List of Super Mario Bros. Special glitches

This is a list of glitches in Super Mario Bros. Special. Unless otherwise noted, all names are conjectural.

Infinite 1-Up trick

Like in the original Super Mario Bros., jumping on a Koopa Troopa or a Buzzy Beetle when it is about three pixels away from an edge or wall makes Mario jump on it continously, thus allowing the player to gain infinite 1-Ups. Unlike the original, the trick is much easier to perform due to the game's different collision physics launching the player higher after a stomp, and can be done in virtually any area with both a Koopa Troopa and an edge or wall.

When a sliding Koopa shell is stomped and stops moving, the timer before the Koopa gets back up does not reset, continuing from where it left off when the shell was kicked. Because of this, it is possible for a Koopa to break itself out of the trick, requiring the player to set the glitch up again.

The player can accumulate a maximum of 255 lives, with the number of current lives remaining represented in hexadecimal numbers (such as "85" for 133 lives and "DE" for 222 lives). Gaining more than 255 lives loops the counter back to 0 lives.

Harmless Fire-Bars

Sometimes, touching the edge of a Fire-Bar does not deliver any damage, likely because of the game's limits in hardware and registering hitboxes with moving obstacles.

Glitched pipes

The Warp Zones from the original were changed in such a way that Super Mario Bros. Special has no true Warp Zone. In World 1-2, reaching the area over the pipe instead leads to the single bonus room that could be accessed normally in the stage, but with a pipe that still leads to the overworld, thus to the end of the level. In World 4-2, a room that more resembles a true Warp Zone can be found, however the only pipe it holds does not have any destinations defined. The pipe can still be entered, but the player remains stuck there indefinitely, forcing the player to be killed by the timer.

In World 4-3, there is a beanstalk that leads to a Coin Heaven. When trying to leave, sometimes Mario is unable to enter the exit pipe. It is assumed to be an overlooked program error, as the entrance back to the main level from this bonus area is present underneath the mushroom stairs leading to the flagpole.

Course designer Ichirou Sakurada has acknowledged that these are unintentional glitches.

Out-of-service jumping board

Compared to the original Super Mario Bros., the jumping board present in World 2-1 is much more difficult to perform a higher jump off of due to poor collision detection, sometimes being stuck in its animation frames when Mario jumps off. Sometimes holding the jump key while landing on the board guarantees success in jumping off, and in the event that a player would have trouble, the set of invisible blocks placed around the board allows players to bypass it.

Disk error

The Disk Error screen, on the PC-88 (left) and Sharp X1 (right).

If the system encounters an error while trying to read and load data from the disk, the screen displays the message: "DISK ERROR! PLEASE RESTART GAME PUSH IPL SWITCH" (the IPL switch being a reset button present on PC-8801 family machines). The error is caused by corrupted data, which may be a result of a damaged disk or a improperly performed ROM dump, the most notable example being a ROM in which 8-4 is corrupted. This error also exists in the Sharp X1 version, and is far simpler to trigger by way of ejecting the Disk mid-gameplay; in the Sharp X1 version, the text for the error flashes various colors.

Music stop error

Due to bad pipe entering detection, if Mario gets too close to a horizontal pipe that can be entered and quickly turns around, the pipe-entering sound plays and the music stops until Mario actually enters the pipe. The player can do this multiple times in the same room which repeats the pipe-entering sound.

Missing objects

On occasion, failing to either defeat select enemies or otherwise despawn objects will cause other enemies or objects later in the stage to not appear. This glitch occurs in both versions of the game, and is wildly unpredictable. Most notably, the second Flimsy Lift in the wide pit in World 4-3 will fail to load if the second Scale Lift is not destroyed, causing the pit to become impossible to cross and requiring Mario to lose a life.