39. ^ Fletcher, JC (August 14, 2008). "Virtually Overlooked: All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros". Engadget. Archived from the original on April 15, 2017. Retrieved June 1, 2022.
  40. ^ Parish, Jeremy; Mackey, Bob; Rignall, Jaz; Benyamine, John; Bailey, Kat; Williams, Mike; Oxford, Nadia (November 2, 2017). "What's the Greatest Mario Game Ever? Find Out Where Mario Odyssey Lands in Our Updated Rankings! [Updated]". USgamer. Archived from the original on January 1, 2018. Retrieved January 1, 2018.
  41. ^ Shea, Brian (March 10, 2017). "Ranking Every Game In The Super Mario Series". Game Informer. Archived from the original on May 14, 2016. Retrieved May 31, 2017.
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