The Most Hidden Powerup in Super Mario Bros.

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Wow, I had no idea that there was such a little known mechanic in such well understood game. I guess part of the reason for the obscurity is that most people know about all the warp zones long before they start paying much attention to hidden 1-ups other than the first one. "All 1ups" seems like a mildly interesting speedrun idea, if only for having to actually pay attention to coins for once in the "Pod Worlds".

Oh my god i KNEW i was not crazy, i found some of these hidden one ups locations and it would confuse the heck out of me when sometimes they just, weren't there. This is some decade year old mystery solved for me, thank you for making this video lmao

Finally I get why sometimes I couldnt grab de 1UP on the 3-1 bridge! It drove me crazy when I was a kid. Nearly 30 years after I find peace of mind. Thanks Kosmic!

I actually knew this one! I think it’s because as a kid I was obsessed with NES and noticed that sometimes I’d get the hidden 1-ups and sometimes not. Then I’d keep track of what I did differently and narrowed it down to -3 coins. I never looked for exact values, but I just kinda collected them all to test my theories. Great vid! Reminded me of a lot of old memories and it’s definitely something I think most people would never connect.

It's funny to mention that, according to the Super Mario Bros. set in RetroAchievements, the 1-up on stage 7-1 is the least collected hidden 1-up in the game (with 3.81%). Followed by 6-1, 8-1, 3-1, 4-1, 5-1, 2-1, 8-2, 1-2, and obviously 1-1.

As a kid, I knew about these 1UPs and the fact that they weren't always there, but I wrongly assumed it had something to do with whether you used warp zones or not. Very cool!

HOLY SHIT SO I'M NOT CRAZY FOR THINKING SOMETIMES THEY'RE NOT THERE. I would always pass by the one bridge in the night level and remembered the hidden 1-Up, but sometimes it wouldn't show up so sometimes I felt like I was remembering it wrong, or it was a different level entirely. Super informational video, now I know how the mechanics work.

Accurate. I played the game at 6 years old when it first came out. I knew about every hidden 1-up except for 7-1. Mind blown.

Can’t believe I learnt something new about the OG Super Mario Bros. in 2022, amazing stuff :D

I remember as a kid aiming to get all coins in each stage and checking "suspicious" locations for hidden blocks - and I just noticed the pattern after finishing several games back then. And i aimed NOT to skip any level as well. So I vividly remember getting all those hidden 1 ups indicated and this "suspicious-ness" in Mario Bros which I carried as new versions of the game was released helped me a LOT in finishing the new releases during those times. There's no internet, from where I am it is quite hard to get a guide as I have to save up on my allowance just to purchase one if I badly need one, and I may have been the only kid in our neighborhood who has access to video games as my dad is also a gamer growing up. Oh boy, this sure brings back a TON of childhood memories as we play the game together every Friday and Saturday nights and I'm allowed to stay up late playing with my dad. RIP to my dad.

The 1UP mushrooms in 2-1 and 4-1 (and sometimes 3-1) haunted me forever. Sometimes they were there, sometimes not. Now I know why. Thanks for the closure, my man

The great thing about the Mario 35 limited time game was that it encouraged you to find all the hidden powerups as they gave you an advantage.

Reminds me of the 7 hidden powerups in Super Mario Bros 3. In that game once per world there's a stage with a lot of coins that are very hard to collect, and if you collect enough of them from those worlds in spawns a toad house with one of the rarest powerups in the game in it. One of the two types of powerup spawns exclusively there and is mentioned in the manual, when I was much younger I could never figure out the mystery of how to spawn that one powerup and nobody I knew figured it out either.

That was indeed the last 1-up mushroom I found in the game, after realizing that one must exist in the level.

3:22 I'm gonna be real, for years I thought it was impossible to do this and the screen always seemed to scroll just far enough for me to be unable to enter the pipe every time I've tried, seeing you casually pulling it off blew my mind

I love when games include these seemingly useless mechanics that serve mostly as knowledge checks. I think my favorite of these is the Cat-Eye Circlet in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, an item you find in the Catacombs that claims to have benefit of healing you when you get hit with a "cat" attack. Some of the item descriptions in SotN flat out get things wrong, so perhaps this could be a mistranslation. It actually isn't a mistranslation, but it may as well be. Functionally, you heal from two decently easy to dodge attacks from one type of witch enemy which spawns in a single area in the entire game that's very out of the way (literal opposite end of the map) and isn't even required to beat the game

I think I knew about literally ALL of these powerups EXCEPT 7-1. Excellent video as always!

I love learning about how the game works internally and going through the code to explain things. Keep up the good work, you're scripted content is always great.