The latter could be an example of Cursed with Awesome, however, as when you have no lives left, taking one away will leave you with infinite lives. Sometimes 1-up mushrooms will either do nothing (downplaying this trope) or just take away a life.Whatever you do, do not grab them - they'll either kill Mario in one hit or crash the game! Poison Mushroom: The recurring Wing Caps you'll find floating around the levels without being released from a block.In the worst case scenario, they'll even crash the game if you grab them. One-Hit Kill: There are oversized flying caps sitting around in some levels, and they will sometimes kill you in one hit if you touch them.Beating the game with all 120 stars is practically impossible. Getting at least 70 stars and getting to Bowser is hair-pullingly difficult. Nintendo Hard / Fake Difficulty: Getting even the first star, much less 8 of them, is a Herculean feat in itself due to the game's wonky programming.Nightmare Face: Mario's corrupted face on the title screen can reach almost Large Marge levels of creepiness.Mind Screw: This game can be described as Mario 64 on one too many mushrooms: Mario's controls and speed can either slow to a crawl or jerk out of control at any time, graphics will randomly become garbled, garbage like patterns, the music will use Mario's voice clips in lieu of the instruments, doors to stages will only work when they feel like it (and sometimes the doors will even teleport you away from them, or in the case of the castle doors, land you right back outside when you enter), sometimes the stages will kill you just as you enter them, the paintings you leave will keep rippling so much that it swallows the entire room, the camera will switch to fish eye perspective, etc.Luck-Based Mission: About the only way to get most, if not all stars, and finish the game, is to pray so the game will go easy on you.Sometimes the Castle doors will trap you in the inescapable "Black Room of Death" (the area behind the castle doors both in and outside the castle), even if you entered them the right way! Lethal Lava Land will also sometimes spawn a killer flying cap that kills you as soon as you set foot in the stage. Whomp's Fortress will sometimes throw you right out into the sky below, leaving you unable to beat the level. This goes away once he enters the castle. Invisible Man: When the game starts, Mario is completely invisible.Invincible Minor Minion: On occasion, the Goombas become impossible to kill - if Mario jumps on them, they will endlessly respawn, one after another, on the spot until Mario stops bouncing on them or gets knocked away.Entering the basement is also very prone to crashing not only the game, but the emulator itself. On top of that, even if you do get a star in some levels, it won't exit you out of it! Using teleporters will also trap Mario in limbo and won't let him reappear, forcing you to reset the game. Game-Breaking Bug: Given how unstable the game is, random crashes are very common.
It bears noting that this only happens in certain levels, like Bob-Omb Battlefield - other worlds, like "Whomp's Fortress", aren't affected by this. Occasionally the game will let up and allow the objects to stop moving and hang in mid-air, though.
Considering how often you're gonna die, having negative lives means it will just keep going down and you'll never get a Game Over.The metal cap makes you invincible, which is especially good in the lava levels, and the wing cap is great in Bowser in the Fire Sea. Sometimes, the randomiser gives you a metal cap or a wing cap for no reason.The super jump and super speed boosts can make you jump so high and go so fast you can no longer move accurately.The metal cap, usually a boon, is horrendous to get in areas where you really want to be swimming.Body Horror: When Mario tries to open a locked door with a star, sometimes he'll be stuck in place and his head will do a 360 degree turn through his body!.He can still move around, jump, and grab things though. Baleful Polymorph: Sometimes the game will turn Mario into a signpost.Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The game occasionally makes Mario an incredibly large size (even bigger than the Mega Mushroom from Mario 64 DS would), but it doesn't affect his gameplay or collision detection.