the nes and snes use pretty much the same cpu (both are 6502 derivatives and they're programmed identically), so they probably used the same game code, which has the same unused levels, and just changed the code to make the graphics work on the snes.
Dear Gruz: Time ago, making a rom hack of SMB3, I found that there are more left-behind levels! I found them in the map's yellow dots. Some levels were impossible to play becouse of glitchy items, but other levels were playable! So, I am making another rom hack that presents all these levels. Wish me good luck! Yours truly, IkeruOZ. Edit: I'm putting some goal cards an changing the spawn in some levels.
Here's an interesting observation about that starry sky in level 14 from looking at pre-release screenshots on TCRF: there exists a beta screenshot showing a coin heaven with a sky gradient effect where the sky gradually gets darker. Those star tiles surely would have been used if that effect had remained in the game.
Nintendo wanted to do a lot more with the Super Mario Bros games that most know about too. Like even a 3d like thing with the original Super Mario Bros. That ground you run on all the time? Notice it's a stack of two of the same block. The goombas/troopas can actually walk on that bottom layer. They just walk on top of it inbetween the two. It's a bit of a leftover of the 3d thing they wanted to try. Look up design doucments on this too. It will explain it more. SMB3 was actually finished in 1988 and we didn't get it in usa till 1990 too. Like you said there's a bunch of things they wanted to do with this too. There's some unused castle icons for the map too. And a beta screen of the world 1 map that had a bit different path to the first fortress too.
The real reason they leave the levels in the game and why many resources are left in the game is because when any kind of project gets late in development, there are lots of references to that level data, and without being too technical, a failure to find all of the references to the data could result in bugs and crashes that are hard to debug.
These are indeed debug levels, fun fact, one of these levels was featured in the box of the game. I always wondered as a kid how to get to that level. Edit: I stand corrected haha, that level isn't even among these 15 hidden levels
Oh I had that same box and remember telling my friends "dude, this level is not in the game, I've beat it a hundred times!" They all thought I was crazy LMAO
6:25 I found this level on my NES back in the 90s *without* a Game Genie. You need an original style NES, partially eject the game just enough so that it doesn’t cause the infamous blinking power light indicator on the console. If you’re very lucky, the game may start Mario on the World 1 map, but he will spawn off-screen to the upper left part. If pressing the A button doesn’t start, keep moving in random directions until you hear Mario move. Then press A. If you’re even more lucky, you just might get the game to start at this particular hidden stage. Good luck!
If i get a nes with smb3 ill try this and if it dose not work, i just have to question my self why your lying. Also where did you know that the level you "Found" was unused? Like no one has that good of a memory!
@@azuraltumbabic4239 You've never seen or heard something after several years and realized you remember it from your childhood? I'm not necessarily saying I believe that account 100% but that's like the most believeable part lol. Cartridge tilting or damaged pins can have some really interesting effects on games and there's no good way to simulate the effects in emulation. As an example, I wish I still had my original copy of Maximum Carnage for the SNES because it was spectacularly busted and would occasionally fail to load cutscenes or scripted sections at the correct time, which would sometimes lead to me losing multiple lives during a "cutscene" (where the widescreen bars appear on screen to transition from gameplay to cutscene, and you lose control of your character), or sometimes allow me to continue a boss fight when I shouldn't be able to for another 10-20 seconds. I've haven't been able to do anything like it since. Being able to access something in memory by accident- especially when you're a kid and you have no idea how, why, or how video games even work, and ESPECIALLY on a system as temperamental as the NES- isn't that hard of a sell to me. That seems like the kind of thing that would stick with you. I was 9 or 10 when I did all that shit with Maximum Carnage and had owned the game for years before it started acting up. I remember it pretty vividly. Maybe I'm just gullible.
@@psirensongs not related really, but I remember when I was 10 (23 years ago) I pulled my link to the past cart out without hitting the eject button, and I broke the cart in half. I taped it with electrical tape and it still works to this day.
@@Faber0k That's awesome lol. I had a similar "How tf do you still work" copy of NBA Jam. Somebody (not me!) threw it at a wall and exploded the entire corner- about a fifth of the cart. We put it back in the machine and it worked just fine. Unfortunately, I don't still own it, as my parents eventually sold our SNES, but I remember it still worked for the remainder of the time we owned it. I've always marveled at how seemingly invincible old cartridge games are.
I always felt there was something off about some levels, especially the map screens, there are a number of areas that looked like you were supposed to go to more places and with things like bridges and being able to break obstacles that didn't really get you any place special, they must have had a lot more planned.
It's still *super* weird to me that the "swimming up dark waterfalls with wooden blocks" level exists. I had a dream about a level that started out with a section exactly like that, waaaay back in 1991 or so when I was a little kid playing through SMB3 for the first time.
I had a dream (or more aptly a nightmare) when I was playing Mario 64 on the Wii VC. I was trapped in some sprawling dark area that I couldn't leave even if I paused the game and exited the stage
I thought they were designed in a notepad with characters being what spawned. How can you tell it was a mouse? I actually remember an interview where they said the levels were designed in text file, but that might of just been the first
The green Para-Beetles were also on the box-art, in a screenshot that showed the first of the scrapped levels they appeared in, saying it was in "World 0".
(3:34) World 3-7 has a similar coin heaven that ends with a treasure chest containing a cloud item. (12:40) A P-speed jump without a raccoon tail does get you 6 tiles of height in SMB3, so you actually can get onto those ? blocks from the floor anyway.
no, i'm pretty sure they were mushroom levels like 1-3 in the original game. Early in dev, someone must have discovered that you can save a few tiles in memory by cutting the lower part. And then someone else in the back had a strike a genius. "you know what would take even less tile in the code ?" "no mushroom at all!". They replaced the mushroom blocks by wood blocks which were easier to rotate and the only level which survived this era was 1-6.
I always think of the E-reader card levels on the GBA version of the game as the lost levels of SMB 3. Because basically nobody has an e-reader or those cards. And there's like 100 of these new extra levels. These days you can easily Google for a romhack of the GBA SMB 3 rom that adds in all the e-reader levels for you, and simply play that. They're a lot of fun. They combine powerups and level styles from all the 2D mario games. So you'll be playing Mario 3, but while wearing a cape feather from super Mario World, while pulling out vegetables from the ground like in super Mario bros 2. Stuff like that. And they're official Nintendo-made levels. Honestly that's my favourite version of SMB 3 nowadays. Because of the dozens of extra e-reader levels. And it's very easy to get the romhack that adds in those extra levels so you can play it on an emulator or even chuck it onto an everdrive and play on a real GBA
*@duffman18* The "Final Airship" e-Reader stages/levels (these stages/levels consist of King Bowser Koopa's personal airship, which was so huge in size that it occupied *_MULTIPLE -_*_ _*_*2*_*_ _*_- AIRSHIP_* stages/levels, where you have to fight him in a boss fight at the end of the second airship stage/level inside an airship cabin!!) were my absolute favourite e-Reader stages/levels!!! (I've seen video game gameplay videos of each of them on TH-cam.) However, sadly, they were only officially available in Japan (until the _Super Mario Bros. All-Star_ video game title, which has the 16-bit version of the _Super Mario Bros. 3_ video game in it, was released on the Nintendo Wii U Virtual Console); so I wasn't able to play them, *_myself,_* to this very day (I never owned a Nintendo Wii U, nor did I ever live in Japan).
if someone prefers to do it officially by Nintendo. WiiU virtual console of Super mario advance 4 all the e-reader are available including the japan exclusive.
extra levels or not this game is an absolute masterpiece. I remember going crazy over it when it came out. all my friends wanted to come over to play it
There was a romhack in addition to this that shows some of the lost bonus games, also at one point someone made a rom hack “the twisted lost levels, that worked to make these lost levels a bit more polished. Finally super Mario bros 3 extended worked to put the more finished ones into super Mario bros 3 in addition to some of the ereader levels
I always did feel like Level 5 was underwhelming in the whole Sky World build-up...now it just appears it's because half the concepts were never finished.
The fact that you bring up the Game Genie really makes me feel nostalgic; I had that, back in the day, and it helped me get through some tough games. This game, in fact, was the first game I ever beat, and it was thanks to the Game Genie.
The levels were left in because they don't really take up much room because they are only calling up existing sprites for the most part, the code doesn't take up much space, and it was easier to just leave them in there than hunting down and deleting the code
@2:04 did anyone try the holding down trick on the white platform box there? You can do that on EVERY white one that appears in the normal game so maybe it works on these as well.
In level 11 you find unique blue flower powerups that literally appear nowhere in the normal game. Then, instead of grabbing one, you decide they are boring, completely ignore them, and don't show them off to your audience at all. Makes total sense.
12:41 You actually can jump high enough to make it on top of those question blocks, you just need a running start and P-speed, because in SMB3 P-speed makes you jump 6 blocks high instead of the usual 5 (this is not true of the SMB3 style in Mario Maker though).
The Wii u virtual console version of super Mario advanced 4 super Mario Brothers 3 has an entire section of levels that have to select on the main menu. They are very cool.
@ Frank M: That only appear in a fan made Super mario bros.3 game where he modified it himself to have an exit so you can progress through the game, and also he went all bunkers with it, and show an unused graphic of the same lost levels, so the real one does not have it. I don't remember the name of the fan game, and i don't know if he as a patch of that fan made game, in the website rom hack because rom no longer exist, so you would need the non-modified version of the rom and a lunar patching software, make sure to make a copy of the original rom so you don't lose it.
I remember some screenshots affiliated with the McDonald's Happy Meal promo, that clearly showed two levels not in the game. One was a floating cloud level with lots of parabeetles, the other was grassy like 1-2. In both instances there was no level display at the bottom of the screen, just "MARIO x4" or similar.
Some of these are great concepts that would have really elevated the game. I wonder if they got so good at making levels by the end that they had to stop themselves or they'd never finish the game, and these levels are just a snapshot of that moment. And maybe instead of stopping altogether, they just switched over to working on Super Mario World, the pipes going up and down reminds me of some things in that game.
Did you know that the world map featured on the SMB3 card board box what different then the world map 1 released on the cartridge. There was also a grass level display with tons of parabeetles that was also not in the released game.
I've been seeing this hack for years, but never really looked into it before. Thank you for sharing this; these are a lot more interesting than I'd thought they would be!
Hey gruz, here's a great smb3 game genie challenge code. EXITZI play the level forwards and backwards at the same time! In other words, you start at the beginning and the end at once. It even plays the music forward and backwards at the same time.
I've seen level 7 come up a lot when people play randomizer. It's nicknamed Atlantis and is one of only 2 stages Autoscroller is not turned off due to turning it off soft locks the game.
Very surprising! On a similar note, I’ve always been curious about the promotional screen shots of levels not used in the game. Wish they were available too, but this is a sweet bonus!
You think 15 unused levels is crazy? Wait until you hear that the original Super Mario Bros. had so many unused levels they made it into a full fledged game! Too bad it didn't leave Japan though...
sure it left japan. that version was ported to a number of Nintendo consoles in the time since NES. even on the wiki page it says " The game was renamed The Lost Levels and first released internationally in the 1993 Super Nintendo Entertainment System compilation Super Mario All-Stars. It was ported to the Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Wii U and Nintendo Switch."
Same difference; in the Japanese equivalent of the SMB franchise Goombas are called "Kuribos". The US English manual for Super Mario Land on the Game Boy even calls Goombas "Kuribitos" ("little Goombas" or "Goomblings")!
Fun fact.. Another way you can play these levels is to get yourself into the Super Mario 3 Randomizer community. The first 11 levels make their way into the random set of levels that get played on a playthrough.. It's lots of fun. :D
So how were players supposed to either know or access these levels back in the late 80's or in the 90's without good INTERNET ACCESS that's available today or unless if it was a very well hidden secret that NINTENDO did not want anyone to know about.
Very cool! I am betting they had so much room to leave unfinished data because back in those days there was no way to add a small amount of more space, you pretty much had to double it with adding a second identical chip. This left far more room then was needed to complete SM3, so they didnt need to clear out the unfinished areas to make room for final touches before burning the final ROMs. And regarding the lost levels on SMBAS on the SNES, again that's no surprise as they used the inital code for the game, just updating the textures. (plese forgive me qany lapses, as I am a big liquored)
Most of these just look like early prototype versions of actual levels and building blocks. Some of the physics might not be useful for the levels because they were probably experimenting with different features and not all of them made it into the shipped game.
These level most likely were dummied out for quality, pacing, being unfinished or just being test levels. The reason why they would still be on the cartridge is pretty simple if they removed them it could cause issues with the coding on the final product so instead the devs on old games just made cut and unfinished content unreachable.
The last level I think serves a purpose. Since they had to design levels when you can stand up on cloud things. This level looks like a test place in case the lower part would work as ceiling and make Mario unable to jump through
About that second group of tan cheep cheeps that only has two... I notice that there is a lot of jellectros spawned there as well. Since the game only has a fixed number of sprite slots, (8, I think), most likely there simply isn't room to load the last cheep cheep sprite so it gets dropped. Not an uncommon thing, actually.
I'm glad the yellow fish returned in NSMBW, now called Eep Cheeps, I'm also glad the green Parabeetle truly existed, I used to think it was a fan made design but it turned out to be a real design that simply wasn't used
I still have a old nes games flyer with this game in particular,AND i never found the dam level that apears in the image, it has a yellow sky and a bunch of Parabeetles flying.
No mention of the Mario 3 randomizer? That's how a lot of people *recently* ended up experiencing or finding out about these stages. In fact, several which were not able to be completed in their original state (no card at the end of the stages, as you mention) were even given cards to make them completable in the randomizer, so they'd be able to be placed in the pool of stages that can show up.
I knew there was something wrong with Karibo's shoe only being in one level. But that also made it more special, my cousin and I would fight over who got to play Level 5-3. So in the beginning is that a functional Game Genie code?
oh man and I did one of these Levels........ Last month I was playing a Mario 3 Randomizer and you can add in some of the Lost Levels into the Game but only 8 Levels and it would Replace the Normal Levels for the 8 Levels too but yeah some of them did get put in the Randomizer like the Underground Level with the Double Doors I do remember playing that one......
Actually, they're called "Goomba Shoe" not "Shoe Goomba". Also, I always wondered about that screenshot on the SMB3 Box that have Para-Beetles in Grass Area be since this was pointed by Andre from GameXplain.
I've always wondered about that screenshot also, I was disappointed not to find it anywhere as a kid! The screenshot of the World 1 map ALSO found on the same back cover also has some noticeable differences from the final game.
@@mattrogers6646 "Kuribo" is the original Japanese name for "Goomba", so same difference. My memory is rusty, but I believe the European release also corrects this to "Goomba's shoe".
I think he was referring to the Goomba who has a shoe, not the shoe itself, which is indeed the Goomba Shoe (a correction Nintendo made from "Kuribo shoe").
I discovered it when playing NSMB DS which was the first game I ever played, I thought it was widely known, specially with SMM allowing people to experiment on enemies
@@darthtroller Between all the times I have played it, or seen someone else play it, I don't think I have ever seen this game behave exactly the same way twice.
Stuff like this is so interesting to me. The way these old games were coded was very different than today and it's neat the weird easter eggs and oddball stuff one can find when they dig into the rom. Would be cool if Nintendo re-released these old games but with a whole new world/levels, but same game mechanics. The format just has unlimited potential.
I wonder if level 3 has any relation to the unused level shown on the back of the box (screenshot with red parabeetles) since they use the same tileset.
0:58 I'm pretty sure there is a way to access them without modifying the game, although it wasn't intended to be there. To do so, one can go to World 7, get to that vertical section, do some manipulations with shells, return to the lowest room, enter the pipe in the unintended direction, and hit a note block (the graphics are messed up, but there is actually one there). This way, the game tries to write to ROM, swapping the banks in an unintended way, and go through a weird sequence that ultimately results in the banks swapping back, but the execution jumping to the shell positions. Another way involves mashing the buttons very fast so that the input procedure doesn't finish in time because of the workaround for a weird hardware bug, but it's TAS-only. Neither way is by me. Both have been successfully used in TASes, such as “total control” with the former or SMB1 Bad Apple with the latter (to set up the memory to start in World N). Glitches like these are called ACE glitches
You know what's crazy? These lost levels were ALSO hidden in Super Mario Bros All-Stars on SNES! WTF?!
the nes and snes use pretty much the same cpu (both are 6502 derivatives and they're programmed identically), so they probably used the same game code, which has the same unused levels, and just changed the code to make the graphics work on the snes.
Very true.
video or it didnt happen
Could you add the Game Genie codes for each hidden level into the video's description? Some of us would like to try these on real hardware. Thanks.
They were probably planned to be included add a bonus feature. Which... yeah no shit.
Dear Gruz:
Time ago, making a rom hack of SMB3, I found that there are more left-behind levels!
I found them in the map's yellow dots.
Some levels were impossible to play becouse of glitchy items, but other levels were playable!
So, I am making another rom hack that presents all these levels. Wish me good luck!
Yours truly,
IkeruOZ.
Edit: I'm putting some goal cards an changing the spawn in some levels.
It's over 30 years since this game's release and I'm still learning more and more about it.
Here's an interesting observation about that starry sky in level 14 from looking at pre-release screenshots on TCRF: there exists a beta screenshot showing a coin heaven with a sky gradient effect where the sky gradually gets darker.
Those star tiles surely would have been used if that effect had remained in the game.
The idea of a vertically ascending stage where the sky gradually gets darker as you go above the clouds is actually brilliant
Nintendo wanted to do a lot more with the Super Mario Bros games that most know about too. Like even a 3d like thing with the original Super Mario Bros. That ground you run on all the time? Notice it's a stack of two of the same block. The goombas/troopas can actually walk on that bottom layer. They just walk on top of it inbetween the two. It's a bit of a leftover of the 3d thing they wanted to try. Look up design doucments on this too. It will explain it more. SMB3 was actually finished in 1988 and we didn't get it in usa till 1990 too. Like you said there's a bunch of things they wanted to do with this too. There's some unused castle icons for the map too. And a beta screen of the world 1 map that had a bit different path to the first fortress too.
@@TeamRocketHQR highly interesting
It actually did:
tcrf.net/File:SMB3NES_UnusedGradient.png
The real reason they leave the levels in the game and why many resources are left in the game is because when any kind of project gets late in development, there are lots of references to that level data, and without being too technical, a failure to find all of the references to the data could result in bugs and crashes that are hard to debug.
The real reason is work hoursm im not going to pay gou to remove what doesnt even matter kid. U get your 40 hours and thats it........ 😒🙄🙄
Kiribo’s shoe was tragically underused in the game, it was insane just using it for one level. It should have had one stage in every kingdom.
These are indeed debug levels, fun fact, one of these levels was featured in the box of the game. I always wondered as a kid how to get to that level.
Edit: I stand corrected haha, that level isn't even among these 15 hidden levels
Oh I had that same box and remember telling my friends "dude, this level is not in the game, I've beat it a hundred times!" They all thought I was crazy LMAO
@@NoSpin23 It drove me crazy when I noticed the level was nowhere to be found xD specially because it looked interesting
I got to the level with random Game Genie codes I was making up.
Me too.
Memories
6:25 I found this level on my NES back in the 90s *without* a Game Genie. You need an original style NES, partially eject the game just enough so that it doesn’t cause the infamous blinking power light indicator on the console. If you’re very lucky, the game may start Mario on the World 1 map, but he will spawn off-screen to the upper left part. If pressing the A button doesn’t start, keep moving in random directions until you hear Mario move. Then press A.
If you’re even more lucky, you just might get the game to start at this particular hidden stage. Good luck!
Cool!
If i get a nes with smb3 ill try this and if it dose not work, i just have to question my self why your lying. Also where did you know that the level you "Found" was unused? Like no one has that good of a memory!
@@azuraltumbabic4239 You've never seen or heard something after several years and realized you remember it from your childhood?
I'm not necessarily saying I believe that account 100% but that's like the most believeable part lol.
Cartridge tilting or damaged pins can have some really interesting effects on games and there's no good way to simulate the effects in emulation.
As an example, I wish I still had my original copy of Maximum Carnage for the SNES because it was spectacularly busted and would occasionally fail to load cutscenes or scripted sections at the correct time, which would sometimes lead to me losing multiple lives during a "cutscene" (where the widescreen bars appear on screen to transition from gameplay to cutscene, and you lose control of your character), or sometimes allow me to continue a boss fight when I shouldn't be able to for another 10-20 seconds. I've haven't been able to do anything like it since.
Being able to access something in memory by accident- especially when you're a kid and you have no idea how, why, or how video games even work, and ESPECIALLY on a system as temperamental as the NES- isn't that hard of a sell to me. That seems like the kind of thing that would stick with you. I was 9 or 10 when I did all that shit with Maximum Carnage and had owned the game for years before it started acting up. I remember it pretty vividly. Maybe I'm just gullible.
@@psirensongs not related really, but I remember when I was 10 (23 years ago) I pulled my link to the past cart out without hitting the eject button, and I broke the cart in half. I taped it with electrical tape and it still works to this day.
@@Faber0k That's awesome lol. I had a similar "How tf do you still work" copy of NBA Jam. Somebody (not me!) threw it at a wall and exploded the entire corner- about a fifth of the cart. We put it back in the machine and it worked just fine. Unfortunately, I don't still own it, as my parents eventually sold our SNES, but I remember it still worked for the remainder of the time we owned it. I've always marveled at how seemingly invincible old cartridge games are.
The Boot is the best power up in all of gaming. Love your enthusiasm man! Good stuff.
I always felt there was something off about some levels, especially the map screens, there are a number of areas that looked like you were supposed to go to more places and with things like bridges and being able to break obstacles that didn't really get you any place special, they must have had a lot more planned.
they did,.. and it all went into the sequel, Super Mario World.
Remember near the end of World 2 (Desert) when you break the rock to extend the map eastwards there was a body of water shaped like Roman numeral III?
It's still *super* weird to me that the "swimming up dark waterfalls with wooden blocks" level exists.
I had a dream about a level that started out with a section exactly like that, waaaay back in 1991 or so when I was a little kid playing through SMB3 for the first time.
I had the same exact dream
But for Mario 2
I had a dream (or more aptly a nightmare) when I was playing Mario 64 on the Wii VC. I was trapped in some sprawling dark area that I couldn't leave even if I paused the game and exited the stage
I once had a dream that Mario Kart Wii had entirely different characters and vehicles and that each vehicle had at least 2 or 3 characters in it
Dude me too!
Loved seeing behind the scenes WIP stages. Interesting to realize that they designed these levels with a mouse.
Pretty sure every member of Nintendo were humans.
I thought they were designed in a notepad with characters being what spawned. How can you tell it was a mouse? I actually remember an interview where they said the levels were designed in text file, but that might of just been the first
@@drowningin One of their design tools was a wireless mouse on a large tablet.
@@drowningin “might of”: mushy must mean brain.
The green Para-Beetles were also on the box-art, in a screenshot that showed the first of the scrapped levels they appeared in, saying it was in "World 0".
I never understood why scrapped levels would appear on the box....
@@KingRandor82 For all I know, it could have been scrapped after the box-art was finalized.
One of my favorite games. Cool to see gruz delve into it.
I love SM3 so much. It's amazing that new things are still found to this day!
I'm pretty sure these levels have been known about for quite awhile. That said, I wouldn't call your comment wrong.
@@Lunar994 ok
It's crazy I still have this on my original Nintendo.
(3:34) World 3-7 has a similar coin heaven that ends with a treasure chest containing a cloud item.
(12:40) A P-speed jump without a raccoon tail does get you 6 tiles of height in SMB3, so you actually can get onto those ? blocks from the floor anyway.
I like to think that Levels 11, 12 and 13 was the level designer not really knowing how adding levels worked so they did it several times)
no, i'm pretty sure they were mushroom levels like 1-3 in the original game. Early in dev, someone must have discovered that you can save a few tiles in memory by cutting the lower part. And then someone else in the back had a strike a genius. "you know what would take even less tile in the code ?" "no mushroom at all!". They replaced the mushroom blocks by wood blocks which were easier to rotate and the only level which survived this era was 1-6.
@@hurktang Except you can see that all 3 of those levels are basically the same level with only slight differences.
@@legoboy7107 Far more likely these were just early and/or alternate ideas for the same level.
A designer isn’t plural and you don’t like to think.
@@alysdexia What does what you said have to do with the comment?)
I always think of the E-reader card levels on the GBA version of the game as the lost levels of SMB 3. Because basically nobody has an e-reader or those cards. And there's like 100 of these new extra levels. These days you can easily Google for a romhack of the GBA SMB 3 rom that adds in all the e-reader levels for you, and simply play that. They're a lot of fun. They combine powerups and level styles from all the 2D mario games. So you'll be playing Mario 3, but while wearing a cape feather from super Mario World, while pulling out vegetables from the ground like in super Mario bros 2. Stuff like that.
And they're official Nintendo-made levels. Honestly that's my favourite version of SMB 3 nowadays. Because of the dozens of extra e-reader levels. And it's very easy to get the romhack that adds in those extra levels so you can play it on an emulator or even chuck it onto an everdrive and play on a real GBA
100 is quite the exaggeration. Lol. There are exactly 38 e-reader levels.
*@duffman18*
The "Final Airship" e-Reader stages/levels (these stages/levels consist of King Bowser Koopa's personal airship, which was so huge in size that it occupied *_MULTIPLE -_*_ _*_*2*_*_ _*_- AIRSHIP_* stages/levels, where you have to fight him in a boss fight at the end of the second airship stage/level inside an airship cabin!!) were my absolute favourite e-Reader stages/levels!!! (I've seen video game gameplay videos of each of them on TH-cam.) However, sadly, they were only officially available in Japan (until the _Super Mario Bros. All-Star_ video game title, which has the 16-bit version of the _Super Mario Bros. 3_ video game in it, was released on the Nintendo Wii U Virtual Console); so I wasn't able to play them, *_myself,_* to this very day (I never owned a Nintendo Wii U, nor did I ever live in Japan).
If you buy it on the Wii U you get them all unlocked!
if someone prefers to do it officially by Nintendo. WiiU virtual console of Super mario advance 4 all the e-reader are available including the japan exclusive.
I completely forgot about the e-reader cards. Thanks for sharing!
extra levels or not this game is an absolute masterpiece. I remember going crazy over it when it came out. all my friends wanted to come over to play it
Do they still want to come over ?
There was a romhack in addition to this that shows some of the lost bonus games, also at one point someone made a rom hack “the twisted lost levels, that worked to make these lost levels a bit more polished. Finally super Mario bros 3 extended worked to put the more finished ones into super Mario bros 3 in addition to some of the ereader levels
I am 40 years old and still finding nes games and levels I've never tried. I can't wait to check these out thanks for the video
Right I'm 34 I still have this on my original Nintendo.
I always did feel like Level 5 was underwhelming in the whole Sky World build-up...now it just appears it's because half the concepts were never finished.
The fact that you bring up the Game Genie really makes me feel nostalgic; I had that, back in the day, and it helped me get through some tough games. This game, in fact, was the first game I ever beat, and it was thanks to the Game Genie.
The levels were left in because they don't really take up much room because they are only calling up existing sprites for the most part, the code doesn't take up much space, and it was easier to just leave them in there than hunting down and deleting the code
My man is back and it's good to see ya again
@2:04 did anyone try the holding down trick on the white platform box there? You can do that on EVERY white one that appears in the normal game so maybe it works on these as well.
In level 11 you find unique blue flower powerups that literally appear nowhere in the normal game. Then, instead of grabbing one, you decide they are boring, completely ignore them, and don't show them off to your audience at all.
Makes total sense.
Does it do anything?
That green boot was always my favorite item, so silly and yet so useful.
Couldn't agree more 👍
6:55 "This is unrealistic" one second later: Fireballs underwater no questions asked
3:25 Fun Fact!
Green clouds are an indicator for severe storms and in some cases tornados!
12:41 You actually can jump high enough to make it on top of those question blocks, you just need a running start and P-speed, because in SMB3 P-speed makes you jump 6 blocks high instead of the usual 5 (this is not true of the SMB3 style in Mario Maker though).
The Wii u virtual console version of super Mario advanced 4 super Mario Brothers 3 has an entire section of levels that have to select on the main menu. They are very cool.
1:09 “if you are reading this you have no life”
Well that’s not nice.
There is an exit on level 11/12. On that green island thing at the end there is a hidden coin heaven block that takes you to the end
@ Frank M: That only appear in a fan made Super mario bros.3 game where he modified it himself to have an exit so you can progress through the game, and also he went all bunkers with it, and show an unused graphic of the same lost levels, so the real one does not have it. I don't remember the name of the fan game, and i don't know if he as a patch of that fan made game, in the website rom hack because rom no longer exist, so you would need the non-modified version of the rom and a lunar patching software, make sure to make a copy of the original rom so you don't lose it.
I heard rumors of these levels and seen a few screenshots, but never a video that takes us through all of them. Thanks for posting this!
I remember some screenshots affiliated with the McDonald's Happy Meal promo, that clearly showed two levels not in the game. One was a floating cloud level with lots of parabeetles, the other was grassy like 1-2. In both instances there was no level display at the bottom of the screen, just "MARIO x4" or similar.
When levels look unfinished there's a good chance the teams working on them may have quit, layed off, transferred or other reasons
any info about the box art level with the grass and red para beetles?
Some of these are great concepts that would have really elevated the game. I wonder if they got so good at making levels by the end that they had to stop themselves or they'd never finish the game, and these levels are just a snapshot of that moment. And maybe instead of stopping altogether, they just switched over to working on Super Mario World, the pipes going up and down reminds me of some things in that game.
Did you know that the world map featured on the SMB3 card board box what different then the world map 1 released on the cartridge. There was also a grass level display with tons of parabeetles that was also not in the released game.
I've been seeing this hack for years, but never really looked into it before. Thank you for sharing this; these are a lot more interesting than I'd thought they would be!
Hey gruz, here's a great smb3 game genie challenge code.
EXITZI
play the level forwards and backwards at the same time! In other words, you start at the beginning and the end at once. It even plays the music forward and backwards at the same time.
I've seen level 7 come up a lot when people play randomizer. It's nicknamed Atlantis and is one of only 2 stages Autoscroller is not turned off due to turning it off soft locks the game.
Very surprising! On a similar note, I’ve always been curious about the promotional screen shots of levels not used in the game. Wish they were available too, but this is a sweet bonus!
You think 15 unused levels is crazy? Wait until you hear that the original Super Mario Bros. had so many unused levels they made it into a full fledged game! Too bad it didn't leave Japan though...
sure it left japan. that version was ported to a number of Nintendo consoles in the time since NES. even on the wiki page it says " The game was renamed The Lost Levels and first released internationally in the 1993 Super Nintendo Entertainment System compilation Super Mario All-Stars. It was ported to the Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Wii U and Nintendo Switch."
"Goomba shoes"
*_Kuribo Boots_*
(are awesome and definitely deserve more love)
Same difference; in the Japanese equivalent of the SMB franchise Goombas are called "Kuribos". The US English manual for Super Mario Land on the Game Boy even calls Goombas "Kuribitos" ("little Goombas" or "Goomblings")!
@@MateDrinker33 that means chestnut-something.
Weeb
4:56 My absolute favorite powerup. The hammer suit is overpowered and can even take out Thwomps, Ghosts and even Bowser himself.
Fun fact.. Another way you can play these levels is to get yourself into the Super Mario 3 Randomizer community. The first 11 levels make their way into the random set of levels that get played on a playthrough.. It's lots of fun. :D
As a lover of Super Mario Bros 3 (and the Mario Bros period), I am very grateful to you for showing this. :)
So how were players supposed to either know or access these levels back in the late 80's or in the 90's without good INTERNET ACCESS that's available today or unless if it was a very well hidden secret that NINTENDO did not want anyone to know about.
Amazing video. Mario 3 missing levels were always a mystery as a kid.
I got my mind blown that there are these stages after playing this game for hours decades ago... nice video!
Nine of these levels are used in the SMB3 Randomizer. They're a nice add-on to the base game and offer some needed variety.
I grew up on this game since the NES era. I'm surprised. Thanks for sharing!
Very cool! I am betting they had so much room to leave unfinished data because back in those days there was no way to add a small amount of more space, you pretty much had to double it with adding a second identical chip. This left far more room then was needed to complete SM3, so they didnt need to clear out the unfinished areas to make room for final touches before burning the final ROMs. And regarding the lost levels on SMBAS on the SNES, again that's no surprise as they used the inital code for the game, just updating the textures. (plese forgive me qany lapses, as I am a big liquored)
The way you said "Koopa Paratroopa" brought me right back to the Mario video media of the early 90s
Most of these just look like early prototype versions of actual levels and building blocks. Some of the physics might not be useful for the levels because they were probably experimenting with different features and not all of them made it into the shipped game.
I see the title and I know what this is. I love all of the crazy cut content in SMB3!
These level most likely were dummied out for quality, pacing, being unfinished or just being test levels. The reason why they would still be on the cartridge is pretty simple if they removed them it could cause issues with the coding on the final product so instead the devs on old games just made cut and unfinished content unreachable.
Watched you back in the day when you did old mario bros genie codes. cool to see you still going so many years later!
Excellent video, dude, very professional.
The only huge problem i saw was that "like-beg" at the beginning.
The last level I think serves a purpose. Since they had to design levels when you can stand up on cloud things. This level looks like a test place in case the lower part would work as ceiling and make Mario unable to jump through
About that second group of tan cheep cheeps that only has two... I notice that there is a lot of jellectros spawned there as well. Since the game only has a fixed number of sprite slots, (8, I think), most likely there simply isn't room to load the last cheep cheep sprite so it gets dropped. Not an uncommon thing, actually.
The Super Mario 3 Randomizer has a setting in which the completable debug levels will be randomly tossed in.
I love how this guy knows the names of all the bad guys. I've played my share of Mario games and I still don't know the names of most of these guys.
I'm glad the yellow fish returned in NSMBW, now called Eep Cheeps, I'm also glad the green Parabeetle truly existed, I used to think it was a fan made design but it turned out to be a real design that simply wasn't used
I still have a old nes games flyer with this game in particular,AND i never found the dam level that apears in the image, it has a yellow sky and a bunch of Parabeetles flying.
Very cool! Suprisingly I never watched any videos showing SMB3s secret levels before!
No mention of the Mario 3 randomizer? That's how a lot of people *recently* ended up experiencing or finding out about these stages. In fact, several which were not able to be completed in their original state (no card at the end of the stages, as you mention) were even given cards to make them completable in the randomizer, so they'd be able to be placed in the pool of stages that can show up.
So where is the level with the parabeetles against a desert background, shown in a screenshot on the box art for SMB3?
I knew there was something wrong with Karibo's shoe only being in one level. But that also made it more special, my cousin and I would fight over who got to play Level 5-3. So in the beginning is that a functional Game Genie code?
oh man and I did one of these Levels........ Last month I was playing a Mario 3 Randomizer and you can add in some of the Lost Levels into the Game but only 8 Levels and it would Replace the Normal Levels for the 8 Levels too but yeah some of them did get put in the Randomizer like the Underground Level with the Double Doors I do remember playing that one......
The Shoemba. That's a good name for the shoe goomba....
Actually, they're called "Goomba Shoe" not "Shoe Goomba". Also, I always wondered about that screenshot on the SMB3 Box that have Para-Beetles in Grass Area be since this was pointed by Andre from GameXplain.
I've always wondered about that screenshot also, I was disappointed not to find it anywhere as a kid! The screenshot of the World 1 map ALSO found on the same back cover also has some noticeable differences from the final game.
The power up is called Kuribo's Boot.
@@mattrogers6646 "Kuribo" is the original Japanese name for "Goomba", so same difference. My memory is rusty, but I believe the European release also corrects this to "Goomba's shoe".
I think he was referring to the Goomba who has a shoe, not the shoe itself, which is indeed the Goomba Shoe (a correction Nintendo made from "Kuribo shoe").
Yeah, them lost levels are cool and all, but holy crap, you can overturn a Spiny AND pick it up?! I am 35 and I had no idea you could do that.
I discovered it when playing NSMB DS which was the first game I ever played, I thought it was widely known, specially with SMM allowing people to experiment on enemies
@@darthtroller Between all the times I have played it, or seen someone else play it, I don't think I have ever seen this game behave exactly the same way twice.
6:57 Some of these should have been in the e-Reader levels on GBA. Especially the ones that introduce the gold Cheep-Cheeps and Green Parabeetles.
Aww yeah bub. I love your style and channel. Smb3 is my favorite Mario, because nostalgia, next to sunshine/odyssey. Too hard to pick
I like the stacked clouds. SMB3 is still one of my favorites.
It's always cool to see some behind-the-scenes stuff
Weren't those levels part of some crazy promotion in Japan that somehow unlocked them?
Stuff like this is so interesting to me. The way these old games were coded was very different than today and it's neat the weird easter eggs and oddball stuff one can find when they dig into the rom. Would be cool if Nintendo re-released these old games but with a whole new world/levels, but same game mechanics. The format just has unlimited potential.
It's hard to believe this game had 15 levels left in. Was difficult just getting the whole game on the cartridge.
You take a while upload but it’s always worth it :D
You make this sound like I'm listening to a storybook as a kid. I love it.
It's always cool to see unused levels characters ect in games
Level 14 looks like to me that perhaps at one point, they had an idea to make a blue sky that faded to black as you got higher.
Love your videos man! They're so relaxing.
There has been more boot levels, and I didn’t know. My whole life is a lie.
I wonder if level 3 has any relation to the unused level shown on the back of the box (screenshot with red parabeetles) since they use the same tileset.
Sick. That's probably my favorite NES game and I had no idea this even existed.
*Oh man! I wanna go back in time of 1991; and show myself this video* ! Thank you!
He ponders how a fire worm enemy can be in an ice level while proceeding to then arrogantly shoot fire bullets underwater. The hypocrisy
Wow, amazing! I never knew these existed. This was my favorite game to play back in the 90s. How long have these levels been publicly known about?!
The coin heaven with Lakitu's Cloud (Jugem's Cloud) in the chest is in the normal game in 3-7
Maybe some of the levels are kinda unit tests...
0:58 I'm pretty sure there is a way to access them without modifying the game, although it wasn't intended to be there. To do so, one can go to World 7, get to that vertical section, do some manipulations with shells, return to the lowest room, enter the pipe in the unintended direction, and hit a note block (the graphics are messed up, but there is actually one there). This way, the game tries to write to ROM, swapping the banks in an unintended way, and go through a weird sequence that ultimately results in the banks swapping back, but the execution jumping to the shell positions. Another way involves mashing the buttons very fast so that the input procedure doesn't finish in time because of the workaround for a weird hardware bug, but it's TAS-only. Neither way is by me. Both have been successfully used in TASes, such as “total control” with the former or SMB1 Bad Apple with the latter (to set up the memory to start in World N). Glitches like these are called ACE glitches
Thank you for the time for showing me all these levels this was extremely neat.
I’ve been watching you for years. Not sure how you don’t have at least 500k subs. Great content!
It's already established in SMB1 that fire can exist underwater since Mario can throw fireballs, so fire jump on ice is consistent with the level.
Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels? More like,
Super Mario Bros. 3: The Lost Levels!