Quickly, gather around everyone. The fresh Mario levels have just dropped.
You heard me. New levels. In Mario. Specifically in Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels, the game that was released for the first time in 1986 and in which, as you might think, everyone has already discovered every secret.
NO. There was still more to find. Speedrunner named Kosmic managed to discover more than 20 previously undecided (and sometimes … Very glitch) playable levels in the game after a lot of community assistance, experimenting, patience and springs jumping.
Kosmic recorded his whole journey here in a 40-minute film and I highly recommend watching it because he does various crazy things and explains in detail how and why it works in this way. But very, Very Basically, in the original Super Mario Bros. And its continuation, The Lost Levels, the game determines to what level and world we will send you at the end of each level, based on which object you will “use” to complete the level. Gripping the flagship mast increases the number “area” by 1 (“2” in “1-2”), while grabbing the ax on the castle bridge increases the number “world” (for example, it sends you to “2-1” after defeating “1-4”).
Then there are Warp pipes. For years, the Mario community has known about the infamous “minus world” error-an infinitely looped level of water, to which you can access after entering the Warp zone in 1-2 in such a way that the zone is not fully loading, and the pipes are not yet configured to send you to the right world and area. In the original game Super Mario Bros. Performing this activity, and then entering to an extremely left or right pipe, causes players to send to the level marked as “world -1” or world minus. In The Lost Levels, this error was removed, instead the pipes sent players to the destination currently loaded into his memory. However, if you enter the pipe during movement, the Warp zone can load after entering and you can cheat the game to send you to the very beginning of the area to which the pipe wants to send you.
It is all quite complicated and to be candid, I also feel dizzy. Again, the explanation of Kosmica is the best, but an even shorter version is that using a combination of flags, axes and pipes, you can manipulate the game to send you to more and more uncertain areas. You can force the game to load crazy things, such as the worlds 2-5, 2-9 and so on. And in The Lost Levels, specifically in the Super Mario All-Stars edition, this strangeness is deepened by the fact that the game contains records available from the menu, which save your access to these strange worlds, but load them differently if you gain access to them from the menu, not from the previous world.
Kosmic was able to connect all this to start loading the world around the world outside the bonus levels with letters in The Lost Levels. First, he reached the B-5, then B-6, 7 and 8. He reached BA, BB, BC and BD with some difficulties. Until this moment, all these levels were largely simply repeated versions of other levels, although sometimes some quirks appeared. But after BD it was not clear what would be loaded.
The answer was to be. At first it seemed just stupid to me. Then Mario briefly went to prison:
The only way out was to save and leave. Kosmic escaped and went to BF, which initiated a series of repetitive normal levels. From here he went to BL, after which the spring and giant bottom prevented him from playing. But he could still load all these levels from the menu for different varieties, and BH resulted in:
From that moment the situation became even stranger:
In total, Kosmic found over 20 “new levels”, which ranged from almost identical to existing levels, to a total mess like the one you see above. Ultimately, the game caused Kosmic to suspend the game and they are probably not very comical from the platform’s point of view, but they were nice to watch.
So why did it take 39 years to find these levels? Kosmic has theories:
“Less people played in Lost Levels compared to the first game. This trick is deeply woven in the game, as in bonus worlds, and not even in the main ones. To see the full range of fault, it only works in the All-Stars version and becomes a bit technical … But the main reason I would say that I would say is really difficult.”
Kosmic shows this in his films. The most tough part is to enter the pipe when the Warp zone is not fully loaded, which requires a lot of precision of movement and where the camera is currently located. It is easier to manipulate some levels than others, but for this error to work, there is one particularly tough Warp zone, which Kosmic had to utilize several very specific tricks.
Congratulations to Kosmice and the entire Super Mario Bros. community, which now has a bag full of fresh, strange levels to play and the confidence that it is never too tardy to discover something fresh about the classic video game.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior IGN reporter. Her posts can be found at BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.Social. Do you have a hint about history? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
