Some Interesting Places in Super Mario 64
Hello!
Just over a month ago, now, I participated in a video game race against my friend. He played every 2D Mario game and I played every 3D Mario game. It was my first time beating Super Mario 64, and I struggled quite a bit. Videos of the race may be forthcoming. Just yesterday, a very long video came out about Super Mario 64. It’s extremely technical (so no need to go and try to watch it), but it’s interesting to me, at least. And as demonstrated previously, I love using noclip.website, which give you control of the camera in video game worlds and lets you see basically whatever you want.
Inspired by this confluence of Super Mario 64 information and intel, here’s a collection of intersting, isolated, or just plain strange areas in the game. Note: This is using noclip.website’s Super Mario 64 DS view, technically, but what I’m discussing isn’t dependent on game version.
Rainbow Ride’s Entrance
Over the course of my Super Mario 64 playthrough, I just barely managed to gather the required 70 stars to beat the game. There were several courses that I was able to nearly complete, some that I got stuck on, and some that I never visited at all. Rainbow Ride is one such location that I didn’t even go to. Why? Because I had no clue where it was! With my limited knowledge of the game, I had no way of knowing that the entrance was in an alcove on the top floor of the castle, near Tick Tock Clock. Admittedly, I should have known to look around a little more, but by the time I reached the top floor, I was already somewhat annoyed at the game and just wanted to be done sooner rather than later. Luckily, I didn’t end up going to Rainbow Ride, because it probably would have made me even angrier with its lack of floor. Even now, the entrance looks out of place to me…why would you put the entrance up there?
Floating Islands in Whomp’s Fortress
Similarly to Rainbow Ride, I had so much difficulty getting here! Since we’re looking at Super Mario 64 DS, things are a bit different, but I had lots of trouble with the mission Fall Onto the Caged Island. I just couldn’t seem to drop from the owl at the correct time to land in the cage. Besides that, I don’t think I ever figured out how to knock down the wooden beam at the top of the fortress. Is that even something you can do? I think I eventually got the red coin star for Whomp’s Fortress, but it was by long-jumping across the islands haphazardly instead of whatever elegant platforming was clearly intended here. For being most players’ second course, Whomp’s Fortress (and specifically these islands) are such a crazy leap in difficulty.
Balcony in Big Boo’s Haunt
This thing isn’t real. There’s no way it can be. I spent what felt like hours running around the inside of the mansion, the outside of the mansion, and I never even found a clue as to where the balcony in this place was. Even now, I couldn’t really tell you how to get there. As you can imagine, this mission (Big Boo’s Balcony) is where my experience in this course ended. That’s unfortunate, because Big Boo’s Haunt is such a unique course, but I just had too much difficulty and needed to cut my losses and move on to the next course. I would love to know if anyone else has every had as much trouble as I did finding this area. Surely, this mission also ended plenty of other peoples’ playthroughs of Super Mario 64, right? If I couldn’t find it, I don’t think an average 8-year-old could.
Hazy Maze Cave’s Rolling Rocks Room
Of all the courses in Super Mario 64, Hazy Maze Cave is the course that I understood the least, layout-wise. Often times, it felt as though I didn’t know where I was going, or where I was meant to go. The mission titles didn’t feel very descriptive. When I got stars, I didn’t really understand what I did correct, exactly, or even which star I was earning.
All these issues culminated in Watch for Rolling Rocks, which I was completely unable to collect during the race. I’m going to blame that on having seen the classic (to a certain subset of people) Watch for Rolling Rocks 0.5 A Presses video, which set me up to think the mission was way more complicated than it is. All I needed to do, I think, was just wall-jump up to the star location in the corridor you can see in the background of the above image.
What shocked me about this area, specifically, is that I also never stopped long enough to realize that so many paths converge in this room. There’s the walkways in the middle that can lead you to anywhere in the course, but the grates are the ones from A-Maze-Ing Emergency Exit (one of the best-named missions in the game, for record). I think I’d like Hazy Maze Cave a whole lot more on a hypothetical second playthrough.
Bowser’s Sub in Hazy Maze Cave
Alright, am I the only one who thought Bowser’s sub would be a bigger deal than it actually was? I wish that were the case. As it is, Bowser’s sub only appears in a single mission in the game, which is unique, but not necessarily in a good way. I would have loved to do at least one mission inside the sub, maybe, or see it as a common element in other water courses. In the game, it feels more like an exception than the norm, which it absolutely has the potential to be, and that’s a shame. Anyone have good romhack recommendations that use this sub in a more interesting way? That has to exist, right?
The Snowman in Snowman’s Land
This snowman. This evil, despicable, atrocious snowman. The mission Snowman’s Big Head was easily one of the worst stars in the game for me to collect, if not the absolute worst. Almost every bit of platforming leading up to the star is counterintuitive and frustrating, and the worst of it all are the gusts of wind coming from the snowman’s mouth. You have a penguin that moves back and forth giving you about two feet of clearance, and if you're outside that area, you get blown all the way back to the start of the course and lose your hat. More than any other part of Super Mario 64, Snowman’s Land made me want to ragequit and cancel the entire 2D vs. 3D race. I never want to see this guy’s ugly mug again.
Wet-Dry World’s Town
Here is yet another location I never visited because I couldn’t reach it. Unlike Rainbow Ride, though, I knew exactly what I needed to do — talk to the Bob-omb Buddy to open the cannon, use the cannon to blast into the fenced area, and swim down to reach the town. But I was completely unable to do it successfully. I tried everything I could think of from every angle, but nothing seemed to get me high enough to reach the Bob-omb Buddy platform. Watching playthroughs of Super Mario 64 now, it seems like you can just triple jump to the platform, but I’m convinced that it still isn’t possible.
To my knowledge, I was also unable to get the water level in the course to its highest level by entering the painting high enough, which is its own can of worms. That would’ve also aided in me reaching the town. This is certainly something that I’d be willing to go back to the game to experience, because I sure failed at it the first time.
Tall, Tall Mountain’s Slide Trap
I know a lot of random information about games that I’ve never played before. Be they plot elements, character information, level layouts, mechanics, or other things entirely, my brain seems to collect miscellaneous tidbits and store them away somewhere.
Imagine my shock when I attempted to use the slide in Tall, Tall Mountain and ran into a trap! I should know that this exists! I ought to have heard at some point in the past that this slide is designed to trick you, but I hadn’t! That’s why I have to admit that the trap on the slide, in addition to killing me, also gave me a unique moment that doesn’t happen too often in older games — a moment that combines shock, annoyance, and determination to get it right next time. When I came across it in my playthrough during the race, the first thing I said was, “What‽” And that’s still accurate. Despite it setting me back a bit, this is a neat thing that the developers of the game did.
Wiggler’s Basement in Tiny-Huge Island
I’m going to give this room in Super Mario 64 two awards at once:
Hardest Area to Access
Most Stressful Platforming Experience
To begin, I had more difficulty getting to this room than anywhere else in the game. Not only did I have to determine where the entrance to the basement was, I then had to get to the tiny bridge and navigate across it to enter the basement. I eventually worked out a method to fall down on the bridge from higher up on the island, but it was still a major pain to get in.
Then, once I was in, the pain shifted to incredibly stressful platforming to collect the eight red coins scattered around. I died twice while I was in the cave, just trying to collect the coins! Having that happen hurt a lot. But collecting that star at the end was so satisfying…maybe I can also give it an award for that?
Cavern of the Metal Cap
And finally, we have the Cavern of the Metal Cap. This is an area that truly feels out of place, like nothing about it fits together in a way that makes sense in my mind.
To start with, you access this watery area through Hazy Maze Cave. That’s odd — I mean, there is that Metal Cap connection, but surely, you’d get here through Dire, Dire Docks or something, right?
And then, once you leave this area, where do you end up? Coming out of the waterfall outside Princess Peach’s Castle! That’s even weirder. Why would it be back there? Is anyone worried about noxious gases flowing out of the cave and onto the castle grounds? Is the Cavern of the Metal Cap canonically there in, say, Super Mario Galaxy? And then you have games like Super Mario Odyssey, where the Mushroom Kingdom has been completely redesigned…where’s the cavern then? Does it exist?
Basically, this area makes me think much more deeply than I’d like about the continuity of this video game series. It’s a neat area, but I don’t think the designers were going for “existential crisis” when creating it. Very strange, indeed.
