Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels

Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels is an NES game played by Arin on Game Grump.

Episode

 * I found out why people HATE Mario 2!

Game information
Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels is a 1986 side-scrolling platform game developed and published by Nintendo as the first sequel to their 1985 bestseller Super Mario Bros. The games are similar in style and gameplay, apart from a steep increase in difficulty. Like the original, Mario or Luigi venture to rescue the Princess from Bowser. Unlike the original, the game has no two-player option and Luigi is differentiated from his twin plumber brother with reduced ground friction and increased jump height. The Lost Levels also introduces setbacks such as poison mushroom power-ups, counterproductive level warps, and mid-air wind gusts. The game has 32 levels across eight worlds, and five bonus worlds, each of which also has four levels.

The Lost Levels was first released in Japan for the Famicom Disk System as Super Mario Bros. 2[a] on June 3, 1986, following the success of its predecessor. It was developed by Nintendo R&D4—the team led by Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto—and designed for players who had mastered the original. Nintendo of America deemed the title too difficult for its North American audience and instead chose another game as the region's Super Mario Bros. 2: a retrofitted version of the Japanese Doki Doki Panic. North America first experienced The Lost Levels, as the Japanese sequel became known, in the 1993 Super Nintendo Entertainment System compilation Super Mario All-Stars. It was later ported to the Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Virtual Console (Wii, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii U), and Nintendo Switch.

The title is known for its intense difficulty, which contributes to its reputation as a black sheep in the franchise. Reviewers viewed The Lost Levels as an extension of the original release, especially its difficulty progression. Journalists appreciated the game's challenge when spectating speedruns, and recognized the game as a precursor to the franchise's subculture in which fans create and share ROM hacks featuring nearly impossible levels. This sequel gave Luigi his first character traits and introduced the poison mushroom item, which would be used throughout the Mario franchise. The Lost Levels was the most popular game on the Disk System, for which it sold about 2.5 million copies. It is remembered among the most difficult games by Nintendo and in the video game medium, and among the least important games in the Mario series.