I've played hundreds of computer and video games in my lifetime and this is one that I find almost impossible to beat, at least compared to the other Mario platform games (Super Mario Land is a joke compared to this, as is Super Mario Brother 3). What with the dudes that throw hammers and stuff at you around World 7 and 8 to the lack of extra lives and such I find it nearly impossible to beat.
Still amazingly fun though.
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I remember as a kid when I owned it, but could never get to the final castle of World 8. The OP mentioned a lack of mushrooms near the end of the game and that was one of the few problems I dealt with. I guess developers did this on purpose to make the game more challenging to see how long you can survive with barely any question block mushrooms at the end. Now at 21 years old, I easily breeze through the entire game. Still fun to play today. Now I'm trying to find The Adventures of Bayou Billy. Never owned it, but that was another NES game I played as a kid. This was hard as hell, but still a good game with three types of gameplay.
shareLooking back I can't remember how I ever beat these games as a kid. Oh wait now I remember, game genie!! Is there anyway to get an emulator for that lol.
shareI beat it easy by using the same pattern in world 8i in all the levels. I have beat it with fir power and being big, but most of the time I get hit and have to beat it as small mario. The hardest level for me is 8-3. Those stupid hammer bros are unpredictable. The rest of the game is predictable and for some reason everything seems to rely on timing.
shareGame Genie, ha! In my day...ok, I'm not that old, but we didn't have any devices or cheat codes yet when the NES first came out. YOU had to beat it. I think the only cheat code I had was for Mike Tyson's Punch Out. Everything else was up to you.
As for beating the game, yep, world 8-4 took FOREVER. But you keep doing trial and error and eventually up pops Coopa and you're like "Holy *beep* it's the end of the game!" And that feeling of euphoria once you run underneath him was like winning the World Series when you're 10 years old. I found my bigger problem with the 8th level was not the hammer bros., but my own impatience; several times I'd run off a cliff or into a bullet.
I remember the first time I beat this game because my family members were all gathered around the TV. This was probably in 1989 (9 years old) and I was playing with my step-brother and we were super competitive with Nintendo. It was pretty much a race to see who would beat the game first. I was down to my last life and it was (as mcfly-31 put it) a "feeling of euphoria" once I got to the end. I didn't even rub it in to my step-brother (I was pretty humble for a 9 year-old). Ah--good time memories.
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this is a late response but even now I am stuck I cant get past world 7 due to lack of mushrooms lol
shareWell, via NES Classic saves, I was able to defeat SMB for my first time since maybe 1989 or something. Funny, I remembered the game being much longer & tougher. Other than a few lean jumps & a slew of hammer brothers, it's not that daunting.
Watching youtube vids for strategy didn't hurt either.
I've now saved the difficult reset to play from the beginning.
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