A friend and I stumbled onto a little known fact (well, at least to us) when we were reading a Wikipedia entry on the classic hit Super Mario Bros. Apparently there are not one, not two, not three but four different ways to getting extra lives. The first three, grabbing green or orange mushrooms or collecting 100 coins, should be pretty familiar to most players, but the last one, defeating several enemies in a row with a Koopa shell…that’s a new one to me.

So the next time you fire up Super Mario Bros on a NES, or an emulator, or even on the Virtual Console, don’t forget to check out the last technique mentioned above. I leave you with a YouTube video highlighting the infinite 1-up techniques in Super Mario Bros 3. Look out for the Koopa shell example :).