Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels

The year was 1986. The Famicom had been on the market in Japan for three years, but its overseas counterpart, the NES, had only been available for one year in North America. Nintendo is busy readying a sequel to Super Mario Bros., which will be released that year. However, that version would never see the light of day outside of Japan, at least not in its original form, until its release on the Wii Virtual Console in 2007.

Nintendo of Japan deemed the game "too difficult" for American audiences. So they decided to take a game called Doki Doki Panic, give it a fresh coat of paint, and release that as Super Mario Bros. 2 in North America and Europe. What happened to the original Super Mario Bros. 2? It was later referred to as "The Lost Levels." A remake of this game appeared in Super Mario All-Stars on the SNES, and was included as an added quest in the Game Boy Color game Super Mario Bros. Deluxe. But the original Famicom version was finally released in 2007, thanks to the Virtual Console.

The Lost Levels, as it is more commonly referred outside of Japan, looks a lot like the original Super Mario Bros. But it has some changes. First, there is no two-player mode. The player can choose to be Mario or Luigi, but this time they each have different abilities. Mario plays the same as he did in the original, while Luigi can jump higher, but has more difficulty in stopping.

Other changes included wind gusts that could help or hinder long jumps, reverse warp zones that would send you back to earlier levels, poison mushrooms, fake Bowsers, a secret World 9, and an even more secret set of worlds A through D, just to mention a few. To reach World 9, you have to complete all 8 worlds without using Warp Zones. To reach World A, you need to beat the game eight times (not necessarily in one sitting, the game saves how many times you beat it), and then complete World 8 or 9 (depending on whether or not you used warp zones).

Fake Bowsers would appear in World 8-4, 9-3, and D-4. The fake Bowser would appear roughly halfway through the stage. He would be colored differently, and not be positioned on a bridge. Also, during water levels, some land enemies (such as Goombas and Koopa Troopas) will show up. You cannot kill them by landing on them.

I recently purchased this game via the Virtual Console, and it is quite difficult. The game has a Continue system, with unlimited Continues, which kind of renders the Lives system useless, beyond the fact that a continue puts you back at the beginning of the current world (like if you continue on World 4-3, you'll go back to 4-1). I'm currently attempting to get past World 5.

The difficulty is definitely higher than the original, but that's the fun of it. Though, it does get frustrating. I highly recommend it to anyone who was a fan of the original Super Mario Bros., but craves a much more difficult version. This will keep you playing for a long time.