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Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels

スーパーマリオブラザーズ 2

Developer / Publisher: Nintendo
03 June 1986
Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels [スーパーマリオブラザーズ 2] - cover art
Glitchwave rating
2.81 / 5.0
0.5
5.0
 
 
651 Ratings / 2 Reviews
#3,595 All-time
#18 for 1986
The ellusive Japanese "Super Mario Bros. 2" brings more exciting and challenging stages for super players of the original "Super Mario Bros.", with extra gameplay features, a small graphical facelift, and unique playing mechanics for Mario's younger brother, Luigi.
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1986 Nintendo  
Floppy
JP 4 902370 500356 FMC-SMB
2004 Nintendo  
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JP 4 902370 509434 AGB-FM2J-JPN
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This is honestly really just a hard level pack disguised as a new game. If you already don't like Super Mario Bros. [スーパーマリオブラザーズ] especially when it gets more difficult then you definitely won't like this at all. I think it would be better if a lot of these levels were more "good difficult" than "stupid difficult" (we really don't need leap of faith wind levels or other trial-and-error methods of design). Personally I didn't enjoy it, but some of the levels were kinda cool and the graphical improvements were nice to see as well as little as that affects my score.
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Sothras 2024-01-02T22:40:11Z
2024-01-02T22:40:11Z
1.5
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mid sequel
Dont get me wrong, I appreciate the lost levels for what it is and think it is quite creative in level design however it does not really fit as a sequel of the game and more feels like an extension of the first game or something along those lines. The graphics have got a slight enhancement and there are also new enemies such as the ground bloopers, red phirana plants and wind but thats really all that i came across that was original. The difficulty is a jump from the previous game but is still feasible for the average player with a few attempts. Thats about it, not too different its predecessor
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saruz 2024-01-20T23:06:28Z
2024-01-20T23:06:28Z
2.5
1
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Title
Evil
Playing this was pretty fun in all honesty. The creators took a few more risks in their level design, creating some more interesting and unique gameplay than the first. There's also a subtle but surprisingly great graphical overhaul, with changes ranging between ground and brick texture, a small shadow beneath the letters, or even the beginnings of the "everything has eyes" aesthetic that the 2d mario games would go on to embrace. Also notable is the introduction of a luigi mode, who plays more slippery yet jumps higher.

However, what is not so pleasant was the noticeable jump in difficulty. Even though the Lost Levels introduces a continue, there's still some really evil design quirks in the latter half that had me looking up how to complete. I remember one level in world 8 where there were hidden bricks in the background of the level you needed to jump off of and that's just one example of evil level design. In another level you could use a spring to jump over the flagpole and possibly discover a secret, but it was a warp pipe back to the first world (but at least with a hole to kill yourself in).

Overall, the lost levels has some straight up sadistic design choices, and difficult platforming that is fun but still hindered by the flawed acceleration mechanic kept from the original Super Mario Bros. It's also way too hard.
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mountainfalcon15 2023-11-10T19:38:14Z
2023-11-10T19:38:14Z
3.0
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The Mario Game for Pros
Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels is essentially the hard mode for Super Mario Bros. It was released on the Famicom Disk Drive in Japan and contains all the features from the first game. It doesn't bring anything new to the table; instead sticking to the tried and true Super Mario platforming. In other words, it's just more Super Mario and that isn't a bad thing.

Like I said earlier, this game is really difficult. Power ups appear less often and in difficult locations; enemies are placed in inconvenient areas; there are wider, nerve wrecking jumps; and the warp zones are more challenging to access and, like the power ups, more sparse in supply. This leaves a player with the option to approach these levels carefully and strategically utilizing warp zones to skip back and forth between levels to finally achieve the now illusive fire flower as well as some 1ups. That's right, some warp zones can straight up punish you for finding them by sending you back to a prior world. This game also sees the introduction of the poison mushroom which will hurt Mario if collected.

I see Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels as a must play for all Super Mario fans if they want a sufficient challenge. If there is anything I dislike about it, it's the new sprites. They look pretty ugly.
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Joe_Kloos 2022-02-09T23:40:16Z
2022-02-09T23:40:16Z
3.5
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I'm acclimated to Mario 2 better than most, and after finishing it(bears saying with a healthy use of the rewind feature now and then) it really doesn't deserve the sour reputation it got. And people might hate that it includes very little in genuine graphical updates or mechanical additions but a sequel/expansion of this nature wasn't unknowable back then, and so many pivotal games had sister variants that expanded it or made its gameplay more difficult(like "Championship Lode Runner" or "Ms. Pac-Man"), but SMB2 still strikes and makes its way with a lot more originality and grace than those two games.

For me, the Japanese SMB2 is kind of like "The Stanley Parable" of Mario. I'm always the first person to bemoan over a difficult game but I was astounded how much enjoyment and connection I've managed to make with SMB2 - 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. 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, giving you an amazing shift of perspective: 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?". It's a brilliant, shocking insight into the nature of game development and it is superbly wonderful how this is a game that allows you to be on equal footing with a developer's headspace. That point about the starman and the piranha plants is exactly one of the many points in this game where the player's power just soars: you feel like you've gained the system and that the developer made this so you could feel a rush. It's a roller coaster. The highs of it are moments that I'm much fonder of than in Mario 1, and even the ending feels much more congratulatory, celebratory and welcoming of the player.

Every single addition here was an idea extrapolation and an experimentation of SMB1 that is akin to thought experiments and mental gymnastics and for me it is more quizzical than trying. Because of this, I've never seen the "Lost Levels" as cruel or hard, aside from the really inconvenient oversight that there is no way to save progress in the game, but instead you'll have to leave your NES powered on overnight. There are far crueler games on the NES: The basic "Mega Man" games will give you tons of unnecessary stress and I'm convinced "Zelda II" is for utter masochists. To say nothing of "Battletoads", or kusoge like "Spelunker", "Atlantis no Nazo", or the kaizo Mario hacks.

Obviously "Lost Levels" 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, and hint at it in a no-small number of modern 2D Mario games. People would say that there are instances where the devs "troll" the player, but they are never cruel jokes and are just very light jests that have a gotcha moment, where usually the tools to solve it is right at your disposal. Like for example, there will be moments when you'll come across a huge dead end or a huge pit you can't leap over, but the solution it turns out is just to knock an invisible block right above you. There might be a row of spinies crawling on the floor, but you can use a koopa shell to knock an entire row of them. Plenty of these gotcha moments and gimmicks would be perfectly recycled for SMB3. Other NES games would be much more disrespectful to the player and deliberately punish them for innocent transgressions, but Mario 2 just isn't that. Not even the notorious poisonous mushrooms are that abundant - after its initial use in the first couple of levels, I've noticed that they just become quickly forgotten and discarded. They get used so rarely after World 1 and I swear that over 90% of the mushrooms in the game are normal, legitimate power-ups. Even world 8 in this game feels much fairer and more palatable than SMB1's world 8, and so many people are giving SMB1 a pass despite it being a very difficult game in its own right.

As a last point I need to mention just how utterlfy fantastic world 9 is, which you get as a reward for beating the game without using any warp zones. World 9 especially cements that it's a fun meta-commentary on Mario instead of aspiring to be the ur-kaizo. There's a whole lot of difference in intent, meaning and language used in Mario 2 that sets it apart from the kaizo community or the genre of immensely challenging games. It has more in common with developer commentaries in Valve games than "Cuphead".

If you consider yourself an enthusiast of SMB1 do give it a fair shake and get rid of the biases you might have heard. It's a great love letter and companion piece to Mario 1, but otherwise very inaccessible for casual Mario players, who have no shortage of introductory Mario games anyway.

Why yes, I did beat this game with Luigi! 💚
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Clownboss 2022-08-08T13:35:01Z
2022-08-08T13:35:01Z
4.0
1
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While Super Mario Bros. influenced later Mario games in various ways, the inspiration was quite literal in the case of Super Mario Bros. 2 (a.k.a. The Lost Levels), a 'sequel' that played more like SMB's evil alter-ego.
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Blah_Blee 2022-07-17T04:11:43Z
2022-07-17T04:11:43Z
5 /10
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Catalog

Onirism0 Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels 2024-03-14T18:27:45Z
3DS
2024-03-14T18:27:45Z
5.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
bgw8 Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels 2024-03-12T13:23:50Z
Switch
2024-03-12T13:23:50Z
2.5
1
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
foiebump スーパーマリオブラザーズ 2 2024-03-12T00:36:53Z
2024-03-12T00:36:53Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Action52 スーパーマリオブラザーズ 2 2024-03-11T12:48:08Z
2024-03-11T12:48:08Z
3.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Jazzymomo スーパーマリオブラザーズ 2 2024-03-08T00:08:42Z
2024-03-08T00:08:42Z
4.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Gibbous スーパーマリオブラザーズ 2 2024-03-05T23:14:12Z
2024-03-05T23:14:12Z
2.5
1
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Land3rman スーパーマリオブラザーズ 2 2024-03-03T21:27:16Z
2024-03-03T21:27:16Z
2.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
kendricco スーパーマリオブラザーズ 2 2024-03-03T03:51:58Z
2024-03-03T03:51:58Z
4.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
NorwegianWally スーパーマリオブラザーズ 2 2024-02-29T00:49:53Z
2024-02-29T00:49:53Z
3.5
1
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
MelodyBae スーパーマリオブラザーズ 2 2024-02-27T19:10:28Z
2024-02-27T19:10:28Z
2.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Peppone550 スーパーマリオブラザーズ 2 2024-02-27T11:08:25Z
2024-02-27T11:08:25Z
1
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
666LILGILGAMESH666 Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels 2024-02-24T04:25:25Z
3DS
2024-02-24T04:25:25Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
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  • Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels
  • Super Mario Bros. 2
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  • Previous comments (27) Loading...
  • LaneisLame 2023-02-11 14:11:47.231648+00
    This game is bullshit lmfao
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  • PhrostByte 2023-03-09 01:44:56.05261+00
    why are there squids in the sky lol
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  • dostovei 2023-04-17 06:43:15.569039+00
    if it it feels like dlc, that's because it basically was
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  • Revolution666 2023-10-09 05:10:07.212244+00
    Pretty good when you have infinite lives on.
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  • figurehead 2024-01-19 20:02:42.736099+00
    enjoyed this one when i finally played it with the original physics. surprised it's rated so low. i guess the parts where you're jumping onto a tiny platform that you can't see ahead of time or where you're trying to land on a tiny platform but you can't see mario are unfair. it was nice to have a difficult mario before Super Mario Maker [スーパーマリオメーカー] came along
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  • charlotte_ 2024-02-21 08:20:51.00501+00
    there's a level of humor to the increasing amount of bullshit the game throws at you, from the bloopers in the sky to the backwards warp zones to the fire bars in 7-2 to the multiple Bowsers in the last level
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