Super Mario Bros. - The Minus World

The Minus World

The "Minus World" (also referred to as "World Negative One") is the name given to an unbeatable glitch level in Super Mario Bros. World 1-2 contains a hidden warp zone, with warp pipes that transport the player to Worlds 2, 3, and 4, accessed by running over a wall near the exit. If the player is able to exploit a bug that allows Mario to pass through bricks, the player can enter the warp zone by passing through the wall and the pipe to World 4-1 may instead transport the player to a stage labeled "World -1". This stage's map is identical to Worlds 2-2 and 7-2, but upon entering the warp pipe at the end, the player is taken back to the start of the level, thus trapping the player in the level until losing all extra lives. Although the level name is shown as " -1" (note the leading space) on the heads-up display, it is actually World 36-1; the game displays tile #36, which is a blank space, to the left of the hyphen.

The Minus World bug in the Japanese Famicom Disk System version of the game behaves differently and creates multiple, completable stages. "World -1" is an underwater version of World 1-3 with an alternate color palette, and contains sprites of Princess Toadstool, Bowser, and Hammer Bros. "World -2" is an identical copy of World 7-3, and "World -3" is a copy of World 4-4, also with an alternate color palette, and contains flying Bloopers, no Bowser, and water instead of lava. After completing these levels, the player returns to the title screen as if the game was completed.

The Minus World bug was fixed in Super Mario All-Stars and subsequent remakes; however, the Virtual Console releases for Wii and 3DS allow players to perform the glitch, as they are emulations of the original Super Mario Bros.