Is Super Mario Bros 2 The Lost Levels a troll game?

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I have been reading the Mario Maker discussion at Game Faqs and I had no idea how many players get annoyed with the antics in the Mario Maker game. Enemies hidden in blocks, instant deaths, and Super Mario The Lost Levels had some of these trollish things; the poison mushroom, warp pipes that tale you back to the previous world, enemies hidden in blocks, so do you think this game was also a troll game? This game was so hard to play it was never released in America because it would frustrate too many Americans. My first ex played the game on Super Mario All Stars and he went to a pipe that made him warp back to world 1 and he was pissed about it. But gosh I never thought about Nintendo in Japan trolling their gamers. I noticed lot of that stuff in Mario Maker as well.

I am probably guilty of some of these things too because I learned them from the levels and I found them hilarious. It made me want to play it more to show the player I beat their level but I cheated in one of them because I uploaded their course to see their tricks and then played it for real and beat it and got a flag for it. But in 100 Mario Challenge I will skip the courses because you lost a life if you start over which sucks and you can't even download the level from the challenge mode.

It's not meant to be that... it's just difficult.

Things like poisonous mushrooms, for instance, wont hit you if you simply pay attention. They're a punishment for taking things too fast. The destination of pipes is simply something you learn, and using warp zones anyway can make you miss stuff... there's an entire extra world you can only get to if you DONT use warps (I think you also have to beat the game a couple of times in a row like this). There's also the "bizarro" world, designed to mimic the strangeness of the original game's minus world (specifically, the original Japanese version of the first game, which had a very different and much weirder "minus" world), except for the last of those 4 levels which is a "thank you" message from the developer. I dont remember the method to get to bizarro land, but it's not complicated and doesnt involve glitches (it's not an actual glitch world, like the original minus worlds were).

Mostly though, it's just a difficult game. The very first game really isnt all that hard, yet many players back then had a ton of trouble with it... particularly in the States. The second game, meant to be more challenging, would simply not have done very well here, and might have tainted the series' name a bit. They did the right thing in simply bringing out the "other" SMB 2 instead.

I guess people don't want to play that sort of thing in Mario Maker.

I kinda feel it is, I can't progress pass level 2 without taking damage, thats poor game design IMO.

It's funny how the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 wasn't brought to America because it was so overwhelmingly difficult, but these days everyone complains about how easy games are and they love torturing themselves playing ultra-hard games like Dark Souls.

Never cared much for it myself. I got a lot more fun out of the American Super Mario Bros. 2.

You can run and slide to slip through those small spaces and then you have to hit the jump button repeatedly to get out of there. I also could never make it far in the game either.

Playing Super Mario Bros 2: LL is not the same as Dark Souls.
You can literally run out of time and die because you cannot find the right path through a castle (Each castle in SMB2:LL has one correct path through, you hear a coin ding when you find the right path in each section).

There are also warp pipes that send you back to earlier worlds.

Add these to the tweaked physics and other antics, then it is a nerve wrecking game.

Not to mention that Dark Souls isnt actually all that hard; it's just that people have gotten used to REALLY easy games these days. The Souls games are all very slow-paced, and like the very first Castlevania, can be beaten through sheer memorization; I got bored of them after awhile for that very reason. Though, again, Dark Souls wasnt even all that hard to begin with.

It aint so simple with something like Lost Levels here. That's difficult as heck from the start, and the game's physics are a little.... odd.... and the level design can be quite mean. I can get through the first couple of worlds without taking damage, but things go downhill after that. It takes practice though.

a "troll" in a game would mean punishing the player for no reason. something that any professionally designed game would never do. it is possible for a game to be well-designed and difficult.

it is just an old game, and most old games were designed to be painfully difficult.

it all goes back to arcade machines. they wanted your quarters. so they purposely made the game difficult so that you would keep trying and putting in more quarters and compete for the high score.

i have never understood the importance of having the high score. i guess it must be a social thing.

i am not the competitive type anyway.

The thing about those troll levels in Mario Maker are people do not know the difference between a challenge and punishing the player. I admit I don't know either.

it is pretty simple: don't put things in that only you will know about. such as:

•invisible blocks in "rude" places (such as beginning of jumps over pits. or "locking" somebody in a small lower area thus forcing a restart)

•*sudden* hidden thwomps (any thwomp that is not visible should have some sort of indication that it is overhead)

•instant death (how is the player supposed to know that if they don't move immediately they will die? this basically punishes the player just for selecting your level. probably the worst no-reason punishment)

•the instant death "chance doors" (again, how is the player supposed to know what door to pick? how about a "mini-adventure" elsewhere in the level to find "clues" about what door is correct? now that would be interesting)


it is okay to punish players. that is the meaning of a challenge.
what i mean is don't punish them for no reason, which is what all those above mentioned things do.

My son was just playing this game and he didn't like the tricks in this game so he called it a silly game.