There needs to be an AVGN episode of Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels

I just finished The Lost Levels on the original Famicom version. I do not feel any guilt whatsoever about save-state scumming the game to achieve 100 percent completion. This includes beating the game eight times to unlock the bonus worlds. It is fortunate that Nintendo Switch Online includes rewind functionality, which allows the player to reverse time whenever they die. What makes this game unique is that it is essentially a troll game, deliberately designed to frustrate the player and actively induce an Angry Video Game Nerd–style rage, while laughing at the player in the process. Think of all the games AVGN becomes angry at due to incompetence or poor design decisions, and replace that with highly competent designers who are deliberately trying to provoke the same emotional response as a practical joke. The long-running joke about Super Mario Bros. 3 being “the Devil’s game” is far more applicable to The Lost Levels, as its designers are consciously cruel to the player. It is the personification of an evil game. What is particularly striking is how the game actively punishes muscle memory and competence developed from the original Super Mario Bros. The player is forced to unlearn what the first game taught them. A simple jump that would succeed every time in the original game now results in hitting an invisible block and falling to one’s death. These invisible blocks are deliberately placed where experienced players instinctively jump, specifically targeting veteran players rather than newcomers. The original Super Mario Bros. encouraged exploration. Entering a green pipe often led to a hidden sub-level filled with bonus coins, teaching players to investigate every pipe for secrets. In The Lost Levels, the player jumps down a pipe expecting to enter it, only to find that it leads nowhere. When they attempt to escape, they hit two invisible blocks and die by a Piranha plant popping out. This philosophy extends throughout the game through the infamous poison mushroom, backward warp pipes, and wind physics that disrupt familiar jump timing. There are trampoline levels where Mario is launched off-screen, forcing the player to estimate where they will land with no visual reference, which feels fundamentally unfair. Other trampolines have altered physics and fail to provide the expected height, requiring extremely precise timing to clear jumps. Some sections are impossible to complete as Big Mario, forcing the player to intentionally take damage and proceed as Small Mario. Later levels demand pixel-perfect landings on single blocks or precise timing to chain jumps across multiple Paratroopas. One particularly egregious example involves a running jump to land on a green pipe that is completely off screen. Upon landing, a Piranha Plant immediately emerges, guaranteeing damage. The only way to survive is to slowly inch toward the ledge to scroll the camera until the pipe becomes visible, then time the jump so the Piranha Plant is retracted. This solution is impossible to discover without dying first. Even if the player is skilled enough to complete the game, they are then required to beat it eight times to unlock Worlds A through D. This requirement was mercifully removed in Super Mario All-Stars. It is easy to imagine the Angry Video Game Nerd’s jaw dropping when, after immense frustration in completing the game, he realises he must do it seven more times. Is this a bad game? In its original form, I think the answer is yes. In an era limited to three lives and no save system, death meant restarting from the beginning. The game contains unavoidable death traps that cannot be survived on a first playthrough and require memorisation to progress. Being killed by an unavoidable trap and sent back to the early levels is already punishing enough. Requiring the entire game to be completed eight times in a single uninterrupted play history to access bonus worlds, which are themselves brutally difficult, is pure sadism. I cannot imagine anyone achieving full completion on the original Famicom without leaving the console powered on for weeks, repeatedly practising without ever turning the system off, as doing so would reset the completion counter. In fact, it is difficult to even consider The Lost Levels a conventional game. Gameplay does not feel like the primary purpose of its existence. Instead, it functions as a sophisticated prank. One can easily imagine the developers designing this game, watching focus-group playtesters fall into trap after trap, and laughing at their suffering. It is easy to picture an evil, demonic Mario taunting the Angry Video Game Nerd as he repeatedly dies. However, in the modern era of save states and rewind features provided by emulation or Nintendo Switch Online, many of these complaints lose their severity. I would actually recommend players experience The Lost Levels, not as a traditional video game, but as an artistic statement. It may be one of the most artistically interesting Mario games ever made. Most Mario games prioritise fun through refined gameplay mechanics. While some argue that the Galaxy games introduce atmosphere and narrative depth, these claims are somewhat overstated. The atmosphere and story may be advanced for a Mario title, but they remain superficial by broader video game standards. The Lost Levels, by contrast, presents a uniquely original artistic statement within the medium. The game is a practical joke played on the player. Its purpose is to lure the player into developer-designed traps and kill them. In its original form, this induces rage. With the modern removal of consequences through save states and rewind mechanics, the meaning changes. Instead of pure frustration, the experience becomes a shared joke. The developers laugh at the player’s expense, and the player responds, “That was a clever prank, you got me,” before laughing along and continuing. Through this lens, The Lost Levels may have evolved into one of the most original and compelling experiences in video game history. It may be an awful game in traditional terms, but it is also one of the medium’s great artistic experiments. There are many games out there that are hard, but The Lost Levels is unique in the fact that it is hard by subverting expectations and deceiving the players which is the video game equivalent of slapstick comedy. One can even see how it directly paved the way for Mario ROM hacks and Mario Maker troll levels, where sadistic design is no longer accidental but celebrated.