Completed as part of the Nintendo Wii release of Super Mario All-Stars and played in front of a live studio audience (LordDarias, Jenny, MagneticBurn, and Xenon.) I bring this up only because sheer obstinance and a desire to prove something was the main motivating factor in completing this baneful piece of video game "entertainment," and were it not for that I'd have probably dropped this around world 5 and played the good Super Mario 2 instead.

The history of The Lost Levels is extremely well documented, but to quickly recap: Takashi Tezuka took over the directorial role of Super Mario Bros. 2 from Miyamoto, who was busy on The Legend of Zelda, and set about designing the game with the philosophy that Japanese players mastered the previous Mario and needed something more challenging. Worried that he maybe went a little too far in some places, Tezuka slapped the tagline "for Super Players" on the box as a warning, and marketing was crafted around the game's high difficulty, featuring footage of Mario getting his shit rocked and children screaming at the TV. The more well-known beats of this story follow from Howard Phillips rejecting the game after being bewildered by Miyamoto's sadism (misattributed), and a reworked version of Doki Doki Literature Club releasing soon after as a proper follow-up to the original Super Mario Bros.. Arguably one of the most significant decisions in game history, and one that the Mario franchise as a whole owes a considerable amount of its identity to.

Not that The Lost Levels hasn't left its own mark on gaming. The entire concept of Kaizo hacks and similar brutal-by-design platformers originates here. The kind of intentionally malicious software designed for people who either loath themselves, have too much free time, or who suffer from speedrunner brain and actually enjoy making pixel-perfect jumps as part of a well-practiced routine. Although I think games don't necessarily have to be fun so long as they're trying to evoke another reaction by design, I do, you know, like to enjoy myself as a matter of personal preference. Trolling the player with deadly power-ups, hidden blocks, and fake exits is funny up to a point, but like any joke that gets stretched out for too long, it gets tiresome.

The Lost Levels' infamous level of difficulty is borne from incredibly rigid game design. The player is given progressively less freedom in how they approach the game, to the point that it imposes a narrow set of rules to complete each level and actively punishes the player for stepping out of line. Mario getting brained on the bottom of a hidden block and immediately eating shit because he had the audacity to jump over a hammer bro a few pixels later than what the game expected of him stops being amusing when you're experiencing it on world 8. Maze levels - the worst part of the original Super Mario Bros. - show up in greater frequency, as if to cement this design philosophy of "screw you, play the way we want you to." There are no checkpoints in castle levels, which are always designed to be the most sadistic in a world's batch of four, but by around world 7 the concept of check points are about as dead as God. They cease to be. Do the level right or don't do it at all. Thankfully, All-Stars throws the player a bone and lets them retry a level they game overed on rather than restart the whole world, a kindness the original version of the game does not afford.

Now before anyone reads all of that and just assumes grandpa and his arthritic thumbs suffered from a case of the "not-skilleds," I'd like to point out that I am a Super Player™. That's right, I beat this without save states. I could say I did this because I had originally intended to play it on real hardware, but the truth is... I couldn't remember the save state hotkeys in Dolphin and was too lazy to check. Or that was the case for about half of The Lost Levels, because after a certain point it was absolutely a matter of not letting the game beat me. I've extolled the virtues of quitting games you don't like, but The Lost Levels felt like such a personal attack I went back to being the old me.

I did it, though! I learned the game and I beat it on its own terms... Its very specific terms, where every level is like its own contract. As something of a Lost Levels expert, I will say the game is not without its positives. Actually overcoming a level you're stuck on and executing with a level of precision that appeases the beast results in a profound sense of satisfaction. There were moments after some of the crueler levels where I started to understand what people see in Kaizo games. It's the sense of accomplishment, the feeling of all that tension melting away, perhaps even the cheers and encouragement of your friends hitting you like a drug. But it is also undercut somewhat by the fact that you're celebrating never having to do any of that bullshit ever again. I made that impossible jump, I can die now without doing it a second time. That's my reward.

I think Jenny put it best when she said "this game sucks."