There's a Mario Maker level that's been played 2.6 million times… but has never been beaten

Some incredibly hard levels in gaming go down in controller-breaking history. Crash Bandicoot's Stormy Ascent, Rainbow Road, and Call of Duty 4's Mile High Club (on the hardest difficulty) all make veins pop up on gamer's forehead, and now this Mario Maker level titled 'Lucky Draw' is entering the fray. As Vice pointed out, you have a one in 7.5 million chance of beating this level, and it's already been played 2.6 million times with no-one being able to beat it. Madness. Pure madness. 

The reason the level is so darn difficult is because Mario can't actually move. He's stuck between two blocks, and all six question mark blocks need to turn to coins, which have to spawn to the right of Mario to make sure he gets over the lava safely. Just in case you needed hard evidence about how hard Lucky Draw is, the video above shows someone trying to complete it for 11 hours. 

Created by Phenotype, Reddit user sass253 did the maths and figured out that it would take until July 4 next year to have a 50% chance of beating the level, or until February 2023 for a 90% chance of beating it. Plus they write that "for a 90% chance of beating the level before Super Mario Maker 2, you'd need to run 47 consoles, 24/7, giving you a throughput of almost seven level attempts per second. For perspective, that many systems combined draw more power than the average American household." Good. God. Let's hope that when/if someone beats Lucky Draw they get footage of it. Just to prove it's possible. 

Want more Nintendo goodness? Here's everything you need to know about Pokemon Sleep and the new Detective Pikachu game for Nintendo Switch, or look below to see what's going on this week in the world of TV, movies, and games!

Zoe Delahunty-Light

While here at GamesRadar, Zoe was a features writer and video presenter for us. She's since flown the coop and gone on to work at Eurogamer where she's a video producer, and also runs her own Twitch and YouTube channels. She specialises in huge open-world games, true crime, and lore deep-dives.