The TRUE Lost Levels: Let's Play Super Mario Advance 4's E-Reader Levels!

Whelp, this is my first Let's Play here! As some people might know, I'm a huge Mario fan. I wanted to play one of the lesser known official Mario titles, and while that statement does seem to be a bit of an oxymoron, there was one game that came to mind.



As most probably know, about ten years ago, Nintendo released the Game Boy Advance handheld, and with it, they decided to remake their classic Mario games, much in the vein of Super Mario All-Stars. The first game, Super Mario Advance, was a remake of Super Mario Bros. 2. This remake utilized enhanced graphics, sound effects, and music, much like the aforementioned collection, but added trinkets, such as the Advance coins and the Yoshi eggs, to keep 100% completion enthusiasts busy. That said, the first game in the Super Mario Advance series was a bit of an odd choice to launch the series. While most would agree Super Mario Bros. 2 was enjoyable, it wasn't exactly what popped into most gamers's heads when thinking of Mario. The next title, Super Mario Advance 2, was a remake of Super Mario World, which was basically more of the same small tweaks. Nice, but not exactly justification to go out and buy it if one already has the game on a home console.

Then came Super Mario Advance 3, a remake of Yoshi's Island. With this, a handful of new levels were released that weren't in the original game, giving this game a bit more longevity than the first two remakes. Of course, the quality of the actual new levels might be a bit debatable, but it was obvious that this was more in the way of actual change than the previous two Super Mario Advance remakes.

Finally, we had Super Mario Advance 4, a remake of what many even today consider the best Mario title released, Super Mario Bros. 3. Nintendo wanted to take steps to make their final Super Mario Advance remake the most memorable. Alongside the main game, they promised a swath of new content, with almost three dozen new levels and items utilizing the features of most all of the classic games in the series.

So, what happened?

They took it as an opportunity to market the soon-to-be-doomed E-Reader accessory, even as the Game Boy Advance was nearing the end of its lifespan. The extra levels were released in the forms of cards in packs, sold at your local Wal-Mart. For a person to access these levels, they would be required to A: buy the cards with the E-Reader code, B: buy the E-Reader, and C: somehow get hold of another Game Boy Advance to tediously import the levels scanned from one Game Boy Advance to another. The end result was that hardly anybody could go through the trouble required to play these levels. Plus, to add insult to injury, only Japan received all of the cards that had been promised. With the release of the DS on the horizon, Nintendo stopped sales to America shortly after the first wave of cards were released (featuring approximately a mere third of the promised new content), and the cards never even saw release in Europe. As a result, very, very few ever even played them.



So, welcome to World E! This place is home to all thirty-three of the "lost" Super Mario Advance 4 levels. Though features will crop up that have originated in other games and do not appear in the original game, the game itself is still first and foremost Super Mario Bros. 3, and features that same type of design. But, even the easiest levels in World E tend to be quite a bit longer and more challenging (some frustratingly so) than most of the levels in the main game.

If you look at World E, you'll notice three different colored mushroom houses. Because World E lacks regular Toad Houses, each of these houses a different "minigame", which we can play to earn power-ups. Each minigame costs some coins to play, but they can only be unlocked when you've collected some Advance Coins, which themselves are, like Dragon Coins in Super Mario World and Star Coins in the newer Mario games, located in the individual World E levels. Other than unlocking minigames as we collect them, Advance Coins serve no practical purpose other than 100% completion and aren't really worth the effort it goes through to get to them. So of course, you can bet we'll spend countless hours going out of our way to collect every last one of them.

The next attraction is the castle.



It looks quite empty now, but this castle showcases the other collectable item in World E - E-Coins. Unlike Advance Coins, which are found in every level, E-Coins are special coins only found in very specific levels - denoted by the level number below each. When one of these coins is collected, it'll show up here in one of the circular indents. And that's it. In terms of practicality, they don't even unlock anything, so they're even more useless than the Advance Coins. And again, we'll be collecting them all.

Finally, there's the blue panel that Mario is standing atop in the map screen.



This is where we select a level to play. You can see our first page of levels here. Each level has black outlines to the right of the name denoting whether we've found all the Advance Coins for that level, and whether we've found that level's E-Coin, if one is hiding there.



And with that, we should be starting the first level of World E, Wild Ride in the Sky, here shortly!

Wow cool!

I had this and the pack of cards that we actually got.

I am curious as hell how you got access to them?

I ended up getting hold of save data for the game that came with the levels loaded on. I'm not entirely sure how to get the individual levels uploaded on the cart one-by-one. Funny thing is, even though the US version only had eleven new level cards available, it still came with the data needed to play all of them. If you were to get an E-Reader and find the level dotcodes of some of these levels, and managed to go through the tedious process necessary to get them on your cartridge, the game would actually read the Japan-only levels and run them just fine.

But yeah, I actually got the couple of cards that came with the game way back when too, but unfortunately never actually got them to work on my handheld. The first one, A Wild Ride in the Sky, is the one that I think came with most versions of the game.

And this is where the really strange world map scenery in SMBX came from.

Basically, there's a couple of ROMs out there with them all pre-loaded. I have them both because my only other options are a) absurd effort or b) never play them. I put them on my PSP and dip in from time to time.

They're worth a look and this is a great idea for an LP. I'll be reading!

I'm really excited to see someone dig into these! I've only seen a couple of them, but they definitely intrigue me.

I don't mean to take attention away from the subject at hand, but this just reminds me: when SMA first came out, I thought the idea behind it was pairing two "black sheep Mario Bros." (i.e., the two where you don't stomp on things in the Mushroom Kingdom). Then, of course, they attached No-Adjective Mario Bros. to everything, including Yoshi's Island and even Mario & Luigi. I always thought that was a bit of a missed opportunity to give some other "small" multiplayer Mario games a chance to shine. SMA2 or 4 could have had Wrecking Crew, SMA3 could have included Yoshi's Cookie or Tetris Attack...oh well.

I'm actually playing through the SMA3 secret levels now. I've always seen YI as the "in-between" of SMW's typical Mario obstacle courses and SM64's open exploration. While the original secret levels tend to skew toward the SMW side of things (aside from the one maze level), the new ones are huge and wide-open, almost like a 3D level in 2D. They're tough to clear 100 percent and take a long time to get through, but they're surprisingly not that lethal (with a couple exceptions). Like World E, they tend to blend a lot of rarely-seen assets in creative ways (though they're obviously all culled from the same game). They're not the best levels in the game, but I wouldn't dismiss them either.

Sorry about the interjection. I'm excited to see how this goes!

This is a good idea.

Nintendo EAD acknowledging the existence of R&D1-developed Mario games? Get the hell out of here.

Not to mention the Hammer Bricks and the Invisible Tanooki blocks.

Looks cool as hell!

Din, are you doing video or screenshots?

Glad to hear you guys are excited for it! I'll just be doing a screenshot LP.

I... actually never have played them! I heard a few other people talk about them, though, and usually got different opinions. They might be really enjoyable, and I'll definitely have to try them some time.

The YI ones are good, I think - there's one called "Items are Fun!" that literally starts you right next to the exit and dares you to go exploring. It also has a bit of wonderful lateral thinking involving a door and some breakable ground.

I notice that the top level here ISN'T activated. It's one that I had, and is just World 1-1 from the original Super Mario Bros, made with SMB3 blocks and enemies. The music is even the All-Stars version of the SMB theme.

Well, let's get this thing started!

Level 1: Wild Ride in the Sky



This is the level that came packed with most American versions of the game, and, as such, serves as the introduction to World E.



It's also an auto-scrolling level, and a pretty fast one at that. Unfortunately, if you're a completion enthusiast or you want to unlock some of those mini-games, things aren't quite so cut-and-dry as making it to the exit. You've got to keep an eye out for the Advance Coins as well.



Even with the scrolling screen (and even after I got hit by an easy-to avoid red koopa like an idiot), this Advance Coin is pretty lenient. But they get a lot trickier as the game goes on. And if you want the game to acknowledge that you've collected all of the Advance Coins and give you the sticker next to the level file, you have to collect all of them in one go and get out alive. It's not so difficult here, because the auto-scrolling leaves very little room for these to hide, but eventually the Advance Coins will be spread out and hidden in more devious positions, such that you'll really be feeling the time limit the game gives you if you're trying to get all of them in one shot.



After a while, the screen scrolling ends and bullet bills start firing from the corners of the screen. You might remember an obstacle like this from the later portions of Super Mario World, and it's as tough here as it was there, especially when we have to board a moving platform and dodge these on the fly.



Thankfully, this doesn't last too long. Shortly, we reach the end of the moving platform segment, and from there it's just a straight jump and run to the finish.



In all, it's a short, sweet, but pretty uneventful level. You'll notice that the only real new feature in this level that didn't appear in the orignal Super Mario Bros. 3 are the cross-firing bullet bills. Don't worry - that's going to change real shortly here.



Next time, Slidin' the Slopes!

Level 2: Slidin' the Slopes



Now for the next level, Slidin' the Slopes. This level is the first in the very first wave of cards that came to America and Japan (and the last wave, in America's case).



Well, this hill is fun! Just a few enemies to slide into to earn some extra poi









…

Yeah, that note block at the bottom of the hill sucks. If you aren’t anticipating it and you slide down, expecting a happy breezy slide like every other slide in Super Mario Bros. 3, odds are you’re going to lose a life there.



Alright, let’s try this AGAIN.



Made it this time by pressing A riiiight as Mario hit the bottom of the slope to hop on the note block and cross the chasm. From here, we head into a pipe to run through a quick SMW corner block obstacle course.





Another feature specific to World E is that, unlike Super Mario World, which only had vertical corner tiles that let you run up vertical walls, there are horizontal corner tiles that let you run on the ceiling.



We scale the final dirt hill between us and the goal.



And cross our fingers as we slide back down.



Thankfully, there are no note blocks used to vault over a pit at the bottom.



Wait, I thought the Boomerang Bro’s boomerangs in this game were white?

Well, they are. After we dispatch the bro, his strange blue boomerangs drop to the ground. We walk up to one and…





…we can pick up and toss his boomerangs ourselves. Unfortunately, the fun is very short-lived.



Because after we clear the level a single screen to the right, the boomerang, like the elusive Kuribo’s Shoe, goes up in a coin, so you can't take it out of the level. So, this item is slightly useless here.



Next up, we see the first World E level that makes very heavy use of the new features, Vegetable Volley.

I'm was a casual completionist in the early days of vidjagames. If I couldn't get every large coin or max out everything, I usually quit playing. Resultingly, game designers caught on to the fact that I exist and started marketing to my ilk, and now there are games where it's harder to complete 100%, so I stopped being a completionist because it took too much time! Ironic!

Oh hey, it's Toad's Boomerang! That one, I did not realize came from e-Reader.

Haha, yup! Unfortunately, it isn't quite as useful as it was in SMBX. Whereas Toad's boomerang flies and arcs like crazy, this boomerang has the same pattern as a Boomerang Bro's boomerang, and you actually have to jump and catch it, or it's gone and never to return.

There's actually a quick video of it here.

Level 3: Vegetable Volley



And now we make our way to the third level, Vegetable Volley. While the first couple of levels didn't use a lot of features exclusive to Super Mario Advance 4, from here on out, the levels are going to get pretty interesting.





This level is filled with the vegetables from SMB2, like the aforementioned game, you can pluck them and throw them at objects or enemies to get rid of them. A lot of the stage is built around this gimmick.



Here, for instance...



...we must toss a few veggies at a bubble to free the mushroom inside.



And how do we get this Advance Coin without committing suicide?



Ah, that's how. This proves to be a vital tidbit of information later on. Advance Coins can be obtained by tossing any item - not just vegetables - at them. There are many more situations like this where we have to toss an item at an Advance Coin to nab it later on.

A note about the veggies - they're a bit tough to get used to. Oddly enough, they seem to be a bit "heavier" than either their Super Mario Bros. 2 or Super Mario Advance appearances, so it's very easy to misjudge its trajectory at first.



Eventually, we revisit an old enemy - the Chargin' Chuck from Super Mario World. Like their original appearances, they charge at you while jumping over any obstacles that get in their way and take three bops to the head to beat.



It's also worth noting that not all of the veggies are mere vegetables. Some, such as this one, are home to a few coins which scatter when you pull the veggie out of the ground, or



THAT IS DEFINITELY NOT A VEGETABLE.

Unfortunately, some veggies are home to poison mushrooms. This is particularly annoying because Mario takes a long time to pull these out, and not only will he have to deal with one of these when he's done, but there's nothing to stop an enemy from hitting him while he's pulling it. And considering the stage is filled with fast-moving Chargin' Chucks who are often on-screen as you're pulling one of them, that can get problematic.



Huh. That grass up there looks suspicious. Let's use the Chargin' Chuck as a trampoline...



...and...



One of those pieces of grass gives us our first e-Coin, and as you can see, it has a mushroom on it. When we collect it, it'll show up back at the castle, as we'll see a bit later.



And from there, it's a rather simple trek to the finish. Fun level, albeit with a few minor frustrations, and it's the first that starts making rather heavy use of the World-e features.



And here's our first e-Coin on display in the World-e castle. As mentioned at the beginning, they have no purpose or function but to make you feel like a DIRTY INCOMPLETIONIST if you haven't collected them all. They onlt appear in certain levels, but, thankfully, none of them are really that tricky or unhinted at, so if you're going for all of the Advance Coins, the chances are good that you'll manage to round up the e-Coins too.



Next up, we've got our first World-e Ghost House, Doors o' Plenty.

So you know how they reproduced SMB1 Bowser? Are there any more new bosses like Birdo or something, or is it just Koopa kid repeats?

Most of the fights are simple boss repeats that play pretty identically to their Super Mario Bros. 3 counterparts. Some of them have a few minor changes (one of the later levels has a Koopaling that can take five hits before going down, for instance), but for the most part, they're the same as their cousins. There is one new boss in World-e, however, and it'll come up in the next segment.

Is this done for?

Don't give up! This is really interesting, I'm digging the analysis of what's been carried forward, and which topics were evolutionary dead-ends.

Moved to 'On Hiatus'

Moved to 'Abandoned'