I have this on NES and in SMAS. I beat the NES version once, and the SMAS one a few times. On my Wii version of SMAS, I didn't beat it yet, but I'm getting there. I am not using any warps to I beat it.
Most of the time when I play the NES version (which doesn't work too well and takes a lot of work to start up), I use warps since it doesn't save.
Most of the time when I play the NES version (which doesn't work too well and takes a lot of work to start up), I use warps since it doesn't save.