Nintendo Switch Online adds the freakishly hard NES Mario next week
Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels; Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream; and Star Soldier are your three for April.
The poison mushroom of Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels is one of the gaming's greatest betrayals.
In February, Nintendo Switch Online got the weird Mario. Next Wednesday, it'll add the insanely difficult one.
Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream and Star Soldier are joining the library you get as part of Switch's $20-a-year subscription service, Nintendo revealed Tuesday.
Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels originally hit Japan as Super Mario Bros. 2 in 1986, but Nintendo decided it was too similar to the original for a Western release. So, it added Mario elements to a very different 2D platformer, Doki Doki Panic, and released that outside Japanse as Super Mario Bros. 2 (it was added to Nintendo Switch Online in February).
The Lost Levels (first released in the US as part of the Super Mario All-Stars collection on SNES in 1993) is infamous for its difficulty, adding in poison mushrooms and reverse level warps. It's also the first game that gave Luigi a higher jump and less ground friction, differentiating him from Mario.
Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream was originally released as Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! in 1987, but re-released without the Tyson branding in 1990 after Nintendo's license expired.
Star Soldier has the most straightforward history -- it's a 1986 vertically scrolling shooter developed by Hudson Soft. It spawned a long-running series of the same name.
First published at April 3 at 5:45 a.m. PT.
Update at 8:15 a.m. PT: Adds background details about the games.
