Complete power-up catalog
| Acquisition | How it appears | Effect | Missability and edition notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Super Mushroom | Emerges from a power-up block when the character is regular-sized. | Changes Mario/Luigi to Super form, permits breaking bricks from below, and absorbs one ordinary hit. | It moves along surfaces and can escape behind the one-way camera. All main versions retain it. |
| Fire Flower | Replaces the Super Mushroom in most power-up blocks when the character is already Super. | Changes to Fiery form; B throws bouncing fireballs, including underwater. | A block already spawned as a Mushroom does not convert later. Enemy damage removes the form. |
| Starman | Hidden in designated blocks; exits and bounces forward. | Brief contact invincibility that defeats most touched enemies. | Does not prevent pit, lava, or timeout deaths and cannot defeat every obstacle or Bowser by contact. |
| 1-Up Mushroom | Hidden in visible or invisible blocks; some invisible examples depend on prior coin performance. | Adds one life immediately. | Moves away after spawning. Conditional examples may not appear; visible-block 1-Ups are dependable. |
All three Warp Zones
| Stage | Access | Destinations | Route impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-2 | At the final lifts, jump to the ceiling and keep running above the ordinary exit pipe. | Worlds 2, 3, or 4 | Skips the rest of World 1 and any intervening worlds. |
| 4-2 vine route | Reveal two hidden coin blocks beneath the early three-brick row, use them as stairs, and hit the left brick to release a vine. | Worlds 6, 7, or 8 | The fastest intended route to World 8; skips 4-3 onward. |
| 4-2 ceiling route | Ignore the vine route; ride the end lifts to the ceiling and run beyond the normal exit pipe. | World 5 only | Skips 4-3 and 4-4 but preserves Worlds 5–8. |
Bonus areas and ordinary currency
- Coin rooms: selected downward pipes lead underground, underwater, or into compact coin chambers and return farther along the same stage.
- Coin Heaven: designated vine blocks lead to a sky bonus route. The exit returns to the main stage; keep enough time for the remainder.
- Coin blocks: strike repeatedly before the short internal timer ends. Coins are repeatable score/life currency, not a finite collectible set.
- 100-coin life: the coin counter rolls over and awards a life. Bonus detours are valuable when they do not create a timeout risk.
Conditional hidden 1-Ups
Several invisible 1-Up blocks at the beginning of a world depend on collecting nearly all required coins in an earlier third stage, or on arriving through a Warp Zone. Examples appear in 2-1, 4-1, 6-1, and 7-1. These rules are easy to disrupt by taking damage or missing coins, so the walkthrough treats them as bonuses rather than guaranteed resources.
Maze and final-castle memory card
4-4: top, bottom | 7-4: bottom, middle, top; then top, middle, top | 8-4: pipe after first lift; floating pipe via hidden block; pipe after next lava gap; underwater end pipeThese directions target the original NES/Famicom layouts and direct emulations. VS. Super Mario Bros. changes maze routes; All-Stars adds chimes but keeps the home-console route.
Second quest
After rescuing the princess, the session unlocks a harder replay. Goombas become Buzzy Beetles and some moving platforms are narrower. On the title screen, B selects the starting world. Because the original NES cartridge has no save memory, powering off loses the unlocked session; save states on later services can preserve it.