#super mario bros 2 the lost levels

[lore-of-the-mushroom-kingdom]

Fake Bowsers

So something people will forget about at times is the fact in several games the Bowsers you fight aren't the real bowser.

In Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2: The Lost Levels many of the Bowser's you fight are minions transformed into Fake Bowsers by magic. We see this done again in Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario 3D Land, and Super Mario Run as well.

[kaasiand]

GUYS GUESS WHO JUST OBTAINED PEAK

[roninkairi]

So...I Kind Of Made A Purchase Today...

Remember that commission I just posted? Well here was what inspired it:

Obviously I like testing myself.

And on the back of each card:

A nice item for your coffee table!

Futaba: Is this why you had Haru kissing me on the cheek?

Me: Yes. Futaba: ...WORTH IT!!

Morgana: (thinking) I need an SNES edition released, just for a pic of me and Ann...

[pumaloafing]

If I included the handheld games there'd be too many for tumblr to list... also not sure if I should have included Super Mario Maker, are those mainline? Ultimately I decided not to include them since I wanted to compare content officially made by Nintendo and the vast array of user-made content for Super Mario Maker is not that.

[misterygx]

The Invalid Brothers.

[hadouwave]

Underrated artist

1.Daisuke shigoto

2.oscar gonzalez loyo

3.kiyoshi utata

4.masami oobari

[ninebaalart]

Peach and Stop Watch

If you're familiar with Supper Mario Broth, you know that Stop Watch is this strange lil creature that popped up in character reference documents due to a misunderstanding from Nintendo of America in the very early days of the Mario Franchise. I added him in after doing this Peach, which is also based from that sort of same period, taking cues from her original outfit and the sprite from Lost Levels.

[supermariobros4smbx400]

https://www.mediafire.com/file/xhlodct489m73ei/Super_Mario_All-Stars_X.zip/file

[demifiendrsa]

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition — Announcement Trailer

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition for Switch will launch on July 18, 2024 for $29.99 via Nintendo eShop, and $59.99 as a “Deluxe Set” physical edition.

Screenshots

First details

On July 18, the Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition game kicks off its worldwide—or just living room-bound—competition on the Nintendo Switch family of systems! And for those whose NES roots run deep, prepare for the nostalgia-plosion that is the Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition – Deluxe Set. This special-edition bundle includes a physical version of the game, a set of five collectible pins, 13 art cards commemorating each of the featured NES classics, and a replica of the fabled gold-colored NES Game Pak (for display only, stand included) to commemorate the original 1990 Nintendo World Championships event. Perfect for collectors, and for raising above your head in victory!

Paying tribute to the unforgettable in-person Nintendo World Championships held in 1990, 2015 and 2017, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition challenges players to battle through bite-sized bits of classic blockbusters. Both old-school and new-school players can enjoy the rush of over 150 speedrun challenges taken from 13 classic NES games. Warm up by setting and beating your own best times in the single-player Speedrun Mode—unlocking new challenges and unique in-game pins along the way—then up to eight players can compete locally in Party Mode. Nintendo Switch Online members can also enter World Championships Mode to submit their best times in five challenges that rotate each week and compete for a spot on the global leaderboard.

Test your mettle against speedrun challenges taken from these NES titles:

Balloon Fight

Donkey Kong

Excitebike

Ice Climber

Kid Icarus

Kirby’s Adventure

Metroid

Super Mario Bros.

Super Mario Bros. 2

Super Mario Bros. 3

Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels

The Legend of Zelda

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

It’s tme to etch your own name into gaming history. Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition – Deluxe Set ($59.99 MSRP) and the digital version of the game ($29.99 MSRP) are available for pre-order at Best Buy, GameStop, Target, and other select retailers. Also, those seeking the most authentic NES feel can snag a pair of optional Nintendo Entertainment System controllers ($59.99 MSRP), available to paid Nintendo Switch Online members.

[everygame]

Super Mario Bros. 2 / The Lost Levels

Developed/Published by: Nintendo EAD / Nintendo Released: 3/05/1986 Completed: 14/05/2023 Completion: Beat it by using warp zones (1-2 to 4-1, 5-2 to 8) and abusing saves at the most miserable parts. At least I'm honest! Version Played: Switch Online Trophies / Achievements: n/a 

How many times have I played the original Super Mario Bros. in my life? It must be thousands, from the real thing, pirate carts, emulation as early as Nesticle… of all video games it is probably the platonic form of the video game, the first screen the most indelible image, beating out Pac-Man or anything modern.

It is the Mona Lisa to art, or Dancing Queen to pop. Something we all know, something you respect, something that, probably, you never need to look at or hear again.

I do think that’s how I feel about the original Super Mario Bros. A masterpiece that I don’t really want to touch. In fact, even though I’ve never played The Lost Levels, I’ve played Super Mario Bros. so much that I approached this almost without curiosity, and after playing it for a while and slamming into its absurd difficulty spikes, I put it down for a long long time.

Because I just found it boring. The story goes that when developing VS. Super Mario Bros., Nintendo’s unusual (US-only!) arcade remix of the NES original, Miyamoto and his team had such fun making the levels more difficult that they thought it would be even more fun if they made an entire game of extremely hard levels–and with Nintendo all-in on the Famicom Disk System, a new Mario game wouldn’t even have to be a huge production. They could just slam it out on disk, quickly.

The thing is… as a level designer, I’m keenly aware that making extremely difficult levels is… well, it’s fun! But it’s fun because it’s easy. You just have to do a couple of things. You make everything that the player has to do require them get it perfect or at the absolute limit of their player character’s abilities. So the platform is as far as it can be for them to land on it at full speed. And then the other thing you do is that you trick the player as much as possible. You know that they need to jump there to make it across, so why not put a block in their way so they’ll bump their head and not make it! Funny!

It’s one of the first thing a level designer does, and I have been as guilty of it as anyone. It’s why games like Limbo are bad, because they’re tuned exactly this way. The player doesn’t play. They just do exactly, exactly what the designer is demanding that they do, with the frustration that what they’re being asked to do is either obscure, difficult, or both.

The funny thing about The Lost Levels, though, is that despite its fierce reputation, the game isn’t made up of only these moments. In fact, when you play the Lost Levels, you become aware of what it is that you’re good at in a Mario game and which parts of the design or controls you’ve never got a hook on. Because while I wouldn’t claim the levels have any meaningful overarching design concept, they generally just… play like a Super Mario Bros. level, until you get to a difficulty spike or a lie.

Playing the Lost Levels, I realized: I’m actually not bad at getting past Hammer Bros.; I guess I’ve internalized how to do it. I can get past fire bars!

But a springboard? Fuck me. It’ll kill me 99 times out of a hundred. I just can’t hit the button at the right time, and maybe I never will. From about the second level of this I’m fucked.

The cleverness, then, of the designers at the time was to work out which of these things were going to fuck the most players. What ways of playing Super Mario Bros. people hadn’t internalised. So it’s not just jumping to hit things at Mario’s limit, sometimes you’re having to awkwardly jump to platforms below you, or hit blocks just right so you don’t immediately suicide and can then get on top of them later.

It’d probably be fine if you didn’t have to generally play through the entire fucking level just to get back to the bit you fucked up! Unlike the classic argument for this (“you’re getting better at the game each time you have to run to the bit you got stuck on!”) here you’re already good at Super Mario Bros. so used to it, generally, that you’re bored of it. And then you do a bit that uses a muscle you’ve maybe never used.

This is probably fun to some people, and I’m sure it was fun to a room full of Nintendo game designers in 1986, but it’s not for me. I mean they really are taking the piss at some points (like 8-2, where the exit is actually completely hidden without a bit of luck or foreknowledge.) 

Some people–many people–are still happy when Dancing Queen comes on the radio. It’s possible you’re one of the people for whom more Mario is always a good thing, who consider the slippy inertia and brown graphics as good as a warm bath. If you are, this is largely more Mario, just sort of unfair in a way that is only rarely interesting.

Will I ever play it again? The Lost Levels, originally Super Mario Bros. 2 “for Super Players” truly was for the super player in that if you could finish it without using warps you got an extra world–where you only got one life. And if you beat the game eight times, you got four extra worlds. I will have a noodle on the SNES port of this one day but I just don’t feel like I need to see any of those extras…

Final Thought: The Lost Levels stands out to me as a situation where an American video game executive actually was correct, which even as I type it I can’t really believe it. Howard Phillips, Nintendo’s product analyst, gave such poor feedback to this that it was decided that it shouldn’t be released in the US.

I don’t think Phillips was thinking this way, but The Lost Levels represents a moment for the Mario franchise where it could have faced stagnation and irrelevance. Nintendo of Japan was thinking in the past. Think of Lode Runner, a series that really doesn’t come up in conversation at all, but in the early 80s was a phenomenon. Sequels and remixes were released endlessly, in a flood, doing nothing but creating more and more difficult and obscure games that you couldn’t even begin to play unless you were a Lode Runner master. I myself remember trying to get past the first level of Hyper Lode Runner on the Game Boy as a kid and never managing it.

It would be possible to hypothesise, actually, that in being forced to remix Doki Doki Panic into Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3 as a true evolution of the platform game as a whole was begat.

Not that I’m saying that’s what happened or anything. Just interesting to think about.

Support Every Game I’ve Finished on ko-fi! You can pick up digital copies of exp., a zine featuring all-exclusive writing at my shop, or join as a supporter at just $1 a month and get articles like this a week early.

[worldpremieretoons]

unfinished drawing of the SMB2J cover art I once did but grew displeased with and scrapped. Coming back to it, I'm not sure why I didn't finish it but here it is anyway lol from 2020

[lore-of-the-mushroom-kingdom]

The Special Worlds

In Super Mario 3d Land after you rescue Princess Peach, Luigi is kidnapped and taken to the Special Worlds.

I believe this may be the Lost Levels from Super Mario Bros. 2: The Lost Levels.

It could also be the Parallel World from Paper Mario: Color Splash.

[pembrokewkorgi]

Commercial Break - Classic Super Mario Commercials

We looked at commercials starring Pac-Man, Sonic, Frogger, and even Wario. Now it's time to look at commercials starring everyone's favorite plumber, Super Mario! https://youtu.be/aV2bD3oQ7i8

Posted using PostyBirb

[devileaterjaek]

Super Mario Bros 2 (AKA The Lost Levels)

[king-k-ripple]