So many hard and fast lines in the sand drawn around this one. 'Bad level design,' 'this game HATES you,' etc. All coming from the fundamental feeling that this game is in some way, doing it wrong. It is not just un-fun. It is a complete misunderstanding of what makes a game fun. Even though I see where people are coming from, I can't agree. This game's approach isn't wrong, its goals are just so different from what games normally strive for that it feels completely alienating.
To understand why The Lost Levels is the way it is, we need only look at when it was released. This game is not Miyamoto and Company's follow-up to Super Mario Bros. First, earlier in 1986, he and former AD Takashi Tezuka (who shares the director chair with Miyamoto on this game as well) went to work on The Legend of Zelda. Nowadays, the original Zelda also feels pretty alien. Without a guide, its puzzles can feel completely random. To modern sensibilities, it looks like needless obfuscation in service of nothing. But immersing a player in a game and making the immense financial investment of one worth it was a very different task in the 80s. You could angle for intense difficulty to extend runtime, a common ploy. Instead, Zelda forged a new path. With a manual full of hints in hand, players were encouraged to take notes, create their own maps, and endlessly trial and error. It's padding! But it's the kind of padding that deepens the experience. It's how you get people brainstorming how to find Ganon with their friends on the playground at lunch, and these are the people who will treasure the game forever. It can feel like a guide game now, but if you give yourself over to the experience, manual and all, you can still see sparks of what made it such a revolution.
This is not an easily replicable formula. A part of me feels like the release of Zelda broke everyone at Nintendo's brains. Looking at the games coming out in the wake of Zelda, even those cashing in on the post-Mario platforming boom, you see an abrupt shift. Suddenly an Ice Climbers started looking more like a Metroid or Kid Icarus. Tasked with making a sequel to Super Mario Bros, our dynamic duo began to experiment with ways they could introduce their new approach to level design to the setting of Mario, while simultaneously expanding upon the ideas of the first game and giving this one its own identity.
The approach they took was one of a reactive, retaliatory, sequel. Commercially, a bad call. Sequels of this ilk rarely go over well with fans. Think of a film like The Last Jedi. It plays on the rhymes, rhythms and preconceived notions of the series (and its fan base) to dramatic effect. However you think that turned out (my lawyer has advised I abstain from commenting), it was deeply contentious and outright rejected by many diehard fans. Putting aside how interesting I find this game, Nintendo of America was unusually canny to realise releasing this as Mario 2 would have been ruinous.
What came of this daring experiment? A game infamous for unreasonably punishing difficulty. Depending on how it hits you, this game can feel like it's mocking you. The decision to include constant (what had not yet been coined) trolls in the forms of invisible blocks, whacked-out enemy positioning and the like is pretty immediately off-putting. What makes it even more aggravating is how intentional it is. 8-3 is awash with invisible blocks present only to punish you for trying to deal with hammer bros in the way the two games have taught you is most effective. Multiple levels have gaps that punish you for running blindly at max pace in a game whose predecessor was most fun when you were doing just that. 4-1 has an arbitrary single block pit at the end specifically to kill you if you randomly hold back a little bit in fear after this entire game has told you to exercise more caution. It is absurd!
Did you ever see that Hbomberguy video on Pathologic? A great watch, but one thing about it always confused me. After an entire multi-hour discussion on how intellectually invigorating, deeply immersive and artistically enriching he found the game, he continued to insist it wasn't fun. Who is Bomberman trying to kid here? We (Gamers) continue to insist fun only has one form. That is the 'reasonable challenge that can be comfortably overcome in a satisfying amount of time with minimal outside assistance' kind of fun. A perfectly valid kind of fun that this game cannot accommodate. But there are many forms of fun. Major nerd alert in coming here, but engaging with the artistic intentions and themes of a work with a lot to say and an exciting way of saying it is fun! Playing an influential game wherein the ideas and innovation are still visible within many games you love, putting yourself into the mental context of the time, is fun! Most relevantly, engaging in a back-and-forth with an artist stretching the limits of their sensibilities, disregarding the wants and needs of the audience, and completely indulging themselves in ideas usually considered frustrating or flat-out wrong is a kind of fun! It might not be your kind of fun, but it certainly is mine.
From start to finish, I have the cheesiest grin playing this thing. I and the collected workers of Nintendo R&D4 are sitting in a theatre, watching the perfectly timed Looney Tune nonsense of their game play out, again and again, for hours on end, and just laughing and laughing. The crucial thing to realise here is what we are laughing at. Not you certainly, there is no victim to this tomfoolery. Instead, it is giddy in the realisation it can turn every expectation of a platformer into an anti-joke. It's dragging you along with it. Do so dutifully and be bored, or join it in its enthusiasm and have a blast. I choose the latter.
The Lost Levels feels especially revolutionary after seeing exactly how many Mario fans would follow its approach to iterating on the series. Doggy doo-doo bullshit like Cat Mario, or fun things like Kaizo Rom-hacks and those hysterically stupid Mario Maker levels, have all, consciously or not, taken this as a veritable how-to guide. You don't have to like these, but I find it oddly beautiful that their scumfuckery isn't just approved of by the original work, but predated by it.
And after everything said here, you can just have a good time with this. Grab a drink, be ready to google how to beat the unreasonable mazes, and drop a save state or two on most levels. You're golden.
This game doesn't hate you, it's too giddy for you to even factor into the equation. It's a little kid who wants to show you their scribbling. Maybe the final piece makes no sense, but you have to love the boundless enthusiasm behind it. I’d stick it on my fridge!
To understand why The Lost Levels is the way it is, we need only look at when it was released. This game is not Miyamoto and Company's follow-up to Super Mario Bros. First, earlier in 1986, he and former AD Takashi Tezuka (who shares the director chair with Miyamoto on this game as well) went to work on The Legend of Zelda. Nowadays, the original Zelda also feels pretty alien. Without a guide, its puzzles can feel completely random. To modern sensibilities, it looks like needless obfuscation in service of nothing. But immersing a player in a game and making the immense financial investment of one worth it was a very different task in the 80s. You could angle for intense difficulty to extend runtime, a common ploy. Instead, Zelda forged a new path. With a manual full of hints in hand, players were encouraged to take notes, create their own maps, and endlessly trial and error. It's padding! But it's the kind of padding that deepens the experience. It's how you get people brainstorming how to find Ganon with their friends on the playground at lunch, and these are the people who will treasure the game forever. It can feel like a guide game now, but if you give yourself over to the experience, manual and all, you can still see sparks of what made it such a revolution.
This is not an easily replicable formula. A part of me feels like the release of Zelda broke everyone at Nintendo's brains. Looking at the games coming out in the wake of Zelda, even those cashing in on the post-Mario platforming boom, you see an abrupt shift. Suddenly an Ice Climbers started looking more like a Metroid or Kid Icarus. Tasked with making a sequel to Super Mario Bros, our dynamic duo began to experiment with ways they could introduce their new approach to level design to the setting of Mario, while simultaneously expanding upon the ideas of the first game and giving this one its own identity.
The approach they took was one of a reactive, retaliatory, sequel. Commercially, a bad call. Sequels of this ilk rarely go over well with fans. Think of a film like The Last Jedi. It plays on the rhymes, rhythms and preconceived notions of the series (and its fan base) to dramatic effect. However you think that turned out (my lawyer has advised I abstain from commenting), it was deeply contentious and outright rejected by many diehard fans. Putting aside how interesting I find this game, Nintendo of America was unusually canny to realise releasing this as Mario 2 would have been ruinous.
What came of this daring experiment? A game infamous for unreasonably punishing difficulty. Depending on how it hits you, this game can feel like it's mocking you. The decision to include constant (what had not yet been coined) trolls in the forms of invisible blocks, whacked-out enemy positioning and the like is pretty immediately off-putting. What makes it even more aggravating is how intentional it is. 8-3 is awash with invisible blocks present only to punish you for trying to deal with hammer bros in the way the two games have taught you is most effective. Multiple levels have gaps that punish you for running blindly at max pace in a game whose predecessor was most fun when you were doing just that. 4-1 has an arbitrary single block pit at the end specifically to kill you if you randomly hold back a little bit in fear after this entire game has told you to exercise more caution. It is absurd!
Did you ever see that Hbomberguy video on Pathologic? A great watch, but one thing about it always confused me. After an entire multi-hour discussion on how intellectually invigorating, deeply immersive and artistically enriching he found the game, he continued to insist it wasn't fun. Who is Bomberman trying to kid here? We (Gamers) continue to insist fun only has one form. That is the 'reasonable challenge that can be comfortably overcome in a satisfying amount of time with minimal outside assistance' kind of fun. A perfectly valid kind of fun that this game cannot accommodate. But there are many forms of fun. Major nerd alert in coming here, but engaging with the artistic intentions and themes of a work with a lot to say and an exciting way of saying it is fun! Playing an influential game wherein the ideas and innovation are still visible within many games you love, putting yourself into the mental context of the time, is fun! Most relevantly, engaging in a back-and-forth with an artist stretching the limits of their sensibilities, disregarding the wants and needs of the audience, and completely indulging themselves in ideas usually considered frustrating or flat-out wrong is a kind of fun! It might not be your kind of fun, but it certainly is mine.
From start to finish, I have the cheesiest grin playing this thing. I and the collected workers of Nintendo R&D4 are sitting in a theatre, watching the perfectly timed Looney Tune nonsense of their game play out, again and again, for hours on end, and just laughing and laughing. The crucial thing to realise here is what we are laughing at. Not you certainly, there is no victim to this tomfoolery. Instead, it is giddy in the realisation it can turn every expectation of a platformer into an anti-joke. It's dragging you along with it. Do so dutifully and be bored, or join it in its enthusiasm and have a blast. I choose the latter.
The Lost Levels feels especially revolutionary after seeing exactly how many Mario fans would follow its approach to iterating on the series. Doggy doo-doo bullshit like Cat Mario, or fun things like Kaizo Rom-hacks and those hysterically stupid Mario Maker levels, have all, consciously or not, taken this as a veritable how-to guide. You don't have to like these, but I find it oddly beautiful that their scumfuckery isn't just approved of by the original work, but predated by it.
And after everything said here, you can just have a good time with this. Grab a drink, be ready to google how to beat the unreasonable mazes, and drop a save state or two on most levels. You're golden.
This game doesn't hate you, it's too giddy for you to even factor into the equation. It's a little kid who wants to show you their scribbling. Maybe the final piece makes no sense, but you have to love the boundless enthusiasm behind it. I’d stick it on my fridge!