- Alternative Character Interpretation:
- Is the Personalization A.I. genuinely a tormented Death Seeker as suggested by snippets of its dialogue, or is it deploying a Wounded Gazelle Gambit to manipulate the player for its own gain?
- Who is the Shadowy Figure, why does he attack you in several areas, why does touching him crash the game like that of the Faceless Marios, and what is his significance? Is he yet another avatar of the A.I. specifically punishing you for going to places you weren't meant to be in? Is he some hostile leftover code reanimated by the game? Or, is he a vengeful copy of Mario that had something happen to leave him in his current state?
- Anti-Climax Boss: The final Bowser battle, coming after the grueling Randomizer Realm, is significantly easier than even the final Bowser battle from the original Super Mario 64. The bombs you have to toss Bowser into are very close to the battlefield, some even right on it, so you will not have to throw him too far, and the battlefield is big and wide enough to give you easy room to avoid his attacks.
- Awesome Music:
- Nebula Castle Lobby's theme
is a beautiful rendition of the castle theme which gives it a sensation of comfort inside this weird place. - Ancient City's theme
is a solemn rearrangement of Wet-Dry World's theme which fits the mysteries around the said city. The night version
aplifies this sensation by slowing the theme down. - Parallel Lobby's theme
is a reprise of Peach's Castle
for Nintendo GameCube demo, and it sounds like a MIDI lullaby. - Eel Graveyard's theme
is an Ominous Music Box Tune made with Dire Dire Docks' theme. - Bowser's Hallway
is a funky rendition of Bowser's battle theme which adds to the mystery of the area. - Desert Maze's theme
is a reprise of the desert theme for Super Mario World levels of Super Mario Maker 2 with Lethal Lava Land/Shifting Sand Land MIDI sounds, and it fits extremely well. - Floor 3B's theme
is a simple yet effective reprise of Peach's castle theme, only pitched down and slowed down, giving it an uncanny feeling. - Snowing Snow Land's theme
is a reprise of Cool Cool Mountain which changes the vanilla game's interpretation of the Leitmotif for Bob-Omb Battlefield's and slightly pitches it down, giving it a more melancholic sound. - Cold, Cold Crevasse's original theme
is a banging remix of Thwomp's Volcano, and dear god, does it sound AMAZING in the Nintendo 64 soundfont. The theme that replaced it
isn't half bad either, being a rather calming, yet Dark Reprise of Snowing Snow Land's theme. - Uncanny Moat's theme
may just be the vanilla Slider theme in minor key, but that doesn't make it sound any less goofy. In fact, it makes it sound almost entirely different! - Wet-Dry Docks' theme
is an ambient reprise of Wet-Dry World's theme with a melancholic vibe. - Jolly Roger Coastline's theme
is a slowed down and pitched up reprise of Jolly Roger Bay's theme that sounds very relaxing. - Dire Dire Victory
is a pretty sad rendition of the original credits theme, fittingly melancholy for the hack’s Bittersweet Ending.
- Nebula Castle Lobby's theme
- Crosses the Line Twice:
- "4th Floor" houses a kitchen with an oven. Curious players will find that this oven has an active stovetop that functions similarly to lava. As the stove hood is low, it's easy to get caught in a fatal Cycle of Hurting, just from brushing against the stove hood and falling back onto the stovetop. The absurdity of Mario/Luigi dying like this from a live stovetop is so frustrating, it wraps back around to being hilarious enough to cushion the blow of getting lost in the castle again (or even getting a game over).
- In the "Twisted Castle Ground", you can find a drowned corpse of Mario in the moat, which has collision detection. It does a decent job of being creepy. However, because the corpse is slightly bigger than Mario's in-game model, it's actually possible to jump onto it and even sleep on it. The fact Mario takes to sleeping on his own corpse all fine and dandy is hilarious enough, and it gets even funnier in a macabre fashion if you're playing as Luigi while doing so.
- Demonic Spiders:
- Blaargs will make you glad Super Mario 64 dummied them out in the end, as they're Invincible Minor Minions placed in pools of lava who spray a stream of lingering fire should Mario draw near. The levels that feature them tend to have tighter spaces, and more perilous platforming, making provoking them all the more easy. Not even riding on a shell guarantees safety, as you can simply crash right into them and lose your shell (and the level design actively uses this against you by featuring Blaargs as obstacles in certain shell-riding sections). If this happens and you have no safe ground to land on, kiss one of your lives a boiling hot goodbye in advance.
- Despite their unassuming appearances, Goomba Stacks are far more aggressive than their individual cousins, rushing down Mario once he's spotted, and strips three slices of health on hit. If you don't commit to killing every Goomba in the stack, they'll eventually regenerate back to their original height.
- Event-Obscuring Camera:
- The camera is a hazard in itself. In Cold, Cold Crevasse, for example, the player must avoid the spin-glide from jumping on Spindrifts or else the camera will point straight upwards the whole time in what's a platforming course set over bottomless pits.
- The "SGI Indy" stage is set on the motherboard used for Nintendo 64 game development, and most of its terrain functions as insta-killing quicksand. The camera in the level is always aimed at a low angle that blends platforms together and makes it very difficult to judge the distance for jumping between them.
- Good Bad Bugs: Many levels in the game teleport you in the Plexal Lobby if you lose a life, even going through negative numbers of lives. This can be used to "gain" more lives if you tend to die often.
- Heartwarming Moments: A Meta example. Though it was far from the intended meaning behind B3313, the ROM hack had actually helped YouTuber blueknot cope with his depression
, and that the ever-shifting world gave him a reason to get out of bed each morning. It also helped him begin recovering from said depression, the impact of which openly touched ChrisRLillo's heart as shared in his comment on the video.
blueknot: Thank you, Chris and your wonderful team! Just know, even though most likely unintentional, you have deeply touched at least one person out there, and I will forever be grateful for that!
ChrisRLillo: (via a comment) i'm so happy and thankful to know that something i made as a hobby helped someone in this way, the hours i spent making this thing are worth it if it helped somebody, i know how bad depression can be, but you got this brotha
much love, and stay strong
ChrisRLillo: (via a comment) i'm so happy and thankful to know that something i made as a hobby helped someone in this way, the hours i spent making this thing are worth it if it helped somebody, i know how bad depression can be, but you got this brotha
much love, and stay strong
- Hilarious in Hindsight: An all black, red eyed, floating Mario that chases after you isn't as scary in this hack now that an official Mario game has the exact same event happen, although that one doesn't crash your game.note
- Narm:
- In scenes where the distorted "infinite staircase" music plays and you still have control, if you manage to survive long enough to not crash the game, the music eventually becomes more and more static-like... then it loops back into the beginning again, which definitely doesn't sound as scary as it's supposed to be anymore.
- The faceless Mario jumpscare scene also has the summons circle in place a few seconds before chasing you. This is because they're reskinned 1-UP mushrooms, but this just makes the whole things a lot...weirder. You don't see this in the room with "GET OUT" flashing as they just come out from everywhere instead, which is definitely scarier than this.
- The Chuckya model with toad faces that appears when you approach a certain faceless Toad is meant to be a jumpscare, but its reference to the famous BUP 64 meme makes it less so for many players.
- Nightmare Retardant: While Mario retains his drowning animation here, his death sound for it on the other hand was replaced with his standard death sound; a cheesy Big "NO!".
- Salvaged Gameplay Mechanic:
- The Wing Cap receives a much-needed buff, giving Mario infinite Video Game Flight. The original physics-based flight system is instead activated when Mario fires out of a cannon, and after Mario's Wing Cap runs out mid-flight, which comes in handy for steering Mario away from Bottomless Pits and lava, should that ever happen.
- More levels, including the Hub Levels, are designed with the caps in mind, featuring them more often and making further use of their gimmicks.
- Scrappy Mechanic: Needless to say, players did not enjoy being forced back to the Plexal Lobby after collecting a Power Star, as it lead to needless backtracking in a game that makes navigation tedious to begin with. Fortunately, V1.0 fixed this, as players are now sent to the level entrance they came from like normal.
- That One Level:
- If War Is Hell, then "Ice-Cold Warzone" is that hell. It's Bob-Omb Battlefield in the form of a Slippy-Slidey Ice World, except there are Goombas, Bob-Ombs, Amps, Chuckyas and Flame Throwers everywhere. It goes from "reasonably challenging" to "hairpulling" if you're playing in daytime, since the cannons start shooting bubbles like there's no tomorrow, exploiting said bubbles' ability to track where you're going. While the bubbles themselves only inflict Scratch Damage, that won't matter if your position is getting hammered by them. Prepare to run through "Bob-omb Battlefield (Beta)"note , "River Mountain"note and "Dark Downtown" all over again if you get unlucky and die. At least there's only one star to grab here, and one other level behind this.
- "Blazing Bullet Factory" starts with a Rise to the Challenge, and it has thin platforms, inconveniently placed Bullet Bill blasters, Bullies to knock you off the platforms, and fire jets. You will feel Mario/Luigi's buttocks getting incinerated by the rising lava below without the Metal Cap to ease the difficulty.
- "SGI Indy" is the motherboard of the titular workstation used to develop Super Mario 64. The circuit boards' flooring are One-Hit Kill quicksand, and the safe grey and black platforms above them are small, and scattered across, so you'll have to do a lot of precise platforming. The camera is among your worst enemies here, as it's forced at a low angle that makes gauging your distance more infuriating than it should be. Worse still, two out of the three stars here require lengthy platforming through the circuit boards. Slip up while going for either of those stars, and you're booted out of the level.
- "wf.z64" is a homage to SM64.z64 that's based on Whomp's Fortress, though thankfully you won't find M'' ,:;, (or any other nasties) here. What you will find is that you need to scale the tower located in the center of the level to reveal a star, under a strict time limit of 43 seconds that instantly kills Mario/Luigi once it's reached. The level is shrouded in darkness that makes navigation rough, and almost all platforms are absent, meaning that advanced jump tricks are crucial to ascending up to the tower in a timely manner. Unlike the other examples here, this level cannot be skipped over, as the star here is one of the 13 Red Stars needed to unlock the Randomizer Realm, and thus beat the game.
- "Corrupted Challenge" is a post-game level dedicated to a famous Self-Imposed Challenge in the vanilla game involving the homing 1-Up Mushroom. Once you spawn in, a homing 1-Up Mushroom spawns in behind you, and picking it up kills you as expected. The level is a pitch-black void, with darkened platforms to make navigation more difficult, Bottomless Pits galore, and a confusing layout riddled with dead ends designed to make you easy pickings for the 1-Up Mushroomnote . Expect to die a couple of times to the 1-Up before you get the hang of it all.
