A guide to completing World 5-2 in Super Mario Bros 1 for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Explore World 5-2
There is a Bullet Bill cannon at the top of a short flight of stairs. Jump on top of the cannon, then run and jump off the top of the cannon to get the coins on the right.
If you ignore the spring on the right and have room to do a running jump, you can try to run and jump onto the lowest brick platform to get the coins. Or you can jump on the spring, press the jump button when the spring compresses, then try to get on the coin platform as you fall. After you get the coins, you can jump and hit the rightmost brick to get a Mushroom or Flower.
To the right, there is a Paratroopa, and on the stairs, there is a Hammer Brother. If you're Fire Mario, you can hit the Bro with a fireball. If not, you can try to carefully jump on the Bro's head when he's not throwing a hammer. Or you can try to run beneath the Bro when he jumps up.
After you get past the Hammer Bro, there is a Piranha Plant pipe. There are three paths you can take: if you go down the pipe, you reach an underwater area, but you will miss a vine that leads to a lot of coins; if you skip the pipe, you can go up that vine and get the coins; or you can ignore the pipe and the vine, but you will have to face two Hammer Brothers. Click the links below for the walkthrough for each choice:
Pipe
In the underwater area, there is a Blooper in the lower half of the area that you can avoid by staying in the upper half.
To the right of that, there are some coins, but beware of the moving platforms. They keep moving down, and they will push you down into the bottomless pit if you get stuck beneath them.
After the two sets of moving platforms, if you swim below the two pink corals hanging from above, you will find two coins between two pits, but there are a lot of enemies in that area, and the bottomless pits will pull you downward. You can skip it by staying above the platform that the corals are hanging from.
To the right, there are coins on platforms, and the exit from the underwater area.
You'll see two brick platforms to the right. If you get on the lower of the two brick platforms, you can go to the rightmost side, and jump and hit the brick above you to get a Starman. Skip to Continue On below.
No Pipe
If you ignore the pipe and go to the right, watch out for the two Goombas and go up the stairs, jumping over the gap to reach the top.
There is a Hammer Brother on the ?-mark blocks on the right. If you're Fire Mario, try to hit it with a fireball. If not, you can try to hit the ?-mark block that it's standing on.
Go two squares past the ?-mark blocks and jump to reveal a hidden block with a coin in it. You can now choose to go up a vine (which leads to a lot of coins and lets you skip a pair of Hammer Bros) or skip the vine and go through the rest of the level.
Vine
To go up the vine, jump on the hidden block that you revealed (see above) then hit the leftmost brick above you. If you want the coins, don't climb up the vine. Just press right to go to the right side of the vine, then press down to get down off of the vine. Then when you're ready, touch the vine and press up to climb up it.
Go to the right and jump on the pearl platform. Jump up and down to try to get as many coins as you can. At the end, run and jump to try to get the three coins near the bottom of the screen. Skip to Continue On below.
No Vine
If you don't want to go up the vine, you can just jump on top of the bricks above the hidden block that you revealed (see above) to get the coins there, then go down to the ground to get the coins there.
Make a running jump over the pit, but beware of the Bullet Bill that comes out of the cannon up ahead, and the Paratroopa that bounces toward you.
To the right, there is a Piranha Plant pipe, and after that, there are two Hammer Bros. If you're Fire Mario, you can hit them with fireballs. Otherwise, you can try to jump and hit the brick they're standing on, or try to jump on their heads when they don't have a hammer above them. In the uppermost level of bricks, the rightmost brick contains a Starman, so if you managed to defeat the Hammer Brothers, you can try to go up and get that Starman.
Continue On
After a pillar of three blocks, there are three Buzzy Beetles, then two bricks. If you're regular-sized Mario, you can run beneath the bricks to hit them. The left brick contains coins, and the right brick contains a Mushroom or Fire Flower. If you're tall, you can try to run and crouch to go beneath those bricks.
Jump right and land on the brick platform, but you might not want to jump up to the next brick platform because there is a red Koopa Troopa there. Below the brick platform with the red Koopa Troopa, there are two Goombas followed by two Paratroopas.
After that, you can hit the brick to get a Mushroom or Fire Flower. If you jump on top of that brick, you can try to jump up onto the platform up above that has two coins on it.
To the right, a Paratroopa is going down the stairs. Get past the Paratroopa and get on the stairs. Jump over the gaps to go to the top, make a running jump to the right to get onto the goal pole, where you will continue to World 5-3.