Nintendo Had The Hottest Game On Earth. Then It Rejected The Sequel.

Super Mario Bros. 2, aka "The Lost Levels," is celebrating its 40-year anniversary today, June 3, 2026. Below, we look back at how Nintendo created a notoriously punishing sequel, and why it only came to the West many years later.

Let's set the stage. It's 1986, and you're Nintendo. Your Family Computer console has become a full-blown phenomenon on the back of the game you released late the previous year called Super Mario Bros. You're now selling millions of consoles and games. On the back of all of this, you're planning to launch an expansion peripheral for the Famicom: a floppy disk drive attachment called the Famicom Disk System that offers all kinds of nifty new features. The Disk System is launching with an ambitious new game by your hot young talent called The Legend of Zelda, and while you're confident in it, it's not a sure thing. What's your best option to get more Disk Systems sold if Zelda doesn't do it?

Well, you task your developers to make a follow-up to your biggest hit so far and make it exclusive to the Disk System, of course. But here's the thing: It needs to satisfy players who've mastered the original Super Mario Bros., and it needs to be out fast. And so, on June 3rd, 1986, Famicom Disk System owners across Japan were able to walk into game stores with a specialized Disk Writer kiosk and request Super Mario Bros. 2, the sequel to the biggest video game megahit since Space Invaders.

In a lot of ways, Super Mario Bros. 2 was an anomaly for Nintendo. We associate Nintendo sequels with innovation, experimentation, and lots of polish. Super Mario Bros. 2, on the other hand, is built directly on the structure of the original SMB, with only a slight graphical touch-up over the existing engine. There's a distinct lack of new gameplay elements. Some of the levels are straight-up reused from the arcade Vs. Super Mario Bros. Overall, the game feels more like an expansion pack than a proper sequel.

That's not to say that SMB2 was devoid of new gameplay elements--it's just that all of said new elements are expressly designed to make the game much, much harder. Mushrooms that damage you rather than powering you up. Wind that comes in suddenly and affects jump trajectory. Moon-jump trampolines that are somehow even more finicky than those in the original. Warp zones that warp you backwards. About the only new gameplay feature that isn't out for your blood is a selectable Luigi, who jumps higher but is more slippery to control.

Beyond all the new hazards, the stage design is downright spiteful at times, often requiring perfect enemy-bounces, leaps of faith, and the ability to predict hazards in advance in order to proceed. When Nintendo slapped the "For Super Players" label on the Super Mario Bros. 2 disk's box, it meant it. 

Meanwhile, an ocean away, things were starting to ramp up for Nintendo in North America. The Nintendo Entertainment System was picking up steam and breathing new life into a moribund console market. Super Mario Bros. had found similar success abroad and was quickly becoming the must-have piece of software. Licensors were knocking on Nintendo's door, eager to get in on this hot new property. A follow-up was a no-brainer to keep the hype machine rolling.

Then-Nintendo product evaluator Howard Phillips got a shipment of titles from Nintendo of Japan to look at. Among them was the unexpected inclusion of Super Mario Bros. 2. He eagerly booted the game up to see what the Mario team had cooked up. What he discovered left him floored--and not in a good way.

In his foreword to the Super Mario Bros. 2 book by Boss Fight Books, Phillips expresses his increasing dismay upon digging into the game:

"I was immediately killed by a mushroom that, unlike the mushrooms in Super Mario Bros., was now poisonous. Chagrined but undaunted, I continued playing only to be taken by a strong, unpredictable wind and tossed into a chasm … As I continued to play, I found that Super Mario Bros. 2 asked me again and again to take a leap of faith and that each of those leaps resulted in my immediate death. This was not fun gameplay, it was punishment--undeserved punishment." 

He would reiterate similar thoughts at a 2019 panel during the Portland Retrogaming Expo. "There was no question in my mind that (SMB2) sucked compared to my expectations … in the context of 'there's other awesome games coming out'--Castlevania, Ninja Gaiden--and here's this thing that isn't as exciting. I made that strong statement very early to (NoA President) Arakawa."

Indeed, the graphical and gameplay quality of NES games was increasing rapidly. In the eyes of Phillips and other evaluators at Nintendo of America, not only was Super Mario Bros. 2 lacking in uniqueness and punishingly hard, but by the time it would be converted to cartridge for international release, it would be competing with games that looked and sounded leagues better. To keep Mario going strong, Nintendo of America would go a different route, repurposing a tie-in game made for a Japanese event in 1987 with the Mario cast--which is another story of its own. For a while, the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 became the stuff of myths, mentioned in gaming magazines and even an official Nintendo strategy guide. It wasn't until the release of Super Mario All-Stars in 1993, seven years later, that players outside of Japan could see what they were missing. 

Super Mario Bros. 2 was the best-selling game on the Famicom Disk System, with over 2.5 million copies moved--which is a fantastic number--but its lack of release overseas means its numbers pale in comparison to the rest of the Mario series. There's a "what if" scenario we can imagine--would SMB2 truly have killed Mario's momentum if it'd been released here instead of "our" SMB2? Ultimately, Mario's impromptu trip to Sub-con got absorbed into the series' canon globally, and we did eventually get a chance to play the "lost" Super Mario Bros. 2 in Lost Levels form, so it all worked out in the end, but the precedent it left stuck: Even if it were a high-profile Nintendo of Japan title, its release overseas was far from a guarantee.