Trivia / Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels

• Creator Backlash: Shigeru Miyamoto agrees with the sentiment that the game is just an unreasonably harder Mission-Pack Sequel of the original Super Mario Bros.
• Dummied Out: Worlds 9 through D in are present in Deluxe's data, some more complete than others.
• Late Export for You: For the longest time, the original Famicom Disk System version was not made available to western players. In addition to it not being ported to the NES, the Famicom Mini (Classic NES series in the US) port from 2004 for the Game Boy Advance was also not released outside Japan. It wouldn't be until the Wii's Virtual Console release in 2007 that the unaltered original would finally be available in Europe and the US. It hasn't missed the international market ever since, having seen release in those regions, through the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U Virtual Consoles, the Nintendo Switch Online service, and a special Game & Watch edition released in 2020 as part of the franchise's 35th anniversary.
• Market-Based Title:
  • Digital releases in the West list the game as Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels after its name in Super Mario All-Stars. The title screen always remains unchanged, however.
  • Super Mario Bros. Deluxe and the Japanese version of Super Mario All-Stars added the subtitle For Super Players instead for unknown reasons (the subtitle is taken from the game's slogan on the box). Later mentions of the game in Japan drop the subtitle.
• Remade for the Export: The game didn't get an international release until it was remade for Super Mario All-Stars on the SNES in 1993.
• Trolling Creator: Apparently, there were some letters of complaints from Japanese gamers that the first game was too easy for them. So in response to this negative feedback, the programmers doubled down on the level designs with a bevy of sinister innovations. One of them being Warp Zones that send you BACKWARDS as punishment for discovering them.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: It's commonly stated that on the Famicom Disk System version, the player has to beat the game eight times in one sitting to unlock Worlds A-D. While the part about beating the game eight times is true, it needing to be done in one sitting isn't - the game did indeed save how many times it had been completed.
• What Could Have Been: There were plans to release the game in the west on NES as a bonus that came with Nintendo Power subscriptions, similarly to Dragon Quest. Although an NES cartridge was supposedly produced, plans fell through due to fears of creating market confusion.
• Word of God: There were conflicting reports over whether the similarity with the original game or the Nintendo Hard difficulty were the main reasons for the game's late export to the States. Its Mission-Pack Sequel status didn't help one bit and even conflicted with NoA's explicit policy on game development at the time, but an interview that the lead analyst for the game Howard Philips gave for a book set the record straight once and for all that it was, indeed, the unusually high difficulty that really did it in:
  "As I continued to play, I found that Super Mario Bros. 2 asked me again and again to take a Leap of Faith, and each of those leaps resulted in my immediate death. This was not a fun game to play. It was punishment — undeserved punishment. I put down my controller, astonished that Mr. Miyamoto had chosen to design such a painful game."

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