Mechanic · structure & scoring

Maze loop

A level that sends the player back to repeat a stretch until they take the right path through it.

stubAlso: looping level, looping castle, wrong-path loop, endless maze, lost woodsUpdated 2026-10-23

A maze loop hides the way forward. A wrong route returns the player to an earlier point, often with nothing on screen to say so, until they find the route through.

See also

Games

Every claim about this mechanic, by game (1)
Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels 1986Enemy spawning and set-up (EnemiesAndLoopsCore through InitJumpGPTroopa) are Super Mario Bros.'s with these changes: ProcLoopCommand reads 12 loop entries where Super Mario Bros. reads 11, and takes each loop's number of checks from a new MultiLoopCount table where Super Mario Bros. special-cases world 7; ProcessEnemyData skips a check in world 9 and gives one enemy code a piranha plant set-up; InitHammerBro checks the world; LakituAndSpinyHandler brings Lakitu back once LakituReappearTimer reaches 3, where Super Mario Bros. waits until it reaches 7, and brings him back lower on the screen in worlds 7 to 9 and A to D; InitBowser first erases any other Bowser; InitPiranhaPlant patches the plant's palette and pipe distance, green in worlds 1 to 3 and red from world 4 and in A to D; InitJumpGPTroopa starts the jumping paratroopa at x speed $F4 where Super Mario Bros. uses $F8. Of its 27 regions, 15 differ only in their addresses and 5 are byte for byte the same.Code