Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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

Super Mario Bros.:
The Lost Levels
Platform game
Mode(s)Single-player

Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels (originally Super Mario Bros. 2,

ported to the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance, along with being re-released through emulation for the Wii, Wii U, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch
.

The Lost Levels is similar to its predecessor in style and gameplay, with players controlling

level warps, and mid-air wind gusts. The game has 32 levels
across eight worlds and 20 bonus levels.

Reviewers viewed The Lost Levels as an extension of the previous game, especially its difficulty progression. Journalists appreciated the game's challenge when spectating

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

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

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.

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

refer to caption
refer to caption
refer to caption
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

Vs. Super Mario Bros.[3]

The Lost Levels, originally released in Japan as Super Mario Bros. 2

infinite lives as preparation for the game's difficulty.[10] Commercials for The Lost Levels in Japan featured players failing at the game and screaming in frustration at their television.[11] After Zelda, The Lost Levels was the second 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 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

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 second 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.

Famicom Mini compilation cartridges.[19]

Nintendo's

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

At the time of its release, The Lost Levels topped Famicom Tsūshin's charts.[11] The game 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 the game 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 game for those who mastered the original, or those who would appreciate a painful challenge.

GamesRadar felt that the game 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 among the most difficult games by Nintendo and in the video game medium.

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.

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

  1. ^ Super Mario Bros. 2 (Japanese: スーパーマリオブラザーズ2, Hepburn: Sūpā Mario Burazāzu Tsū)
  2. Puzzle & Dragons Super Mario Bros. Edition[37] and the Wii U version of Tekken Tag Tournament 2.[38]

References

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  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. ^
    AllGame. Archived from the original
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  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. ^
    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.
  10. ^ a b c "Nintendo Channel Interview with Shigeru Miyamoto Volumes 1 and 2". The Mushroom Kingdom. December 2010. Archived from the original on June 5, 2017. Retrieved June 5, 2017.
  11. ^
    ISBN 978-1-940535-05-0
    .
  12. ^ "NES Classic Edition Developer Interview". Nintendo. Archived from the original on January 1, 2017. Retrieved November 24, 2016.
  13. ^ a b Claiborn, Samuel (June 15, 2012). "This Is Shigeru Miyamoto's Favorite Mario Game". IGN. Archived from the original on March 11, 2022. Retrieved June 1, 2022.
  14. ^ a b Schreier, Jason (January 7, 2015). "30 Minutes Of Impossibly Precise Mario Speedrunning". Kotaku. Archived from the original on May 7, 2022. Retrieved June 2, 2022.
  15. ^ a b c Ashcraft, Brian (October 28, 2010). "Super Mario All-Stars Coming To America". Kotaku. Archived from the original on April 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.
  25. ^ Watts, Steve (November 13, 2020). "Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros. Is Almost The Game Boy Classic I Always Wanted". GameSpot. Archived from the original on November 13, 2020. Retrieved November 16, 2020.
  26. ^ a b "The Top 125 Nintendo Games of All Time". IGN. September 24, 2014. Archived from the original on April 21, 2022. Retrieved June 1, 2022.
  27. ^ a b Sanchez, David (January 2, 2012). "Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels - Does It Hold Up?". GameZone. Archived from the original on January 20, 2015. Retrieved March 26, 2017.
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  30. USgamer. Archived
    from the original on May 10, 2017. Retrieved May 31, 2017.
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  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.
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External links

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