"What is a minus world?"

Those hardworking lads over at the Lightbulb Detective Agency slipped in a request over the weekend, imagine my surprise when the milkman knocked on the door and I opened it to find an issue of Alpha Flight #12 with a hastily scrawled message on a Hostess Fruit Pie ad, "What can you tell us of minus world? L.D.A."


Well, I can tell you the truth of course. Super Mario Brothers minus world back in my day was a bragging right. even in my first year of high school I was showing the doubters, like any girl that would pay attention, that in fact the minus world was a reality. It's a glitch in the program. By pressing your back against a brick by the world 1-2 exit you can phase through the wall and if you drop down and wait for the plant to lower back into the pipe so you can jump up and down it...you are transported to the fabled minus world.


Minus world was exactly like worlds 2-2 and 7-2 but they would just endlessly loop so you would have to either restart the game or just go ahead and die. Still...it's a fun little trick that can pull off rather easily.


Now the second best well known trick in Super Mario Brothers is the 1-up turtle shell jump. Not as easy to pull off, at least for me, though my Grandmother could rack up 99 lives in world 3-1 like it was nothing. You would have to jump on the edge of the turtle shell, normally the third step up, and time it so that it would bounce back to you as you were coming down from your jump, which if you did properly would keep giving you a score bonus until you received a 1-up for each hit. You could only do this 99 times though as the game would end if you went over that number.

I've included two videos for your enjoyment. The first one reveals a third trick, similar to minus world, that I did not know about. The second one...is probably what we all thought when we reached the Princess.