the nes and snes use pretty much the same cpu (both are 6502 derivatives and they're programmed identically), so they probably used the same game code, which has the same unused levels, and just changed the code to make the graphics work on the snes.
Here's an interesting observation about that starry sky in level 14 from looking at pre-release screenshots on TCRF: there exists a beta screenshot showing a coin heaven with a sky gradient effect where the sky gradually gets darker. Those star tiles surely would have been used if that effect had remained in the game.
Nintendo wanted to do a lot more with the Super Mario Bros games that most know about too. Like even a 3d like thing with the original Super Mario Bros. That ground you run on all the time? Notice it's a stack of two of the same block. The goombas/troopas can actually walk on that bottom layer. They just walk on top of it inbetween the two. It's a bit of a leftover of the 3d thing they wanted to try. Look up design doucments on this too. It will explain it more. SMB3 was actually finished in 1988 and we didn't get it in usa till 1990 too. Like you said there's a bunch of things they wanted to do with this too. There's some unused castle icons for the map too. And a beta screen of the world 1 map that had a bit different path to the first fortress too.
The real reason they leave the levels in the game and why many resources are left in the game is because when any kind of project gets late in development, there are lots of references to that level data, and without being too technical, a failure to find all of the references to the data could result in bugs and crashes that are hard to debug.
6:25 I found this level on my NES back in the 90s *without* a Game Genie. You need an original style NES, partially eject the game just enough so that it doesn’t cause the infamous blinking power light indicator on the console. If you’re very lucky, the game may start Mario on the World 1 map, but he will spawn off-screen to the upper left part. If pressing the A button doesn’t start, keep moving in random directions until you hear Mario move. Then press A. If you’re even more lucky, you just might get the game to start at this particular hidden stage. Good luck!
If i get a nes with smb3 ill try this and if it dose not work, i just have to question my self why your lying. Also where did you know that the level you "Found" was unused? Like no one has that good of a memory!
@@azuraltumbabic4239 You've never seen or heard something after several years and realized you remember it from your childhood? I'm not necessarily saying I believe that account 100% but that's like the most believeable part lol. Cartridge tilting or damaged pins can have some really interesting effects on games and there's no good way to simulate the effects in emulation. As an example, I wish I still had my original copy of Maximum Carnage for the SNES because it was spectacularly busted and would occasionally fail to load cutscenes or scripted sections at the correct time, which would sometimes lead to me losing multiple lives during a "cutscene" (where the widescreen bars appear on screen to transition from gameplay to cutscene, and you lose control of your character), or sometimes allow me to continue a boss fight when I shouldn't be able to for another 10-20 seconds. I've haven't been able to do anything like it since. Being able to access something in memory by accident- especially when you're a kid and you have no idea how, why, or how video games even work, and ESPECIALLY on a system as temperamental as the NES- isn't that hard of a sell to me. That seems like the kind of thing that would stick with you. I was 9 or 10 when I did all that shit with Maximum Carnage and had owned the game for years before it started acting up. I remember it pretty vividly. Maybe I'm just gullible.
@@psirensongs not related really, but I remember when I was 10 (23 years ago) I pulled my link to the past cart out without hitting the eject button, and I broke the cart in half. I taped it with electrical tape and it still works to this day.
@@Faber0k That's awesome lol. I had a similar "How tf do you still work" copy of NBA Jam. Somebody (not me!) threw it at a wall and exploded the entire corner- about a fifth of the cart. We put it back in the machine and it worked just fine. Unfortunately, I don't still own it, as my parents eventually sold our SNES, but I remember it still worked for the remainder of the time we owned it. I've always marveled at how seemingly invincible old cartridge games are.
These are indeed debug levels, fun fact, one of these levels was featured in the box of the game. I always wondered as a kid how to get to that level. Edit: I stand corrected haha, that level isn't even among these 15 hidden levels
Oh I had that same box and remember telling my friends "dude, this level is not in the game, I've beat it a hundred times!" They all thought I was crazy LMAO
Dear Gruz: Time ago, making a rom hack of SMB3, I found that there are more left-behind levels! I found them in the map's yellow dots. Some levels were impossible to play becouse of glitchy items, but other levels were playable! So, I am making another rom hack that presents all these levels. Wish me good luck! Yours truly, IkeruOZ. Edit: I'm putting some goal cards an changing the spawn in some levels.
I always felt there was something off about some levels, especially the map screens, there are a number of areas that looked like you were supposed to go to more places and with things like bridges and being able to break obstacles that didn't really get you any place special, they must have had a lot more planned.
It's still *super* weird to me that the "swimming up dark waterfalls with wooden blocks" level exists. I had a dream about a level that started out with a section exactly like that, waaaay back in 1991 or so when I was a little kid playing through SMB3 for the first time.
I had a dream (or more aptly a nightmare) when I was playing Mario 64 on the Wii VC. I was trapped in some sprawling dark area that I couldn't leave even if I paused the game and exited the stage
The green Para-Beetles were also on the box-art, in a screenshot that showed the first of the scrapped levels they appeared in, saying it was in "World 0".
I thought they were designed in a notepad with characters being what spawned. How can you tell it was a mouse? I actually remember an interview where they said the levels were designed in text file, but that might of just been the first
no, i'm pretty sure they were mushroom levels like 1-3 in the original game. Early in dev, someone must have discovered that you can save a few tiles in memory by cutting the lower part. And then someone else in the back had a strike a genius. "you know what would take even less tile in the code ?" "no mushroom at all!". They replaced the mushroom blocks by wood blocks which were easier to rotate and the only level which survived this era was 1-6.
(3:34) World 3-7 has a similar coin heaven that ends with a treasure chest containing a cloud item. (12:40) A P-speed jump without a raccoon tail does get you 6 tiles of height in SMB3, so you actually can get onto those ? blocks from the floor anyway.
There was a romhack in addition to this that shows some of the lost bonus games, also at one point someone made a rom hack “the twisted lost levels, that worked to make these lost levels a bit more polished. Finally super Mario bros 3 extended worked to put the more finished ones into super Mario bros 3 in addition to some of the ereader levels
extra levels or not this game is an absolute masterpiece. I remember going crazy over it when it came out. all my friends wanted to come over to play it
I always think of the E-reader card levels on the GBA version of the game as the lost levels of SMB 3. Because basically nobody has an e-reader or those cards. And there's like 100 of these new extra levels. These days you can easily Google for a romhack of the GBA SMB 3 rom that adds in all the e-reader levels for you, and simply play that. They're a lot of fun. They combine powerups and level styles from all the 2D mario games. So you'll be playing Mario 3, but while wearing a cape feather from super Mario World, while pulling out vegetables from the ground like in super Mario bros 2. Stuff like that. And they're official Nintendo-made levels. Honestly that's my favourite version of SMB 3 nowadays. Because of the dozens of extra e-reader levels. And it's very easy to get the romhack that adds in those extra levels so you can play it on an emulator or even chuck it onto an everdrive and play on a real GBA
*@duffman18* The "Final Airship" e-Reader stages/levels (these stages/levels consist of King Bowser Koopa's personal airship, which was so huge in size that it occupied *_MULTIPLE -_*_ _*_*2*_*_ _*_- AIRSHIP_* stages/levels, where you have to fight him in a boss fight at the end of the second airship stage/level inside an airship cabin!!) were my absolute favourite e-Reader stages/levels!!! (I've seen video game gameplay videos of each of them on UA-cam.) However, sadly, they were only officially available in Japan (until the _Super Mario Bros. All-Star_ video game title, which has the 16-bit version of the _Super Mario Bros. 3_ video game in it, was released on the Nintendo Wii U Virtual Console); so I wasn't able to play them, *_myself,_* to this very day (I never owned a Nintendo Wii U, nor did I ever live in Japan).
if someone prefers to do it officially by Nintendo. WiiU virtual console of Super mario advance 4 all the e-reader are available including the japan exclusive.
I always did feel like Level 5 was underwhelming in the whole Sky World build-up...now it just appears it's because half the concepts were never finished.
12:41 You actually can jump high enough to make it on top of those question blocks, you just need a running start and P-speed, because in SMB3 P-speed makes you jump 6 blocks high instead of the usual 5 (this is not true of the SMB3 style in Mario Maker though).
Some of these are great concepts that would have really elevated the game. I wonder if they got so good at making levels by the end that they had to stop themselves or they'd never finish the game, and these levels are just a snapshot of that moment. And maybe instead of stopping altogether, they just switched over to working on Super Mario World, the pipes going up and down reminds me of some things in that game.
@ Frank M: That only appear in a fan made Super mario bros.3 game where he modified it himself to have an exit so you can progress through the game, and also he went all bunkers with it, and show an unused graphic of the same lost levels, so the real one does not have it. I don't remember the name of the fan game, and i don't know if he as a patch of that fan made game, in the website rom hack because rom no longer exist, so you would need the non-modified version of the rom and a lunar patching software, make sure to make a copy of the original rom so you don't lose it.
The fact that you bring up the Game Genie really makes me feel nostalgic; I had that, back in the day, and it helped me get through some tough games. This game, in fact, was the first game I ever beat, and it was thanks to the Game Genie.
I remember some screenshots affiliated with the McDonald's Happy Meal promo, that clearly showed two levels not in the game. One was a floating cloud level with lots of parabeetles, the other was grassy like 1-2. In both instances there was no level display at the bottom of the screen, just "MARIO x4" or similar.
Very surprising! On a similar note, I’ve always been curious about the promotional screen shots of levels not used in the game. Wish they were available too, but this is a sweet bonus!
I've been seeing this hack for years, but never really looked into it before. Thank you for sharing this; these are a lot more interesting than I'd thought they would be!
I've seen level 7 come up a lot when people play randomizer. It's nicknamed Atlantis and is one of only 2 stages Autoscroller is not turned off due to turning it off soft locks the game.
The Wii u virtual console version of super Mario advanced 4 super Mario Brothers 3 has an entire section of levels that have to select on the main menu. They are very cool.
The levels were left in because they don't really take up much room because they are only calling up existing sprites for the most part, the code doesn't take up much space, and it was easier to just leave them in there than hunting down and deleting the code
Hey gruz, here's a great smb3 game genie challenge code. EXITZI play the level forwards and backwards at the same time! In other words, you start at the beginning and the end at once. It even plays the music forward and backwards at the same time.
In level 11 you find unique blue flower powerups that literally appear nowhere in the normal game. Then, instead of grabbing one, you decide they are boring, completely ignore them, and don't show them off to your audience at all. Makes total sense.
Same difference; in the Japanese equivalent of the SMB franchise Goombas are called "Kuribos". The US English manual for Super Mario Land on the Game Boy even calls Goombas "Kuribitos" ("little Goombas" or "Goomblings")!
Stuff like this is so interesting to me. The way these old games were coded was very different than today and it's neat the weird easter eggs and oddball stuff one can find when they dig into the rom. Would be cool if Nintendo re-released these old games but with a whole new world/levels, but same game mechanics. The format just has unlimited potential.
Very cool! I am betting they had so much room to leave unfinished data because back in those days there was no way to add a small amount of more space, you pretty much had to double it with adding a second identical chip. This left far more room then was needed to complete SM3, so they didnt need to clear out the unfinished areas to make room for final touches before burning the final ROMs. And regarding the lost levels on SMBAS on the SNES, again that's no surprise as they used the inital code for the game, just updating the textures. (plese forgive me qany lapses, as I am a big liquored)
I'm glad the yellow fish returned in NSMBW, now called Eep Cheeps, I'm also glad the green Parabeetle truly existed, I used to think it was a fan made design but it turned out to be a real design that simply wasn't used
Fun fact.. Another way you can play these levels is to get yourself into the Super Mario 3 Randomizer community. The first 11 levels make their way into the random set of levels that get played on a playthrough.. It's lots of fun. :D
The last level I think serves a purpose. Since they had to design levels when you can stand up on cloud things. This level looks like a test place in case the lower part would work as ceiling and make Mario unable to jump through
Did you know that the world map featured on the SMB3 card board box what different then the world map 1 released on the cartridge. There was also a grass level display with tons of parabeetles that was also not in the released game.
You think 15 unused levels is crazy? Wait until you hear that the original Super Mario Bros. had so many unused levels they made it into a full fledged game! Too bad it didn't leave Japan though...
sure it left japan. that version was ported to a number of Nintendo consoles in the time since NES. even on the wiki page it says " The game was renamed The Lost Levels and first released internationally in the 1993 Super Nintendo Entertainment System compilation Super Mario All-Stars. It was ported to the Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Wii U and Nintendo Switch."
These level most likely were dummied out for quality, pacing, being unfinished or just being test levels. The reason why they would still be on the cartridge is pretty simple if they removed them it could cause issues with the coding on the final product so instead the devs on old games just made cut and unfinished content unreachable.
the second level you showed that went into the green cloud area is actually the bonus area from 3-7 it's just the object set got messed up hence why the green colored sky and clouds.
Most of these just look like early prototype versions of actual levels and building blocks. Some of the physics might not be useful for the levels because they were probably experimenting with different features and not all of them made it into the shipped game.
oh man and I did one of these Levels........ Last month I was playing a Mario 3 Randomizer and you can add in some of the Lost Levels into the Game but only 8 Levels and it would Replace the Normal Levels for the 8 Levels too but yeah some of them did get put in the Randomizer like the Underground Level with the Double Doors I do remember playing that one......
Actually, they're called "Goomba Shoe" not "Shoe Goomba". Also, I always wondered about that screenshot on the SMB3 Box that have Para-Beetles in Grass Area be since this was pointed by Andre from GameXplain.
I've always wondered about that screenshot also, I was disappointed not to find it anywhere as a kid! The screenshot of the World 1 map ALSO found on the same back cover also has some noticeable differences from the final game.
@@mattrogers6646 "Kuribo" is the original Japanese name for "Goomba", so same difference. My memory is rusty, but I believe the European release also corrects this to "Goomba's shoe".
I think he was referring to the Goomba who has a shoe, not the shoe itself, which is indeed the Goomba Shoe (a correction Nintendo made from "Kuribo shoe").
This clears up a mystery for me. I was looking for a ROM of the Japanese Super Mario 2 which in the US was released as the Lost Levels. The ROM i downloaded started playing a bunch of weird SM3 levels. Now i know what they are. 😁
Glad these types of hacks are available. I remember playing SMB3 on a playchoice-10 kiosk in a bowling alley arcade months before the game was released in the USA. So I already knew how to play the game. I built my own custom arcade. Got a Famicom Mini and collected many games over the years. Have them all on my arcade. Yes I play on sticks. Never cared for gamepads. But I will be adding this 15 level hack for certain. Never had a chance to play these levels until now.
Seeing these levels is pretty cool. I do wish they were at least finished, but just were never used because they had been decided on which levels were going to be used in the end.
I don't know if you addressed it in the video, but typically, it's easier to leave unused stuff in than it is to remove it and deal with all the potential bugs/glitches that could come from removing them. That's why games usually have so much unused stuff in them still.
I still have a old nes games flyer with this game in particular,AND i never found the dam level that apears in the image, it has a yellow sky and a bunch of Parabeetles flying.
Personally I think all levels started out like this, it's just that some levels got finished (expanded and tweaked until they were officially accepted) while others were abandoned at some point as the concept was not working very well or there were technical difficulties or they weren't required anymore as the game already had enough levels. There may have been even more unused levels but they maybe got deleted once their space was needed while these few got left over as their space wasn't required.
What’s surprising is that when Nintendo was a new company, they had the money and time to make prototype/testmap levels that are before maps that go through with being tested and seeing if mechanics in them work according to how they’ve wanted their codes to work, so amazingly Nintendo even had access to making test maps, levels, samples, prototypes, demos before they went right on with actually making these games, this may suggest that Miamoto wanted to make Nintendo when he had quite a sum of money already made first because it’s kinda like Microsoft and Apple, they were aware of sources of where to get their chipsets, operating systems, etc… and they wanted to make sure that they found themselves the money needed to purchase these products off original creators before something like a Mac or windows pc ever got invented. It’s extraordinary to see how far Nintendo went with developing the future of games and gaming mechanics, if Nintendo someday shut down, as well as Sony, a lot of creators of lots of online video games you can only play in computers went away to, you could only imagine who will still keep video gaming alive and what they’d make and if they’d even revive Nintendo, Sony, or be a whole different direction taking business where gaming in these times wouldn’t be familiar with how games where made then.
@Fox Tunes you could only imagine where Miamoto started off with his money, what did he do with his life before he brought the world Nintendo, what did he originally do, where did he even work, how was life for him before gaming existed, himself as a kid, does Sony's own founder have a side to share as well to talk about? I'm someone who plays RuneScape 3 and Old School RuneScape and the game was founded by Andrew Gower and his brothers Paul Gower and Ian Gower were making RuneScape from Andrew's moms house in Nottingham Cambridge of the United Kingdom, RuneScape isn't from America, but it's a 300 million users created MMORPG Graphical MUD originally started off as Java based game with 16 bit graphics, but nowadays it's a very high tech and very brilliant looking game where it's totally overhauled of its graphics, the zoom out mode and render more space in game detail is a lot wider, the games completely rewritten with C++, it has a history where Jagex Ltd the company that develops RuneScape (which Andrew used to be the owner of) I want to hear these video game companies speak to the public with stories of the founders lives like the Gower brothers of RuneScape did. to me that'd be cool :)
@Fox Tunes I mean ya there’s your Wikipedia written things, but you likely never got Miamoto to say these questions kind of answers on a stage for an audience or some interviewer yet, because if so, then at least a few million people right now would’ve already seen that, it’s Miamoto after all, more then half of the globe knows of Nintendo and Sony.
You mention many of the enemies by name. I was surprised you didn't call the "Shoe Goomba" Kuribo's Shoe. That ice level reminds me of Super Mario Bros. 2 level 4. I like how you mention the fire snake jumping on ice is unrealistic, but then a second later, you say nothing about Fire Mario shooting fireballs underwater :) I gave it a thumb up.
No mention of the Mario 3 randomizer? That's how a lot of people *recently* ended up experiencing or finding out about these stages. In fact, several which were not able to be completed in their original state (no card at the end of the stages, as you mention) were even given cards to make them completable in the randomizer, so they'd be able to be placed in the pool of stages that can show up.
My own claim to fame along these lines: There's an old arcade game called Venture. It is a very early example of an arcade game boasting 3-voice (and a lot of it!)-in fact it may be the first. Anyway, the game opens with an intro tune as your character is shown descending into the dungeon. This tune gets cut off at about the 70% mark when the gameplay begins. Quite a while back, I tweaked some variables in MAME to force the tune to finish playing. And I'm pretty sure I'm still the only living person to have heard the full tune from this fairly landmark game. (The composer is, sadly, deceased.) Someday, I reckon, some UA-camr will start plumbing these lost treasures, and I hope this is one that they visit.
Yup thats exactly what I found out about a song in Megaman 3. Dr Wilys castle (map area) is never heard all the way through unless you Game Genie it or something. ua-cam.com/video/KIkMbgcTg5s/v-deo.html @ 19:30 Pretty crazy after decades to discover this stuff, so cool.
You know what's crazy? These lost levels were ALSO hidden in Super Mario Bros All-Stars on SNES! WTF?!
the nes and snes use pretty much the same cpu (both are 6502 derivatives and they're programmed identically), so they probably used the same game code, which has the same unused levels, and just changed the code to make the graphics work on the snes.
Very true.
video or it didnt happen
Could you add the Game Genie codes for each hidden level into the video's description? Some of us would like to try these on real hardware. Thanks.
They were probably planned to be included add a bonus feature. Which... yeah no shit.
It's over 30 years since this game's release and I'm still learning more and more about it.
Kiribo’s shoe was tragically underused in the game, it was insane just using it for one level. It should have had one stage in every kingdom.
Here's an interesting observation about that starry sky in level 14 from looking at pre-release screenshots on TCRF: there exists a beta screenshot showing a coin heaven with a sky gradient effect where the sky gradually gets darker.
Those star tiles surely would have been used if that effect had remained in the game.
The idea of a vertically ascending stage where the sky gradually gets darker as you go above the clouds is actually brilliant
Nintendo wanted to do a lot more with the Super Mario Bros games that most know about too. Like even a 3d like thing with the original Super Mario Bros. That ground you run on all the time? Notice it's a stack of two of the same block. The goombas/troopas can actually walk on that bottom layer. They just walk on top of it inbetween the two. It's a bit of a leftover of the 3d thing they wanted to try. Look up design doucments on this too. It will explain it more. SMB3 was actually finished in 1988 and we didn't get it in usa till 1990 too. Like you said there's a bunch of things they wanted to do with this too. There's some unused castle icons for the map too. And a beta screen of the world 1 map that had a bit different path to the first fortress too.
@@TeamRocketHQR highly interesting
It actually did:
tcrf.net/File:SMB3NES_UnusedGradient.png
The real reason they leave the levels in the game and why many resources are left in the game is because when any kind of project gets late in development, there are lots of references to that level data, and without being too technical, a failure to find all of the references to the data could result in bugs and crashes that are hard to debug.
The real reason is work hoursm im not going to pay gou to remove what doesnt even matter kid. U get your 40 hours and thats it........ 😒🙄🙄
6:25 I found this level on my NES back in the 90s *without* a Game Genie. You need an original style NES, partially eject the game just enough so that it doesn’t cause the infamous blinking power light indicator on the console. If you’re very lucky, the game may start Mario on the World 1 map, but he will spawn off-screen to the upper left part. If pressing the A button doesn’t start, keep moving in random directions until you hear Mario move. Then press A.
If you’re even more lucky, you just might get the game to start at this particular hidden stage. Good luck!
Cool!
If i get a nes with smb3 ill try this and if it dose not work, i just have to question my self why your lying. Also where did you know that the level you "Found" was unused? Like no one has that good of a memory!
@@azuraltumbabic4239 You've never seen or heard something after several years and realized you remember it from your childhood?
I'm not necessarily saying I believe that account 100% but that's like the most believeable part lol.
Cartridge tilting or damaged pins can have some really interesting effects on games and there's no good way to simulate the effects in emulation.
As an example, I wish I still had my original copy of Maximum Carnage for the SNES because it was spectacularly busted and would occasionally fail to load cutscenes or scripted sections at the correct time, which would sometimes lead to me losing multiple lives during a "cutscene" (where the widescreen bars appear on screen to transition from gameplay to cutscene, and you lose control of your character), or sometimes allow me to continue a boss fight when I shouldn't be able to for another 10-20 seconds. I've haven't been able to do anything like it since.
Being able to access something in memory by accident- especially when you're a kid and you have no idea how, why, or how video games even work, and ESPECIALLY on a system as temperamental as the NES- isn't that hard of a sell to me. That seems like the kind of thing that would stick with you. I was 9 or 10 when I did all that shit with Maximum Carnage and had owned the game for years before it started acting up. I remember it pretty vividly. Maybe I'm just gullible.
@@psirensongs not related really, but I remember when I was 10 (23 years ago) I pulled my link to the past cart out without hitting the eject button, and I broke the cart in half. I taped it with electrical tape and it still works to this day.
@@Faber0k That's awesome lol. I had a similar "How tf do you still work" copy of NBA Jam. Somebody (not me!) threw it at a wall and exploded the entire corner- about a fifth of the cart. We put it back in the machine and it worked just fine. Unfortunately, I don't still own it, as my parents eventually sold our SNES, but I remember it still worked for the remainder of the time we owned it. I've always marveled at how seemingly invincible old cartridge games are.
These are indeed debug levels, fun fact, one of these levels was featured in the box of the game. I always wondered as a kid how to get to that level.
Edit: I stand corrected haha, that level isn't even among these 15 hidden levels
Oh I had that same box and remember telling my friends "dude, this level is not in the game, I've beat it a hundred times!" They all thought I was crazy LMAO
@@NoSpin23 It drove me crazy when I noticed the level was nowhere to be found xD specially because it looked interesting
I got to the level with random Game Genie codes I was making up.
Me too.
Memories
Dear Gruz:
Time ago, making a rom hack of SMB3, I found that there are more left-behind levels!
I found them in the map's yellow dots.
Some levels were impossible to play becouse of glitchy items, but other levels were playable!
So, I am making another rom hack that presents all these levels. Wish me good luck!
Yours truly,
IkeruOZ.
Edit: I'm putting some goal cards an changing the spawn in some levels.
The Boot is the best power up in all of gaming. Love your enthusiasm man! Good stuff.
I always felt there was something off about some levels, especially the map screens, there are a number of areas that looked like you were supposed to go to more places and with things like bridges and being able to break obstacles that didn't really get you any place special, they must have had a lot more planned.
they did,.. and it all went into the sequel, Super Mario World.
Remember near the end of World 2 (Desert) when you break the rock to extend the map eastwards there was a body of water shaped like Roman numeral III?
It's still *super* weird to me that the "swimming up dark waterfalls with wooden blocks" level exists.
I had a dream about a level that started out with a section exactly like that, waaaay back in 1991 or so when I was a little kid playing through SMB3 for the first time.
I had the same exact dream
But for Mario 2
I had a dream (or more aptly a nightmare) when I was playing Mario 64 on the Wii VC. I was trapped in some sprawling dark area that I couldn't leave even if I paused the game and exited the stage
I once had a dream that Mario Kart Wii had entirely different characters and vehicles and that each vehicle had at least 2 or 3 characters in it
Dude me too!
The green Para-Beetles were also on the box-art, in a screenshot that showed the first of the scrapped levels they appeared in, saying it was in "World 0".
I never understood why scrapped levels would appear on the box....
@@KingRandor82 For all I know, it could have been scrapped after the box-art was finalized.
Loved seeing behind the scenes WIP stages. Interesting to realize that they designed these levels with a mouse.
Pretty sure every member of Nintendo were humans.
I thought they were designed in a notepad with characters being what spawned. How can you tell it was a mouse? I actually remember an interview where they said the levels were designed in text file, but that might of just been the first
@@drowningin One of their design tools was a wireless mouse on a large tablet.
@@drowningin “might of”: mushy must mean brain.
I like to think that Levels 11, 12 and 13 was the level designer not really knowing how adding levels worked so they did it several times)
no, i'm pretty sure they were mushroom levels like 1-3 in the original game. Early in dev, someone must have discovered that you can save a few tiles in memory by cutting the lower part. And then someone else in the back had a strike a genius. "you know what would take even less tile in the code ?" "no mushroom at all!". They replaced the mushroom blocks by wood blocks which were easier to rotate and the only level which survived this era was 1-6.
@@hurktang Except you can see that all 3 of those levels are basically the same level with only slight differences.
@@legoboy7107 Far more likely these were just early and/or alternate ideas for the same level.
A designer isn’t plural and you don’t like to think.
@@alysdexia What does what you said have to do with the comment?)
I love SM3 so much. It's amazing that new things are still found to this day!
I'm pretty sure these levels have been known about for quite awhile. That said, I wouldn't call your comment wrong.
@@Lunar994 ok
It's crazy I still have this on my original Nintendo.
(3:34) World 3-7 has a similar coin heaven that ends with a treasure chest containing a cloud item.
(12:40) A P-speed jump without a raccoon tail does get you 6 tiles of height in SMB3, so you actually can get onto those ? blocks from the floor anyway.
There was a romhack in addition to this that shows some of the lost bonus games, also at one point someone made a rom hack “the twisted lost levels, that worked to make these lost levels a bit more polished. Finally super Mario bros 3 extended worked to put the more finished ones into super Mario bros 3 in addition to some of the ereader levels
extra levels or not this game is an absolute masterpiece. I remember going crazy over it when it came out. all my friends wanted to come over to play it
Do they still want to come over ?
I always think of the E-reader card levels on the GBA version of the game as the lost levels of SMB 3. Because basically nobody has an e-reader or those cards. And there's like 100 of these new extra levels. These days you can easily Google for a romhack of the GBA SMB 3 rom that adds in all the e-reader levels for you, and simply play that. They're a lot of fun. They combine powerups and level styles from all the 2D mario games. So you'll be playing Mario 3, but while wearing a cape feather from super Mario World, while pulling out vegetables from the ground like in super Mario bros 2. Stuff like that.
And they're official Nintendo-made levels. Honestly that's my favourite version of SMB 3 nowadays. Because of the dozens of extra e-reader levels. And it's very easy to get the romhack that adds in those extra levels so you can play it on an emulator or even chuck it onto an everdrive and play on a real GBA
100 is quite the exaggeration. Lol. There are exactly 38 e-reader levels.
*@duffman18*
The "Final Airship" e-Reader stages/levels (these stages/levels consist of King Bowser Koopa's personal airship, which was so huge in size that it occupied *_MULTIPLE -_*_ _*_*2*_*_ _*_- AIRSHIP_* stages/levels, where you have to fight him in a boss fight at the end of the second airship stage/level inside an airship cabin!!) were my absolute favourite e-Reader stages/levels!!! (I've seen video game gameplay videos of each of them on UA-cam.) However, sadly, they were only officially available in Japan (until the _Super Mario Bros. All-Star_ video game title, which has the 16-bit version of the _Super Mario Bros. 3_ video game in it, was released on the Nintendo Wii U Virtual Console); so I wasn't able to play them, *_myself,_* to this very day (I never owned a Nintendo Wii U, nor did I ever live in Japan).
If you buy it on the Wii U you get them all unlocked!
if someone prefers to do it officially by Nintendo. WiiU virtual console of Super mario advance 4 all the e-reader are available including the japan exclusive.
I completely forgot about the e-reader cards. Thanks for sharing!
One of my favorite games. Cool to see gruz delve into it.
I am 40 years old and still finding nes games and levels I've never tried. I can't wait to check these out thanks for the video
Right I'm 34 I still have this on my original Nintendo.
I always did feel like Level 5 was underwhelming in the whole Sky World build-up...now it just appears it's because half the concepts were never finished.
12:41 You actually can jump high enough to make it on top of those question blocks, you just need a running start and P-speed, because in SMB3 P-speed makes you jump 6 blocks high instead of the usual 5 (this is not true of the SMB3 style in Mario Maker though).
Some of these are great concepts that would have really elevated the game. I wonder if they got so good at making levels by the end that they had to stop themselves or they'd never finish the game, and these levels are just a snapshot of that moment. And maybe instead of stopping altogether, they just switched over to working on Super Mario World, the pipes going up and down reminds me of some things in that game.
There is an exit on level 11/12. On that green island thing at the end there is a hidden coin heaven block that takes you to the end
@ Frank M: That only appear in a fan made Super mario bros.3 game where he modified it himself to have an exit so you can progress through the game, and also he went all bunkers with it, and show an unused graphic of the same lost levels, so the real one does not have it. I don't remember the name of the fan game, and i don't know if he as a patch of that fan made game, in the website rom hack because rom no longer exist, so you would need the non-modified version of the rom and a lunar patching software, make sure to make a copy of the original rom so you don't lose it.
That green boot was always my favorite item, so silly and yet so useful.
Couldn't agree more 👍
The fact that you bring up the Game Genie really makes me feel nostalgic; I had that, back in the day, and it helped me get through some tough games. This game, in fact, was the first game I ever beat, and it was thanks to the Game Genie.
I remember some screenshots affiliated with the McDonald's Happy Meal promo, that clearly showed two levels not in the game. One was a floating cloud level with lots of parabeetles, the other was grassy like 1-2. In both instances there was no level display at the bottom of the screen, just "MARIO x4" or similar.
Very surprising! On a similar note, I’ve always been curious about the promotional screen shots of levels not used in the game. Wish they were available too, but this is a sweet bonus!
I've been seeing this hack for years, but never really looked into it before. Thank you for sharing this; these are a lot more interesting than I'd thought they would be!
I've seen level 7 come up a lot when people play randomizer. It's nicknamed Atlantis and is one of only 2 stages Autoscroller is not turned off due to turning it off soft locks the game.
The Wii u virtual console version of super Mario advanced 4 super Mario Brothers 3 has an entire section of levels that have to select on the main menu. They are very cool.
Nine of these levels are used in the SMB3 Randomizer. They're a nice add-on to the base game and offer some needed variety.
The levels were left in because they don't really take up much room because they are only calling up existing sprites for the most part, the code doesn't take up much space, and it was easier to just leave them in there than hunting down and deleting the code
Hey gruz, here's a great smb3 game genie challenge code.
EXITZI
play the level forwards and backwards at the same time! In other words, you start at the beginning and the end at once. It even plays the music forward and backwards at the same time.
In level 11 you find unique blue flower powerups that literally appear nowhere in the normal game. Then, instead of grabbing one, you decide they are boring, completely ignore them, and don't show them off to your audience at all.
Makes total sense.
Does it do anything?
"Goomba shoes"
*_Kuribo Boots_*
(are awesome and definitely deserve more love)
Same difference; in the Japanese equivalent of the SMB franchise Goombas are called "Kuribos". The US English manual for Super Mario Land on the Game Boy even calls Goombas "Kuribitos" ("little Goombas" or "Goomblings")!
@@MateDrinker33 that means chestnut-something.
Weeb
Stuff like this is so interesting to me. The way these old games were coded was very different than today and it's neat the weird easter eggs and oddball stuff one can find when they dig into the rom. Would be cool if Nintendo re-released these old games but with a whole new world/levels, but same game mechanics. The format just has unlimited potential.
Very cool! I am betting they had so much room to leave unfinished data because back in those days there was no way to add a small amount of more space, you pretty much had to double it with adding a second identical chip. This left far more room then was needed to complete SM3, so they didnt need to clear out the unfinished areas to make room for final touches before burning the final ROMs. And regarding the lost levels on SMBAS on the SNES, again that's no surprise as they used the inital code for the game, just updating the textures. (plese forgive me qany lapses, as I am a big liquored)
I heard rumors of these levels and seen a few screenshots, but never a video that takes us through all of them. Thanks for posting this!
I'm glad the yellow fish returned in NSMBW, now called Eep Cheeps, I'm also glad the green Parabeetle truly existed, I used to think it was a fan made design but it turned out to be a real design that simply wasn't used
My man is back and it's good to see ya again
As a lover of Super Mario Bros 3 (and the Mario Bros period), I am very grateful to you for showing this. :)
4:56 My absolute favorite powerup. The hammer suit is overpowered and can even take out Thwomps, Ghosts and even Bowser himself.
Fun fact.. Another way you can play these levels is to get yourself into the Super Mario 3 Randomizer community. The first 11 levels make their way into the random set of levels that get played on a playthrough.. It's lots of fun. :D
6:57 Some of these should have been in the e-Reader levels on GBA. Especially the ones that introduce the gold Cheep-Cheeps and Green Parabeetles.
The last level I think serves a purpose. Since they had to design levels when you can stand up on cloud things. This level looks like a test place in case the lower part would work as ceiling and make Mario unable to jump through
Did you know that the world map featured on the SMB3 card board box what different then the world map 1 released on the cartridge. There was also a grass level display with tons of parabeetles that was also not in the released game.
I grew up on this game since the NES era. I'm surprised. Thanks for sharing!
I got my mind blown that there are these stages after playing this game for hours decades ago... nice video!
6:55 "This is unrealistic" one second later: Fireballs underwater no questions asked
Amazing video. Mario 3 missing levels were always a mystery as a kid.
I love how this guy knows the names of all the bad guys. I've played my share of Mario games and I still don't know the names of most of these guys.
Wow, amazing! I never knew these existed. This was my favorite game to play back in the 90s. How long have these levels been publicly known about?!
It's always cool to see unused levels characters ect in games
The Super Mario 3 Randomizer has a setting in which the completable debug levels will be randomly tossed in.
Sick. That's probably my favorite NES game and I had no idea this even existed.
Wow, that's a lot of hidden levels. On a side note, Tanooki Mario is in Mario Kart Tour during the Autumn Tour.
You think 15 unused levels is crazy? Wait until you hear that the original Super Mario Bros. had so many unused levels they made it into a full fledged game! Too bad it didn't leave Japan though...
sure it left japan. that version was ported to a number of Nintendo consoles in the time since NES. even on the wiki page it says " The game was renamed The Lost Levels and first released internationally in the 1993 Super Nintendo Entertainment System compilation Super Mario All-Stars. It was ported to the Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Wii U and Nintendo Switch."
I see the title and I know what this is. I love all of the crazy cut content in SMB3!
When levels look unfinished there's a good chance the teams working on them may have quit, layed off, transferred or other reasons
The way you said "Koopa Paratroopa" brought me right back to the Mario video media of the early 90s
These level most likely were dummied out for quality, pacing, being unfinished or just being test levels. The reason why they would still be on the cartridge is pretty simple if they removed them it could cause issues with the coding on the final product so instead the devs on old games just made cut and unfinished content unreachable.
the second level you showed that went into the green cloud area is actually the bonus area from 3-7 it's just the object set got messed up hence why the green colored sky and clouds.
Most of these just look like early prototype versions of actual levels and building blocks. Some of the physics might not be useful for the levels because they were probably experimenting with different features and not all of them made it into the shipped game.
The Shoemba. That's a good name for the shoe goomba....
oh man and I did one of these Levels........ Last month I was playing a Mario 3 Randomizer and you can add in some of the Lost Levels into the Game but only 8 Levels and it would Replace the Normal Levels for the 8 Levels too but yeah some of them did get put in the Randomizer like the Underground Level with the Double Doors I do remember playing that one......
Level 14 looks like to me that perhaps at one point, they had an idea to make a blue sky that faded to black as you got higher.
Actually, they're called "Goomba Shoe" not "Shoe Goomba". Also, I always wondered about that screenshot on the SMB3 Box that have Para-Beetles in Grass Area be since this was pointed by Andre from GameXplain.
I've always wondered about that screenshot also, I was disappointed not to find it anywhere as a kid! The screenshot of the World 1 map ALSO found on the same back cover also has some noticeable differences from the final game.
The power up is called Kuribo's Boot.
@@mattrogers6646 "Kuribo" is the original Japanese name for "Goomba", so same difference. My memory is rusty, but I believe the European release also corrects this to "Goomba's shoe".
I think he was referring to the Goomba who has a shoe, not the shoe itself, which is indeed the Goomba Shoe (a correction Nintendo made from "Kuribo shoe").
It's interesting how the Gold Cheep Cheeps in Mario 3 spawn the same way the Goombas in Mario 64 do
This clears up a mystery for me. I was looking for a ROM of the Japanese Super Mario 2 which in the US was released as the Lost Levels. The ROM i downloaded started playing a bunch of weird SM3 levels. Now i know what they are. 😁
Watched you back in the day when you did old mario bros genie codes. cool to see you still going so many years later!
3:25 Fun Fact!
Green clouds are an indicator for severe storms and in some cases tornados!
I would like gaming historían to do a more in depth regarding this topic.
Smb3: the lost levels on switch confirmed
Glad these types of hacks are available. I remember playing SMB3 on a playchoice-10 kiosk in a bowling alley arcade months before the game was released in the USA. So I already knew how to play the game.
I built my own custom arcade. Got a Famicom Mini and collected many games over the years. Have them all on my arcade. Yes I play on sticks. Never cared for gamepads.
But I will be adding this 15 level hack for certain. Never had a chance to play these levels until now.
Excellent video, dude, very professional.
The only huge problem i saw was that "like-beg" at the beginning.
I like the stacked clouds. SMB3 is still one of my favorites.
It's always cool to see some behind-the-scenes stuff
*Oh man! I wanna go back in time of 1991; and show myself this video* ! Thank you!
Very interesting hidden Easter egg element!! Wish I could've found it when I used to play Super Mario 3.
Very cool! Suprisingly I never watched any videos showing SMB3s secret levels before!
Seeing these levels is pretty cool. I do wish they were at least finished, but just were never used because they had been decided on which levels were going to be used in the end.
It's hard to believe this game had 15 levels left in. Was difficult just getting the whole game on the cartridge.
Great vid; I agree; that ice/water (iceberg-esque) combo level looks like it would have fit right into the main game.
I don't know if you addressed it in the video, but typically, it's easier to leave unused stuff in than it is to remove it and deal with all the potential bugs/glitches that could come from removing them. That's why games usually have so much unused stuff in them still.
You make this sound like I'm listening to a storybook as a kid. I love it.
I still have a old nes games flyer with this game in particular,AND i never found the dam level that apears in the image, it has a yellow sky and a bunch of Parabeetles flying.
Personally I think all levels started out like this, it's just that some levels got finished (expanded and tweaked until they were officially accepted) while others were abandoned at some point as the concept was not working very well or there were technical difficulties or they weren't required anymore as the game already had enough levels. There may have been even more unused levels but they maybe got deleted once their space was needed while these few got left over as their space wasn't required.
What’s surprising is that when Nintendo was a new company, they had the money and time to make prototype/testmap levels that are before maps that go through with being tested and seeing if mechanics in them work according to how they’ve wanted their codes to work, so amazingly Nintendo even had access to making test maps, levels, samples, prototypes, demos before they went right on with actually making these games, this may suggest that Miamoto wanted to make Nintendo when he had quite a sum of money already made first because it’s kinda like Microsoft and Apple, they were aware of sources of where to get their chipsets, operating systems, etc… and they wanted to make sure that they found themselves the money needed to purchase these products off original creators before something like a Mac or windows pc ever got invented.
It’s extraordinary to see how far Nintendo went with developing the future of games and gaming mechanics, if Nintendo someday shut down, as well as Sony, a lot of creators of lots of online video games you can only play in computers went away to, you could only imagine who will still keep video gaming alive and what they’d make and if they’d even revive Nintendo, Sony, or be a whole different direction taking business where gaming in these times wouldn’t be familiar with how games where made then.
@Fox Tunes you could only imagine where Miamoto started off with his money, what did he do with his life before he brought the world Nintendo, what did he originally do, where did he even work, how was life for him before gaming existed, himself as a kid, does Sony's own founder have a side to share as well to talk about?
I'm someone who plays RuneScape 3 and Old School RuneScape and the game was founded by Andrew Gower and his brothers Paul Gower and Ian Gower were making RuneScape from Andrew's moms house in Nottingham Cambridge of the United Kingdom, RuneScape isn't from America, but it's a 300 million users created MMORPG Graphical MUD originally started off as Java based game with 16 bit graphics, but nowadays it's a very high tech and very brilliant looking game where it's totally overhauled of its graphics, the zoom out mode and render more space in game detail is a lot wider, the games completely rewritten with C++, it has a history where Jagex Ltd the company that develops RuneScape (which Andrew used to be the owner of)
I want to hear these video game companies speak to the public with stories of the founders lives like the Gower brothers of RuneScape did.
to me that'd be cool :)
@Fox Tunes I mean ya there’s your Wikipedia written things, but you likely never got Miamoto to say these questions kind of answers on a stage for an audience or some interviewer yet, because if so, then at least a few million people right now would’ve already seen that, it’s Miamoto after all, more then half of the globe knows of Nintendo and Sony.
You mention many of the enemies by name. I was surprised you didn't call the "Shoe Goomba" Kuribo's Shoe.
That ice level reminds me of Super Mario Bros. 2 level 4. I like how you mention the fire snake jumping on ice is unrealistic, but then a second later, you say nothing about Fire Mario shooting fireballs underwater :)
I gave it a thumb up.
I feel like more Goomba’s Shoe is literally about the only thing which could possibly make SM3 even better.
1:09 “if you are reading this you have no life”
Well that’s not nice.
any info about the box art level with the grass and red para beetles?
13:00 I wonder if the idea was that Mario flies so high that he can see the stars, but they couldn't find a way to make the effect look good.
No mention of the Mario 3 randomizer? That's how a lot of people *recently* ended up experiencing or finding out about these stages. In fact, several which were not able to be completed in their original state (no card at the end of the stages, as you mention) were even given cards to make them completable in the randomizer, so they'd be able to be placed in the pool of stages that can show up.
It's amazing that there is this much content still left floating around in the game
ive never seen that animation of the green boot + a star powerup where when he jumps he does frontflips!
looks cool in the boot
The tan cheep cheep herd and the floating sky background where quite intriguing.
My own claim to fame along these lines: There's an old arcade game called Venture. It is a very early example of an arcade game boasting 3-voice (and a lot of it!)-in fact it may be the first. Anyway, the game opens with an intro tune as your character is shown descending into the dungeon. This tune gets cut off at about the 70% mark when the gameplay begins. Quite a while back, I tweaked some variables in MAME to force the tune to finish playing. And I'm pretty sure I'm still the only living person to have heard the full tune from this fairly landmark game. (The composer is, sadly, deceased.) Someday, I reckon, some UA-camr will start plumbing these lost treasures, and I hope this is one that they visit.
Yup thats exactly what I found out about a song in Megaman 3. Dr Wilys castle (map area) is never heard all the way through unless you Game Genie it or something.
ua-cam.com/video/KIkMbgcTg5s/v-deo.html
@ 19:30
Pretty crazy after decades to discover this stuff, so cool.