Use these inventory and bonus-game notes alongside the eight world routes. The NES game has no Star Coin collection or modern checklist screen: a full tour means deliberately visiting each course, secret room and optional map branch you want before leaving its world.
Power-ups and map items
- Super Leaf: gives the tail attack, slower descent and temporary flight after filling the P-Meter.
- Tanooki Suit: includes flight and a temporary statue form, activated with Down and the attack button.
- Frog Suit: improves underwater movement and is needed for several current-blocked collectible routes.
- Hammer Suit: throws hammers. Its attack is different from the inventory Hammer that breaks map rocks.
- P-Wing: supplies flight for a stage while the effect is retained.
- Jugem’s Cloud: bypasses a map course without permanently clearing it. Losing a later attempt can put that uncleared course back in your way.
- Music Box: temporarily puts the roaming enemy encounters to sleep.
- Anchor: holds an airship in its map position after a failed attempt.
The map inventory holds twenty-eight items. An additional item replaces the last slot, so use a suitable item before opening another reward chest if the inventory is full. Choose an item on the map rather than expecting to switch freely between stored suits inside a stage.
Goal cards and extra lives
Three goal cards give an extra life. Matching three Mushrooms gives two lives, three Flowers gives three, and three Stars gives five. The spade-panel picture game has the same two-, three- and five-life rewards for completed pictures.
Repeated enemy bounces without touching the floor increase their reward. The Goomba-producing pipes in 1-2 are a convenient practice spot with the raccoon tail’s slow descent. Keep watching the timer, and remember that invincibility does not prevent bottomless falls or crushing.
N-Spade matching boards
The N-mark spade panel uses one of the eight layouts shown below. Reveal a card, note its exact row and column, then select its match. Two mistakes end that visit, so identify the board from several positions before relying on a single familiar card. Correct pairs supply the items or rewards shown.
Compare the opened cards with the diagrams rather than assuming every board starts with the same pair. Each image can be opened separately for a closer view.
N-Spade layout A
N-Spade layout B
N-Spade layout C
N-Spade layout D
N-Spade layout E
N-Spade layout F
N-Spade layout G
N-Spade layout H
Make a Treasure Ship appear
This trick works in Worlds 1, 3, 5 and 6 while a roaming Hammer Bro. encounter remains on the map. Finish a stage with a coin total of 11, 22, 33 and so on, and match the score’s tens digit to that repeated digit. For example, eleven coins needs a score ending in 10. Take the goal on an even timer value so the time bonus does not change that tens digit.
The transformed ship contains coins and an extra life, followed by two Boomerang Bros. Its final item is the replaced encounter’s usual reward. Avoid the scrolling-edge and fall hazards even though most of the ship has no enemies.
Cleared courses and continuing
On the NES, a cleared normal course becomes a passable map panel instead of a replayable course. After Game Over, Continue returns you to the beginning of the current world with inventory items retained and normal courses reset; destroyed fortresses remain destroyed. The SNES and GBA remakes add different save and replay behavior, so their completion menus are not evidence of an NES feature.
Use the world chapters’ previous and next links for the full route, or open the specific guides for Warp Whistles and White Mushroom House coins.