Remember a while back that I told you how to get lots of 1ups in the original Super Mario Bros.? Turns out that you can pull off a similar feat in its super-hard sequel, too.
At the very beginning of the game you see this thing.
Which houses a hidden mushroom. Hit it from underneath to pop it out of there.
Then get the koopa over on the right-most block and strategically break the rest like so:
Then, wait until the koopa is about halfway off its platform and jump straight down on it. Done right, you'll start bouncing.
And just like before, you'll eventually start racking up the 1ups!
And the best part is that on the Super NES version, the counter actually stops correctly at 127 lives, so there's no danger of going over and losing them all.
And you're going to need every one of those lives, trust me.