Super Mario World: The Lost Levels

This hack is a work of art, like an excellent horror movie. I'm in world 6, and I can say with total conviction that this hack is pure HELL!!! This hack borders on madness. I'll highlight a few points. 1- The author removed the start+select system, making it impossible for the player to get a powerup and exit the level. If you want to get a feather, you'll have to complete an entire level!!! (The easiest level to get a feather is Donut Speedway) 2- The author removed the collection of lives by killing enemies consecutively or when Mario is invincible with the star, forcing the player to acquire lives through gold coins or by collecting the five Yoshi Coins. 3- The levels are very... very LONG indeed. Each level that you pass gets longer!!! A pipe leads to another screen that leads to another pipe that leads to another screen and another pipe!!! Seriously, this is pure madness!!! 4- The author seems to have a thing for single-block jumps or maximum jumps. Inexperienced players in extremely difficult Mario Hacks will be frustrated when faced with these types of jumps. Note: as soon as I finish, I will give final feedback... I may change my comment... But for now, I will advance to another level of this hell called SUPER MARIO WORLD THE LOST LEVELS.

Difficulty changed to "very hard." I looked at some levels and they indeed look unreasonable.

This hack took an insanely long time to 100% without tools. I can safely say that this hack is both extremely and irrationally difficult. First off, this hack starts off by removing a couple of fundamentals things on smw (disabling start+select, cannot get 1ups from consecutively bouncing off of enemies, and can't get 1ups from killing lots of enemies with a star.) Each level is lengthy, lacking powerups at times, and has secret exits that no human can find on their own without looking at lunar magic. I had to use lunar magic in almost every level despite the message box telling me otherwise. Because this hack disables start+select, my way of getting capes is by constantly replaying over and over and over and over again. I would say around 35% of my gaming experience in this hack is just that level. Some of the late game levels really start to become irritating as levels just keep getting longer and they are very huge mazes. It really starts to becomes nightmare fuel and even looking in lunar magic, I was still confused sometimes. This hack also suffers with occasional blind jumps, misleading coin trails, and all that other shenanigans that would make your game artificially difficult.

Also, the difficulty should 100% be changed to VERY HARD. Hard is not a fitting difficulty for this absolute nightmare of a hack. (edit: thanks BeeKaay for changing it)

One final note: consider all this a fair warning to everyone thinking of playing this. It's super long, difficult, and puzzling (not good puzzles. Mainly item garbage and backtracking) so if you are gonna play this, know what you are REALLY getting yourself into.

edit: on second thought, don't even bother with this hack. Seriously, your mental health will deteriorate more and more as you keep playing this. It's by far one of the most tedious hacks in smw history (if not, the most tedious.) Even if you play this with savestates, it would still take a long time to complete it. Imagine what I went through. I did this so that no human has to do this. So please, for the sake of your health,
DO NOT PLAY THIS!!

Trash. Perfect example of terrible level design and artificial difficulty, with an obvious lack of testing. Misleading coin trails, long levels with no midways, secret exits that you will never figure out on your own, and blind jumps.

So many 'Standard:Hard' hacks try and flirt with Kaizo-esque gameplay, but since the creators have never beaten or experienced a good kaizo hack, they believe that kaizo=cheap gameplay.

I have very mixed feelings on this. There's a lot of content to this hack, and a lot of creative design. I like the idea of pushing switches not necessarily being something you want to do.

That being said there's some really mean stuff in this game, such as being unable to start-select out of levels, strict time limits, and blind jumps. There's also a part in the first level of world 7 where you're forced to fall down a pit if you go a certain way, with no indication that it's a bad way to go. Some of the secret exits are also pretty cryptic.

The hack is honestly more fun when I use a debug mode to be able to exit levels, and infinite lives/time cheats. I'd imagine with those finding all the dragon coins could be fun.

This hack might make you want to go on a killing spree due to obvious lack of testing. I will not recommend this hack to anyone, not even if they are very skilled at Super Mario World. I played lots of stuff, lots of very very difficult stuff that even made me go crazy but none of it was as bad as SMW:Lost Levels. Here's why:

At first there are several mechanisms turned off to make your playthrough even harder, just for whatever reason. You can not Start-Select, you do not get Extralives from hitting consecutive enemies on the head, there is nothing in any activated switch-block (which is okay I'd say, the cape is one of the most overpowered items in gaming-history). Like a "You're not welcome here" from the beginning.

The hack tells you not to use Lunar Magic to find Secret Exits. Trust me, this does not work. Finding most of the secret exits involves flying up at a random point of the level (with no indicator whatsoever), mostly while holding a P-Switch, going up a pipe and to connect the key to the keyhole - if you're lucky. If you're unlucky, you will have to go over the map, do random blindjumps into spaces where you anticipate lavafloors or carry a P-Switch through the whole level by exploiting the game mechanics. This is cool for a Kaizo-Hack, it's not cool for "Hard"-difficulty. Trust me - if you clear a level and you advance to the next one just to be greeted by a red dot on the overworld, you will go nuts about it.

The hack leaves you the possibility of pushing the Switches or not doing so. Either way will leave room for a diffirent experience in gameplay, whilst some passages might be open or closed for you. This is a good thought in general, mostly because you are told about this fact at the beginning of the hack, but instead of opening several different routes, pushing the switches will just leave you with dead-ends, especially in the last world.

Your placing of sprites, enemies and the structure overall makes me think if you ever anticipated the gameplay of anyone trying to beat this hack. There are cointracks leading to severe death, impossible (or at least pixel-perfect) jumps and a whole lot of blindjumps. For every input you do, there is no telling if you would feel ground under your feet. This has nothing to do with difficulty, this is just poor leveldesign. Grab a cape and try your best, without a cape your journey will be over soon.

The worst thing about this hack is the length of the levels, most of them don't even come with a midway point. Even if you are granted with a midway-point, there is no telling if your time is sufficient to beat the level, especially in the Bowser-/Secret-World. I can't count how many times I lost a life due to the time frame, even without wasting any moment and while rushing with all capacities to the exit. If you want to play this hack, be aware that EVERY level after the Chocolate-World is a giant maze without any indicator if you're going the right way or not. You will run out of time a lot. Again, this has nothing to do with difficulty, it's much more an example of insufficient gametesting.

I tried it without savestates, I made it very far without savestates but for the sake of my own health I stopped doing so. This is "by far" one of the worst hacks I ever played to the end. But I did it. And if you are reading it, dear visitor of smwcentral.net: Please, for your own sake, please close this window of your browser now and never come back.

What The Fuck i cant beat the 1st level

Blind Jumps, no coins who say to you, where you must go. Unfair enemy placement, too long levels sometimes, sometimes very repetitive... Im now in world 2 and game over because of the bad, very very bad enemy placement in some situations.

For example: In Castle 2: In the room after the midpoint if you fall down a ledge, it's very often your death, because a podobo crashes in you with no chance for a reaction. I got no powerup before this room, so its try and error. And i got not many lifes...

Overall i think this is a nice hack, the level design in many situations is pretty nice, interessting and clever.

But many minor frailties give me not a very good feeling playing this. Give u 3/5.

Nice!

Don't like it. There's no run button and you gain speed by walking on a long stretch of ground. That has not been a feature nor probably ever will be a feature in a Mario game. I couldn't even get past the 1st level because I couldn't make a jump. Why? No run button! I know for a FACT I have my run button set up on my emulator. On every other game I play on it the run button works. Just.... add a run button! Also, I checked TheRealNinjaBoy's channel ALL the way through his videos and I didn't see he played your hack.

Levels are ridiculously long and take way too much exploration; once you do actually explore, you run out of time. (In fact, anything you do makes you run out of time.) You might as well go in to lunar magic even if the message boxes say otherwise. Furthermore, you pretty much need a cape for every level. If you don't, well, you're screwed unless you're extremely careful and good at the game.

It's also awkward to have the switch palaces being good and bad, as it makes me paranoid to turn on any of them.

Other than that, it's pretty creative and the overworld is amazing for vanilla.

Many years later, my opinions have really changed (alongside my grammar). I still look a bit dearly at this hack, as it influenced me a lot, but it's definitely not a good experience per se.

The main problem is highlighted by most other commenters here: bad level design. Levels are way too long, repetitive, and too much loyal to the original. Many also feel similar to each other, using the same block and sprite setups. Adding to all of that, there are many stretches of unfair difficulty, due to blind jumps, sprite spamming, low time limit, and so on. It's what you'd expect to find in a VLDC collab worst world, albeit more polished.

Today, I see this hack as a waste of a good idea. Super Mario World is renowned for its non-linearity and many secrets; building on top of that to make something even bigger is great in my opinion, but the execution didn't turn out very good. The hack promises that even the Star World levels are very hard to find, for example, and they really are, but not in a good way. You need to go to completely unsuspecting places, fly through the ceiling or fall in a specific pit to find the secret exits. It doesn't reward exploring and skill; even the most experienced players will need to resort to trial and error or just pure luck to reach most secrets. If you try to follow the hack's advice and not look at Lunar Magic, you won't go far searching for the secrets.

After all that, I find it a bit hard to comment about the positive aspects of this hack, like the nice custom palettes and the overworld map. A great idea with bad execution is the perfect way to describe Super Mario World: The Lost Levels. I rate it 3/10, despite my nostalgic feelings about it; not something I'd recommend to others.