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Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels Game Review

Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels is a 1986 platform video game published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It’s a problematic, but interestingly hard experience.

This is actually the Japanese sequel to the original 1985 game. The story is iconic by now – this game was thought to be exceedingly difficult for US gamers, so they discarded it and went out and created their own sequel released a couple of years later. That US sequel was widely different from the original Mario game. This true sequel is the opposite – it is so similar to the point that it can be thought of as an extension or a DLC so to speak.

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That high level of familiarity is certainly a hurdle that this game never overcame. It’s good, don’t get me wrong, but it’s just not great due to the lack of surprises and creativity in it. The only big difference is its difficulty level, but more on that later. You can once again play as either Mario or Luigi, but no co-op mode is possible this time around.

Luigi can jump higher, so that makes the two different, which was refreshing to witness. Another fresh inclusion is the deceptive angle to it. It can be frustrating, but this approach made the game very hard, which I appreciated. The mushrooms that enlarge Mario can deceive you as there is the brown one that can literally kill you. The warp pipes can also transport you backward, which can be super annoying when it happens. I played it carefully and avoided the pipes for the most part, which proved to be a terrific tactic.

There are also wind gusts that can make getting from one side of the screen to another infuriatingly difficult. This is probably the part of the game that I hated the most for better and for worse. I lost count how many times I’ve died jumping on those damn trampolines. They are so difficult that I would have personally discarded them altogether. I appreciated the difficulty at first, but maybe so much empty space between the platforms was not the greatest idea as it made the game overly dark in backgrounds and frustrating in the jumping precision that it requires.

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Graphically speaking, Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels is good. It’s pretty much the same as its predecessor with the difference being that it’s not as diverse in terms of world building. I wished for more variety and versatility in the gameplay mechanics and backgrounds as well. The score is also the same, but that is welcome when you have that iconic Mario theme on your disposal.

The level design is definitely not up to par with its predecessor, but there are some very interestingly designed levels with the invisible platforms being particularly intriguing additions in some levels. The controls work fine, but the jumping requires immense precision and it can be a slippery procedure, so it’s not for everybody, but I am used to this level of difficulty and clumsiness, and I even find it a positive element.

The plot is the same as it was before and this game basically repeats everything from the original with the difficulty being cracked to double the levels and maybe even more. Yes, this game is super hard, so let’s discuss this infamous difficulty. A lot of it depends so much on the precise jumps on the smallest of platforms, which made it frustrating in certain parts where there were too many of these tiny platforms.

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The first and the second world are of the similar difficulty as the first game, but the later worlds go even further and become even harder. The third world is one of the best as it is still not excruciatingly difficult while the color palette is more memorable. The fourth world is more of the same while the fifth world introduced the jellyfish into the proceedings. They were needlessly hard obstacles that did not fit in these sky levels. The seventh world has those annoying wind gusts while the eight world features those invisible platforms. Both are super hard.