nevermind! i just learned that if you start over after beating the game all goombas are replaced by beetles and the lifts speed up

If you beat the game and start it over, the goombas turn into beetles. I accomplished this exactly once.

Good timing. By "this" mean "beat the game," not this. It's a pretty random glitch, but I'm surprised nobody else had accidentally discovered it in nearly 30 years.

Edge of the pipe is a safe place.

But in both cases he landed right on the piranha plant while it was all the way out of the pipe, then kind of glided across it and fell off. Is this some kind of technique/glitch I've never seen, or what?

Get the warp whistle and win the game!

If I had to guess I'd say you're thinking of this: http://youtu.be/5-DNt_erbL4?t=14s Which raises the question, this doesn't HAVE to be beatles for the glitch here to work, does it? Wouldn't it work with the original turtles?

yeah but it's goombas at the beginning of the level unless you beat the game; as far as I can tell, the beanstalk will only spawn at the beginning of the level. I can't remember where I heard of the infinite turtle jump one, but it was more-or-less a videogame urban legend since the early 90s, and probably was known before that.

So statistically this is a NIGHTMARE for me. Think of EVERYONE you've ever met, chances are a good majority of them (including grandma and grandpa) have at least played this game. over 40 million copies were sold, so let's go low and say at least 80 million people have played an actual copy, not a ROM or otherwise. While SMB wasn't the only game, it was the most popular, as well as the free one that came with the system, so ostensibly it was the most-played. The odds of doing this aren't that different from Lottery odds, but still, you'd think someone would've found it sooner.

Oh, right, goombas. Good call. I was thinking it was turtles at the beginning. Well that explains that. Good unto you!