It's also blatantly unfair to romhacks, or at the very least rooted in a grossly outdated view of them, there has been some incredible creativity coming from the SMW romhacking community in the past 15 years or so.
It wasn’t just that it was “too difficult.” It’s also that there wasn’t any real improvement in graphics or sound and that Howard Phillips thought North American’s would be disappointed by the lack of enhancements. SMB2 USA made a ton of improvements such as vertical scrolling, the ability to go backwards, and much better graphics and sound.
The fact that the SNES version lets you save and continue at every level instead of the start of each world like all the other All-Stars remakes shows that they knew Lost Levels was stupidly hard.
@tespenkr9924: It does not used the same engine as Excitebike, because the video above is just a big Troll Review, because they are a lot of inaccurate statement made with accurate statement. And plus do not trust him because he is playing a fake version of Super mario bros. the lost levels, how is it fake starting from 4-1 strait-upward pipe have red pirahna plant not green pirahna plant, and the trampoline that send you flying to be walking in the sky blind for a few moment are green in the real game not pink.
From the sounds of it, the game was designed less to be fun for the general public, and more to be fun for the game designers to play. It's kind of like how the aristocrats joke is a joke that is told by comedians to other comedians instead of being something that they incorporate into their actual stage show
0:31-0:40 If you think The Lost Levels is hard and awful, play the NES port of Ghosts 'n' Goblins. The game is borderline broken and unforgiving that it requires playing the same levels twice.
@@officialFredDurstfanclub That is the famous “fuck you do it again” that the ghost and goblins series is famous for 😅 that has been present since tre first arcade game and if I am not mistaken a thing present in all following GnG games. (to the original writer : nothing broken but as it should be 👍)
It was something common in old arcade games. G&G was originally an arcade game so it has that same trope. you'd basically do it once, then it'd let you do it again on a harder difficulty.
@@r100curtaincall yeah. Still I think GG was the first arcade game that demanded it for the true ending. The other was hair “let’s do it again but harder”
The difficulty is certainly a major issue, but I think the bigger reason for reskinning Doki Doki Panic is because of the launch timing. The NES didn't get a national launch and really take off until 1986, so SMB was still very much a system seller in '86 and '87. That puts them at '88 for the time being right to get a Mario sequel out here and SMB2J looked so dated already, but Doki Doki Panic looked and sounded great. Easily the best decision they could have made, since otherwise DDP would have been stuck as a weird FDS only curiosity and never released again after the Yume Kojo '87 festival. I will say, it's a shame that the All Stars version of this game stripped out the little bit of graphical changes that made the original version stand out next to SMB1 and instead both games look 100% identical.
Wind does reappear in New Super Mario Bros. Wii. While it is mostly just an annoyance throughout the single level it features in, it is cleverly paired up with the Propeller Suit’s flight abilities as a means of accessing a Star Coin and a Secret Exit in said level (the wind turns on and off periodically; the player must time their propeller flight with the wind to clear gaps).
As someone who played the All-Stars version as a child, it was still really fun. Most of the stuff like the evil mushrooms and spring physics could be learned, after that it really was just stages 9-20, comparatively
The kids in Japan in general were also more advanced and mature at an earlier age compared to the United States. Their eighth grade is probably equivalent to our twelfth grade, for example. Therefore, difficult games like this probably don’t bother them as much in Japan compared to us in the United States. Most of us wouldn’t have the patience to beat this game. The only reason I was able to beat it was because on the SNES, you could restart at any stage instead of just the start of the world, so as long as you keep plugging away, you’ll eventually get it, and you don’t have that “fear” of having to start the whole world over from the beginning (only the current stage you are on). If you were to ask me if I beat this game without getting a “game over” and having to “continue”, I honestly can’t answer that. I know I was able to on the original SMB, but the Lost Levels is a different story.
Because they got games like this they in a lot of cases became insanely good at these types of Platformers which gave rise to Kaizo Genre, You play enough Japanese hacks and you realize, Super Mario Bros 2 really isn't that hard (until you get to the lettered levels anyway)
@@hdofu Well yeah the problem with lost levels isn't that its hard its just that its terribly designed so it isn't really fun. I wouldn't be that harsh on them if they were made by some fan but the game is really egregious due to being made by the official studio. It feels like its at a weird middle ground where its so poorly designed it isn't fun but not over the top hard enough to be interesting
You mentioned World A-D, but there's also World 9, if you play through without warping. It looks much like Mario Maker levels, with underwater overworlds, an overworld castle (with a defeated Bowser you can just pass right by), and a Japanese word sculpture made of blocks.
This is exactly why Howard Phillips shot down this game down in the first place, and ended up with the Doki Doki Panic version of Super Mario Bros. 2. We noticed it was weird for a Mario game as kids, but never realized it was an entirely different game originally.
I like that we got it because even though it was a reskin of another game it introduced so many things that would become staples of the Mario franchise. For example Bob Ombs, Pokeys, Shy Guys, and of course Birdo. Not to mention Luigi got his flutter jump and Peach got her floating jump it. If it wasn't for that game, Mario as we know it would be much different.
How did you notice it being weird? I mean the Mario games before I think was Donkey Kong, Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros, Mario Tennis - all with rather different styles and settings. Like it was not so much of a tone or reference of what made a Mario game back then (until Super Mario 3 imo)
@@SamsarasArtexactly! It’s very easy to go back and retcon and say oh it did not look like a Mario game. Or play like a Mario game. But all games introduced new classic Mario stuff as you say. And the controls / gameplay of Donkey Kong, Mario Bros and Super Mario all was very different.
@@SamsarasArt tbh Doki Doki Panic did start off as a Mario game and still had some Mario features *like the Starman* even Shigeru Miyamoto worked on this more then he did on Lost Levels, plus don't forget Donkey Kong *Mario's 1st game* was meant to be a Popeye one before being redesigned...and Mario Bros *the arcade one* while having koopa troopers/shell creepers you didn't jump on them cus they would bite and kill you,you had to knock them over first from below then kick them.
@@SamsarasArt I feel like mario throwing stuff in Mario 3 and Super mario was directly influenced by them playing with the mechanics of DDP/Mario 2. Mario 2 weaponizes throwing stuff in everyway possible. This bled into future games and likely changed what Mario games are. Who knows what we would gotten had Lost levels stayed the course of Mario titles.
A much better "harder SMB1" is Super Mario Bros Special 35th Anniversary Edition. It ports the Sharp PC levels back into the original game. They're hard, but they are not designed to piss the player off. It's much more enjoyable than The Lost Levels.
I remember beating this game (as in World D level 4) by the age of 11. I really don't say it as a flex since it involved hours of trial and error and stubbornness. Playing it through All Stars also really helped as it not only saves the game including the amount of lives we'd have after using the extra lives trick, but I also learned that it helped to sometimes use the feature to backtrack on levels that I'd find undiscovered warp tunnels to get to even further stages. And since the All Stars version was kind enough to save on the furthest stage we'd get to (rather than world like in the other included 3 games), I remember being able to beat the final stage more consistently than the original SMB. Meanwhile, I remembered using Luigi throughout most of the game...I just liked how he jumped higher, but I now retroactively look back wondering if it created more headaches than benefits.
It's funny how people complain about Super Mario Bros 2 not being good enough as it technically isn't an "Official" Mario game and disparage Nintendo for not releasing the lost levels in America in the first place, little realizing that Nintendo had very good reason for both of these things.
Me too, though I was a teen. The smaller screen wasn't really a problem. And I remember it being slightly easier than the All Stars Version. If I recall, the wind obstacle was removed and so were the extra worlds like A, B, C and D?
Correct the Deluxe version only has Worlds 1 to 8 for the Lost Lvs and the wind removed from the area's that had it but despite those changes its still brutal.
It's worth noting that the extension is notorious for giving inaccurate numbers. It usually doubles (or even sometimes triple) the amount of dislikes a video actually has. I remember a while back, the extension showed one of my more viewed videos had nearly 200 dislikes. Meanwhile, in the studio app, it had under 100 dislikes. So, I doubt this video has nearly as many dislike as it's showing you.
I'll give you that it's really hard and it certainly wrecked me when All Stars was released, but it's a great game if you go into it knowing what it is. I finally beat it a few years ago and I still feel good about that.
“Mario games have never been hard.” You’re a better gamer than I. First 2D Mario game I ever beat was Mario World. I never owned Mario 2 or 3, but the first came with my NES and I was never good enough to finish it. Even today I find the NES Mario games to be super tough.
Being American doesnt make you somehow worse at mario, so the localiser saying "this isn't right for the American audience" was basically him saying "i need as few people as possible to play this shitty game"
The decision to use Doki Doki Panic as a sequel to the original game will forever go down as one of the single best business decisions in the history of gaming. I'm dead serious when I say Lost Levels is *that* bad of a sequel. Like consider all the new things Mario 2 USA brought to the franchise. Consider if the series would feel the same without Shy Guys, Wart, playable Peach, or any of the other series staples introduced in Super Mario 2, all of that in just the second game most would play in the series. Now consider how the only thing Lost Levels brings to the table are mushrooms that are dickheads and obscene difficulty. It doesn't even play better than 1, with a lot of the levels being designed worse and the bulk of the sprite art looking a lot less polished. In the modern era, there is little reason to ever play Lost Levels unless you really wanna experience everything the series has to offer. You're not facing new bosses, you're not going through any truly new levels, just significantly harder and less fair versions of stuff you've already experienced in 1, and probably had a lot better time with The biggest compliment I can give Lost Levels is that it was interesting to hear it existed when I was like 7 and first heard about it. It really got my mind going as to what this unseen game could be, I had only seen a single screenshot in Nintendo Power. Then I finally play it and it's just a royal pain in the ass, like the girl you always wanted to talk to but realize you have nothing in common with at all anywhere.
The original version of the Lost Levels was released internationally on the Wii Virtual Console. I remember buying a copy. I think it’s also available for the virtual console on the Switch.
The original SMB was very carefully designed to teach you the internal logic of the “house”. Crucially it was gradual. You learn that jumping on a goomba squashes it. Then you learn the mushroom makes you big. Then you learn about the koopa mechanics, the carnivorous plants, the pipes. And so on (underground there are lots of moving girders, the castle has no only fire traps etc). Lost Levels is lazy and unfair, with stupid stuff like the bloopers occurring in mid-air in above-ground levels, and promiscuous overuse of hammer koopas, who are normally a sort of mini-boss.
Never understood the hate for challenge in games. I personally don't want everything handed to me in a game. Takes the fun out of it for me. I played this game as Lost Levels on SNES as a kid and liked it 2nd only to SMB3. But I have obtained the FamiCom SMB2 version on an NES cartridge and have had a blast playing it in 8bit form. Very nice. Brings back two memories at once. Very nostalgic.
@@user-nz8mx9ok9tThe poison mushroom in 1-1 is the perfect example of a beginner's trap. One because it's the first power-up you're likely to come across and two, the way the games have conditioned you to pick up every power-up you can find.
@@KitsuneYojimbo If you're a beginner, then how can you be conditioned to think that way? I get that it's a trap, but there are traps in the 1st Super Mario Bros. Why are traps a bad thing now? Besides, what else are multiple lives for? You learn from your mistakes and you try again. Not really that different from how the 1st game works, it's just harder; and they literally put that on the packaging.
"Surprised that this is the same team who made SMB3 and SMW." One of the fortresses in World 7 actually has that backwards pipe jump that you do in the room after the water section in World 8-4. And world 7 even has a Star Man run on chompers level, reminicent of ROM hacks.
I played a lot of the All Stars version of Lost Levels. It's hard as hell but with the forgiving game over, I didn't find it all that bad. However, some time during the Wii lifespan, Virtual Console, I decided to try out the original Famicom Lost Levels. No save states and going back to the beginning of the world when you get a game over was rough because I wasn't aware at the time about the infinite 1up trick at the start. I have managed to beat the game, but at what cost? Never again. Give me the SNES version any day
@@DanBCooper what I mean is that Japanese players tend to be better overall than American players, you always get that guy named お尻のセックス in your Mario kart lobby and he absolutely stomps everyone else. They take gaming more seriously over there than we do here.
Reminder that what became Doki Doki Panic back in the day WAS intended to feature even more Mario elements during the development process from the getgo before the company that commissioned it had it customized to its tastes mid-production. In other words, Super Mario Bros. 2 is a Mario remaster of an original reskin of prototype Mario elements; The POW blocks were ALWAYS intended to be in the game, for one thing, and those are definitely not Doki items. By all accounts, SMB2 is the real SMB2 that came about in a very roundabout way. Lost Levels is basically like Street Fighter "2" if you ask me; Not Street Fighter II, the iconic fighting game that shook the landscape, but the immediate follow up to the _original_ Street Fighter, which retains that old jank and is nowhere near as interesting as the more famous incarnations.
So wait, you think the game is cheating because it introduces a poisonous mushroom right at the beginning of the game? That sounds like a good move on the part of the makers, to show you right off the bat this mushroom exists instead of blindsiding you with it halfway through the game. I'm guessing you didn't grow up in the NES era. The Lost Levels is just how NES games were back then. Many of them were punishingly difficult because they didn't want you buying a $50 game and beating it in a weekend. NES games were all about trial and error, and memorization. If you failed a jump, you'd know why you failed it and be able to improve in the future.
Nah, they just trolling with this shit. It's fun to see as a side project, but they clearly learned from their mistakes and made a better game with SMB3
@jackalvonstone250 Think of it like an expansion to the original game. They weren't "trolling", it's a game for players who have beaten the first game and probably want a harder challenge. Both the mushroom and poison mushroom are close by in the first level, so it's easy to differentiate, which is which after dying to it. That's why in the title it says "For Super Players."
Honestly, the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 is actually a reminder of what game companies used to do before DLC was a thing. In the modern day, something like that would just be DLC for the original Super Mario Bros. game. Back then, they would sell it as a sequel at full price. It's debatable whether it's worse to have DLC, or full-price sequels in the same engine that are little more than ROM hacks. Majora's Mask is a later example of something similar... it's pretty much just a full game made up of what should have been DLC for Ocarina of Time. People assume you would get all the DLC content as the original game if there were no DLC possible. The reality is that they would release the original game as-is, and then save up all that potential DLC/expansion pack content until they have enough for another full game based on the same engine...
It's not unheard of to create multiple games on the same engine once you've went theough the effort to make one. Especially for 3D games since they take time to develop. Also, DLC wasn't a thing before the 2000s because the internet was kind of slow. PC games were the only ones that had it, but even then simple patches took forever to download. And limited storage space on cartridges and early optical media meant games could only be so large. So even if Majoras Mask were completed at the same time as OoT, there wouldn't be space on the cartridge for both games. And over on the PlayStation and PC, even CD based games (optical media) needed multiple CDs for larger games. Now we can download things super fast, and we can store large amounts of data on BluRay discs and even new SD card-like flash memory. It's actually kind of funny that you acuse game designers if holding stuff back to sell you more back in the day, when the reality is thst it's the newer technology thst allows them to do those things now. 😅
Does the word “super players” mean nothing to you? Difficult, yes. Bad level design? No, (mostly) also the “blind jumps” aren’t blind, just slow down and you can see the koopa on the edge of the screen. If you wanna play a balanced game, play SMB 1. If you wanna play a unique 2D platform we, play SMB2 USA, if you wanna play an exploration game, play SMW. But if you want a game which will put your gaming skills to the test, across 32 unforgiving yet fair levels? Play SMB2 lost levels, or Kaizo I if you hate yourself.😊
See? You absolutely get it. 👍 I actually get fed up of people describing the level design in The Lost Levels as "bad". I honestly think it's just a case of sour grapes on the part of those players because they don't want to have to put any effort into improving at the game. The level design is actual devious genius in my view.
I mean the poor design is worse than the difficulty lmao. Kaizo levels can be fun with how over the top they are while this game is a weird middle ground where mario 1 is so stiff it isn't really fun with this type of design and it isn't hard enough to be novel. Even beyond the blind jumps there are so many general flaws alongside a general lack of improvement that its hard to call it anything other than poorly designed
@@plugshirt1762 Evidence of good level design, first stage. You can see a chamber holding a koopa, and a pair of ? Blocks to the right. Hitting the blocks releases a poisonous muchroom. Instead hit the blocks that hold the koopa to get the mushroom, then time a block bounce to get the mushroom out. This shows you have to put thought, and time into your jumps, as even getting a power up can be tricky. So if you wanna have fun playing SMB 2 lost levels…. GET GOOD.
@@plugshirt1762 Despite someone just pointing out that there aren't blind jumps in the game, the myth persists. I honestly put it down to players just wanting something to blame their sloppy playing on.
The Western SMB2 is one of my favorite games and I'm so glad we didn't get the other version. It's not fun, it's not innovative, it's not fair. It just feels like the personal project of a frustrated teen
The problem with Lost Levels isn't the difficulty, it's that it's purposely punishing and actively aggressive toward the player. It's the first Kaizo ROM hack. That said, I actually enjoy the game. I didn't think about it too much when I was a kid and I just considered it another Mario game
Am I the only person who actually thinks this game is fun? I love coming back to this game because I like the difficult challenges. I also have unlocked and beaten worlds A-D
You perfectly surmised the same experience that I went through, trying to play this game when i was a child. What a frustrating game. Your video was really funny to watch. Brought back those lost level (bad) memories :') Funny memories now.
As someone who grew up with the NES and was very conscious of the time that this game came out (not a younger person looking back before their time) it is an absolute shame that we didn't get Super Mario Bros. 2 localized in the US before the SNES. Back in the mid 80s, players got really good at the NES. They were beating games like Contra, Castlevania, Batman, and even Battletoads. Hard games weren't something we didn't know about. Super Mario Bros was somewhat challenging, but it wasn't on the level of its contemporaries. SMB2 would have given us the challenge in a Mario game that we were looking for. Waiting until 1989-90ish for SMB3 was wrong of Nintendo of America to deny us that. Super Mario Bros. 2 had a difficulty where Super Mario Bros. had left off. Effectively making it the first stand alone expansion of a game on console. Something the US would have to wait until the SNES to fully experience. When I did finally get to play what was called Lost Levels, I loved it. I didn't see it as overly hard. Hell it was still easier than many NES titles. If you're looking back after playing Super Mario Wonder or some other post Millennium Mario title, then yes, I could see how the difficulty and challenge of Super Mario Bros.2 might be daunting. But I'm looking at it through the lens of someone who was a teenager in the 80s or 90s, where if you were playing and enjoying games. You understood that the difficulty of a game meant that you might not be able to complete it until you achieved the ability to do so. And no everyone did. Heck not even Super Mario Bros. was completed by everyone. I had siblings who could make it to World 8 and not complete it. It didn't make the game bad. It made the game a challenge. It made sense for a direct sequel to pick up where the previous game left off in those days. If only that would be done in modern games. The original Super Mario Bros for example has been beaten by skilled speedrunners in under 5 minutes. A 5 minute game gives you far more time for your money spent as one gets that good than your typical AAA modern title.
This game is likely what led to future Mario games having a bigger focus on accessibility because this is a great example of a developer going "this is too easy" forgetting that they're an expert at the game. Not good or great but legitimately an expert who has mastered the controls to the point of knowing how long to hold the button for precise jumps. These look like Kazio Mario levels where you either guess correctly on what to do next or you straight up practice every level dozens of times until you've memorized it. That kind of mentality is fine for a final level or world but not a whole game unless it's the whole point like in Kaizo Mario. So glad America got a reskinned game for the sequel especially since multiple concepts & characters would be integrated into the franchise like Shy Guys and Birdo.
Kaizo Mario? Do you even know what you are talking about? Lost Levels is a joke compared to that kind of difficulty. The leap of faiths are also not as bad. If you don't see where you need to go, just go full speed. You will end up at the correct location.
I’m not sure if you know this but this game was made hard intentionally. They were mad how easily people beat Mario 1 and mocked it with speed runs so they answered back with this treacherous game to say speed run this. It was not meant to be fun. It was meant to punish those who mocked the easy difficulty of the original.
Also this is the only game i rage quit. There's a nasty trick in 5-1 where with one of those super springs you can jump over the flag pole easily and the level continues to a warp, a warp to level 1-1. And since you can't go to an earlier part of the level, you're forced to start from the very beginning. Whoever came up with that was an asshole.
The Allstars version is a lot more playable. You get saves and continues by default for every level and don't have to do anything special to get levels A through F. The levels aren't that long and you get a lot of breathing room to learn them. Just don't go down pipes like at all so you don't get hit with surprise reverse warp zones because those are just the worst. And when getting sprung off the screen don't move Mario left and he'll stay over dead center so you'll know where he's going to fall.
The other thing is that as long as you don’t take any warp zones at all on the SNES Lost Levels, you can play through world 9 at the end of the game, and you aren’t limited to just one life. You can play World 9 as long as it takes you to complete it, and then you move to World A. If I was to give training tips for Super Mario Brothers: Lost Levels, I would first say don’t even try this game until you can play the original Super Mario Brothers (both quests) without warping, and without getting a game over (and maybe without even losing a single life). The SNES Lost Levels is much more forgiving than the Famicon version, but don’t take any warp zones if you ever want to see World 9.
I bought my Super NES during the promo where you could get Super Mario All Stars free via mail-in offer. I also learned about the "No Warping" challenge for The Lost Levels and managed to complete it before the deadline. Barely. I got my iron-on patch in the mail long after I had forgotten about it, thinking my letter and photo (or whatever it was they required for proof; this was 30 years ago) was lost. By that point in time, I was more about Super Mario Kart anyway.
Tell me im wrong but isn’t this entire video just a guy complaining about The Lost Levels being too hard? that was the whole point of the game in the first place
@@TimDespairBear11 The level design isn't exactly the best i agree on that, However personally i kinda enjoy that aswell, its a unique challenge and not something you'd find in your average mario game
Lost Levels is insanely hard and I've never once wanted to play through it. But calling it bad is ridiculous. The Lost Levels is pretty much what inspired Mario rom hacks and gave life to the speed running community being as competitive as it is. It's a game I'd classify as "absolutely not for everyone" but I have to respect what it is.
5:40 you can easily scroll the screen enough to see where the Koopa is here. In fact, that's the case for every single """leap of faith""". You just hate this game because it offered too much resistance for you and you couldn't just breeze through it to tick it off your backlog and brag to your friends on discord about beating it, and thus you blame the game. Embarrassing
If you thought that this game was downright sadistic (which it is) you should try playing the game gear version of Sonic 2 without using any emulator save states or cheat codes, it has the brutal and unfair level design of this game, an excessive amount of screen crunch which makes memorizing obstacle placements a requirement, and a botched continue system where you can only obtain a continue if you can somehow beat a level without dying and while also carrying exactly 77 rings to the end of the level, no more no less. Also the first boss of the game is genuinely one of the hardest bosses in any sonic game and caused me many, many game overs and restarts before I was able to beat the boss. I spent hours upon hours on that game and even with memorizing object placements, ring placements, and extra live placements I was only ever able to make it near the halfway point of the game.
@@CeleryX5FR! I remember the last time I played the game I made it all the way to green hills act 3 with a good amount of lives and a continue and then within the next couple of minutes all of my lives were depleted and I was sent back to the title screen. The screen crunch on the game gear made that level absolutely brutal because the game forces you to maneuver across tiny platforms and springs that you can’t even see. I just gave up on the game after that point. And y’know what’s weird? Sonic chaos (the sequel to gg sonic 2) has the exact opposite problem with its difficulty, that game is way too easy! It only took me around 40 minutes to beat that game and the only remotely challenging part of it was the final boss which I lost a few lives on.
@Spongeboythebob94 Green Hills Zone Act 3 is complete blind jumps over spike pits with no rings 😆 And Scrambled Egg Zone Acts 1 and 2 are nothing but blind pipe runs. That game is easily one of the hardest Sonic games ever.
Funnily enough, I beat the Game Gear version of Sonic 2 (with all six Chaos Emeralds) without using save states for the first time the other day, playing on Sonic Origins Plus on Nintendo Switch. I played the Master System version a little bit as a kid in the 1990s. The level design in 8-bit Sonic 2 is just awful; it's incoherent and completely amateurish. The change in developer from Ancient to Aspect after 8-bit Sonic 1 was a terrible decision in my view. Ancient were amazing as a developer and did a brilliant job with 8-bit Sonic 1, but Aspect churned out some really low-quality Sonic games in their time.
Don't forget the fact that if you beat worlds 1-8 in one go with no warp zones, the game normally sends you to world 9-1 Four of the toughest levels in the game. All underwater, too. On top of that? In the original Famicom version, you're set to one life, and you can't continue. Good luck!
"Need to go punch sand." I'll say it every time, people with disabilities like Kabuki Symdrome need difficulty settings. And healthy people who want to share the game play experience with such a person may never be able to do that. Anyone blindly saying what you did needs to go punch sand.
Yeah like it could have been decent with a more modern version of mario but the og is so stiff that anything beyond the normal difficulty just isn't really enjoyable.
I feel like its reception would have been better if "for super players" was its title in the first place, rather than being relegated to a tagline with a minor spot on the case. That would've at least advertised front-and-center its intention as a game for those who've well and truly mastered the original game.
I agree that the level design in Lost Levels is horrendous, but because I'm apparently a masochist, it has always been one of my goals to beat this game as Luigi, ice physics and all. I've tried before, but I was using an emulator on my PC, which was also a PoS back in the day. But now that I have it on NSO, i need to try again.
I disagree, Lost Levels is one of my favorites for its extra challenge. While yes a lot of the ideas are unfair or trolly I can get a laugh from it especially from things like the poison mushroom or backwards warp zones. I wish that the newer Mario games took a bit of difficulty from Lost Levels, games like Mario Wonder or New Soup are much more on the easy side and not in the accessibility department. Compared to games like even Super Mario Bros 3, the newer games feel like I could beat them eyes closed
I do support an easy mode for FromSoft games purely for accessibility reasons.if you don’t have arms and need to play the game with your feet, mouth, chin, and other such things, you need a greater margin for error. I like NerdCubed’s idea for it: optional adaptive difficulty. That way they can keep the challenge without locking people out. I’m of the mindset that gaming is for everyone, not just the able-bodied.
Maybe I was just too young to appreciate the badness of this game, but I definitely enjoyed it as a kid. Even the part where you need to beat the whole thing in one sitting without warps to get to world 9 (at least in the Super Mario All-Stars version, which is what I played). Yeah, it's hard, but you just have to start over from the level you die on rather than the world, so it was actually easier for me than the original SMB. I can't count the number of times I died to 8-2 in SMB and was saved by the fact that there's a 1-up early in the level. Once I got to the checkpoint, there was no more mushroom, so getting to 8-4, never mind past it, was always a very hard challenge. No such issue with Lost Levels! Also, Luigi jumps higher, so I always played as Luigi. The ice physics are not that bad, and being able to jump higher is a very big help. I don't think I ever even tried to beat Lost Levels as Mario.
Those are abominations we do not speak of. Those are the games even The Devil doesn't make the damned play in Hell, because it's too cruel even by his standards.
It's a breath of fresh air hearing you talk about game difficulty. I have been saying for many years there is a world of difference between a game being challenging, even borderline cruel, and outright going out of your way to piss the player off. So many people do not comprehend this distinction at all. It is so good to hear someone who gets it. Like I love (despite sucking at them) the Ghost N Goblins/Ghouls N Ghost games, old school Castlevania games, or even difficult Metroidvania games like Hollow Knight. However, that being said, you couldn't PAY me to play this game, because I'd be paying it right back to you so you could replace the TV after throwing the controller through it.
"The consensus of this being like a rom hack is probably a little too harsh."
**Sees the section about blind leaps of faith**
Nevermind.
There's not a single blind leap of faith, you can always scroll the screen enough to see the enemy before jumping. Play the fucking game
@@MisterSpeedStackingnah I'm good
It's also blatantly unfair to romhacks, or at the very least rooted in a grossly outdated view of them, there has been some incredible creativity coming from the SMW romhacking community in the past 15 years or so.
It wasn’t just that it was “too difficult.” It’s also that there wasn’t any real improvement in graphics or sound and that Howard Phillips thought North American’s would be disappointed by the lack of enhancements. SMB2 USA made a ton of improvements such as vertical scrolling, the ability to go backwards, and much better graphics and sound.
Howard is a hero. Not only an American hero, it also affected Europe. One of the best decisions ever made in the gaming industry.
@@michaelkjellander9370While a justified comment, Nintendo probably wouldn't even exist today without Gail Tilden.
You MUST be having a laugh??? Mario USA is a terrible game that was corrected with Mario 3
@@gunsharck Mario 2 is awesome. Yes, Mario 3 is even better than Mario 2, but what makes Mario 2 a bad game in your opinion?
@@ezehogan It feels like a generic, un-memorable platformer with Mario skins stuck on it.
The fact that the SNES version lets you save and continue at every level instead of the start of each world like all the other All-Stars remakes shows that they knew Lost Levels was stupidly hard.
no it just shows that they were dumbing down the game.. like how mario world is stupidly easy and forgiving compared to any of the NES games
Howard Phillips was right to never localize it because he said it was “too hard for American gamers.”
@@kevink2986 lol, how is that not an insult?
@kraken5003 If that was an insult, then he was also roasting himself since he supposedly came to that conclusion after play-testing it himself.
@@KitsuneYojimbo lol true
It’s that dip in enjoyment when the difficulty between easygoing normal Mario levels and overly engaging kaizo hacks
Nah, something at that difficulty can be fun. It just has a bunch of design issues like the ones outlined in the video
I never knew Super Mario Bros. ran on the same engine as Excitebike. That's kind of cool.
They should've included the overheating thing from excitebike
@tespenkr9924: It does not used the same engine as Excitebike, because the video above is just a big Troll Review, because they are a lot of inaccurate statement made with accurate statement. And plus do not trust him because he is playing a fake version of Super mario bros. the lost levels, how is it fake starting from 4-1 strait-upward pipe have red pirahna plant not green pirahna plant, and the trampoline that send you flying to be walking in the sky blind for a few moment are green in the real game not pink.
@@That-Ninja Lmao, imagine overheating right before one of those giant pits in world 8.
@@SuperNickidwhat statements are inaccurate? And what is your source for the piranha plant?
@@SuperNickidschizo
From the sounds of it, the game was designed less to be fun for the general public, and more to be fun for the game designers to play.
It's kind of like how the aristocrats joke is a joke that is told by comedians to other comedians instead of being something that they incorporate into their actual stage show
If you think this game is bad... you should see what the Japanese Rom Hackers have done with this engine... it's only the first circle of Hell here.
the lost levels feel like a bad fan game made in 2004
"It's a f*cking fan hack that costs money to play, and that's just wrong"
~Somecallmejohnny
Nah it kinda feels like a fan game but it`s not bad.
Trans femboy icon detected opinion rejected
It's kaizo Mario before kaizo Mario.
Exactly
0:31-0:40 If you think The Lost Levels is hard and awful, play the NES port of Ghosts 'n' Goblins. The game is borderline broken and unforgiving that it requires playing the same levels twice.
What? You mean that you need to play level one twice before going to level two? Or do you mean you need to play the whole game twice to complete it?
@@litjellyfishthe latter. When you beat the final boss it boots you back to the beginning and makes you beat the game again to get the true ending
@@officialFredDurstfanclub That is the famous “fuck you do it again” that the ghost and goblins series is famous for 😅 that has been present since tre first arcade game and if I am not mistaken a thing present in all following GnG games. (to the original writer : nothing broken but as it should be 👍)
It was something common in old arcade games. G&G was originally an arcade game so it has that same trope. you'd basically do it once, then it'd let you do it again on a harder difficulty.
@@r100curtaincall yeah. Still I think GG was the first arcade game that demanded it for the true ending. The other was hair “let’s do it again but harder”
The difficulty is certainly a major issue, but I think the bigger reason for reskinning Doki Doki Panic is because of the launch timing. The NES didn't get a national launch and really take off until 1986, so SMB was still very much a system seller in '86 and '87. That puts them at '88 for the time being right to get a Mario sequel out here and SMB2J looked so dated already, but Doki Doki Panic looked and sounded great. Easily the best decision they could have made, since otherwise DDP would have been stuck as a weird FDS only curiosity and never released again after the Yume Kojo '87 festival.
I will say, it's a shame that the All Stars version of this game stripped out the little bit of graphical changes that made the original version stand out next to SMB1 and instead both games look 100% identical.
Wind does reappear in New Super Mario Bros. Wii. While it is mostly just an annoyance throughout the single level it features in, it is cleverly paired up with the Propeller Suit’s flight abilities as a means of accessing a Star Coin and a Secret Exit in said level (the wind turns on and off periodically; the player must time their propeller flight with the wind to clear gaps).
Not to mention the times it showed up in Mario 64. But maybe he was thinking of just the 2D Marios.
@@sonokawaray there's also mario maker 2 (desert night)
Wind works well in DKC 2
I feel like it doesn't deserve as much hate as it tends to get
It is absurd how hard the original Mario 2 was. I feel bad for the little kids in Japan that got this nightmare than the version we got.
As someone who played the All-Stars version as a child, it was still really fun. Most of the stuff like the evil mushrooms and spring physics could be learned, after that it really was just stages 9-20, comparatively
@@CarmsCelestia for me the game is too difficult and I've only beat it with access to save states. Also the trick 5-1 plays on players is cruel.
The kids in Japan in general were also more advanced and mature at an earlier age compared to the United States. Their eighth grade is probably equivalent to our twelfth grade, for example. Therefore, difficult games like this probably don’t bother them as much in Japan compared to us in the United States. Most of us wouldn’t have the patience to beat this game. The only reason I was able to beat it was because on the SNES, you could restart at any stage instead of just the start of the world, so as long as you keep plugging away, you’ll eventually get it, and you don’t have that “fear” of having to start the whole world over from the beginning (only the current stage you are on). If you were to ask me if I beat this game without getting a “game over” and having to “continue”, I honestly can’t answer that. I know I was able to on the original SMB, but the Lost Levels is a different story.
Because they got games like this they in a lot of cases became insanely good at these types of Platformers which gave rise to Kaizo Genre, You play enough Japanese hacks and you realize, Super Mario Bros 2 really isn't that hard (until you get to the lettered levels anyway)
@@hdofu Well yeah the problem with lost levels isn't that its hard its just that its terribly designed so it isn't really fun. I wouldn't be that harsh on them if they were made by some fan but the game is really egregious due to being made by the official studio. It feels like its at a weird middle ground where its so poorly designed it isn't fun but not over the top hard enough to be interesting
You mentioned World A-D, but there's also World 9, if you play through without warping. It looks much like Mario Maker levels, with underwater overworlds, an overworld castle (with a defeated Bowser you can just pass right by), and a Japanese word sculpture made of blocks.
This is exactly why Howard Phillips shot down this game down in the first place, and ended up with the Doki Doki Panic version of Super Mario Bros. 2. We noticed it was weird for a Mario game as kids, but never realized it was an entirely different game originally.
I like that we got it because even though it was a reskin of another game it introduced so many things that would become staples of the Mario franchise. For example Bob Ombs, Pokeys, Shy Guys, and of course Birdo. Not to mention Luigi got his flutter jump and Peach got her floating jump it. If it wasn't for that game, Mario as we know it would be much different.
How did you notice it being weird? I mean the Mario games before I think was Donkey Kong, Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros, Mario Tennis - all with rather different styles and settings. Like it was not so much of a tone or reference of what made a Mario game back then (until Super Mario 3 imo)
@@SamsarasArtexactly! It’s very easy to go back and retcon and say oh it did not look like a Mario game. Or play like a Mario game. But all games introduced new classic Mario stuff as you say. And the controls / gameplay of Donkey Kong, Mario Bros and Super Mario all was very different.
@@SamsarasArt tbh Doki Doki Panic did start off as a Mario game and still had some Mario features *like the Starman* even Shigeru Miyamoto worked on this more then he did on Lost Levels, plus don't forget Donkey Kong *Mario's 1st game* was meant to be a Popeye one before being redesigned...and Mario Bros *the arcade one* while having koopa troopers/shell creepers you didn't jump on them cus they would bite and kill you,you had to knock them over first from below then kick them.
@@SamsarasArt I feel like mario throwing stuff in Mario 3 and Super mario was directly influenced by them playing with the mechanics of DDP/Mario 2. Mario 2 weaponizes throwing stuff in everyway possible. This bled into future games and likely changed what Mario games are. Who knows what we would gotten had Lost levels stayed the course of Mario titles.
A much better "harder SMB1" is Super Mario Bros Special 35th Anniversary Edition. It ports the Sharp PC levels back into the original game. They're hard, but they are not designed to piss the player off. It's much more enjoyable than The Lost Levels.
SMB Lost Levels also had the greatest middle finger to gamers in the game. The backwards warp pipes.
"Welcome to the warpzone. Go **** yourself"
I remember beating this game (as in World D level 4) by the age of 11. I really don't say it as a flex since it involved hours of trial and error and stubbornness. Playing it through All Stars also really helped as it not only saves the game including the amount of lives we'd have after using the extra lives trick, but I also learned that it helped to sometimes use the feature to backtrack on levels that I'd find undiscovered warp tunnels to get to even further stages. And since the All Stars version was kind enough to save on the furthest stage we'd get to (rather than world like in the other included 3 games), I remember being able to beat the final stage more consistently than the original SMB. Meanwhile, I remembered using Luigi throughout most of the game...I just liked how he jumped higher, but I now retroactively look back wondering if it created more headaches than benefits.
The original Famicom version is just like ninja gaiden, IMPOSSIBLE without save states
It's funny how people complain about Super Mario Bros 2 not being good enough as it technically isn't an "Official" Mario game and disparage Nintendo for not releasing the lost levels in America in the first place, little realizing that Nintendo had very good reason for both of these things.
SomecallmeJohnny: "Its a fan-hack that costs money to play."
I actually beaten the lost levels on super mario bros deluxe when i was a kid
Me too, though I was a teen. The smaller screen wasn't really a problem. And I remember it being slightly easier than the All Stars Version. If I recall, the wind obstacle was removed and so were the extra worlds like A, B, C and D?
I did it on the SNES All Stars when I was like 10? Zero interest in going back to it.
Correct the Deluxe version only has Worlds 1 to 8 for the Lost Lvs and the wind removed from the area's that had it but despite those changes its still brutal.
Yeah I was 4 when I beat DKC and 5 when I beat this 😂
There's a good reason international Mario 2 had nearly infinitely more franchise and cultural impact than Lost Levels.
7:42 Yeah actually it did come back. "New Super Mario Bros. Wii" and "Super Mario Maker 2" are a couple of examples of which wind showed up in.
Glad I seen this comment as I was going to comment it myself😭😭 as soon as he mentioned it I remembered the sand storm levels
why does this video have so many dislikes, i thought saying the lost levels sucked was a pretty popular opinion lmao
How can you see the dislikes?
@@WilberWoolbear browser extension; right now it has 846 likes to 191 dislikes
@@thatisaduck Lucky, I use mobile.
It's worth noting that the extension is notorious for giving inaccurate numbers. It usually doubles (or even sometimes triple) the amount of dislikes a video actually has. I remember a while back, the extension showed one of my more viewed videos had nearly 200 dislikes. Meanwhile, in the studio app, it had under 100 dislikes. So, I doubt this video has nearly as many dislike as it's showing you.
Because he spouts bullshit and blames the game for his own failure.
I'll give you that it's really hard and it certainly wrecked me when All Stars was released, but it's a great game if you go into it knowing what it is. I finally beat it a few years ago and I still feel good about that.
It's just too sadistically hard to be enjoyable.
“Mario games have never been hard.”
You’re a better gamer than I. First 2D Mario game I ever beat was Mario World. I never owned Mario 2 or 3, but the first came with my NES and I was never good enough to finish it. Even today I find the NES Mario games to be super tough.
3 is pretty challenging (especially worlds 7 and 8) but gets the easier the more you lay
The ultimate troll game
Your channel name doesn't need an apostrophe in "Reviews."
Maybe that's the point.
I just watched a 12 minute video that can be summarized in one sentence. "I don't like this game because I'm bad."
the game is unfair on some sections i can definitely sympathize with his understandable rage
Being American doesnt make you somehow worse at mario, so the localiser saying "this isn't right for the American audience" was basically him saying "i need as few people as possible to play this shitty game"
More likely that he wasn't impressed at how at surface level Super Mario 2 is just the first game again.
The decision to use Doki Doki Panic as a sequel to the original game will forever go down as one of the single best business decisions in the history of gaming. I'm dead serious when I say Lost Levels is *that* bad of a sequel.
Like consider all the new things Mario 2 USA brought to the franchise. Consider if the series would feel the same without Shy Guys, Wart, playable Peach, or any of the other series staples introduced in Super Mario 2, all of that in just the second game most would play in the series.
Now consider how the only thing Lost Levels brings to the table are mushrooms that are dickheads and obscene difficulty. It doesn't even play better than 1, with a lot of the levels being designed worse and the bulk of the sprite art looking a lot less polished.
In the modern era, there is little reason to ever play Lost Levels unless you really wanna experience everything the series has to offer. You're not facing new bosses, you're not going through any truly new levels, just significantly harder and less fair versions of stuff you've already experienced in 1, and probably had a lot better time with
The biggest compliment I can give Lost Levels is that it was interesting to hear it existed when I was like 7 and first heard about it. It really got my mind going as to what this unseen game could be, I had only seen a single screenshot in Nintendo Power. Then I finally play it and it's just a royal pain in the ass, like the girl you always wanted to talk to but realize you have nothing in common with at all anywhere.
The original version of the Lost Levels was released internationally on the Wii Virtual Console. I remember buying a copy. I think it’s also available for the virtual console on the Switch.
The original SMB was very carefully designed to teach you the internal logic of the “house”. Crucially it was gradual. You learn that jumping on a goomba squashes it. Then you learn the mushroom makes you big. Then you learn about the koopa mechanics, the carnivorous plants, the pipes. And so on (underground there are lots of moving girders, the castle has no only fire traps etc). Lost Levels is lazy and unfair, with stupid stuff like the bloopers occurring in mid-air in above-ground levels, and promiscuous overuse of hammer koopas, who are normally a sort of mini-boss.
The poison mushroom at the beginning of 1-1 is perhaps one of the cruelest beginner's traps in the history of gaming.
Like the ground giving away lava trap at the beginning of king's field ancient city.
Never understood the hate for challenge in games. I personally don't want everything handed to me in a game. Takes the fun out of it for me.
I played this game as Lost Levels on SNES as a kid and liked it 2nd only to SMB3. But I have obtained the FamiCom SMB2 version on an NES cartridge and have had a blast playing it in 8bit form. Very nice. Brings back two memories at once. Very nostalgic.
the reason he doesn’t like the game is because it’s unfairly hard not because it’s just hard
@@Gojira-ri6rj I never thought it was unfair. Sounds more like a personal skill problem
@@user-nz8mx9ok9tThe poison mushroom in 1-1 is the perfect example of a beginner's trap. One because it's the first power-up you're likely to come across and two, the way the games have conditioned you to pick up every power-up you can find.
@@KitsuneYojimbo If you're a beginner, then how can you be conditioned to think that way? I get that it's a trap, but there are traps in the 1st Super Mario Bros. Why are traps a bad thing now? Besides, what else are multiple lives for? You learn from your mistakes and you try again. Not really that different from how the 1st game works, it's just harder; and they literally put that on the packaging.
"Surprised that this is the same team who made SMB3 and SMW."
One of the fortresses in World 7 actually has that backwards pipe jump that you do in the room after the water section in World 8-4. And world 7 even has a Star Man run on chompers level, reminicent of ROM hacks.
Lost levels is great. You just need to Git Gud
I played a lot of the All Stars version of Lost Levels. It's hard as hell but with the forgiving game over, I didn't find it all that bad. However, some time during the Wii lifespan, Virtual Console, I decided to try out the original Famicom Lost Levels. No save states and going back to the beginning of the world when you get a game over was rough because I wasn't aware at the time about the infinite 1up trick at the start. I have managed to beat the game, but at what cost? Never again. Give me the SNES version any day
There's wind in SM64
Wind in SM64 wasn't messed up.
It was SMB3-style wind, basically a tornado, not something pushing you toward the edge of the platform you're on to make you lose a life.
There’s a reason they kept this game in Japan, they knew the Americans couldn’t handle it
Odd comment considering history, and US vs Japan GDP. Lol
@@DanBCooper what I mean is that Japanese players tend to be better overall than American players, you always get that guy named お尻のセックス in your Mario kart lobby and he absolutely stomps everyone else. They take gaming more seriously over there than we do here.
Reminder that what became Doki Doki Panic back in the day WAS intended to feature even more Mario elements during the development process from the getgo before the company that commissioned it had it customized to its tastes mid-production. In other words, Super Mario Bros. 2 is a Mario remaster of an original reskin of prototype Mario elements; The POW blocks were ALWAYS intended to be in the game, for one thing, and those are definitely not Doki items. By all accounts, SMB2 is the real SMB2 that came about in a very roundabout way.
Lost Levels is basically like Street Fighter "2" if you ask me; Not Street Fighter II, the iconic fighting game that shook the landscape, but the immediate follow up to the _original_ Street Fighter, which retains that old jank and is nowhere near as interesting as the more famous incarnations.
So wait, you think the game is cheating because it introduces a poisonous mushroom right at the beginning of the game? That sounds like a good move on the part of the makers, to show you right off the bat this mushroom exists instead of blindsiding you with it halfway through the game. I'm guessing you didn't grow up in the NES era. The Lost Levels is just how NES games were back then. Many of them were punishingly difficult because they didn't want you buying a $50 game and beating it in a weekend. NES games were all about trial and error, and memorization. If you failed a jump, you'd know why you failed it and be able to improve in the future.
Nah, they just trolling with this shit. It's fun to see as a side project, but they clearly learned from their mistakes and made a better game with SMB3
@jackalvonstone250 Think of it like an expansion to the original game. They weren't "trolling", it's a game for players who have beaten the first game and probably want a harder challenge. Both the mushroom and poison mushroom are close by in the first level, so it's easy to differentiate, which is which after dying to it. That's why in the title it says "For Super Players."
Also developers made games hard to discourage renting games because they figured buying the game would be cheaper in the long run
I’ve got to give it to NOA for this one, Mario USA is one of the best localization choices ever
WHAT? WHAT DID YOU SAY? HUH? CAN'T HEAR YOU! TURN UP THE VOLUME!
Terrible audio
@@ncapone87Audio is fine for me.
@@Zellunar_DE Maybe if you're wearing headphones.
@@crystalwater505I was.
Sounds fine
Honestly, the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 is actually a reminder of what game companies used to do before DLC was a thing. In the modern day, something like that would just be DLC for the original Super Mario Bros. game. Back then, they would sell it as a sequel at full price. It's debatable whether it's worse to have DLC, or full-price sequels in the same engine that are little more than ROM hacks. Majora's Mask is a later example of something similar... it's pretty much just a full game made up of what should have been DLC for Ocarina of Time. People assume you would get all the DLC content as the original game if there were no DLC possible. The reality is that they would release the original game as-is, and then save up all that potential DLC/expansion pack content until they have enough for another full game based on the same engine...
There is a high likelyhood that Majora's mask would be worse off if it was a DLC, so lol.
Lmao comparing majora mask to a dlc...wtf.
@@lpfan4491fr
It's not unheard of to create multiple games on the same engine once you've went theough the effort to make one. Especially for 3D games since they take time to develop.
Also, DLC wasn't a thing before the 2000s because the internet was kind of slow. PC games were the only ones that had it, but even then simple patches took forever to download.
And limited storage space on cartridges and early optical media meant games could only be so large. So even if Majoras Mask were completed at the same time as OoT, there wouldn't be space on the cartridge for both games. And over on the PlayStation and PC, even CD based games (optical media) needed multiple CDs for larger games.
Now we can download things super fast, and we can store large amounts of data on BluRay discs and even new SD card-like flash memory.
It's actually kind of funny that you acuse game designers if holding stuff back to sell you more back in the day, when the reality is thst it's the newer technology thst allows them to do those things now. 😅
@@Bloodstar6078Dreamcast:"Am I a joke to you?"
Does the word “super players” mean nothing to you? Difficult, yes. Bad level design? No, (mostly) also the “blind jumps” aren’t blind, just slow down and you can see the koopa on the edge of the screen. If you wanna play a balanced game, play SMB 1. If you wanna play a unique 2D platform we, play SMB2 USA, if you wanna play an exploration game, play SMW. But if you want a game which will put your gaming skills to the test, across 32 unforgiving yet fair levels? Play SMB2 lost levels, or Kaizo I if you hate yourself.😊
See? You absolutely get it. 👍
I actually get fed up of people describing the level design in The Lost Levels as "bad". I honestly think it's just a case of sour grapes on the part of those players because they don't want to have to put any effort into improving at the game. The level design is actual devious genius in my view.
I mean the poor design is worse than the difficulty lmao. Kaizo levels can be fun with how over the top they are while this game is a weird middle ground where mario 1 is so stiff it isn't really fun with this type of design and it isn't hard enough to be novel. Even beyond the blind jumps there are so many general flaws alongside a general lack of improvement that its hard to call it anything other than poorly designed
@@plugshirt1762 Evidence of good level design, first stage. You can see a chamber holding a koopa, and a pair of ? Blocks to the right. Hitting the blocks releases a poisonous muchroom. Instead hit the blocks that hold the koopa to get the mushroom, then time a block bounce to get the mushroom out. This shows you have to put thought, and time into your jumps, as even getting a power up can be tricky. So if you wanna have fun playing SMB 2 lost levels….
GET GOOD.
@@plugshirt1762 Despite someone just pointing out that there aren't blind jumps in the game, the myth persists. I honestly put it down to players just wanting something to blame their sloppy playing on.
@@neilt82 youre too blind to see the blind jumps
7:40 - Not quite right. There were windy sections in Super Mario 64 (especially in the final levels). Some could even blow his hat off.
This video sounds normal and fine in my buds
People who find this game (either version) too hard.... can't play videogames. I've played and beaten both versions.
Same. I love the puzzles. I love Mario. The difficulty made Me want to play more.
The Western SMB2 is one of my favorite games and I'm so glad we didn't get the other version. It's not fun, it's not innovative, it's not fair. It just feels like the personal project of a frustrated teen
You did get the game in '93
The problem with Lost Levels isn't the difficulty, it's that it's purposely punishing and actively aggressive toward the player. It's the first Kaizo ROM hack. That said, I actually enjoy the game. I didn't think about it too much when I was a kid and I just considered it another Mario game
Am I the only person who actually thinks this game is fun? I love coming back to this game because I like the difficult challenges. I also have unlocked and beaten worlds A-D
I feel like this game predicted Mario Maker
NES era:
Hard game bad unless cheat codes.
There are no cheat codes for Ninja Gaiden and that isba great difficult game.
You perfectly surmised the same experience that I went through, trying to play this game when i was a child. What a frustrating game. Your video was really funny to watch. Brought back those lost level (bad) memories :') Funny memories now.
Lost Levels isn't bad, it just hard. Comparing it to Kaizo hacks it isn't so hard either.
As someone who grew up with the NES and was very conscious of the time that this game came out (not a younger person looking back before their time) it is an absolute shame that we didn't get Super Mario Bros. 2 localized in the US before the SNES. Back in the mid 80s, players got really good at the NES. They were beating games like Contra, Castlevania, Batman, and even Battletoads. Hard games weren't something we didn't know about. Super Mario Bros was somewhat challenging, but it wasn't on the level of its contemporaries. SMB2 would have given us the challenge in a Mario game that we were looking for. Waiting until 1989-90ish for SMB3 was wrong of Nintendo of America to deny us that.
Super Mario Bros. 2 had a difficulty where Super Mario Bros. had left off. Effectively making it the first stand alone expansion of a game on console. Something the US would have to wait until the SNES to fully experience. When I did finally get to play what was called Lost Levels, I loved it. I didn't see it as overly hard. Hell it was still easier than many NES titles.
If you're looking back after playing Super Mario Wonder or some other post Millennium Mario title, then yes, I could see how the difficulty and challenge of Super Mario Bros.2 might be daunting. But I'm looking at it through the lens of someone who was a teenager in the 80s or 90s, where if you were playing and enjoying games. You understood that the difficulty of a game meant that you might not be able to complete it until you achieved the ability to do so. And no everyone did. Heck not even Super Mario Bros. was completed by everyone. I had siblings who could make it to World 8 and not complete it. It didn't make the game bad. It made the game a challenge.
It made sense for a direct sequel to pick up where the previous game left off in those days. If only that would be done in modern games. The original Super Mario Bros for example has been beaten by skilled speedrunners in under 5 minutes. A 5 minute game gives you far more time for your money spent as one gets that good than your typical AAA modern title.
You’re just not a super player
2:05 I can't believe you just admitted that you're not a super player
This game is likely what led to future Mario games having a bigger focus on accessibility because this is a great example of a developer going "this is too easy" forgetting that they're an expert at the game. Not good or great but legitimately an expert who has mastered the controls to the point of knowing how long to hold the button for precise jumps. These look like Kazio Mario levels where you either guess correctly on what to do next or you straight up practice every level dozens of times until you've memorized it. That kind of mentality is fine for a final level or world but not a whole game unless it's the whole point like in Kaizo Mario.
So glad America got a reskinned game for the sequel especially since multiple concepts & characters would be integrated into the franchise like Shy Guys and Birdo.
Kaizo Mario? Do you even know what you are talking about? Lost Levels is a joke compared to that kind of difficulty. The leap of faiths are also not as bad. If you don't see where you need to go, just go full speed. You will end up at the correct location.
I’m not sure if you know this but this game was made hard intentionally. They were mad how easily people beat Mario 1 and mocked it with speed runs so they answered back with this treacherous game to say speed run this. It was not meant to be fun. It was meant to punish those who mocked the easy difficulty of the original.
Also this is the only game i rage quit. There's a nasty trick in 5-1 where with one of those super springs you can jump over the flag pole easily and the level continues to a warp, a warp to level 1-1. And since you can't go to an earlier part of the level, you're forced to start from the very beginning. Whoever came up with that was an asshole.
Theres a hole in that warp to world 1. You dont have to start from the beginning. Just lose a life and continue from the checkpoint of 5-1
@@tiradouken2854 Yeah. It confuses me when people say this
@@tiradouken2854 I wasn't that smart when I was a kid.
The Allstars version is a lot more playable. You get saves and continues by default for every level and don't have to do anything special to get levels A through F. The levels aren't that long and you get a lot of breathing room to learn them.
Just don't go down pipes like at all so you don't get hit with surprise reverse warp zones because those are just the worst. And when getting sprung off the screen don't move Mario left and he'll stay over dead center so you'll know where he's going to fall.
The other thing is that as long as you don’t take any warp zones at all on the SNES Lost Levels, you can play through world 9 at the end of the game, and you aren’t limited to just one life. You can play World 9 as long as it takes you to complete it, and then you move to World A. If I was to give training tips for Super Mario Brothers: Lost Levels, I would first say don’t even try this game until you can play the original Super Mario Brothers (both quests) without warping, and without getting a game over (and maybe without even losing a single life). The SNES Lost Levels is much more forgiving than the Famicon version, but don’t take any warp zones if you ever want to see World 9.
I bought my Super NES during the promo where you could get Super Mario All Stars free via mail-in offer. I also learned about the "No Warping" challenge for The Lost Levels and managed to complete it before the deadline. Barely. I got my iron-on patch in the mail long after I had forgotten about it, thinking my letter and photo (or whatever it was they required for proof; this was 30 years ago) was lost. By that point in time, I was more about Super Mario Kart anyway.
So glad the algorithm pointed me in your channels direction
the video is really quiet, perhaps consider turning up your voice for your future videos?
I’d argue lost levels is better than Mario 1
Tell me im wrong but isn’t this entire video just a guy complaining about The Lost Levels being too hard?
that was the whole point of the game in the first place
It’s not just hard, the level design is garbage and unfair.
@@TimDespairBear11 The level design isn't exactly the best i agree on that, However personally i kinda enjoy that aswell, its a unique challenge and not something you'd find in your average mario game
How is it not good? It just require memorization just like every other ones game. You must hate games like Castlevania, MegaMan, etc
GIT GUD, BRUUUUUUUUUUUUH!
Lost Levels is insanely hard and I've never once wanted to play through it.
But calling it bad is ridiculous. The Lost Levels is pretty much what inspired Mario rom hacks and gave life to the speed running community being as competitive as it is. It's a game I'd classify as "absolutely not for everyone" but I have to respect what it is.
5:40 you can easily scroll the screen enough to see where the Koopa is here. In fact, that's the case for every single """leap of faith""". You just hate this game because it offered too much resistance for you and you couldn't just breeze through it to tick it off your backlog and brag to your friends on discord about beating it, and thus you blame the game. Embarrassing
It’s a great game. If you really like smb 1, this is a great continuation of that. It isn’t supposed to be easy.
Honestly I really think Mario 2 USA was a much better game and we got the right end of the stick
if you love that part in 7-4, then wait til you see what C-4 throws at you
I just beat Lost Levels with no continues it's excellent
If you thought that this game was downright sadistic (which it is) you should try playing the game gear version of Sonic 2 without using any emulator save states or cheat codes, it has the brutal and unfair level design of this game, an excessive amount of screen crunch which makes memorizing obstacle placements a requirement, and a botched continue system where you can only obtain a continue if you can somehow beat a level without dying and while also carrying exactly 77 rings to the end of the level, no more no less. Also the first boss of the game is genuinely one of the hardest bosses in any sonic game and caused me many, many game overs and restarts before I was able to beat the boss. I spent hours upon hours on that game and even with memorizing object placements, ring placements, and extra live placements I was only ever able to make it near the halfway point of the game.
As a Sonic fan I can confirm. Game Gear 8-bit Sonic 2 is BRUTAL.
@@CeleryX5FR! I remember the last time I played the game I made it all the way to green hills act 3 with a good amount of lives and a continue and then within the next couple of minutes all of my lives were depleted and I was sent back to the title screen. The screen crunch on the game gear made that level absolutely brutal because the game forces you to maneuver across tiny platforms and springs that you can’t even see. I just gave up on the game after that point. And y’know what’s weird? Sonic chaos (the sequel to gg sonic 2) has the exact opposite problem with its difficulty, that game is way too easy! It only took me around 40 minutes to beat that game and the only remotely challenging part of it was the final boss which I lost a few lives on.
@Spongeboythebob94 Green Hills Zone Act 3 is complete blind jumps over spike pits with no rings 😆 And Scrambled Egg Zone Acts 1 and 2 are nothing but blind pipe runs. That game is easily one of the hardest Sonic games ever.
Funnily enough, I beat the Game Gear version of Sonic 2 (with all six Chaos Emeralds) without using save states for the first time the other day, playing on Sonic Origins Plus on Nintendo Switch. I played the Master System version a little bit as a kid in the 1990s.
The level design in 8-bit Sonic 2 is just awful; it's incoherent and completely amateurish. The change in developer from Ancient to Aspect after 8-bit Sonic 1 was a terrible decision in my view. Ancient were amazing as a developer and did a brilliant job with 8-bit Sonic 1, but Aspect churned out some really low-quality Sonic games in their time.
This is why I always play the master system version 😂
Don't forget the fact that if you beat worlds 1-8 in one go with no warp zones, the game normally sends you to world 9-1 Four of the toughest levels in the game. All underwater, too. On top of that? In the original Famicom version, you're set to one life, and you can't continue. Good luck!
There's difficult games that are fun and still keep you engaged. Lost Levels was just never fun for me. It felt like a prank.
I see a trick for lining yourself up in mid-air. If you’re moving forward, you’ll drop at the point the coin count ends.
This game is for those who want a harder version of the original. For experts only.
"Need to go punch sand." I'll say it every time, people with disabilities like Kabuki Symdrome need difficulty settings. And healthy people who want to share the game play experience with such a person may never be able to do that. Anyone blindly saying what you did needs to go punch sand.
Next time you see someone claiming Mario never had a bad game, point them to this.
It would've been a much better game with Mario 3, or especially Mario World physics. Mario 1 is WAY too stiff for those spring jump leaps of faith
Yeah like it could have been decent with a more modern version of mario but the og is so stiff that anything beyond the normal difficulty just isn't really enjoyable.
There is a reason why I praise the original Super Mario Bros over its "actual" sequel
I feel like its reception would have been better if "for super players" was its title in the first place, rather than being relegated to a tagline with a minor spot on the case. That would've at least advertised front-and-center its intention as a game for those who've well and truly mastered the original game.
I agree that the level design in Lost Levels is horrendous, but because I'm apparently a masochist, it has always been one of my goals to beat this game as Luigi, ice physics and all. I've tried before, but I was using an emulator on my PC, which was also a PoS back in the day. But now that I have it on NSO, i need to try again.
Kosmic is rolling his eyes lol
I disagree, Lost Levels is one of my favorites for its extra challenge. While yes a lot of the ideas are unfair or trolly I can get a laugh from it especially from things like the poison mushroom or backwards warp zones. I wish that the newer Mario games took a bit of difficulty from Lost Levels, games like Mario Wonder or New Soup are much more on the easy side and not in the accessibility department. Compared to games like even Super Mario Bros 3, the newer games feel like I could beat them eyes closed
I do support an easy mode for FromSoft games purely for accessibility reasons.if you don’t have arms and need to play the game with your feet, mouth, chin, and other such things, you need a greater margin for error. I like NerdCubed’s idea for it: optional adaptive difficulty. That way they can keep the challenge without locking people out. I’m of the mindset that gaming is for everyone, not just the able-bodied.
Maybe I was just too young to appreciate the badness of this game, but I definitely enjoyed it as a kid. Even the part where you need to beat the whole thing in one sitting without warps to get to world 9 (at least in the Super Mario All-Stars version, which is what I played). Yeah, it's hard, but you just have to start over from the level you die on rather than the world, so it was actually easier for me than the original SMB. I can't count the number of times I died to 8-2 in SMB and was saved by the fact that there's a 1-up early in the level. Once I got to the checkpoint, there was no more mushroom, so getting to 8-4, never mind past it, was always a very hard challenge. No such issue with Lost Levels! Also, Luigi jumps higher, so I always played as Luigi. The ice physics are not that bad, and being able to jump higher is a very big help. I don't think I ever even tried to beat Lost Levels as Mario.
I never have ever wanted to finish lost levels
Bro's probably never heard of Super Mario Bros. Special for PC-88 and Sharp X1 Computers 🤷♂️
Those are abominations we do not speak of. Those are the games even The Devil doesn't make the damned play in Hell, because it's too cruel even by his standards.
💀
It's understandable why Nintendo didn't bring this game to the west at first.
And I heard that in the super Mario Deluxe version they took out the wind levels
Its hard yes. If you think it sucks and think mario 1 good than your probably just dealing with hurt feelings.
I don’t even know what world I’m at in that game but I remember it being really hard. I was also pretty young when I last played it.
It's a breath of fresh air hearing you talk about game difficulty. I have been saying for many years there is a world of difference between a game being challenging, even borderline cruel, and outright going out of your way to piss the player off. So many people do not comprehend this distinction at all. It is so good to hear someone who gets it.
Like I love (despite sucking at them) the Ghost N Goblins/Ghouls N Ghost games, old school Castlevania games, or even difficult Metroidvania games like Hollow Knight. However, that being said, you couldn't PAY me to play this game, because I'd be paying it right back to you so you could replace the TV after throwing the controller through it.