Super Mario Bros. - The Lost Levels is the sequel to the original Super Mario Brothers game, but it was not originally released in America. Nintendo made the decision to not release the sequel to the most popular video game in America because they said that the American’s couldn’t handle the difficulty of the game. When I found this out I was insulted. How dare Nintendo say American's aren't as good as Japanese at video games. Don’t they know that we have the same amount of time as they do to waste on video games? I decided that I need to go out and get this game to prove to Japan that America is just as good as are at playing Mario Brothers! What I found out right away is that maybe Nintendo was right. This game is ridiculously hard. From the start of the game you can tell that this isn’t the same game as the original Super Mario Brothers. It may look the same because it uses the same game engine, the enemies are the same, and visually it looks just like the first game. But then you start playing the game and realize that there are new obstacles, the enemies are more aggressive, and this game even has mushrooms that hurt you! Also, you get to decide if you want to play the game as Mario or Luigi. Mario has better traction, but Luigi is more agile and can jump higher and further. I decided to play this game as Mario. I figured that since this blog is named after him I should use him instead of Luigi. During this project, I plan on using Mario whenever I have the option of picking a character.
You may be reading this and think that this game can't be as hard as I’m making it out to be. This game was made in 1986 for the original 8-bit Nintendo system, and I have developed my video game skills since it was released and I am ready to complete this game in my first sitting! Wrong. Each level in this game is carefully designed to get you to run into an enemy, fall to your death, or make a stupid mistake that will leave you cursing and throwing your controller. Some levels require you to be perfect because they don’t offer you any mushrooms. In World 5, I was unable to find 1 mushroom until I was in the castle. Other levels require you to be 100% accurate with your jumps; otherwise you are falling to your death. When you get to world 7 or 8, most levels require you to be both perfect with the enemies and 100% accurate with your jumps.
So, how was I able to complete this game? The best answer I can give you is that I played this game like crazy. I had to make this a top priority when I had free time. I even had to quit playing Modern Warfare 2! The amount of time I put into this game basically gave me the ability and confidence to beat each level. Playing a certain level over and over allowed you to get used to when enemies would show up and how to overtake them. It also allowed you to figure out the best route to take for completing the level. Also, this game gives you unlimited continues. This is very important because trust me on this, you are going to die a lot. When you use the continue you are forced to go back to level one of the world you were playing, but at least you don’t have to keep starting the game from the beginning once you run out of lives.
I want to show you why some of these levels are so hard. To do this I posted videos of how to beat certain levels that stood out to me as being the most difficult to defeat. Before you view the videos, I want point out that these videos may make the level look easy because the person playing it completes the level without any problems, but let me tell you it is a different story when you are playing the levels. So keep in mind when you are watching these videos that this game is harder than the videos look. If you don’t believe me just play the game. My guess is that it will take you a few weeks just to get to the levels that I am about to show you.
This level was the first level for me that really gave me some problems. The first part that I had difficulty with was the long jump where you had to the hit the flying turtle to get to the landing zone. Next, when you see Mario avoid Bullet Bill and land on the top section, he easily jumps his way over the gap onto the other side. This part is easy if you are able to make it to the top section. If you happen to miss it, you have a very difficult jump to make because jumping from the bottom requires you to press the jump button at the very last second when you are running to make the jump. If you hit the jump button too early you will not jump far enough to land on the other side. Finally, when you do actually make it to the end of the level, your nerves are almost fried when you have to jump on the two single bricks to make it to the flag pole.
I would rate this level a 4 out of 5 on the difficulty scale.
So you made it past World 4-3, now you get to play the second hardest castle level of the game! This level is hard for many reasons. First there are many tricky jumps that require you to be 100% accurate to make it across. Also, the level puts you in tough situations with enemies that are hard to get past because of the low ceiling. At the end it gets really tough because of the wall hanging from the ceiling when you face Bowser. It takes a few times to get used to it and figuring out a way to get around Bowser, because at this point you are probably small and have to avoid him to complete this level.
I would rate this level a 4.5 out of 5 on the difficulty scale.
So you finally made it past World 4, now it’s time to relax and start enjoying the game! Wrong, level 5-1 is tough level that requires you to be perfect to beat it. It also introduces you a new wind feature that wasn’t in the first Mario game. The wind will pick up in certain parts of the level to make it more difficult to control Mario. The wind has the ability to push Mario in both directions. This makes it very difficult to get past the section where you have long jumps to make. There also is a double jump that requires you to run, jump onto a single block and then immediately jump again to get over a decent size pit. Also, this level is pretty long, if you take your time you most likely will run out of it!
I would rate this level a 4.5 out of 5 on the difficulty scale.
This level is somewhat similar to level 4-3 where there isn’t much ground for Mario. I would say the level starts out pretty easy, but once the Bullet Bill’s come out the level of difficulty picks up. You have to be smart with the conveyor belts as well; otherwise you will be too short to make it to your next landing zone.
I would rate this level a 3.5 out of 5 on the difficulty scale.
There is nothing like this level in the previous Mario game or the Lost Levels game. First, you have wind for the entire level. That means controlling Mario will be a very tough task. To top that off, about 75% of this level you are jumping on super trampolines and trying to land on a small section of land. The combination of the super trampoline jumps and the wind blowing in both directions makes this level extremely hard to complete. Most of the time you have no idea where Mario is because he is off the screen! It takes a lot of tries before you get the hang of jumping on the super trampolines with some type of accuracy. Finally, once you make it to the end of the level, you have some hard jumps to make with the wind Mario around. The only good news about this level is that 7-4 isn’t as difficult.
I would rate this level a 4.5 out of 5 on the difficulty scale.
So now you are one level away from King Bowser, but don’t start to think this will be a cake walk to the end. You have to face 4 hammer brothers and they are very aggressive at this point of the game. Also, there are 2 gap jumps that are very difficult. The first makes you jump off a trampoline and hit a flying turtle to make it to the other side. The other is at the end of the level where you have to get the conveyor belt to raise up so you can make the jump onto two blocks and then onto the flagpole. The reward for making it through this level is the chance to take on King Bowser.
I would rate this level a 4 out of 5 on the difficulty scale.
Congratulations, you finally made it to the last level of the game. Now you just have to play the hardest level in the game to get to Bowser. This level has it all, insanely hard jumps, difficult enemies in the way, and a maze that you need to figure out. The jumps in this level are very hard to get used to. At two different points of the level you have to jump in the air and then direct Mario backwards below the ground you just jumped on. The hardest jump is when you have to have the timing down with the jumping Podoboo and the moving fire arm to make it across the fire pit. That took me about 15 times before I was able to figure out the timing on that jump. If you can make it past all the crazy jump, and you figure out the maze, you get to face 2 Bowsers! There is a “fake” Bowser that you have to get past, but can’t get him to fall into lava. If you are able to get past him, you then have to get past 2 jumps and you are put up against King Bowser. If you are able to get past him, you have just beat the Lost Levels.
With a maze, a ton of enemies, crazy hard jumps and 2 Bowsers I would rate this level a 5 out of 5 on the difficulty scale.
So this concludes my walkthrough of the game. You can check out my thoughts on this game as I played it by looking at my old tweets, and you can view my progress throughout other Super Mario Brothers games as I’m playing them by following me on Twitter (http://twitter.com/MarioBroProject). After I beat this game I took a few pictures to prove that Americans can beat the same video games that the Japanese can beat.
If you get the chance to play this game, you can really appreciate the effort that the developers put into making this game hard to beat. The long jumps are out of this world. Also, another neat thing about this game is that there are some warp zones that cause you to go back a few worlds. This didn’t affect me since I decided not use warp zones for this blog. If you do decide to use warp zones there is a catch to using them. This game has a secret world 9 in it. The only way to unlock this world is to avoid using any warp zone in the game. I can’t give too much information about this world because I didn’t get too far in it, but I do know that you start out with 1 life. I played it once and died about 15 seconds into level 9-1. This game didn’t stop with the surprises with world 9 though. This game also has 4 more secret worlds, A – D, that can be unlocked by beating the game 8 times! For the purpose of the blog I will not try to defeat world 9 or A-D because they aren’t part of the original game. I do plan on going back to this game once I complete all the other Mario games and try to unlock these worlds to see what crazy obstacles these bonus worlds offer.
Now that I have beat one of, if not, the hardest Super Mario Brothers game, it's time to move on to a Mario game that I have only beaten once in my life, Super Mario Brothers 2. This game is pretty different from most of the other Super Mario Brothers games. There will be a whole new group of enemies, storyline, and worlds to beat, and I won’t be facing Bowser at the end of the game either. Even though this game is pretty different from the other games and it’s been 22 years since I beat it originally, I am very excited to take this game on again and beat it again for a second time.
