> Japanese or US SMB2? Don't remember it but I've finished it a few times and never > knew about a 127 lives thing at the beginning...
Most probably he's referring to what we know as "The Lost Levels", I don't recall wind levels in Super Mario Bros. 2 (US) but "The Lost Levels" have.
In the game lives are stored into a signed byte, hence in the first Mario it was game over for you if you get more than 127 lives (anything greater than 0x7F is a negative number).
EDIT: Great! I just got out of the minority statistic. I swear if someone would have explained it to me as in this video, I would have done it a long time ago. No fancy "position yourself on the 3rd step" or "do a back jump". This is actually more easier than bomb jumping in Metroid.