Released alongside Urban Champion, Golf, Donkey Kong Jr. Math, Mach Rider, Solar Jetman and Cobra Triangle is Atlantis no Nazo (The Mystery of Atlantis), a Sunsoft platformer released in Japan in 1986.
Launched in the wake of Super Mario Bros., Atlantis no Nazo was famously compared to Nintendo's game in its advertising campaign, with Sunsoft even including the cheeky line "Ano Super Mario wo koeta!!" ("The game that surpassed Super Mario!!") in its promotional material.
This boast was apparently based not on the game's overall quality but the fact that it had more levels than Super Mario Bros. – a rather underhanded claim, but one that was factually correct, at least. Over the years, Atlantis no Nazo has been labelled "kusoge" ("crap game") by some sectors of the gaming community.
Despite this, Atlantis no Nazo is still held in moderate esteem in Japan and was included on the Classic Mini: Family Computer micro-console (the Japanese version of the NES Classic) in 2016. At one point, the game almost became part of the Pitfall series when Activision began localization work, but Super Pitfall II (as it would have been named) never saw release.
