For decades, the Minus World in the original Super Mario Bros. stood as one of gaming’s most legendary glitches. Now, in a discovery that has stunned the retro gaming community, a similar secret has been unearthed in its notoriously difficult sequel, Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, nearly four decades after the game’s initial release.

The discovery was made by renowned speedrunner and glitch hunter Kosmic, who detailed his findings in a new YouTube video. This reveals that a brand-new set of “Minus World” levels have been secretly accessible all along, but only in the Super Mario All-Stars version of the game for the SNES .

The Original Minus World: A Glitch Legacy

To understand the significance of this find, it’s helpful to look back at the original glitch that started it all.

• What it is: The Minus World, or World -1, is an impassable, infinitely-looping underwater level in the 1985 Super Mario Bros. for NES .
• How to access it: Players can reach it by performing a specific wall-clipping glitch in World 1-2 to access a Warp Zone before it has fully scrolled onto the screen .
• The Name: Fans dubbed it the “Minus World” because the game displays its true internal value, World 36-1, as a blank tile followed by a “-1” .

The New Discovery: A Lost Levels Mystery Solved

For years, it was assumed that similar glitches in The Lost Levels simply transported players to ordinary, if incorrectly numbered, levels. Kosmic’s investigation has proven there is much more to the story.

The breakthrough came when Kosmic, with assistance from another community member known as Simplistic, discovered that the version of The Lost Levels included in Super Mario All-Stars handles its memory and level progression differently . By using a complex series of warp glitches and leveraging the game’s save and quit functionality, they accessed a chain of levels that should not exist.

The journey to these glitched worlds is complex, requiring players to progress through increasingly corrupted versions of levels, eventually reaching worlds designated by letters, like B-5, B-9, and B-D . After defeating the glitched B-D level, the game truly breaks, opening the door to never-before-seen stages.

What Are the New Glitched Levels Like?

The newly uncovered Minus World levels in The Lost Levels are described as a psychedelic cyberpunk hellscape . They feature:

• Junk Visuals: Familiar level layouts become overlayed with chaotic and incomprehensible graphics, turning the screen into a mess of tiles and numbers .
• Altered Gameplay: Underwater levels can be transformed into platforming stages, completely changing their mechanics .
• Expert Gameplay Required: Navigating these broken stages requires immense skill, as players must often rely on their memory of the original level’s layout to survive .

Why Did It Take 40 Years to Find This?

Kosmic speculates that several factors contributed to this secret remaining hidden for so long :

• Less Popular Game: The Lost Levels was famously difficult and was not released outside of Japan until it was included in Super Mario All-Stars, resulting in a smaller player base.
• Extreme Difficulty: The glitch requires players to be deep into the game’s later, most challenging worlds.
• Technical Precision: Executing the necessary tricks is incredibly technical and hard to perform consistently.

The Original Minus World vs. The Lost Levels’ Minus World

The table below highlights the key differences between these two legendary glitches.

Feature	Original Super Mario Bros. Minus World	The Lost Levels (All-Stars) Minus World
Game Version	NES / Famicom original	Super Mario All-Stars on SNES
Nature of Levels	A single, infinitely-looping underwater level	A series of progressively glitched levels with corrupted visuals
Access Method	Wall clip in World 1-2	Complex warp glitches and save manipulation in later worlds
Historical Context	Discovered and popularized in the 1980s	Discovered in 2025 by speedrunner Kosmic

This remarkable discovery proves that even the most well-studied classic games can still hold secrets. For those with the skill and a childhood SNES cartridge, these glitched levels have been waiting patiently on the console for over 30 years to be explored .

Will you be firing up your SNES to try and find these glitched levels yourself? Let us know in the comments below!