Super Mario Bros. 2: The Lost Levels retrospective: A real kick in the disk | NES Works Gaiden
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- Опубликовано: 25 ноя 2024
- By a perfectly timed request by patron TheyCallMeSleeper, this episode arrives just in time to be positioned between this channel's coverage of Super Mario Bros. and its American sequel. Of course, this Japan-only sequel has almost nothing to do with that latter game besides the addition of Luigi as the Mario Bro. whose controls and physics turn his adventure into hard mode. But every mode of Super Mario Bros. 2: The Lost Levels amounts to hard mode, doesn't it? Nintendo took no prisoners with this one. No, they took those prisoners and tossed 'em in the wood chipper, laughing cruelly the entire time. Harsh.
Production notes:
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NES/Famicom footage captured from disk via RGB from @analogueinc Nt Mini with Famicom Disk System. Game Boy and Super NES footage captured via RGB from MiSTer FPGA. Video upscaled to 720 with @retrotink339 5X.
Understanding the context of the release of games like this helps one understand how the Japanese gaming culture formed and the mentality behind it. Dying again and again, trying new things, learning everything you can about your favourite game until you know it as well - or better - than the devs did, until you can claim total mastery, that IS the fun part. The reward is the journey, victory is just the icing on the cake. It goes a long way to explaining why genres like early grind heavy RPGs like Dragon Quest, Ys, or Wizardry, and punishing shmups like Gradius or Touhou got SO popular over there, and sheds a lot of light on how someone like Korone can play 12 hours of a game like NES Dragon's Lair with a smile on her face lol
How else would we have gotten Demon's Souls and everything that followed?
For me, the Lost Levels is kind of like "The Stanley Parable" of Mario. I've just recently finished it(after admitedly openly abusing the rewind function) and I was astounded how much enjoyment and connection I've managed to make wtih the game, and 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. And then 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: 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?"
Every single addition here was an idea extrapolation and an experimentation of SMB1 that is akin to thought experiments and mental gymnastics. Because of this, I've never seen the Lost Levels as cruel or hard, aside from the really unnecessary oversight that there is no way to save progress in the game. There are far crueler games on the NES: The basic Mega Man games will give you tons of unnecessary stress and I'm convinved Zelda II is for utter masochists. To say nothing of Battletoads or Kaizo Mario hacks. Obviously it 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.
There are a couple of instances where the devs "troll" the player, but they are never cruel jokes and are just very light jests. Like yes, there's a part of the game where you come across a sheer wall and don't know how to proceed, but instead of being roadblocked and waiting for nothing but your timer to run out, you just actually need to jump around and uncover some invisible blocks. There might be rows of koopas underneath you, but you already managed to kick a shell on top of a platform and are now savagely knocking a whole line of enemies. There is always some way out. The devs trick you with a poisonous mushroom the first time, but after its initial use in the first couple of levels, I've noticed that they just become quickly forgotten and discarded. It so rarely gets used after World 1 and I swear that over 90% of the mushrooms in the game are normal, legitimate power-ups.
As a last point that this isn't a merciless game, just different, I *swear* that world 8 of Lost Levels is far far easier than world 8 of the original SMB. And world 9 is just fantastic. World 9 especially cements that it's a fun meta-commentary on Mario instead of ever aspiring to be a kaizo game. It just isn't.
Great comment, really hit the nail on the head
The game saves how many times you finished 8-4 and shows that as stars on the title screen; the eight finishes needed to unlock World A do not need to be from the same session. Also, if World A is unlocked and you die in World 9, the continue code will take you to World A, where multiple lives can be held and continues are infinite.
FWIW, the worlds beyond 8 cannot be accessed in SMBDX by normal means, even though the level data exists.
Ah, thanks for clarifying this. This specifics on this mechanic are NOT easy to come by online, and I did not have the chops to actually complete this game eight times to test it for myself.
Also, wind is NOT random. It starts and stops at specific places in the stage. Though those places aren’t marked, so it might seem random at first.
@@JeremyParish There's a lot of weirdly incorrect information online (like, did they even play the game?). Simply having the eight stars is enough; to get a star, you need to beat world 8-4, doesn't matter how you get there. On the Game & Watch version, this becomes a trivially easy task due to the built-in world warp cheat.
Honestly the game isn't that hard, especially if you've practiced on Mario Maker levels. It's a fun entry :)
"Having the ability to make Mario stages basically turns you into a jerk." Yep, pretty much, haha. Perfectly describes all of my Mario Maker levels!
It's mostly the same with DooM and its custom levels with populated with lots of CyberDemons, Arch-viles and chaingun dudes.
If it isn't the great Super Mario Bros. god, Austin!
Pretty much. And I love that that is the last line of this episode. It just stops. No outro. No "like, comment, and subscribe." No "thanks for watching." Just "it turns you into a jerk."
This game was so much more like a puzzle game than a traditional Mario game, which I think is something important that tends to get lost when people just describe it as “hard.” It’s kind of a road not taken for the Mario series, in which manipulating and exploiting the game’s physics in this super careful way becomes a much more important part of gameplay than just breezily running and jumping through the levels with reckless abandon.
Hey! My favorite Canadian political and cultural vlogger! Thanks for your great content. ❤️
Exactly, it's very different and thus is meant to be played differently. I honestly love Lost Levels, it's become one of my favorite 2D Mario games lately, but it's fundamentally very different from every other Mario game. If you try to run through these levels sometimes zoning out a bit like with other easier Mario games, you're playing it wrong and will die a lot, it requires playing slow and steady (until you master it of course) and being alert at all times. It's also not supposed to be targeted toward newcomers, it's made specifically for masters of SMB1 and thus expects that the player will already know everything from that game from the start and have mastered it all, and then challenges the player's skill and knowledge on the same mechanics from there but with new twists, whereas every other Mario game pretty much has instead focused on novelty and being friendly to new players. The closest any other Mario game has come to having that kind of philosophy would be Luigi U and I guess some of the NSMB2 DLC, that's it. Once one has mastered SMB1 enough to reach the skill and knowledge level intended for Lost Levels, man it becomes such a freaking fun game, especially since I'm now at a skill level where all the other 2D Mario games are starting to get too easy for me, but going into it as a more average Mario player and playing it like any other Mario game will not be nearly as fun unless one's a masochist or something lol.
I also am not fond of the All-Stars version because, while yes it effectively gets rid of lives (which I don't actually like but that's more personal preference), it butchers almost everything else. Like, the infamous invisible blocks right before hammer bros. bad trolly level design people talk about is really only in the All-Stars version, in the original Famicom version those blocks were not invisible ones, they were visible fully solid ones that just kinda blended in with the background if you didn't look hard enough. So while in the All-Stars version those blocks only exist to ruin your day, in the Famicom version they can actually be used to help get you past the Hammer Bros. as you can actually stand on them from the start, and if you look closely you can see where they are whereas you can't tell at all in All-Stars until you trigger them. It also ruins World 9, which in the original was this wacky weird-looking world that was inspired by the FDS version of SMB1's Minus World, whereas in All-Stars it's just a bunch of ordinary nondescript water levels and a castle stage and the whole look is ruined.
Also, didn't expect to see you here! Hi!
Thats pretty much what the Kaizo hacks are, a Mario/platformer puzzle. Now SMB2 Japan isnt that brutally hard, but I think if it was released today, I could see it being a hit on YT/Twitch because of the perceived difficultly. People werent ready for it, even thought it was advertised as a Mario game for experts in the Japanese advertisements. Howard Phillips take on it always makes me chuckle - "Maybe Miyamoto was depressed at the time he made Mario 2..."
It feels like they started where SMB1 ended, in terms of challenge and mazes. The last few dungeons of SMB1 can be a little frustrating on your first few tries. SMB2J is decent, but I think Nintendo made a brilliant choice to give us SMB2U instead. We needed a new experience. Being a fan of games like Dig-Dug and Mr. do!, I really enjoyed the vertical oriented levels in SMB2U.
The disk does record your wins in the title screen as little stars. When you get 8 stars, you unlock worlds A-D.
Great video. I’m proud to say I’m in the World 9 club without save states or trickery.
So I have a way too long compared to how interesting it actually is story about SMB2J that I'd like to tell anyway:
Sometime around...probably 1988 or 1989, 5 or 6 year old me was watching the local news with my dad because that's just something we did together I guess, and a story came on about a Japanese boy in the general area I lived in (which basically meant "anywhere within a 100-mile radius", given how...extremely rural it was) achieving...something academic, I don't quite remember. As part of the story, there was a brief scene of him playing what initially looked like Super Mario Bros. However, being the absolutely Nintendo-obsessed kid that I was, I quickly noticed that something was...different. Specifically, the ground tiles were not the same ground tiles I was used to seeing in SMB, a game I had spent countless hours playing (much to my video-game-hating father's chagrin). Of course, being so young, and it being the late 80s, there was nothing I could do to figure out what I had just seen. So the memory of that 2-3 seconds from a random local news story stuck in my head for years as a mild curiosity.
Fast-forward to 2008, when I purchase SMB2J on the Wii Virtual Console and play it for the first time in its original form (having played the All-Stars version years prior). Immediately upon starting the game, I saw it, and all at once the memory came rushing back. The ground tiles were the same ones I had seen in that news story 20 years prior. I suddenly realized that what I had seen that day had been the true Super Mario Bros. 2, something that young me would have absolutely flipped out over had he known it existed. The Japanese boy's parents must have either imported an FDS and SMB2J for him, or he already owned it when he moved to the US, and he just happened to be playing it when he was filmed for the story. Either way, that's the entirely-too-long story of how I was one of what I assume was a very small number of American kids in the 80s who saw any footage at all of SMB2J, even if it would take me a couple decades to realize it.
Cool story man,I also was kid born in the 80s,82 to be exact,I remember lotta weird shit on, I could be totally wrong here and makes no difference but I have a quick ten second memory of Macaulay Culkin telling arsinio hall that his game system of choice was the turbo grafx 16,, yeah I know, nothing about our stories are the same but.....
I had an experience with seeing 2J early as well, but it was in a form that rather gave away the mystery: Books Kinokuniya in SF Japantown(still active) imported all sorts of Japanese-language material and among the stuff we picked up there, probably around 1989-1990 when we got our NES, was a tankoban of game magazine Famicom Tsūshin, which had screenshots of 2J, the Tennis cart-swap 256 worlds trick, and usage of Family BASIC, all things that were completely alien in the NES world. And then some material on other games that also weren't available here like Atlantis no Nazo. While I didn't understand all of it at the time(my Japanese is not anywhere near magazine-grade literacy even now), the message was clear that there was a level of access to stuff over there that we didn't have here. When I later read about Lost Levels in Nintendo Power it was like "oh, I remember seeing that, it all makes sense now."
I don't think I've ever heard anyone analyze the Super Mario 2 phenomenon so thoughtfully and thoroughly.
One of my favorite things about it is that you actually bounce up high from enemies. SMB1 small bump is so sad.
Yeah, and if you time it right on certain enemies you can even bounce nearly the whole screen's height.
That's the best analysis of SMB2 I've ever heard, I'm now understanding that game in a way I've never thought before
Mr. Parish has a knack for that, eh? ^-^
The convenience store where we got our NES rentals when I was growing up found a way to get its hands on an assortment of Famicom cart (pirate or legit? Who knows?) with adapters, and one of those was this very Super Mario Bros 2. Oh, can you imagine the delight of my friends and I seeing that we had, apparently, this hyped-but-too-hard-to-buy Mario game in our little town? Such delight! And such frustration once we rented it and all of us couldn't even get past the first level. It did not leave a good impression of the game. We weren't generally very good at regular Super Mario Bros. either, but that game was forgiving enough in the first few stages that you could play it and feel that your eventual loss in World 3 or World 4 was fairly earned.
I do have to commend the same store for getting their mitts on a Famicom copy of Super Mario Bros. 3, though. Now THAT was a coveted rental, in the months when the NA release was just a blip on the horizon.
I think both the Japanese and USA Mario 2 are very much worth adding to your collection. I have no preference on which one is better.
Same, I can't decide either. USA Mario 2 is definitely better for the majority of players who aren't SMB1 gurus though, but for what each game is, they're both great.
I love how you put things like this in historical context, really fascinating.
I was afraid that this would be another slander of Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels, but understanding this game and giving its release much needed context makes this a more positive take on SMBTLL. I think this game is the most overhated I've ever seen, as if people didn't actually try playing it well or understand it. I mean, this game is for "Super Players". What makes it different from many hardcore NES games or even modern games? Sure, there are a few trollish moments, but I personally find satisfaction from beating tough stages, especially bowser stages that lack a checkpoint, rather that relief. That being said I would recommend Super Mario All-Stars version for it's convinient save system, saving after each level instead of each world like other games in this collection or not saving at all. This turned out to be a great retrospective of the much maligned sequel to the classic. Thanks for your work!
I may not have nostalgia for playing the original in Japan, but I have it for playing it on SM All-Stars. I remember when that was announced and having the revelation that there was a whole other Mario game that we didn't get. It was like finding secret treasure.
I remember from Lost Levels on the SNES All Stars cart, it saved your progress by level as well. That's how I was able to beat it as a 10 year old.
I love me some King Crimson. One the best opening wordplays yet. 😺
Maynard James Keenan does a great cover of it.
@@zackschilling4376 I'll be sure to check that out. Thanks!
I think the reputation of this game would be pretty different if it had been as ubiquitous as its predecessor was in the west. So many of the tropes and tricks of Super Mario Bros--the hidden power-ups, the warp zones, the 1-up staircase trick--became common knowledge simply because everyone owned the game and played it to death by virtue of it being the pack-in title. There was never a time in my life when I knew about Super Mario Bros but didn't also know about the world 1-2 warp zone, for example, as my first exposure to the game was watching my more experienced uncle demonstrate it to me. So, like many of my peers, I'd always had the luxury of that wide and deep base of community knowledge to draw from to get a leg up on Super Mario Bros, which never really existed in the US for its direct sequel, and which would have benefited from it so much more.
Lost Levels cranks up the difficulty slider quite a bit, but it also throws several bones to the player that I don't think are appreciated by those who never had the patience to really break the game down. Plenty of power-ups do exist, but they're often hidden; even world 8-4 of this game provides two mushrooms/flowers for the player, which is a huge concession that the first game's final stage certainly didn't offer. Like you noted, the infinite 1-up trick is intentional this time around and even shows up exactly one screen length into the first stage, but even beyond that, this also happens to be the first game in the franchise where you can earn a free 1-up at every single flagpole through some "magic number" trickery with the timer + coin counter. The designers did give the players lots of tools; you just really have to work for them this time around.
That isn't to say that the game didn't earn its difficult reputation (it's explicitly marketed "for Super Players" after all), but it doesn't even strike me as an outlier among the broader NES line-up when it comes to challenge level. There are plenty of other officially licensed games in the US that played sloppier than this and didn't even have the decency to offer infinite continues to make up for it. Some time ago I came to the same conclusion that you did: the timeline just never made sense for a US release. In Japan, this game was created at least partially to give the FDS some more marquee software to push the add-on's sales, and the original SMB had had enough time on store shelves at that point to be properly digested by the Japanese audience. Neither of those aspects were factors in the US, and by the time people were ready for a sequel, SMB2 arguably looked and felt dated next to much of the high water marks of the 1987-88 NES lineup.
This happens to be my favorite platformer of all time, and I'm something of an apologist for the game. I think there's a healthy debate to be had as to whether or not it would have been an appropriate release for the late '80s, but I think its existence is absolutely justified over 30 years later. In a world where the pantheon of mainline Mario games spans dozens of titles designed for players of all stripes, it's nice to have that one release that cuts out all of the training wheels and unapologetically caters to the veterans. And I like how it's often been paired with SMB1 as a bonus game when it has been rereleased. It's a way meatier "hard mode" for SMB1 than the original SMB1's hard mode is, at least.
Finally, I have *never* understood why so many people try to draw connections between Lost Levels and kaizo hacks. The Lost Levels might be challenging, but it's still structured like a normal, singular quest, with peaks and valleys of difficulty, a give and take between stress and relief, and some actual consideration for the lives / game over concept. Kaizo hacks are an exercise in maximal frustration and zero relief, often requiring an extremely esoteric and encyclopedic knowledge of game mechanic minutia and tempered only by the existence of save states. That whole design paradigm feels bewilderingly different to me, and I sometimes wonder if people who insist on that connection have really played either style of game much at all. The Lost Levels is absolutely not an IWBTG style savestate platformer.
4:28 There is no headwind in this game. Wind always pushes Mario from left to right.
13:12 This is only true of world 9, which is a sort of special victory lap bonus world. Worlds A-D comprise a proper "second quest" and allow you to continue normally upon game over.
> I have never understood why so many people try to draw connections between Lost Levels and kaizo hacks
as others have noted, there is a historical throughline from the super mario bros 2 hacking community to what we know today as "kaizo".
@@ShadowEl You can make that throughline for the creative process that leads to the creation of those games, but the end-user experience of playing them is starkly different because the design intent behind them is different.
Lost Levels plays on, tests, and subverts the user's familiarity with SMB1 a lot, but there's still a general discovery and experimentation process that's in line with standard Mario level design. Check out the section in this video at 6:00 with the invisible blocks (that Jeremy is unfortunately struggling with because he can't find the second block). A lot of people point to this specific section as the first instance of the kaizo pixel-hunt jerk block, but the whole reason that pipe is suspended up in the sky at this specific point is to give the player the incentive to reach the pipe, and thus the incentive to start *searching* in this specific area for secrets. If this was a kaizo game, then that pipe wouldn't be there, and the player would be even slightly more left in the dark to intuit their way out of the situation.
(And that's not to mention that a few of the instances in this game of "kaizo blocks" actually weren't such things at all in the original FDS release, and were only butchered into being such when the game was given its 16-bit makeover on SNES.)
People point to stages like World 7-3 (the one with the nonstop wind and the green trampolines) as being an unreasonably difficult gimmick stage, but if you've been playing the game from start to finish, then at that point you should have started to get a grip on how to keep track of Mario while he's off screen anyway, blunting the stage's difficulty somewhat. A kaizo game would give you that kind of esoteric challenge right from minute one instead of gradually building up to it.
Lost Levels gives deference to the concept of extra lives, game overs, and continues. The koopa troopa 1-up trick is in several levels. You can acquire an extra 1-up from every single flagpole as long as you pay attention to your coin count and get a feel for how long the stages are. There are at least a few castle stages with potential 1-ups from koopa shell chains, which is just that slight extra push that a player might need to keep themselves from game over-ing on stage 4 and having to start the world over from stage 1 again. Lost Levels is still designed as a singular quest with levels that flow into each other and comprise larger chapters built from individual challenges, with peaks and valleys of stress and relief. Kaizo games are typically grueling, nonstop maximal execution gauntlets, with no relief ever, leaving you feeling like you're smashing your head against a brick wall over and over again with no break, and tempered only by the existence of save states.
Lost Levels is a comfort game to me. I can turn it on and kill an hour with a single playthrough without a problem, even if I haven't played it in years and am rusty. I can't *watch* more than two stages of Kaizo Mario Bros 3 without feeling exhausted. It's an order of magnitude of difference.
shoutout, I've just played SMB2 myself and I have immense love and respect for that game. Really much more forgiving than most notoriously hard NES games(I personally think Zelda II is far more punishing), but in comparison to the first SMB it's not really that much harder either.
Last I checked, Howard Phillips explained his frustration with SMB2's difficulty way back when he was trying to do a Kickstarter with a game. I only remember because Matthew Taranto, the creator of Brawl in the Family, did a series of comics about Howard Phillips way back when Brawl in the Family was a thing.
Also, there's a book called Gamemaster Classified they both collaborated on, apparently.
His frustration with the game is a matter of public record. My point here was just that he’s never claimed to have single-handedly blocked its release the way internet lore claims. The game’s absence here involved a number of factors of which that one seems the least significant.
I backed Gamemaster Classified. Definitely looking forward to reading more about NoA's licensing decisions during the NES era.
I just commented about this same Howard Phillips story. Thanks for another gaiden history lesson, Jeremy. These are a joy to watch.
@@JeremyParish My biggest problem with this common knowledge explanation of SMB2J's shelving is that--if Mario 2 was "too difficult" for the American audience--then what does that say of the plethora of games that were even more frustrating than this one, yet still saw a US release?
That, and I've always found it to be quite curious that--of all four 8-bit Mario adventures--the US SMB2 is literally the only one of them that *doesn't* offer infinite continues, and is rather stingy on extra lives to boot.
5:30 - Funny, I always felt ashamed when I selected Luigi because I thought the height of his jump made the game too much easier.
Awesome video. I never put much thought into it other than "it was just too hard" but after watching this that doesn't make any sense at all because we've all seen the NES library. It's full of insanely challenging games for cryin out loud. Your take on it seems far more logical and likely. Thank you for the great vid :D.
Oh, its difficulty and Howard Philips' disappointment in the game surely factored into its lack of a U.S. release. I'm just saying there's more to a multinational corporation's decision not to sell one of its most successful tentpole releases of all time outside of Japan than "One person said not to do it."
I'm unsure about the claim about being unreleased because of the difficulty. On one hand, The Lost Levels really isn't that hard compared to most of the NES library, and even some first party titles released around that time (like Metroid and Kid Icarus) are significantly harder.
On the other hand, since Super Mario Bros. WAS Nintendo'd flagship casual, mass appeal game, a hardcore sequel might have been a turn-off to some if simply presented as a regular sequel. Maybe if it was actually called "Super Mario Bros.: Expert Edition", it would have alleviated the confusion.
I recall hearing from some interview Phillips saying he frequently got to try new games from Japan and found Super Mario 2 frustrating and not as fun. And the president would ask Phillips for feedback and he said as much.
So I infer from that that he used Philips as a mini test-market for the average American player. This would have been around the time that NES was just ramping up in the west. The market had recently crashed due to a flood of bad player experiences, Atari had refused to distribute the NES, and Nintendo who were much smaller then was doing it themselves and it was going well so far.
It makes sense to me why Arakawa may have thought then was not the time to release such a game on the recovering market when they themselves were just established in that market and were a much smaller company than today. But long term it found its place.
I'm curious how many people bought the game as a stand alone release for the disk system versus from a kiosk. I bought a copy of FDS volleyball and was surprised to see it included SMB2 on the B side (assuming the previous owner didn't rewrite it) and a proper manual.
You know, I've never seen a breakdown of that info. The packaged retail release definitely sold well. It's one of the easier FDS titles to find on retrogaming shop shelves.
You note that Lost Levels exists in a space where millions of people have broken Mario down to the pixel, and this leads to a very interesting side story that ties into the Kaizo Mario of today. Specifically, because the FDS is really just a regular floppy disk with some fancy plastic security bits, it meant that anyone with the technical knowledge could, theoretically, make a ROM hack, and people did! There was a special hex editing tool named "Tonkachi Mario" that came with an extensive manual and - most importantly - a full ROM hack of Lost Levels that is even more brutal and crushingly difficult, requiring understanding of specific mechanics that wouldn't be seen regularly until the rise of speedrunning. It's still a mystery who created the Tonkachi Mario disk, but it's astounding that within a year of the game's release, you had this black market tool (which by all accounts is excruciating to use) and a fastidiously thorough ROM hack that stands up today. Mario mania really did inspire a nation.
I'd like to post more info, but RUclips seems to delete comments with links in them, so put "Glitchcat7 tonkachi mario" into a search engine, and click the footnotes for the original JP sources. There's this entire incredible world of ROM hacks back in 1987 that just blows me away.
wasnt "tonkachi mario" the name of the rom hack? (or the name given to the rom hack i cant remember)
@@hhhhhhhhhhhhh... Yep! I got it wrong, "Tonkachi Editor" is the name of the tool, and "Tonkachi Mario" is the hack.
I actually answered this comment right when you sent it, but I put a link and therefore it got eaten...RUclips really going hamfisted to avoid spammers I suppose.
@@RabbitEarsCh yeah i noticed a lot more comments are getting shadow-deleted lately lol
Even in Japan Super Mario Bros. 2 is considered to be way too difficult. It inevitably shows up on lists of most difficult video games, and the package's admonishment that it's only "for super players" is well remembered.
I can recommend the Japanese Gameboy Advance Famicom Mini version, it does have a (secret) option to save your progress, meaning you can at least start in the same world!
Growing up with this game on the Super Nintendo, I love it far more than the original SMB. Its levels are more memorable and do more unique and interesting things.
E.g. the falling platform segment in 1-2, or the level that's nothing but super jump springs (7-3). Or the level where the exit is hidden behind a secret (8-2). There's also far more interesting secrets mentioned in the video like world 9 and worlds A - D. As much as I love it, the first Super Mario game feels downright boring in comparison.
I also only play as Luigi because I always thought he was much easier, so I was (and still am) surprised to see many years later online that others came to the conclusion that he's much harder to play as.
This is why I'm glad that you can save on each of the game's 52 levels (World 1-1 to World D-4) in the All-Stars version...
Great job recontextualizing the release of the game. Really shows the value of these chronological deep dives.
I feel like this is something many are missing.
Sure retrospective can still be about the game outside of their context (because an old videogame could simply not be as good today as back then).
Damn that was a good one. Jeremy Parish… never stop.
I never knew that the springs would send Mario flying up so high for so long. Nintendo was being a real troll with this game lol.
Just SMB2/Lost Levels.
@@ChromeCobra420 yeah I didn't mean the other games
You can tell where Mario is easily though by using the screen scroll, if it's scrolling then he's in the center, if it's not scrolling he's somewhere to the left and if you're holding hard left you know he's all the way to the very left of the screen. 7-3 has some specific setups for this even, where there's some platforms that are wide and that, if you scroll enough so that they touch the left end of the screen, and then stop scrolling and hold left, Mario's guaranteed to land on them safely. Knowing this stuff, 7-3, the dedicated green spring level, honestly becomes pretty fun ngl, bouncing really high and whatnot lol.
I think Kirby's Dream Land was the first time I experienced the "Harder Redux" phenomena explained here. I wonder what other examples there are? 🤔
Phenomena is plural, the word you’re looking for is phenomenon.
@@dingdongism Cool, thanks prink.
You explaining the context of this release is absolutely fascinating. I was ready to believe this was a cash-in just like everyone said, but this video made me see Lost Levels in a different light. It's also incredible that this game was Nintendo's attempt at embracing the exploits and bugs of their previous release. It seems so shockingly out of character for the company, considering their behavior towards things like Melee's wave-dashing and removing the iconic BLJ in Super Mario 64 in 3D All-Stars.
8:48 You handled those Hammer Brothers way better than I do. There are two secret power ups in the level, and I need those to get through.
It looked like the shell was going to nail Hammer Bro #2, then it passed right through. What a ripoff!
But yeah, Jeremy took it in stride.
I'm a truck driver and Ive been listening to your opinions on games on my routes. Your insights have helped me figure out which puzzle games on the Gameboy are worth my time. Please do continue and I will gladly help any financial needs you may have. Your work is essesntial......thanks
Thanks for watching! Or listening, I suppose?
Regarding this game seeming too hard and too similar to its predecessor, something similar happened with Final Doom, particularly The Plutonia Experiment. It was also seen as dated when it first came out, especially with Duke Nukem 3D and Quake being released the same year. Custom Doom level designers, on the other hand, were inspired by Plutonia to make their level sets more difficult. Now Plutonia is largely considered the best commercial Doom level set of the 90s.
That final line makes this episode feel like a shaggy goomba story.
13:13 アリガトウ!" (Arigatō!)
Great job as always. It's easy to see why Nintendo passed on bringing this sequel to the States, when they were just starting to grow the Super Mario brand.
Never ceases to amaze me how wildly popular the admittedly influential Tower of Druaga was in Japan. However the super popularity of Super Mario 1 and Zelda 1's second quest makes TOTAL sense!
Excellent video! I really appreciate seeing these games in the context of their release time.
Meanwhile, I'm wishing I could take a peek at an alternate universe where an improved _Super Mario Bros. Special_ was included on the _Super Mario All-Stars_ cartridge :)
I'm not a very good platform gamer generally speaking so I was extremely proud when I finished Japanese SMB2.
Absolutely fantastic video, as always, Jeremy. Your diligent research, calm narration style, and no-bullshit approach always deliver. Keep up the excellent work :)
Here’s the thing about Luigi, though. Like Mario, you can slow him down in the air by pressing the opposite direction from which you jumped. Learn to master doing that before you hit the ground, and the rewards of a higher jump can outweigh the lack of traction on the ground by a long shot.
I'm actually kinda glad they didn't release The Lost Levels outside Japan until the rest of the world was ready.
Who knows how much it would've damaged Mario's reputation at the time, since SMB3 hadn't come out yet and this felt like a game even the most dedicated non-Japanese players might rage quit at.
I LOVBED the lost levels when it came out. I had played all mario games so much, i really apreciated the challenge.
I really enjoyed SMB 2 back in the day in the All-Stars compilation but even back then I recognized it was largely thanks to the game saving your progress after each level. Nowadays I think of it as Mario by way of Super Meat Boy, where you really need to be able to record progress for it to make sense.
Finally, a fair assessment of the Lost Levels! Excellent video!
Excellent video as always!
Experienced it as the Super Mode on the GameBoyColor Super Mario Deluxe. Was super happy to find that there were a bunch more levels to play.
Great video! I got hooked to The Lost Levels around a year ago on NSO's NES library and I'm happy you were fair to it cause honestly I kinda love it? It's absurdly hard but once you learn and memorize the exact path through each level it's just a matter of trying again and again until you slowly improve, and the hundred lives trick helps a ton. I never quite got good enough to beat it from start to finish without save states (uni starting got in the way) and I'm pretty rusty these days but I had a blast with it and I'd love to pick it up again at some point.
Wonderful job as always!
The Proverbial: my favorite kind of iron. Especially the hot variety.
i feel like the lost levels was the blueprint for kaizo romhacks lol
A King reference within the first 5 seconds? Instant like
Just discovered the channel and loving the first few videos I’ve watched!
Happily subscribed! 👍
The Nintendo tips line had recorded explanations for some games including the original SMB, and one of the explanations was how to access the “minus world” 😊
Wow! That was a fun and very insightful retrospective on this game. It really helps to put games into their proper context and made me re-evaluate my perspective on SMB 2.
And on a side note: It seems like the blocks at 13:13 spell out arigatou, i.e. thanks.
They do! You can see it clearly at vgmaps: www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/NES/SuperMarioBros2(J)-World9-4.png
Really enjoyed this video! It's nice to see a more positive take on this game that does it justice, you voiced a lot of how I feel about this game. It just has a very different purpose, intended playstyle, and target audience from nearly every other Mario game, which is probably a big reason why it's kinda disliked in the West. It focuses on developing already existing mechanics and challenging seasoned players as much as possible, rather than focusing on novelty and accessibility like nearly every other Mario game. Lately, as I've played Super Mario Bros. 1 so many times that I've gotten really good at it, and 2D Mario in general has kinda gotten too easy for me, Lost Levels has now become one of my favorite 2D Mario games and is one of the most fun for me to play, since it better matches my current skill level. And boy is it a blast when one is finally skilled enough. Apparently, according to Miyamoto in an interview, the levels in this game were actually stages the devs made for themselves while working with the VS system, wondering if they could make hard levels that matched their skill level, and they found them fun enough that they decided to release them publicly for other players to play. Pretty neat!
A couple minor corrections though:
4:48 The red piranha plants actually will retreat if Mario stands ON their pipes, they just won't if he stands next to them like the green ones do, but standing right on top of them is safe. Except for the upside-down red ones, those will never retreat no matter where Mario is standing, and they also come in and out even faster than the rightside-up ones.
13:13 You can continue in Worlds A-D. It's only World 9 in which you're done if you game over, but World 9 is honestly pretty easy, the main challenge is that they only give you 1 life to beat it, but you can abuse the flagpole 1-up trick to cheese that lol.
13:35 While this is true on a level-by-level basis, it does at least record something of your progress. Specifically, it records how many times you've beaten World 8, tallied by stars on the title screen, which are saved between play sessions. But yeah, it doesn't record what level you last left off on.
For the piranha plant thing, they actually do come out if you stand on the top of the pipe at the very edge. But true, they don't come out if you stand above their hitboxes where you would actually take damage.
@@19Szabolcs91 Yeah, but standing on the very edge is something the game moreso considers like standing next to them rather than on top.
Really enjoyed the context you provided here.
Here is a fun fact proving Nintendo' intentionality. Worlds A-D is its separate campaign in the original version, unlocked after beating the game 8 times. And just like 1-1, A-1 also has a place to perform the 1-up trick to stock up on lives before the challenges ahead.
I think if it had infinite lives as a quick fix, it would have been much more bearable. If somebody made a mod with infinite lives, a death count, a timer, and a sped up respawn time then I think it would be a fun Kaizo-style game.
I recorded this with a 99 lives cheat code and still couldn't get past that damned spring in 4-1.
It kind of does have... well, not infinite lives, but up to 127 with the 1-up trick that can be done at the very start of the game. I actually found that myself, and was very proud of the fact. And honestly, without that, I probably wouldn't have persevered.
Love this game. Eventually SMB1 stops feeling challenging but SMB2 always keeps you on your toes.
I like the mechanic where you can try to finish the level with your coin counter at a multiple of 11 for an extra life. Makes it easy to start off with a few extra lives without having to rely on the shell trick.
The game doesn't save your progress but it does record how many times you finished it. I think you need to complete it 8 times to unlock worlds A-D. The GBA version does also save the last world you finished and the All-Stars version just lets you go straight into World A after finishing the game once.
Part of me likes to half-jokingly say that SMB2J was probably too difficult for Japan as well, they were just too polite to say so. In any case, I do think that of SMB2J, Doki Doki Panic, and SMB2US, we got the best game of the three.
Game Player’s Magazine in their premiere issue in 1989 may have been the first to report on the Japanese SMB2.
I had the most fun with the gbc version of LL. I don't know if it was easier than the mario all stars version but I played the hell outta it
The GBC version gets rid of most of the little things that make it distinct from SMB1, like the high bounce and the minor visual alterations, and slightly changes some level layouts to accommodate those changes (like shortening some gaps that would have required a high bounce to pass). I think you could make a case that it's fairly tougher overall due to the GBC screen crunch though.
Yeah the GBC version is actually harder mostly due to being able to see less ahead.
@Jeremy Parish: You miss a few think, in Japan Vs. Super mario bros was already made and release, and the arcade sequal Vs. super mario bros.2 was also done but no release yet. They wanted to make a sequal for the console for Super mario Bros. and the sequel plan to be release in japan would have been the one with the tossing vegetable, but they did not have the technology at the time to make one level switch from horizontal scrooling, to vertical scrolling, and it would be boring to toss vegtable at enemie on vertical scrolling level only. So it got delayed, and the solution of the disk system then it was possible to do it at this time, but the creator(producer) already send his Super mario bros.2 plan for Yumi kojo doki doki panic, so they decided to take Vs super mario bros.2 the sequal to the arcade, that was already finish but not release yet, and they turn it, into a console game, and they also took the new level from Vs Super mario bros. and place them into the console release, instead of inventing new level to replace them. And release as Super mario bro. 2 for the Family computer disk system, in 1986, and since it became the official sequal they send it to US to get it tested. But it probebly got tested incorrectly. Maybe the person testing it in the US assume they where the exact machanic as the original Super mario bros. And that is how it got label as too hard for US. and from that on you know the rest.
I'd put forward that the optimal way to play this game in the modern day is on an emulator with a good rewind feature like the NSO version. Picking from straight before you died makes it alot more forgiving and makes it flow more like an indie game from the late 2000s (think Meat Boy). There is honestly a lot of great content to tour here. It's challenging and esoteric for sure, and it's probably fair to say that it comes off as mean spirited, but a lot of love was clearly put into this troll of a game. I really appreciate everything it's trying to do and you can tell that these levels were definitely still designed by the core Mario team, a lot of the athletic levels in Mario 3 for instance feel like easier versions of some of what we see here. Stewart on Retronauts also pointed out that it plays a lot more like an 80s micro computer game than a contemporary console game and I think that probably speaks a lot for why it's so vexing to play blind, but clever and interesting when armed with strategies (or cheats). I love game, a lot, but yeah maybe those levels were lost for a reason lol
Wow, i guess mario 2 is a very different sequel than i realised, more similar to something like doom 2 than a lazy cash grab.
Getting a bigger sequel to such a revolutionary and beloved game so soon must have been amazing back then. That's not even accounting for the discounted price
Best closing line ever.
The reskinned Doki Doki Panic version of Super Mario Bros 2 will always be the real sequel to me. Not just because I live in the US but because of how it was introduced to us.. it was the cover of the first issue of Nintendo Power and was heavily featured inside of that issue thus building up the hype for us kids. It was so weird and different and awesome.
How a cash grab reskin can be a legit sequel?
The version of SMB2j in SMB: Deluxe doesn't contain Worlds 9-D, nor Luigi's physics. They also made a few tricky spots a little easier to traverse. And with the constrained window on the playfield, it's more of a way to "play Mario on GBC" than a desirable way to play in general.
It's not like the Super Mario 2 (Doki Doki Panic) that we did get in the US was easy. Maybe less cruel, but certainly not easy.
One of a handful of nes games I still play but have never beat.
Original game was released earlier then 2007. On GBA in Famicom Mini series
A couple of people I read suggested that the Japanese Mario 2 could have triggered a backlash from American kids that would have been the undoing of the NES, similar to how Pac-Man and E.T. were partially the undoing of the Atari 2600 a few years earlier.
Given that everything about the NES' early years was about distancing it from the pre-crash era in general and Atari in particular (the VCR frontloader design, the "what you see is what you get" black boxes, ROB, the censorship code, the draconian third party-policies), I can see Nintendo at least in part worried that a potentially alienating Mario sequel might undo the goodwill they went out of their way to build up.
Given all the wildly difficult games on NES, many of which felt far less fair than SMB2, I have a hard time imagining this as the bridge too far.
@@JeremyParish Most of those weren't published by Nintendo, much less sequels to the console's flagship franchise.
So you think kids would have somehow drawn the line here? "It was OK when other companies made hard games, but now that Nintendo did one, I am DONE! Master System for life! That's where the easy games are!"
@@JeremyParish I dunno. Maybe?
Given Nintendo's strict censorship policy and all the other extremes they went through in the early NES era, is it crazy that they would be irrationally hypersensitive, particularly for the sequel to their biggest hit?
Something else to consider is that to make smb2j work in a cartridge format you need a TS-rom board which has an MMC3 mapper AND additional work ram. If you’d want the game to save how many times you’ve beaten it (to access hidden worlds) you’d also need battery backup. All of this would have increased the cost of cartridge and the tech wasn’t around until 1988. So a sequel that isn’t much different beyond difficulty, coming out in ‘88 AND it would have been more costly just wouldn’t work. Considering how one point of the FDS was to make games less expensive it wouldn’t make sense to have to adapt the game to a more costly format.
I am wondering if the Lost Levels were the first inspiration for the Special world in SMW.
Also I wish they decided to make a sequel to SMB USA (or a side series like Donkey Kong '94/Mario vs DK).
Seems likely. One of the worlds spells out “Arigatou” just like the SMW world that spells out “You are a super player”-can’t imagine that’s a coincidence.
@@JeremyParish SMB2J gives you a congratulations screen after a world 9 game over that literally says "You are a super player!" as part of a thank you message from "Mario" personally. Most 3D Mario games from 3D Land onward spell out "Thank You!" at some point within their final secret unlockable challenge level (Champion Road, Darker Side of the Moon, etc.), as in world 9-4.
There's at least a handful of other little and repeatedly used touches throughout the series that you can trace back to this game specifically, from using stars as a progress marker (title screen clear tally), to putting eyes on all of the power-ups and some background scenery, to hiding Bowser's castle in the sky.
This was the highlight of the recent game and watch for me
Infinite lives, Just turn off and turn back on when time to play
Ummm Stu Gipp now always comes to mind when I think about this game
Lost Levels would seem to have planted the seed for kaizo romhacks which would appear after Super Mario World for the Super Famicom. I definitely don't have the skills to play kaizo but watching experts do kaizo Mario stuff is very compelling. Great request by TheyCallMeSleeper.
At least kaizo can be mastered to the point the top players can sight-read them.
It's also to blame for SSM's troll levels. From cheap to intricate, without foreknowledge they're designed to chew through lives and dare you to skip them. Because they know master players won't.
Troll levels aren't designed to mess with Expert players, they're intended as comedy performances done with infinite lives. The modern troll standards have come a long way since off screen thwomps and pick a path. Now they use complicated contraptions to surprise you with perfect timing.
A couple years ago, I heard someone talk about Lost Levels like it was a puzzle game, something to be solved. I played through the game with that mindset, and had a miserable time. Few things felt intentional or fully planned out, and those that did felt cruel. I wound up writing a whole essay about it (I think it was 8+ pages?), but decided not to post it anywhere because I know so many people do enjoy this game. I felt conflicted, because my experience was lousy, so my writing reflected that, but I kept reading about other people's experiences and how the game was so subversive and thoughtful. I've spent so much time reading reviews and developer interviews from across the decades to figure out what I'm missing, but at the end of the day, all I can say is "I had a bad time with this game. I dont think I like it."
But on Mario Deluxe they took out the wind levels and it didn’t have the clouds with the little smiley faces
I mean, I'd hardly call the poison mushroom a power UP, but agreed with everything else. never realized that the extra disk space allowed them to have more unique levels, though. definitely one I doubt I'm ever going to finish, even with the save feature from all-stars! indeed lost levels feels like the original 'kaizo mario' I'm just glad you said it, haha.
More like a power-down?
@@retro3188 yeah exactly!
It's more of a power-UP YOURS
@@JeremyParish okay that one's even better, LOL!
I agree with you. Excessive difficulty could not be the real reason for not releasing the game in the West, because, well, nobody refrained from releasing hard games on NES, and very often Western versions were made even harder than Japanese originals.
I think this is the best counter argument to the cute, cuddly image Nintendo had soon after, this game hates your ass and wants to see how much it can hurt you
Superb video
Too bad this SMB2 and Doki Doki Panic weren't released on the NES.
I suppose if they called it "Championship SMB" or "Super Mario Bros. Challenge", a specific, niche-oriented title, it still could have worked out in the circle of NES Mario elites.
But then again, it would have to be about as pricey as the original cartridge, which would NOT have worked out.
Or maybe if the disk system ecosystem got several more Mario level packs a la the Doom level packs of the 90s...
Had the NES taken another year or two to reach the US, they might have combined the games into a single cartridge, provided there was a mapper available.
Was Super Mario Bros: USA released in Japan before All-Stars?
Yes, by about 10 months.
Nintendo had already given us in North America, a harder Super Mario Bros. experience. All you need to do is complete the game and start a new one. Now all of the levels are more difficult.
I think that's in every region's version of SMB1 though
The differences in the second quest are so minor that they barely matter.
Correct. It's a "world rom". Only the PCB / pinout and cart shell are different.
It can make some of the later levels quite a bit more challenging. It's not just that its changing Goomba to Buzzy Beetles, but all enemies are faster, and all elevators are the short variety platform size. The point is that Nintendo wanted to give players a more challenging version with very little additional programming. It's nice to have it.
@@videogameobsession Yeah I know it's not just goombas vs buzzy beetles, but there are more small changes. Let me rephrase it. The hardest stages in SMB1 (like 7-1, 7-3 and world 8) are barely affected. Cheep Cheep, Hammer Bro's and Bullet Bills (which are the hardest enemies to deal with) act the exact same.
So the early part of hard more is harder than the early part of normal mode for sure, but overall, the difficulty never really exceeds the hardest parts of normal mode, at least not by much.
Didn't SMB1 have a second (ura) loop too? Not one with completely different level designs but IIRC it offers a harder quest if you press start after the ending?
Yes. In the new quest Goombas are replaced by Buzzy Beetles.
And the enemies move more quickly.
I beat this game with Luigi which was not easy cause he kept sliding around.
Good times.
Why doesn't the shell kill the hammer bros on 8-3? I've always hated that glitch!
Super Mario bothers 2: The Lost Levels is a very hard game to beat.
It's hard to play from the beginning. The game shows no mercy and actively trolls you, even tricking you on learned knowledge from mario 1.
@@cattysplat yep that's true.
The All-Stars version is not that hard because you restart from the current level after a game over.
@@CallOfEuropeanSpirit
And on SMAS, it has a save feature.
I always thought this should've been released in the US as an 'expert edition' Super Mario Bros cart. Shame they didn't put it out here... I would've bought it.
I never played the lost levels but it does seem tough
I'm really curious what an international release of this game would have looked like. International ports were usually easier, because developers could implement feedback from the domestic release (kind like a modern patch), so I wonder what tweaks would be made to make SMB2 more palatable overseas?
I just noticed the suspended platforms in SMB2 that have a different graphic than the steel girder look in SMB1 are made of mushroom faces.
Did they need the address space for those graphics for something else and made the platforms out of another asset?
I just think that's an instance of the designers moving further away from the Donkey Kong origins and more into the growing Mushroom Kingdom aesthetic. This is also the first game that puts faces on the mushroom items (and a few other objects, for that matter).
“It’s too darn hard” came from Howard Phillips of “Howard and Nester” fame. He play tested all of Nintendo’s games before wide US release, and he told Yamauchi-san as much.
Not sure if you saw, but all of this is covered in the video? In any case, Philips definitely didn't tell Yamauchi. Yamauchi didn't particularly care about the specifics of individual game releases, and he handed off management of NOA to his son-in-law (Arakawa) to deal with so he didn't have to deal with sheafs of opinions from some American kid about which games should show up in the U.S.