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[Amory]

Lost Levels has a warp zone backwards???

I just had to commit suicide to keep from starting the game over...

 

[93xfan]

Did you play the actual Super Mario Bros 2?

Yeah, beat Wart no sweat

 

[whiterabbit]

Have you played Super Mario Bros 3? I think it's actually harder than SMB 1 in some ways.

 

[Teppic]

I beat it two times in a row without warp pipes. It's not that hard, but I wouldn't say it's an easy game. I remeber I had a lot of trouble in the levels in world 8 before I managed to get to the castle.

 

[Mr. Poolman]

I beat it as a kid.
World 8 was almost memory reflex at that point.

 

[Lothar]

I still think SNES Lost Levels is the better game... not because you have infinite continue, but because it allow you to practice any levels.

After that, the challenge is still to finish the game from 1-1. It's not because you don't have to do it that you can't try it.

I'm fine with SMB starting again at 1-1 if you lose, because you don't need to practice levels dozen of times to be able to finish them (and even with that, there's still hidden continues, if I'm not mistaken?) But Lost Levels is SO difficult in later levels that it's just awful to start at 1-1 each time.

Besides, you still need to do it in a single sitting to unlock world 9, no? (I'm not talking of world A-D, but the hidden world 9)

But those later levels are more intense because you know you can't screw up. You know that getting past a part means a lot more because if you don't, you will be sent back.

I played Last Levels on SNES with a friend in college and it was kind of boring because if you start at the same level you died on and play it over and over, there's no way you won't succeed. The stakes aren't high because you have nothing to lose.

I played japanese SMB2 with the same friend when it came out on virtual console and it was so much more exciting and fun. When we beat a world, we really felt like we did something.

Same reason Contra is more fun without the 30 lives code. You have to be more careful, you have to care more, you're more into it.

 

[Valjean Lafitte]

One of the major things that made this easier was realizing that going under Bowser in worlds 6, 7, and 8 (when he's throwing hammers) is way easier than going over him (which is basically impossible to time).

Bowser is even easier to beat if you have a Fire Flower. Just shoot a few fireballs and he's toast.

 

[Polioliolio]

Never actually beat it till I made a decent effort about 5 years ago. Since then, I've beaten it another time or two, but I'm telling you, as a kid, I didn't have the patience.

 

[jb1234]

I beat it as a young kid but it's a tough game, especially World 8.

 

[petran79]

SMB is OK. Perfect, even: neither too hard nor too easy.

Super Mario Bros. Deluxe on the GBC, though... that shit is tough. The cropping absolutely kills that game, especially in the later levels, where the game throws Bullet Bills and Hammer Brothers at you like there's no tomorrow.

The platforming levels of Super Mario Land on the original Gameboy are also much harder than any NES Mario.
Mainly because everything feels so tiny and there is ghosting when you move.
Castlevania the Adventure on later levels was the hardest game I remember to have played.

 

[Pancakes R Us]

Most gamers today can't even finish level 1. Pathetic.

http://www.p4rgaming.com/majority-of-gamers-today-cant-finish-level-1-in-super-mario-bros/

Hahaha. Kids have it too easy these days.

 

[MegamanPoweredUP]

Lol what is this shit?

This shit saved me from many tedious conversation.
Jokes aside, this is the argument I love to use against my (so called) gamers friends in order to get them angry. They all started on Playstation and are terrible at fighting games.

Pft, go harder

1) You can't call yourself a gamer if you haven't beaten 5 rounds of Frogger
2) You can't call yourself a gamer if your first gaming device ever wasn't older than a colecovision

It's not about how old are you and how hard the games are, it's about culture and technique.
Smb1 isn't the hardest and oldest game, but it's too much of an important game to be ignored.
Same goes for the hadouken input. You'll be surprised at how many people just don't have that basic technique.

So I was a PC gamer and never owned a console until like 2006. I played Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, both redefined the FPS genre. But according to this I'm not a gamer. That's cool.

Dude, isn't PC a gaming device too? I owned a PC before consoles too. I played the shit out of Wolfenstein back then.

Spoiler

I hope you are not implying you never beat Smb1.

 

[DrKelpo]

I remember playing the game some years ago and trying to beat it. In 8-3 or so I ran through the castle, increased heart rate....the finish line was in sight.... And then some fish jumped at me out of nowhere, killed me and I had to restart the game

 

[spekkeh]

I could beat most of the game with my controller upside down. Had to switch back for world 8 but that was it. Never thought it was difficult. Did use warp pipes of course, I had more problems with world 7 even if I thought it looked cool.
Ninja Gaiden, Dr Wily in Mega man 2, Mission fucking impossible, now those games were hard. But still doable if I set my mind to it.

Now two hours into dark souls I'm like fuck that noise, time to play some hello kitty island adventure.

 

[Danneee]

SMS is one of the few 8-16 bit games I feel are easier now then I felt back when they were new.

 

[Vitten]

I remember it was very easy with the warps, without them not so much.. I always got lost in those castles where you had to follow a certain path or they kept looping. Certainly shaped my platforming skills as a kid.

Beating the Lost Levels on the Snes was a proud achievement of mine.

 

[Majukun]

remember never being actually able to finish it when i was a child..i was able to arrive to the last bowser..but never able to beat itbecause i always arrived there as small mario and avoiding the rain of hammers was impossible for 5/6 years old me

 

[eXistor]

I replayed it very recently as well and for the first time in years I played it on a CRT and damn the difference is pretty noticable. I've been playing retro games mostly on LCD screens lately, but the lag really does kill the experience for me. I was surprised how easy I got through it actually. The LCD situation has been fixed btw, every retro system is hooked up to that CRT now.

 

[PuppetSlave]

As a kid the hardest part for me was timing it with bowser. My kid brain had problems with that and probably overthought it too much. Often timing it so bowser would squash you instead. Often I would just run and hope for the best

I think the issue is not difficulty but patience. As a kid I sat with friends and practiced the game and the worlds. There is so much more options in entertainment today for kids so they probably just give up after a few deaths instead of shouting at the screen with your friends and trying again as you did back then.

*edit* for people who are mentioning lag. (which makes my blood boil since that really means slow ping but not getting into that.) If you are playing on the Wii U try playing on the gamepad. the response is much better imo compared to my tv.

 

[Cygnus X-1]

Believe me: nothing is more difficult that the original Battletoads for NES. Super Mario Bros gets a bit difficult just in World 8-2, but still, it's doable.

 

[lifeexpectancy]

Is this a joke thread? I'm not trying to thread shit man, I'm just really curious and confused. I mean the original Super Mario Bros was not particularly difficult to beat, like, at all.

 

[kevm3]

Try Ninja Gaiden or Battletoads

 

[MrCunningham]

I replayed it very recently as well and for the first time in years I played it on a CRT and damn the difference is pretty noticable. I've been playing retro games mostly on LCD screens lately, but the lag really does kill the experience for me. I was surprised how easy I got through it actually. The LCD situation has been fixed btw, every retro system is hooked up to that CRT now.

It is amazing how LCD lag can still throw off the timing of so many classic NES era games that require 60hz with no frame lag. The NES zapper is the perfect example of this. The only reason why it doesn't work on an LCD screen is because the timing is off by milliseconds, making it non functional.

Yeah, the smaller screen did hurt things slightly on that port. It was still ace though, I was so proud of managing to finish the main game, game +, Lost Levels and beat the fastest boos on the races. And get the Yoshi eggs. So much content in that game...

I didn't find the cropped screen to be that much of a problem. For me it was easy to adjust too. The GBC version played and looked great, IMO. Very accurate to the NES version in almost all respects. The Lost Levels port in SMB Deluxe was made easier to accommodate for the smaller screen size though. It is not a totally accurate port of the original Japanese version. But it is still decent.

 

[IsntChrisL]

I look back at it as one of the easier Mario games. Very good but not that hard.

 

[revolverjgw]

Try Ninja Gaiden or Battletoads

And Ninja Gaiden 3 was an even nastier sumbitch than NG1.

 

[FO-totality]

"The first level of Super Mario Bros. is easy with lexicographic ordering and time travel ...after that it gets a little tricky."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOCurBYI_gY

 

[witchedwiz]

at times like this i dread to remember that while i can play most of the platforms of my youth, I'm not nearly as good as I was..
smb1 i could still finish with no particular issue..
smb2 and smb3 instead, i could finish, but nowhere near as "stylishly" (if you pass me the term) as I could in my younger days...
getting old is a bitch :X (still 31.. sigh)

 

[JMDSO]

Lost Levels has a warp zone backwards???

I just had to commit suicide to keep from starting the game over...

It has a few and they generally appear at dead ends too.

 

[Crimsonclaw111]

Those are my golden rules about videogaming:
1) You can't call yourself a gamer didn't beat SMB1;
2) You can't call yourself a gamer if you can't hadouken OR if your first gaming device ever wasn't older than a Sony Playstation.

If you don't beat Smb1 you're not a gamer, you're just a geek.

All the children who were born after PSX are not gamers, our hobby am doom

 

[Novocaine]

It's not that hard, it's just memorization and execution.

 

[witchedwiz]

"The first level of Super Mario Bros. is easy with lexicographic ordering and time travel ...after that it gets a little tricky."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOCurBYI_gY

it was real then? at times I assumed it was an april fool :L

 

[Simbabbad]

All those "..... is hard" threads end up the same, with tons of people boasting it's easy.

Super Mario Bros. is really hard if you ignore warp pipes. If you use them, it's still hard, but it's so short you can beat it through repetition and memorisation.

 

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

it was real then? at times I assumed it was an april fool :L

P4RGaming is a parody site.

 

[MegamanPoweredUP]

All the children who were born after PSX are not gamers, our hobby am doom

They can be real gamers if they're able to perform an hadouken (or similiar fireball move in any other 2D fighting game) AND complete Smb1.

 

[Booker.DeWitt]

I really don't think it is that hard, really

 

[Koren]

But those later levels are more intense because you know you can't screw up. You know that getting past a part means a lot more because if you don't, you will be sent back.

I played Last Levels on SNES with a friend in college and it was kind of boring because if you start at the same level you died on and play it over and over, there's no way you won't succeed. The stakes aren't high because you have nothing to lose.

I agree it's far more interesting if you have to go back to 1-1 when you lose.

It's just that All Stars allows you to practice later levels without having to redo the first ones each time, because SMB2 (Lost Levels) needs far more practicing than SMB1.

Once I get a gripe of all levels, I play it "normally", without using continues, even if the game allows it. And indeed, it's far more intense. That's like playing Megaman with only the buster, nothing forces you to do it, but you still can enjoy it that way.


Besides, I don't think many people would have played far without this saving option... The game is really brutal, especially if you don't have a good memory (invisible blocks in the middle of jumps are devilish)

 

[Sixfortyfive]

8-3 and 8-4 are genuinely difficult, arguably more so than the endgame stages of Lost Levels. (Lost Levels' 8-4 is generous enough to give you two secret power-ups.) It's hard to recover from a mistake if you lose your Fire Flower mid-way through 8-3 or later.

The maze castles will also eat through a few lives just from trial and error.

Otherwise the game's pretty easy.

*edit* for people who are mentioning lag. (which makes my blood boil since that really means slow ping but not getting into that.) If you are playing on the Wii U try playing on the gamepad. the response is much better imo compared to my tv.

The Gamepad is dogshit for NES Virtual Console games.

If your TV lags worse than that, then you have a really bad TV for gaming.

EDIT:

I agree it's far more interesting if you have to go back to 1-1 when you lose.

Neither game forces you to go back to 1-1 on a Game Over.

SMB has a code that lets you start at the world you lost on.
SMB2J (8-bit version) just allows you to continue from the current world without a secret code.

 

[DeaviL]

I've never beaten SMB either, i feel slightly ashamed.
I did beat Super Mario Land, but that was a lot easier.

 

[Koren]

8-3 and 8-4 are genuinely difficult, arguably more so than the endgame stages of Lost Levels. (Lost Levels' 8-4 is generous enough to give you two secret power-ups.) It's hard to recover from a mistake if you lose your Fire Flower mid-way through 8-3 or later.

I agree, though I *hate* the windy level in Lost Levels 8 world where your character spend 99% of the time over the screen and then try to land on a single tile.

The maze castles will also eat through a few lives just from trial and error.

Only the first times, though, and mostly the one in 8 world because you run out of time trying all pipes...

Neither game forces you to go back to 1-1 on a Game Over.

SMB has a code that lets you start at the world you lost on.
SMB2J (8-bit version) just allows you to continue from the current world without a secret code.

I knew for SMB (although I discovered that after finishing the game ^_^) and I suspected it was the same for SMB2J, but I've never owned the game. I guess that for people that think the All Stars system is cheating, this is also "cheating", though...

 

[Sixfortyfive]

The All-Stars versions of SMB1 and (especially) Lost Levels suck for other reasons though:

- Broken brick-breaking behavior that can actually mess up some jumps in Lost Levels
- Camouflaged blocks from the original version of SMB2J become literally invisible hazards in the SNES version due to some removed graphics.
- World 9 isn't nearly as trippy.
- The sound is worse (imo). Heavily subjective, but I don't think the SNES renditions of the original SMB themes have as much oomph.
- The handful of graphical updates that separated SMB2J from its predecessor aesthetically don't come into play because both games have the same graphics in All-Stars.

I think the SNES versions of the other two games are fine, though.

 

[Jarlaxle]

I've beat it several times over the years. Definitely as a kid and every now and then I come back to it and don't stop until I beat it again. I did this again last year. Nowadays, I just do the warp trick to beat it though and it goes pretty fast. Back when I was a kid, I beat it all the way through with no warps but I did use the "infinite lives" trick with the turtle shell. It was crazy when the counter starts showing crowns and stuff. The game is still great after all these years.

 

[Amory]

Lost Levels is dumb-hard, not fun-hard. Generally I'm not a fan, though I do think it's funny when the game just blatantly fucks with you (the first springboard when I was unexpectedly launched off the screen for ~8 seconds and then fell into a pit, for example).

I'm in world 5, using continues. Won't even attempt this one without using continues

 

[foltzie1]

Lost Levels is dumb-hard, not fun-hard. Generally I'm not a fan, though I do think it's funny when the game just blatantly fucks with you (the first springboard when I was unexpectedly launched off the screen for ~8 seconds and then fell into a pit, for example).

I'm in world 5, using continues. Won't even attempt this one without using continues

Lost Levels exceeds Nintendo hard.

 

[Version 3.0]

The NES version is Easy Mode. I beat "VS Super Mario Bros", the arcade version, before we got an NES. That's the real version to me. Its enemy placement is tweaked here and there, and it has a few levels the NES version is missing. 6-3 and 6-4, IIRC, are just repeats of 3-3 and 3-4 on the NES. In the arcade, they're original levels and are very tough.

When we got an NES I was like "what is this watered-down kiddie crap?".

 

[Timu]

And Ninja Gaiden 3 was an even nastier sumbitch than NG1.

I beat Ninja Gaiden 1 without dying once for a youtube playthrough...meanwhile I will always die in Ninja Gaiden 3 due to how absurd the last level is with the time limit.

 

[sn0man]

In college I saw my friend beat it in under 7 minutes. (using the warp zones of course).

Just hold B and Right and time those jumps perfectly...

True: knew a similar friend in college that could do the 8 minute Mario as we call it. Officially timed it was in the 6s or 7s I can't remember.

May I suggest Kid Icarus or SMB2 from Japan.

 

[Watevaman]

I was probably 6 or 7 the first time I beat SMB1. It was one of my favorite games for the NES.

 

[PuppetSlave]

The Gamepad is dogshit for NES Virtual Console games.

If your TV lags worse than that, then you have a really bad TV for gaming.

It's a Sony Bravia 1080p. Google says it's comparatively ok...

 

[Sixfortyfive]

It's a Sony Bravia 1080p. Google says it's comparatively ok...

What model? If it scores under 30ms on the Leo Bodnar tester, then it should be faster than the Gamepad for VC games.

 

[Bleeether]

I don't remember that game being so hard. I beat it when i was 6 years old.

The only mario game i haven't beat to the day is SMB2