Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels

Super Mario Bros.:
The Lost Levels
The Lost Levels box art shows Mario holding the two-finger V sign inside an inscribed circle. Above, red Japanese text reads the title text: "Super Mario Bros. 2". The Nintendo logo and an award ribbon are displayed in opposite corners.
Japanese cover art
Developer(s)Nintendo R&D4
Publisher(s)Nintendo
Director(s)
Producer(s)Shigeru Miyamoto
Designer(s)Shigeru Miyamoto[1]
Programmer(s)
  • Toshihiko Nakago
  • Kazuaki Morita
Composer(s)Koji Kondo
SeriesSuper Mario
Platform(s)Family Computer Disk System
Release
  • JP: June 3, 1986
Genre(s)Platformer
Mode(s)Single-player

Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels is a 1986 platform game developed and published by Nintendo. A sequel to Super Mario Bros. (1985), it was originally released in Japan for the Family Computer Disk System as Super Mario Bros. 2[a] on June 3, 1986. Nintendo of America deemed it too difficult for its North American audience and instead released an alternative sequel, also titled Super Mario Bros. 2, in 1988. It was remade and renamed The Lost Levels for the 1993 Super Nintendo Entertainment System compilation Super Mario All-Stars, serving as its first international release. It has been rereleased for Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Wii, Wii U, Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo Switch.

The Lost Levels is similar to Super Mario Bros, with players controlling Mario or Luigi to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser. It adds a greater level of difficulty and Luigi controls slightly differently from Mario, with reduced ground friction and increased jump height. The Lost Levels also introduces obstacles such as poison mushroom power-ups, counterproductive level warps, and mid-air wind gusts. It has 32 levels across eight worlds and 20 bonus levels.

Reviewers viewed The Lost Levels as an extension of Super Mario Bros, especially its difficulty progression. Journalists appreciated the challenge when spectating speedruns and recognized the game as a precursor to the franchise's Kaizo subculture in which fans create and share 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.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Atari HQ: SMB2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).


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