Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, known in Japan as is a 1986 platform game developed by Nintendo R&D4 for the Famicom Disk System. Like its predecessor, Super Mario Bros., players control Mario or Luigi to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser. The Lost Levels has a higher difficulty level, introducing obstacles such as the Poison Mushroom, counterproductive level warps and mid-air wind gusts. Luigi controls differently from Mario, with reduced ground friction and increased jump height. The game contains 32 levels across eight worlds, and 20 bonus levels.
Nintendo developed The Lost Levels after designing some of its levels for the Nintendo VS. System version of Super Mario Bros. It was directed by Takashi Tezuka and designed for players who had mastered the original. Nintendo released it as Super Mario Bros. 2 in Japan on June 3, 1986, but Nintendo of America deemed it too difficult for the North American market and released an alternative Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988) instead. The original Super Mario Bros. 2 was retitled The Lost Levels for its inclusion in the 1993 Super Nintendo Entertainment System compilation Super Mario All-Stars, its first international release. It has been rereleased for Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Wii, Wii U, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch.
Reviewers viewed The Lost Levels as an extension of Super Mario Bros, especially its difficulty progression, and appreciated the challenge when spectating speedruns. The Lost Levels gave Luigi his first unique character traits, while the poison mushroom became a recurring Mario franchise element. The Lost Levels was the bestselling FDS game, selling about 2.5 million copies. It is remembered as among the most difficult Nintendo games and recognized as a precursor to the Kaizo subculture, in which fans create and share ROM hacks featuring nearly impossible levels.
Gameplay
frame|left|Screenshot of gameplay from the 1986 Japanese release, showing a Poison Mushroom|alt=Mario, viewed in profile, faces to the right of the screen, with question mark blocks and a dark mushroom floating overhead and a green pipe in the ground nearby. The screen is mostly blue sky.
The Lost Levels is a 2D side-scrolling platform game similar in style and gameplay to the original 1985 Super Mario Bros., save for an increase in difficulty. As in the original, Mario (or Luigi) ventures to rescue the Princess from Bowser. The player jumps between platforms, avoids enemies and obstacles, finds secrets (such as backwards Warp Zones and vertical vines) and collects power-ups such as the Mushroom (which makes Mario grow), the Fire Flower (which lets Mario throw fireballs), and the Invincibility Star. Unlike the original, there is no two-player mode, but at the title screen the player chooses between Mario or Luigi. Their abilities are differentiated for the first time: Luigi, designed for skilled players, has slower acceleration and deceleration with a higher jump height, while Mario is the opposite; he has faster acceleration and deceleration, but has a lower jump height.
The Lost Levels continues the difficulty progression from Super Mario Bros. It introduces obstacles including Poison Mushrooms, warps that return the player to previous levels, and gusts that redirect the player midair. The Poison Mushroom, in particular, works as an anti-mushroom, shrinking or killing the player character. Some levels require "split-second" precision and others require the player to jump on invisible blocks. After each boss fight, Toad tells Mario that [[Our princess is in another castle!|"[their] princess is in another castle"]]. The main game has 32 levels across eight worlds and five bonus worlds. A hidden World 9 is accessible if the player does not use a Warp Zone. Bonus worlds A through D are accessible when the player plays through the game eight times, for a total of 52 levels.
Development
<!--File:[[Takashi Tezuka, Shigeru Miyamoto and Kōji Kondō (cropped).jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|The game's director, designer, and composer pictured together in 2015: Takashi Tezuka, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Koji Kondo]]-->
In late 1985, during simultaneous development of The Legend of Zelda (1986), the Super Mario Bros. team began creating a version of the game for Nintendo's coin-operated arcade machine, the VS. System–while also experimenting with new, challenging level designs. They enjoyed these new levels, and thought that Super Mario devotees would too. Shigeru Miyamoto, who created the Mario franchise and directed Super Mario Bros.,<!--not in source but easily cited if needed--> no longer had time to design games by himself, given his responsibilities leading Nintendo's Nintendo R&D4 division and their work on The Legend of Zelda. The Super Mario sequel was delegated to its predecessor's assistant director, Takashi Tezuka, as his directorial debut. He worked with Miyamoto and the R&D4 team to develop a sequel based on the same underlying technology, including some levels directly from Vs. Super Mario Bros. Development of the Super Mario sequel began in January 1986 and lasted about four months.
The Lost Levels, originally released in Japan as Super Mario Bros. 2 on June 3, 1986, was similar in style to Super Mario Bros. but much more difficult in gameplay"nails-from-diamonds hard", as Jon Irwin described it in his book on the sequels. Tezuka felt that Japanese players had mastered the original game, and so needed a more challenging sequel. Recognizing that the game might be too difficult for newcomers, the team labeled the packaging with "For Super Players". They also added a trick to earn infinite lives as preparation for the difficulty. Japanese commercials for The Lost Levels featured players screaming in frustration at their televisions. Otherwise, the original and this sequel are largely similar in graphics and soundtrack. After Zelda, The Lost Levels was the ninth release for the Famicom Disk System, an add-on external disk drive with more spacious and less expensive disks than the Famicom cartridges.
When evaluated for release outside of Japan, Nintendo of America believed The Lost Levels was too difficult and frustrating for the recovering American market and declined its release. Howard Phillips, who evaluated games for Nintendo of America President Minoru Arakawa, felt it was unfairly difficult, even beyond the unofficial moniker of "Nintendo Hard" that the company's other games sometimes garnered. His opinion was that The Lost Levels would not sell well in the American market. He later recalled that "few games were more stymieing. Not having fun is bad when you're a company selling fun".
Nintendo instead released a retrofitted version of Fujisankei Communications Group's Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic as the region's Super Mario Bros. 2 in October 1988. Doki Doki Panic had originally been developed by Kensuke Tanabe. Tanabe was instructed to use characters from Yume Kōjō '87 and was released in Japan as a standalone game on July 10, 1987. Doki Doki Panics characters and artwork were modified to match Super Mario Bros. before being released in America, and the re-skinned release became known as the "big aberration" in the Super Mario series. In 1992, the American Super Mario Bros. 2 was later released in Japan as Super Mario USA.
Rereleases
thumb|alt=A white and red Famicom unit sits atop a candy red Famicom Disk System unit with black insertable disk drive. Two rectangular controllers, each with a D-pad and two black buttons, fit into the Famicom.|The Lost Levels was the ninth game released for the Famicom Disk System (attached below the Famicom, as pictured).
Nintendo "cleaned up" parts of the Japanese Super Mario Bros.2 and released it in later Super Mario collections as The Lost Levels. Its North American debut in the 1993 Super Mario All-Stars collection for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System featured updated graphics (including increased visibility for the Poison Mushroom) and more frequent checkpoints to save player progress. According to All-Stars developers, the compilation was created because Miyamoto felt The Lost Levels had not reached a wide audience and wanted more players to experience it. All-Stars was rereleased as a Limited Edition for the Nintendo Wii console in commemoration of Super Mario Bros. 25th anniversary in 2010. The Lost Levels was edited to fit the handheld Game Boy Color screen as an unlockable bonus in the 1999 Super Mario Bros. Deluxe: the visible screen is cropped and some features are omitted, such as the wind and five bonus worlds. The Lost Levels was rereleased in 2004 for the Game Boy Advance on the third volume of Nintendo's Japan-only Famicom Mini compilation cartridges.
Nintendo's Virtual Console digital platform introduced North America and Europe to the unedited 1986 Japanese release. The Lost Levels was released for multiple Nintendo platforms: the Wii's Virtual Console in 2007 (partially in support of Nintendo's Hanabi Festival), the 3DS's in 2012, the Wii U's in 2013, and the Switch's Nintendo Classics service in 2019. Nintendo's 2014 classic game compilations NES Remix 2 (Wii U) and Ultimate NES Remix (3DS) included selections from The Lost Levels. For the series' 35th anniversary, in late 2020, Nintendo included The Lost Levels in a limited edition Game & Watch device.