< That One Level

That One Level/Super Mario Bros

Yeah, you're pretty much screwed...


When a series has been running for over 25 years, has countless installments, and features the most prolific video game character in history, you would expect it to have its tough moments. But these take it to another level.

Super Mario Bros.

  • The original Super Mario Bros. had many gamers' first That One Level: World 4-1. You can't warp around it. And it presents Mario with his first encounter with Lakitu, who is hard to kill, throws infinite enemies on you, and if you do kill him, he respawns ten seconds later.
    • Amazingly, this level becomes a literal walk in the park if you walk forward constantly without ever touching the run button; Lakitu's Spinies will never hit you. On the downside, this method requires you to time jumping-onto-a-wall-then-over-a-pit will extreme precision in two different spots.
    • In an interview, Shigeru Miyamoto suggested that World 4 would have been the first world in Super Mario Bros. if they hadn't rearranged things late in the development. This is a truly scary thought.
    • More difficult than that level for some gamers is World 2-3 (and, by extension, its "re-vamp" as World 7-3). At first it seems like you can just run across the bridge and outrun the Cheep Cheeps, but then you get to just before the end, where there are three small platforms. If you don't slow down, you will miss all of them and lose a life. However, if you slow down too soon, you will get snagged by a leaping Cheep Cheep.
  • Level 5-1. Not a powerup in sight. Woe to the player who starts out small, or dies.
  • World 8-1. The whole level isn't that bad. But there's one leap that you have to make by perfectly timing when you let go of the run button while still moving and jumping at the right time to land on a platform that's only as wide as Mario is between 2 of the biggest gaps found in the entire game that are meant to be clear-able.


Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels

  • World C-4. There's a firebar at about the two-thirds point that requires almost inhuman timing (or being Super Mario, which, at that point, is unlikely at best) to pass. This video (0:30 in) makes it look easy, but it's really, really not.
    • Heck, pretty much all of world C is nigh-impossible, with the exception of the first level.
  • The cloud stage in 8-3. You have to make big jumps and dodge hammer bros. In addition, there are invisible blocks designed to trip you up, one of which contains a poison mushroom.
  • Ever tried B-3 with Mario? This video makes it look easy, but the jump off the green Koopa Paratroopa (around 20 seconds in) is insanely difficult to execute with Mario.


Super Mario Bros. 2

  • World 5-3. The entire level is a hornet's nest of Bob-ombs and Sparks, and the majority of it has you hopping up and down and across a bunch of platforms trying to dodge said Sparks and Bob-ombs with hardly any room to maneuver thanks to the low ceilings. And once you get past all that, you have to ride two Pidgits' carpets past a bunch of dive-bombing Beezos without getting knocked into the abyss to reach the boss of the level.
  • World 5-1, where you have to cross a vast waterfall by hopping on the heads of rising and sinking Trouters, is a nightmare if you try to complete it with anybody other than the Princess (who can simply soar from platform to platform). If you really want to punish yourself, try it with Luigi and his horribly imprecise jumps.


Super Mario Bros. 3

  • Level 7-4 is an underwater Auto-Scrolling Level which herds you through a veritable maze of deadly, immobile, invincible Jelectros while all the while a Blooper Nanny follows you, spawning little Bloopers. Pray that you have a Frog Suit in your inventory.
  • All of Pipe Maze, especially either of the levels blocking the crossroads.
  • The mini-fortress in World 8. So many doors... Even worse in the SNES remake, where the two sides of the fortress are the same colour.
  • The castle with lava on the ceiling.
  • The (unnumbered) airship level from world 8 is a real nightmare: compared to the airship levels which end every previous world, it scrolls faster and has Floating Platforms spaced further apart.
  • The tank level just before Bower's Castle is pretty wild, with cannon balls and bob-ombs littering the screen. Let's just say all of World 8, provided you don't have a suit and don't swim under the boats.
  • World 5-9. Two words: diagonal autoscrolling.
  • On the plus side, the designers (no doubt aware they've made several levels that fit this trope), added an item made to bypass them: the P-Wing. Activating it prior to a level gives you infinite flight, letting you fly over the entire level. It works in almost every level, save the underground and water ones.
    • Also, there's another item available called the Jugem's Cloud, which allows you to bypass a level completely. Personal note: do not lose a life if you haven't cleared a level after using the cloud. You'll be forced to play the level you skipped unless you have another cloud.


Super Mario Land 2

  • Take the formula for SMB3 Level 7-4, change the water to space, change the deadly jellyfish to deadly stars, change the music from pleasant to frantic, multiply the maze's length, and add a difficult boss to the end, and you have Space Zone 2 in Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins.
  • Wario's (or rather, Mario's) Castle has many jumps that are nigh impossible without bunny ears. It's also much, much longer than any other stage in the game, and has no checkpoint.


Super Mario World

  • The (thankfully optional) level "Tubular", which forces you to play as a balloon version of Mario, having to float in between enemies throwing footballs at you, three waves of Koopas, and lava-spewing plants. Oh, and there's no solid ground, no halfway checkpoint, and the balloon won't last for the whole level-you must periodically get a new balloon powerup in increasingly hard to reach areas. Fortunately, it's possible to use a Blue Yoshi and a Cape in order to get through the level without having to use the balloon power-up once. It's tricky to pull off, but compared to going through the normal level it's cake.
  • Arguably harder than Tubular if you think platforming is harder than balloon flight is Outrageous, which is not only full of enemies but seems specifically designed to combat the easy option of flying over it.
  • Soda Lake is also considered That One Level by some. It's an underwater level that features Torpedo Ted, a type of enemy that is (thankfully) only seen in this stage. There are several spots that spawn them, they're quite fast (much faster than a swimming Mario, at any rate), there's almost no room to dodge them, and some spots require you to swim right through where they spawn. Those spots often require the utmost perfect timing to get through without taking a hit.
    • Related, the Cheese Bridge secret exit. It's a Kaizo exit, and you have to fly under it. Oh, and for that, you get Soda Lake. Thanks, Nintendo.
  • Until you get used to it, Wendy's Castle in Chocolate Island is this. The bone-throwing Dry Bones will be the least of your problems, what with the spiked pillars (Which by the way, are not treated as normal hazards, but rather as solid walls, meaning they can kill you instantly and you cannot run your way through them) pounding the ground and ceiling and the saws. Oh yeah, and the section at the end with the floating platforms with little spark creatures rotating on the perimeters.
  • Arguably That One Exit rather than That One Level, the secret exit from the Valley Ghost House to Larry's Castle can be frustrating to execute even when you know how to go about it. First, you must hit the ? Block containing a stream of coins, and direct it so that it forms a path to the secret area - except that the secret area is off the top of the screen, so you are reduced to guessing after the first couple of seconds. Then, you must activate the P-switch (which hopefully you remembered to carry over from where you found it) so that the coins turn into blocks and you can jump or fly to the top and see if you set up the path properly. Even if you set everything up correctly, it's easy to fall at the final hurdle by not getting through the gap into the key room (which is as high as small Mario and thus requires either being small Mario or crouching while running or jumping to enter) before the P-switch effects wear off and the blocks turn back into coins.
  • Valley of Bowser 3, on top of the Mind Screw of being an air-based level inside a cave, is the only level in the game to feature the timed platforms. Oh yeah and toward the end there are Banzai Bills that take up a good percentage of the screen.
  • The Valley Fortress not only has the same spiked pillars as Wendy's Castle, but toward the end of the level they move up and down equally quickly, requiring more than usually sharp timing and positioning. If you have a Cape, it becomes even more frustrating unless you can force yourself to tap the Jump button instead of holding it for even a fraction of a second longer than necessary; otherwise, Mario will float for a while and throw off the timing.


Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island

  • The 5th bonus level "Kamek's Revenge". To obtain all those red coins, you first had to perform two whole screens of skiing and hit all the obnoxiously difficult placed items with perfectly -precise jumps, THEN, you had to hunt down a bunch of them on a huge, nonlinear helicopter course (which happens to be timed--run out of time and you fall to your doom). Miss just one coin, and your only option is to die and try the whole thing over again. And while we're at it, the first section of that stage--where you have to make your way across a whole bunch of tiny floating logs without getting knocked off by Kamek or the pitchers--ain't no picnic either.
  • World 2's "extra" level "Hit the Switch!!" is an utter nightmare. If you're aiming for 100% completion, it feels like the level designers confused "making a 'complex' level" with "making a level that makes you remember and do way too much shit." If you manage to reach the end... it pulls you into a nearly Unwinnable situation-- simple as that.
  • "Poochy Ain't Stupid", World 1's extra level, is a goddamn lie, featuring lava for practically the entire level and auto scrolling to go along with the introduction of Poochy, a dog that, if you unlocked the extra stage before proceeding to world 2, is a new mechanic.
  • "Endless World of Yoshis/Crazy Maze Days". The first part isn't so bad, although it does have fast auto scrolling. However the maze part is worse. Not only is there a long shaft filled with instant death spikes you have to dodge with split second timing (entirely blind I may add), but to get 100% completion you need to beat this section THREE TIMES. There's just one midway ring after it, meaning that if you mess up before the cave (and given the confusing layout of the place, you probably will), you'll have to do a significant amount of the level over. After that there's a cave with some rather mean tricks as well as a replica of the intro with Kamek attacking Yoshi throughout. It's also a Marathon Level. And the last flower is literally right before the goal, so if you forget about it/run out, you're playing the whole thing over.
  • "The Very Loooooong Cave". It isn't the length of the level that makes this one a pain, it's that it requires a steady sequence of very precise jumps, which due to the continuous auto-scroll, you have essentially no time to prepare. Going for hundred percent? Bet you're looking forward to that part about 5 minutes in where you have to ride a rolling boulder across a lava pit to reach an alternate exit door, while the screen is auto-scrolling. Slip and fall in the lava, and it's back to the very beginning of the level for you!
    • The very end of the level autoscrolls especially fast and has a series of pillars that you need to Ground Pound to collect the last red coins. If you miss, you only have a fraction of a second to get yourself pinched between the pillars and the autoscrolling sides - otherwise, instead of dying and going back to the last checkpoint, you must complete the level and start it again.
  • "More Monkey Madness". GODDAMMIT, STOP SPITTING SEEDS AT ME, YOU #@!$%* &%$#@! MONKEYS! And you have 5 seconds to get past those monkeys and grab the Shy Guy hovering above a bottomless pit before it flies off with a red coin. Gaaah! It isn't so bad in the SNES version, since for some goofy reason there are 21 red coins in that level (normal is 20, and you need exactly 20 of them); however, the GBA port fixes this, leaving you no room for error.
  • "The Impossible Maze" gets a special mention here, as it lives up to its name all too well.
  • World 5-7: Shifting Platforms Ahead deserves mention.


Super Mario 64

  • Anywhere that requires you to use the Wing Cap, due to the steep learning curve for the flying controls
  • Super Mario 64 lends itself to many a Self-Imposed Challenge, one of the most common being getting every coin in each level of the game. There are a few levels that are annoying to do this on.
    • Hazy Maze Cave: Several coins must be obtained by defeating the bat enemies, which have a tendency to hang around over bottomless pits. Another type of enemy (Mr. I) must be defeated by running quick circles around it on small platforms.
    • Lethal Lava Land: Coins vanish when they touch lava. The player has to choose between using the shell and its imprecise controls, or going without and taking tons of damage, being oh-so-careful to time the coin collection just right. The volcano portion of the level has an enemy who must be punched down into the lava (which is about 10 stories up), at which point the player must then jump in after it, with perfect timing and perfect accuracy, and then make it back to the tiny platform nearby while you're flailing about from the lava so you can live to tell about it. It's even harder than it sounds.
  • To single out a level which requires the Wing Cap, Mario Over the Rainbow is arguably the hardest level in the game. The player has to collect eight Red Coins in the air. Solid ground is minimal, and due to the angles, it can be really difficult to gauge safe landing spots. The Wing Cap must be refreshed every so often to have enough time to collect all the coins.
    • The DS version takes some of the sting out of this - if you need to land, keep an eye on the lower screen and activate a Ground Pound when the Mario icon is directly over an island. Even this is not foolproof, though - the lower map gives no indication of height, so if you rely on it too heavily you may Ground Pound while under an island instead of over it - and if you are too high up when you Ground Pound, Mario will lose two or even four units of health.
  • Tick Tock Clock is a nightmare. The level is long and painfully linear, and it's one continuous tricky jump after another after another, made worse by the fact that most of the level takes place on very thin platforms which are really easy to fall from. Plus, if you don't know the "trick" for entering the level, the whole level can end up requiring insane timing.
    • And even if you DO know the trick to stop the clock, two stars require the clock to be in motion so that the hands of the clock can carry you to the stars. (In the N64 version, at least; in the DS version, if you play as Luigi, all eight stars (including the 100-coin star) can be obtained while the clock mechanism is stationary.)
  • Some of the 100-coin stars. Especially Dire, Dire Docks (which only has 103 coins in the entire level) in which you must scour every single nook and cranny to find all the coins you need while a lot of coins are placed dangerously close to insta-death whirlpools.
    • Rainbow Ride (a really difficult area as it is) has another notably hard 100-coin star. There are plenty of coins in the area, but they're spread amongst several divergent pathways, and to get all the coins you need, you must go down each pathway and then backtrack so you can go down another. The layout of the course - a series of platforms in the sky with large distances between them and only flying carpets for navigation - does not make this easy, to say the least, and to boot, there is (as always) a switch that activates blue coins worth 5 each for a short time. In this level, the blue coin run is very easy to flub, resulting in an Unwinnable situation.
    • Then, there's Hazy Maze Cave's, which has all your coins stretched out over the enormous level, and most infuriatingly, it has a blue coin challenge that spawns the coins near a series of small ditches that are easy to get stuck in. And if you flub up collecting the blue coins, then you basically have to start the level over again because you've been screwed out of the star.
  • The race against Big Penguin in Cool, Cool Mountain. Crazy Commentaries mentions that one turn in particular is angled just such that you can't slow down without falling off, you can't go too fast without falling off, and sometimes the penguin you're racing will just bump you off the track if you barely make it past the turn. The turn actually earned the nickname "Demon Turn" from the duo.
  • Dire, Dire Docks is another area which is just hellish in general, and it's all thanks to the horribly imprecise swimming controls. The first mission is required to complete the game, but the only reason for a non-100% Completion-ist to bother with the rest of it is the awesome music. To single out specific missions:
    • Chests in the Current: You have to open four treasure chests in a specific sequence while underwater, but unlike the similar mission in Jolly Roger Bay, the chests are all facing different directions, and since they're clustered so closely together, you have to keep constantly swimming in circles and readjusting your angle so that you're lined up properly with the next chest. (Mario in this game lacks the ability to dive straight down, which if he had it would make this level significantly easier; sadly, that mechanic would not be added until Galaxy.) What makes this one really bad is that the final chest is located right in front of the whirlpool, making it next to impossible to open it without getting sucked into the whirlpool and dying before you can claim the star.
    • The Manta Ray's Reward: You have to trail behind a manta ray and swim through the rings that he releases as he moves through the water. To get the star, you have to swim through five consecutive rings, which due to your inability to turn on a dime while in the water, and the fact that they vanish after a couple of seconds and if you miss just one you have to start over, is really amazingly fricking frustrating.
    • Through the Jet Stream: This one is basically a lesser version of The Manta Ray's Reward. Swim through five consecutive rings, get the star. This one isn't as bad as the other one, though, since you can usually get the star pretty quickly by swimming straight down. However, again, there's no "dive directly down" mechanic in this game, so it's still easier said than done.
    • The 100-coin star: There are only 106 total coins in the level, so you really need to collect almost every coin. And sooooo, sooooo many of them are underwater. And many of those are directly in front of instant-death whirlpools, so good luck collecting them all without dying! To save yourself some work, you might want to get this star at the same time as the red coin star, since you'll pretty much have to get all of those anyway in order to have enough coins to reach 100.

Super Mario Sunshine

  • The damn boat ride to Bowser in the last level. You must turn Mario just right and fire the FLUDD to propel the boat. It is very easy to crash the boat and tip you into the lava, an instant death.
  • Those darn mini-stages, in which every other platform is either moving, has tons of holes in, or is disintegrating beneath your feet, and in some cases the camera is swooping around so much that that jump you judged you'd make has now sent you plummeting off the edge. Not to mention that they all share the same Ear-Wormy tune.
  • By far the worst Sunshine mini-stage is Delfino Plaza's Lily Pad Ride. First, you have to ride Yoshi across 3 barges to get there without running out of juice or falling into the water. And that's just to enter the damn mini-stage! Once you enter this hell hole, you'll find that you have to grab 8 Red Coins (many of which are in mid-air) while floating down an instant-death river on a barely-maneuverable lily pad that will dissolve shortly after you get on it. Oh, and there are bottomless pits all around the river. If you get a Game Over, you get taken back to Delfino Plaza's main square. That's right! You have to ride Yoshi ALL THE WAY BACK ACROSS THE WATER JUST TO TRY AGAIN! The only way to win this crap-fest is to make it to the end grabbing as many of the Red Coins as you can, and then walk very carefully along the super-thin railing to get back to the start for another run down the river. Oh, and that warp pipe at the end? Logically you'd think it would take you back to the start, right? Wrong; it takes you out of the level and back to Delfino Plaza! It's much, much easier to abuse a glitch to ride Yoshi underwater than to bother with the barge-riding to get there.
  • The Secret of the Village Underside. Yoshi controls terribly anyway, but you have to somehow jump down to a platform you can barely see. Then you get the actual mini-level, which instead of actual platforming, you just have to be thrown by Piantas. Sounds easy, but you have to be DEAD ON in your positioning and how you move the control stick, otherwise you're screwed! Actually, you may still be screwed anyway.
    • Averted in the Red Coin mission. Despite the Red Coin missions usually being more difficult than the regular secret levels due to the time limits and awkward coin positions, FLUDD will allow you to bypass all but one of the Piantas.
  • Pachinko Pain. You have to retrieve eight Red Coins in a giant pachinko board (which, for those unfamiliar with the game, is essentially an upright pinball game with no flippers). However, you have extremely limited movement with FLUDD, and a good half of the coins are in really hard-to-reach locations. And should you happen to miss all the pockets and fall to the bottom of the board, you're immediately chucked out the bottom where you fall to your death. And should you happen to bring the Rocket Nozzle with you instead of the Hover Nozzle... good luck getting more than four coins.
    • This doesn't even touch on the worst part of it: you can't go left. Not past a certain point, anyways. Those two ball-returns on the left side of the board? You've pretty much got to cheat your way into them, because once you hit the center section, you can't go back. And if you're on the left, you can only move right. And the plunger will always shoot you past the top-left cup. The only real solution is to wall-kick up the starting chute and hope you can get just high enough that you can hover over.
  • The third mission of Pianta Village, "The Goopy Inferno". Full stop. The entire village is covered in flaming goop, and worse, Shadow Mario swipes FLUDD as you enter. You do get it back... right before you get the Shine Sprite. Even worse, the slightest touch of the goop wrecks the controls to the point of almost certain death. There are a number of different ways of dealing with the situation, all of which have their difficulties. The intended solution involves taking a long roundabout route underneath the village; however, it's really easy to lose your bearings trying to navigate through the maze of platforms, and those catwalks are really easy to fall from. A quicker path is to swim up the river into the pond and then repeatedly jump out of it, splashing water out to clean a path to the mayor's house. However, while you're trying to do this, Swoopin' Stus and that bird flying overhead keep trying to splash goop on you, and even if you can clear out enough of a path, you still have to do a perfect spin jump to the right spot to make it count. Finally, you can tiptoe around the left side of the village and climb to the top of the tree and then spin jump to the center of the village. However, this particular route leaves you absolutely no margin for error; slip up just a tiny little bit and you're screwed. (You'll either fall from the tree and plummet to your death, or you'll land smack in the goop and won't have time to extricate yourself before you die.)
  • To single out yet another Pianta Village mission, there's the Fluff Festival Coin Hunt. It's another "collect the eight Red Coins" mission, but what makes this one so frustrating is that some of the coins are in extreme pain-in-the-ass locations. (Have fun trying to grab that coin on the ledge behind the beehive... or the one on the underground catwalks.) The worst one is the one at the top of the tall tree in the center of the village. You have to climb up the tree platform by platform, then use the Rocket Nozzle to get from the highest platform to the top of the tree. The problem with this is that the top of the tree is so far above you that you can't get to it with a simple Rocket jump; you have to get some extra height via spin-jumping and then rocket to the top of the tree from as high in the air as you can get. And if your jump is a little bit off, you'll likely hit the curved part of the treetop and end up sliding off the tree entirely, forcing you to make your way all the way back up the tree. Oh yeah, and to get Pianta Village's secret Shine, you have to get back to the top of the tree again. Good luck.
    • Guide Dang It: The platform above the Rocket Nozzle is a horrible red herring. After you get the Rocket Nozzle, go down one platform and get on the swing. There's some clouds positioned to easily get on top of the tree. Of course, you still have to get to the Rocket Nozzle and find all the other coins so it's still not easy.
  • In "The Watermelon Festival" in Gelato Beach, you have to guide a gigantic watermelon down a cliff and along a beach past a horde of Cataquacks, who, if they get anywhere close, will knock the watermelon into the air, popping it. Oh, and the controls for guiding said watermelon are hellishly awkward. You can squirt the Cataquacks with FLUDD to stun them, but the area is so swarmed with them that for every one you can fend off, there are always two or three more coming at you from the other side.
  • In "Yoshi's Fruit Adventure", you have to squirt juice onto jumping fish to reach a series of platforms. This one is extremely frustrating because if you're just a tiny fraction off in one of your jumps, Yoshi falls in the water and dissolves, forcing you to go all the way back and get him again, and then cross the platforms again to get back to where you were. One trick which makes this level a lot easier is after you reach the first stationary platform, to jump off to the side onto a ledge and have Yoshi eat a coconut. This will cause his juice to turn the platforms pink and go straight up instead of moving horizontally, basically carrying you the rest of the way to the shine. Surprisingly few players seem to catch onto this trick, however.
  • The eighth mission on Pinna Island, where you have to ride the same roller coaster you fought Mecha Bowser in and pop all of the balloons (20 in total) before the coaster completes 3 laps. Thanks to the poor, clunky aim, the rockets are very difficult to send off properly, so you'll usually end up having two or three stray balloons taunting you towards the end. You can only shoot most of them within one or two 3-second periods during the entire lap, so if you miss your chance, even if you have half a minute of ride left, you're pretty much boned.
  • In general, Sirena Beach is pretty bad. The first mission is a fight against That One Boss, followed by a romp through a secret stage, then you've gotta navigate the maze-like hotel, followed by a Luck-Based Mission with wonky physics leading to another secret stage, followed by a luck-based boss fight, followed by a boring clean-the-goop mission, followed by chasing Shadow Mario through said maze-like hotel, and then finishing off with finding 8 red coins in the resident Timed Mission... again in said maze-like hotel.


New Super Mario Bros.


Yoshi's Island DS

  • Stage 5-5, the Cave That Never Ends is an obnoxiously difficult forced-scrolling stage that very nearly lives up to its name. The level is a constant barrage of challenging platforming sections that are far too complex to make split-second maneuvers practical, yet that's what you have to do... you know, because of the autoscroll and all. There are several spots where you have to clear a path to a coin or flower and then backtrack so you can follow the path, only to find that you can no longer get to it because you didn't stay quite far enough ahead of the scroll. And then once you do finally get to the exit ring, you find out you passed it quite a while ago, but the scrolling wouldn't let you go to it until just now.
  • Stage 5-7, Super Hard Acrobatics, lives up to its name and then some. Unsurprisingly, it's composed of vicious jumping puzzles and dodging on moving platforms. If this weren't bad enough, unless you specifically set yourself otherwise, you're probably carrying Baby Donkey Kong into the stage, which cripples your speed and aerial ability.
  • Every single one of the secret levels is this.
    • "Welcome to Yoshi Tower!" is an Auto-Scrolling Level of Nintendo Hard puzzles and lava. The worst part of it is that there is not one single middle ring in the entire level. This means that not only does one mistake mean you're doing the entire level over, but you'll also have to scramble for every star you can find in the stage if you're trying to max your star count in order to get 100%. (Here's a tip: go into the level with a full supply of red eggs and then nail all those enemies at the beginning for all the stars you can get.)
    • "Yikes! Boiling Hot!" is a Nintendo Hard level of lava practically making up most of the level. The last section forces you to do a bunch of precision jumping while dodging lava-spitting enemies and an absolutely massive lava monster, who even if you can avoid being killed by him directly, will make things a lot harder by destroying the ground beneath you.
    • "A Light in the Dark" has very little light/visibility and a hated ski section. Remember how hard the ski section was in "Kamek's Revenge"? This makes that one look like cake.
    • "Hurry and Throw!" has two ungodly horrible sections. In the first, you have to dodge enemies and spikes while locating and depositing three number balls, all while the stage is auto scrolling. But this one is a looping autoscroll stage which just keeps taking you around and around the room until you find the exit. While this does give you some margin for error, it also gets annoying quick. For the second, you'd better have Peach or Mario, cause you're gonna have to do some master-level platforming. You have to make your way to the goal ring by bouncing off the backs of Paratroopas, all while collecting the usual crap and dodging obstacles like firebars which rotate in the air. Seriously, who designed this place?
    • Finally there's "Yoshi's Island Easter Eggs", a Marathon Level of Kaizo type evil puzzles (aka, lots of spikes of instant death and perfectly timed jumps needed). You know you're in trouble when there's a middle ring after every goddamned room.
  • Bowser's Castle (of course) gives you five different ways to go through it, depending on who you have on your back. Every one of them is Nintendo Hard, though Mario's route is the easiest... if your Sonic the Hedgehog instincts kick in.
    • Wario's route depends on puzzle-solving ability rather than platforming skills, so if you don't have problems with using a strategy guide, it's not too bad at all.
  • World 4-7, "Teeth-Chattering Chill Zone". Let's see: You use Bouncies in combination with ice to slide past the crushing rocks, BUT those things fall and rise INCREDIBLY fast, so you're likely to DIE. Then, you have to do a tricky platforming section with lots of Bumpties and Bouncies to avoid, as well as some moving platforms. These Bumpties and Bouncies, combined with it being an ice level, often lead to you falling to your death. This section is so hard, some gamers never even get past this part before giving up in frustration. The final section is a ski jump section, which normally is a Scrappy Mechanic, but here, it's actually the easiest part of the level.
  • World 5-1, "Rompin' Stompin' Chomps" features three different versions of the Chomp enemy, and they're all nasty. In the first section, you have to dodge huge, fast-moving Chomps which jump up and down in place while trying to collect red coins by throwing eggs really high into the air. Doesn't sound so bad? Did I mention that the screen is AUTO-SCROLLING while you're trying to do this? Yeah, good luck with that. In the second section, you have to hover over gaps while even bigger Chomps are raining down on you from above. And if you can manage to get past that, there's the final section, where one of the "eats everything in its path" Chomps from the first game chases you, and he's much faster than the ones in the original game. If you're going for 100%, be sure not to miss the very inconveniently placed coins and flowers while you're scrambling for your life!


Super Mario Galaxy

  • There's a Daredevil Comet challenge where you have to go through Melty Molten Galaxy, which is covered in lava, without being hit once, leading to furniture being punched in frustration after missing a jump after going through the entire level for the fortieth time. Then, when you unlock Luigi, you have to race a Shadow version of yourself in several galaxies who's much, much faster than you are, makes nearly impossible jumps, and will cause you to miss jumps if you happen to occupy the same space as him.
  • Thhe Ghostly Galaxy's Daredevil Comet pits you up against That One Boss, Bouldergeist, and because of the Daredevil Comet, you cannot get hit even once. The way to beat the boss is to throw three sets of three Boo Bombs at his center, but you have so little control of where the bombs will go off that half the time Bouldergeist's arms will take the hit, lengthening the fight. And since Bouldergeist's main attack is summoning jagged rocks from the ground that are really hard to dodge, you will be playing that level for a while. Best to just skip it unless you want One Hundred Percent Completion.
  • Luigi's Purple Coins makes that level look easy is just as hard as that one. In this level, there is no lava, only a green slime that is instant death (by contrast, you bounce off lava and lose a bit of health) and all platforms either disappear or start rotating once you step on them. Needless to say, planning your route is required, as any mistakes are immediately fatal. Also, there's a time limit, but since you're much more likely die by being forced to fall into the green slime by the disappearing/rotating platforms, it may as well not even be there at all.
  • While not as infuriating as Luigi's Purple Coins, Sling Pod Galaxy is evil. Using the Wii-mote to launch Mario into small targets and time shots around obstacles made for controller breaking notfun. And star bits in excess of nine thousand (not joking) were earned, thanks to the developers always making sure there were enough of them to give you an extra life every time you died.
  • This one is more like that one mini-game. In the Battlerock galaxy, during the third star mission, you can access a secret area with piles of trash on it and a robot who wants you to clear it up by throwing Bob-Ombs at them. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the 30-SECOND TIME LIMIT, the fact that those Bob-Ombs take FOREVER to explode, and that the only way to really get all of the piles of trash is to throw them on 5 small yellow spots on the ground. Fun. Then, in the Dreadnought Galaxy, you get to do it all over again, only this time there are 6 little yellow spots for which to aim and NO INCREASE IN THE 30-SECOND TIME LIMIT. For added amusement, try playing these levels as the less sure-footed Luigi. GRRRRAH!
    • It says a lot that the sequel, which virtually had the mission statement of being harder than the original, made trash-destroying significantly easier. This could be Nintendo's way of admitting that the trash-destroying missions in the first game were an example of Fake Difficulty; they wanted the second game to be hard, but they wanted it to be because of real difficulty.
  • The Battlerock and Dreadnought purple coin missions are very similar- in both missions, you have to travel on a moving platform and collect coins while dodging cannonballs and other obstacles, and in both cases, if you miss a coin, there's no way to go back and get it. It's a toss-up as to which of the two is more difficult. In Battlerock, you have to do insane jumps over super-huge electric fences as well as having to constantly switch between two sides of a moving platform (which, thanks to the weird physics, makes it much, much harder than it sounds). In Dreadnought, the platform you're on goes upwards, sideways, and then completely upside down as you're struggling to collect coins and dodge the cannonballs, which come at you even more relentlessly than the ones in Battlerock. To add to this, since this is 3D, you can easily miss the coins by forgetting that the platform also has depth.
  • The Loopdeswoop Galaxy. Tilt the Wiimote a bit too much, or not quite enough, or speed up in just the wrong place, and it's into the void with you. Over and over again.


New Super Mario Bros. Wii

  • 9-7, even by World 9 standards, is flatly unbelievable. To explain, the entire level past the start point is basically made out of ice blocks. Ice blocks melt when hit by fireballs. There are Fire Piranha Plants popping out of every pipe, in clusters, throwing fire that will burn away your platforms. Oh, and if the platforms aren't positioned over bottomless pits, they're covering invincible chomping plants. Cue Unwinnable situations happening if you mess up.
    • If you're going for Star Coins, you're pretty much fucked. To make it achievable through anything other than luck or unholy skill, you must have a Fire Flower at a certain point. You have to run right (on ice), stop (again, on ice), turn around (once again, on ice), throw a fireball to the left, jump down and grab the Star Coin, jump back up, and then run forward before the Fire Piranha Plants melt all the ice blocks in front of you. See the image at the top of the page? That's what happens 99.99% of the time you go for the second Star Coin.
      • If you're willing to wait a while, though, it's possible to goad one of the Fire Traps into melting the ice above the second Star Coin by waiting above the pipe to its left. As an added bonus, until you make the run for the Coin you won't get close enough to the hanging Fire Traps for them to start firing at you.
    • And the third one yarrrgh. Eventually the rest of the level becomes a cakewalk because your thumbs have learned how to get you there on autopilot and you just. Keep. Dying.
  • 9-4 is no walk in the park, if only because it's a Auto-Scrolling Level and, if you're going for the star coins, the hardest one to get is at the end. The second one is also difficult unless you can freeze a Bob-Omb and throw it at the coin; otherwise, the platform has the be at just the right height and then you have to jump off of it and then make a perfectly timed wall jump so that you'll get to the coin and make it back to the platform safely - all while the level continues autoscrolling.
  • World 5 could qualify too, especially the acid river in 5-4, and especially if you're a moderately talented first-timer who found the secret exit in 1-3 and decided to skip ahead...
  • 2-2 isn't so hard if you're just playing through, but if you're trying to get the Star Coins... all of those fucking Spikes...
  • Ludwig's Fortress too, in single player. It's clearly a stage designed with groups of people in mind, since it is hell trying to juggle tons and tons of Bob-ombs raining down on you by yourself while you slowly rise left and rise.
  • 8-1. A massive Difficulty Spike with an Advancing Smog Of Doom, constant rocks raining down, lava plumes everywhere all make the hellscape scenery look authentic. Just see what happened when the Freelance Astronauts decided to try it with four players... Hilarity Ensues.
  • 7-6, in addition to being relatively hard to find, is an autoscroller that has you jumping on the heads of large Para-Buzzies for the entire level. There's rarely any solid ground, and most of the Para-Buzzies aren't that big, so one slip will usually send you back to the beginning. Oh! And no midway flag. Enjoy.
  • Getting used to the ice can make for a Difficulty Spike in 3-1 that can make it seem like a That One Level.
  • 3-4 is also known to be difficult, since it takes place mostly on giant moving blocks of ice. One wrong slip and you'll be crushed or fall into a bottomless pit. And because of a thing the developers did with the secret exits, you're forced to play through it twice.
  • 2-4, also known as the level with the (motherfucking) sandstorm. A good chunk of the level will be spent pinned down against a wall, waiting for the wind to stop blowing.
  • Either as a coincidence or a Four Is Death kind of thing, 8-4 is also pretty unbelievable. Blackout Basement....underwater.


Super Mario Galaxy 2

  • Cloudy Court Galaxy is an easy level on its own, but how about the secret mission, Silver Stars In The Purple Pond? You go to a massive bowl filled with dark matter (?) with a system of clouds floating over it. To make matters worse, a Cosmic Clone spawns behind you for each star you get, so that will mean that you will have up to FOUR clones chasing you. So, in other words, you have to get the stars without taking a single hit OR retracing your steps. If you take a hit, you fall through the clouds, and into the insta-kill dark matter Mario goes. If you turn around, the clones will get you.
    • Here's a tip: treat the cloud platforms like a road and stick to one side. They're wide enough that you can double back and run right past the Cosmic Clones on the other side.
  • If you didn't hate the Cosmic Clones enough already, "Cosmic Clones in the Chompworks" will make you curse them to your very soul. In that level, you have to race around a course holding down platforms to try to guide a Golden Chomp to the end of the course where it will release the Star. Not only is it hard to stand and wait on the platforms the right amount of time while the clones are chasing you, but the layout of the level makes you retrace your steps quite a bit- which of course means, running smack through where all the clones are running around. Once you eventually succeed, the sight of all the clones instantly disintegrating and turning into Star Bits is extremely cathartic.
    • And if you thought they were through with you after that, try "Cosmic Clones Wall Jumpers" in the Flip-Out Galaxy. It's pretty much you having to wall-jump and spin with precision up alternating red and blue walls that slide in and out while those sadistic clones chase you down. And since there's hardly any room for you to wall jump without colliding with them if you get knocked back down, getting hit once pretty much costs you a life.
  • Clockwork Ruins Galaxy has you traversing a series of giant rotating cogs. This wouldn't be so bad, but gravity does not keep you in place, so you have to keep moving around the edges of the platforms in order to stay in a position where you don't fall to your death, and at the same time, keep moving forward so you can proceed through the level. And as if that weren't enough, you later have to go through it again to collect purple coins. While there's a timer on the level. Ouch.
  • The Special World. For starters, there are stages based off of the "Luigi's Purple Coins" mission and the platforming levels from Sunshine. Also, the Stone Cyclone Galaxy features enemies that go at ludicrously fast speeds. And to top it all off, there's the Boss Blitz Galaxy. Sure, fighting Dino Piranha, King Kaliente, Major Burrows, Bouldergeist, and Fiery Dino Piranha is simple enough, but then the Comet mission slaps you with a 5-minute time limit!
    • The Boss Blitz Galaxy Comet wouldn't be so frustrating if it weren't for Bouldergeist. Anyone who has played the first one knows that he is a tough boss to beat, and as shown in the sequel, he's even worse under a time limit. While the first half is easy enough, he then grows hands and the frustration starts. Most of the time, he's either punching, pounding the ground, throwing rocks and Bomb Boos or creating stalagmites on the ground. Even when you get a Bomb Boo, good luck trying to hit him. The three other attacks almost always create obstructions that cost you precious seconds on the timer if the Bomb Boo you're currently holding hits these obstructions. If you do actually beat him, more often than not, most of the time you only have a few seconds left to beat the subsequent boss. What were the level designers thinking?
  • The Stone Cyclone Galaxy. It's pretty bad when the hardest galaxy in the game is a level from the first game, which wasn't that hard to begin with. And then there's Green Star 1...
    • To elaborate, Stone Cyclone is the result of taking the third mission of Beach Bowl Galaxy from the first game, making the Cyclone Stone the only planet, making everything on it move FIVE TIMES FASTER, and putting Silver Stars on it. That means no checkpoints. Of all levels to reincorporate the time-slow gimmick on, they chose THIS. That's why it's so fast; you're expected to slow everything down.
    • The speed run comet gets rid of the time switches. So you have to go through the level at normal speed. While timed. You're at least able to take some shortcuts in this one, however, since you don't have to collect any Silver Stars, just get to the end of the level.
  • "Luigi's Purple Coin Chaos" takes arguably the hardest mission in the original game and manages to make it even more annoying. On top of the purple coins to collect, the vanishing green platforms [1], and Cosmic Clones which begin spawning the instant you get the first coin, you have to do it all in TWO MINUTES. If you plan to do this level, bring a friend; Co-Star Luma can keep the vanishing platforms there for you.
  • The Grandmaster Galaxy by itself is merely tough. Its comet star, however, transforms it into a platform hell incarnate nightmare. To elaborate: There are multiple sections to this galaxy, and you must pass all of them with only a single hit point. The first section involves riding Yoshi to swing across a field littered with mines, hovering spiked mole-things and a few homing Bullet Bill launchers, which forces you to rethink a mechanic that you've been using since the start of the game in order to get through. The next portion has you activating a grid of tiles by walking on them while sadistic robots each fire a long rang laser at you when you get close to them. After this, you must move across an electric-fence field by creating cloud platforms that are forced to sidescroll to the right. Then comes hopping across a road made entirely of either green tiles that begin to disappear if you land on them or red-blue tiles that flip whenever you spin; meanwhile, there are spike-topped giant-laser-halo emitters and octopi that shoot fireballs scattered across the road. Then you navigate through cruelly-placed moving electric lines with pull-stars while avoiding the flying Goombas. And finally comes platforms littered with a merciless gauntlet of Hammer Bros. plus a trio of Boomerang Bros. at the end that you must get rid of. So to conclude: Insane course, one hitpoint, and no checkpoints at all, thus meaning that one hit will send you all the way back to the start. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. [2]
  • Fleet Glide Galaxy. You thought Fluzzard was hard enough to control? Now you have to use him again. There's just one problem; YOU DIE WHENEVER YOU TOUCH A WALL. And there's lava everywhere. God help you if you miss the Life Mushroom, as that's the only thing that keeps you alive.
    • The Comet Medal is even worse. You have to pass through five rings, including one far off the path to the left in the second section which requires God like controls to make it back to the main route in time, and then collect the medal which flies at you in mid air at high speed. Did we mention the first ring is placed exactly so you can't get the Life Mushroom without Co-Star Luma's help?
  • Super Mario Galaxy 2 contains one incredibly difficult comet mission in the Rolling Coaster Galaxy: you have to collect purple coins while riding on an extremely hard to control ball, with no way to backtrack. Oh, and did we mention that you have to complete it in under 2 MINUTES?! Some of the coins are scattered about on the platforms in between slide sections, and if you aren't ultra-precise in rolling over them, you will either run out of time or be forced to leave them behind and possibly fall short of 100.
  • The Beat Block Galaxy, by itself, isn't hard: a set of yellow blocks and a set of green blocks alternate being solid, and you just have to listen for the musical cue for each switch, which happens every eight beats. The comet mission has you repeat the mission in double-time... except, actually, it's quadruple-time, with the blocks alternating every two beats (which is pretty much every second). It's a good idea not to jump toward any block that is solid, as it most likely won't be anymore by the time you reach it. As if this wasn't enough, whereas in the normal mission you only have to collect five Silver Stars on what is a single side of a pyramid with alternating green/yellow blocks, the comet mission has a full pyramid to go around, with the Silver Stars scattered all around it. You do get Yoshi to "help" you out, although an ill-timed flutter jump can send you falling to your doom as well.
  • Green Stars in general are a pain, as some range from just waiting on a platform to dissipate from beneath you, to overcoming odd camera angles and controls thanks to gravity so you can leap to your death. That said, some individual Green Stars are worth singling out.
    • The first Green Star of Stone Cyclone Galaxy is a pain in the ass nearly impossible to get without cheating. For starters, they positioned the star so high that it's impossible to get even with your highest jumps. To make things EVEN WORSE, they also positioned it in the route of the impossibly fast Tox Boxes, so even if you get close to the star, it wouldn't matter, because you'll be squashed. The only way to get it requires precise timing, by first turning on the time slow switch, and try to jump on the Tox Box. If you mess that up, you have to cross the platforms back to the switch, which is made needlessly difficult by the speed of them, and try the strategy again, which, more often than not, squishes you flatter than a pancake. (Worth noting that you can get the Green Star with a well-timed triple jump from the elevated part of the platform. You still have to time your movements around the Tox Box's path, though, so it's still a pain in the ass to get.)
    • The first Green Star in the Boo Moon Galaxy. You have to ride an extremely fast moving platform going at running speed, then long jump off to the star in a split second, hopefully not hitting the instant kill poison underneath.
    • The Flipsville final Green Star. You have to fall into it from the wrong side of the platform. It's not above land, so there's no shadow to judge your fall, and if you miss, Mario is instantly killed by flying off into space.
    • The final Green Star in Shiverburn Galaxy. The star is located on the third planet, and you have to use the Cloud Flower to reach it. The problem? The Cloud Flower is only found on the first planet. You have to get the Cloud Flower and make it all the way to the third planet without taking a hit or spinning more than twice, since spinning uses up one of your three clouds, and you need at least one cloud to get the star on the third planet. And the second planet is really hard to get through under these restrictions, since it takes place on shifting platforms over lava while a bunch of rock-spitting enemies are trying to kill you. If you mess up at this point, you have no way to refresh your clouds, so you have to do the whole thing over again.
    • The final Green Star in Melty Monster Galaxy is pretty sadistic as well. Rolling through an extremely lengthy passage with the Stone Mushroom, unable to slow down or stop, having to move in a line that's as straight as possible or you'll end up falling into a hole, or crashing into a wall and bounce off it, and then, at the very end of the course, you have to fall off the platforms and collide with a star suspended in mid-air. You have to be moving in a very precise direction and fall off at exactly the right spot to catch it, and it's almost impossible to accurately guess where you have to fall off, and even harder to control it well enough to actually get it right.
      • The mission this Green Star is found in, the second mission, is quite hard as it is. The passage you're trying to control Rock Mario down is a twisty (and oftentimes narrow) path with gaps, and as if Rock Mario is not easy to control, towards the end you have to bounce off two boxing ring ropes... With an easy-to-reach 1-up early on and crystals with Star Bits all along the path, extra lives will come readily to you, which is good, because you will die a lot.


Super Paper Mario

  • 3-3 has those damned Crayzee Dayzees in a jump-centric level. They hit you when you're in the middle of a jump, and there's a good chance you will start back at the bottom of the tree. And when you finally make it out of there and deal with this level's miniboss, you still have quite a bit of jumping to do...and it's possibly made worse by having a few Lakitus roam the sky.
  • If you don't just hop on GameFAQs, chapter 2-3 is the ultimate in Scrappy levels. To wit - you have to play out extremely long, unbearably boring minigames to run up 1,000,000 Rubees to pay for a vase. Even though you really only need about 10,000 (the rest can be found once you've got that), it takes forever and a year just to get that much and if a player does not talk to people much then it is theoretically possible to go for the full million. Thankfully, every bit of that minigame work can be skipped over if you just hop on the Internet and figure out how to get the hidden stash of them without worrying about paying NPCs to tell you.
  • The Flopside Pit of 100 Trials. It seems to be your standard Pit of 100 Trials: 100 floors, no opportunities to completely heal or save in between floors, and "rest stops" every 10 floors. Here's where it gets infuriating: To fight Shadoo, you have to go through the entire thing, TWICE.


Super Mario 3D Land

  • SW8-Crown. First off, there's no checkpoint. The first half of the level consists mostly of narrow used coin blocks you must jump across. It's practically impossible to get across that part without a Tanooki Suit, and even with it, you're still gonna die a few times. Or more. If you survive that part, you're pitted against Boom Boom and Pom Pom at the same time. Then you go through one of those green roller coaster stages with bombs and complicated jumps galore. Then you're thrown onto a block where you must run to the other side while dodging fire, lasers, enemies, and a Giant Cosmic Mario who won't let you stop and take a breath. If you didn't have a mushroom or other item on you at that part, you're most likely dead. THEN... you get to ride across the rest of the level while watching the green floor unfold, spelling out "THANK YOU!!"
    • It's possible to mistake the unfolding green floor for the proper path if you're expecting the brutal level design to continue. This would be a mistake.
  • S8-3. It's a rehash of 5-Castle. 5-Castle wasn't so bad, huh? Well, 8-3 is. You start out with only 30 seconds on the clock, and you can't stop or turn around because a Giant Cosmic Mario is chasing you. Not to mention the star coins (and time bonuses, to a lesser extent) are VERY inconveniently placed, more enemies are added, and all item blocks are no more. You're gonna cry.
  • S7-5. Especially the first coin. All you have to do to get it is hit a block, jump onto it, and get it. In theory it's pretty much nothing, but in practice it's pretty much impossible. It's a scrolling level, so you get maybe half the time you need to do it. If you actually got it, you might as well be killed by the coin itself, because there's no way you're getting to the next platform before the screen kills you. It would probably be easier in any other game, but in this game, Mario's jumping skills were effectively nerfed out of existence.
  • S7-1. It's basically 3-4. Wasn't so bad, right? Well, this level may not have any previous obstacles or enemies, but they are replaced with Boomerang Bros. throwing boomerangs at you when you are on a tightrope with little space to dodge, and with only 30 SECONDS. Oh, and you'll have to kill enemies to get time, and waste some getting Star Medals, since they are NOT on your path. And those Roulette Blocks over there? You're probably gonna get a mushroom. Admit it,you want to cry now.
  1. ↑ The rotating platforms are gone, but that's only a consolation
  2. ↑ It pays to learn how far Yoshi can grab in section 1, as quite a few flowers can be skipped. Finishing section 1 with a well-timed flutter jump will let you keep Yoshi, which is useful for getting section 2 done a little quicker and moving on. In section 3 you need to leave Yoshi but you can preserve two or even all three clouds at the end, which can be used at any point. But, the very next section has platforms that encourage you to spin, which uses the clouds. In section 5 the toughest part can be bypassed with a skillful long-jump + pull combination (which seems to be a deliberate alternative). Section 6, good luck.
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