The 20th Star

Nightmare Through the Tree of Dreams

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Anxious for a sign of Cheezepin's "Yoshi Commits Tax Fraud" hack, I logged onto the romhacking site and sorted by new. I figured that even if it wasn't out, perhaps there was another hack that would seem interesting. Being a huge fan of Kaze's "SM64 Ocarina of Time", the description for "The Tree of Dreams" piqued my interest when it compared itself to a Zelda dungeon. Released only a few days earlier at the beginning of 2023, it appeared that stars acted as keys to progress through the game. From the screenshots too, it appeared to have some impressive custom assets, like its prominent tree.

I could see its rating was weak and I was only the 40th download, but small sample sizes don't mean much -- perhaps the rater was a traditionalist who was unimpressed by hacks with interesting changes to the formula.

I started the game and began to explore -- it didn't take me long before finding the 3, 16, and 17 star doors. But I also couldn't find any stars either. Jumping into a picnic basket took me to a level that required the wing cap, while another hole led to a sandpit that a sign said needed a shell to progress, but there was no shell in sight.

I did have at least one starting place for a star: the red coins in the hub. They appeared to serve as a tutorial for some advanced techniques, like kicking up a steep slope, or slide kicking to gain brief immunity from deadly quicksand. I actually was unaware of the slide kick method, so this was quite an insight for me. After some searching, the first star was mine.

Also available to me was a pit over in the corner of the hub, which led to a slide. It was actually a pretty tough slide, with precarious pits and enemies blocking your way, so I had previously figured I'd come back to it later, but with no where else to turn, the slide it was. After observing the layout of the level, I realized it would be a lot easier just to jump straight to the end of the slide than to actually go down it -- a strange oversight I thought. After a couple failures at this, I was successful in reaching the bottom of the slide, but oddly enough, there was no star down there, and the pipe just led back to the hub. Had I missed something? Was there a star hiding in the bushes at the bottom? Did the game have some way of checking that I cheated at the slide?

I tried again, but this time I passed through a coin on my way down and a number appeared -- despite the coins being yellow, it became clear that these were secrets that were placed in the same areas as the coins. Finally I had a goal, but now came the challenge of completing the slide. Taking a slower pace this time to collect the coins, I realized there were literal flat areas of the slide that you could stop and stand on. With that, the task became much simpler, as these flat sections let me control myself on my way down. Star number 2 was mine.

But where was the third star? I searched up and down the tree, climbing its tire swing, navigating the tricky log rolls, searching all around, but to no avail. I had found a secret while searching for red coins, but had not found any of the others, so I had assumed they might be in some inaccessible area to me. After all, how could I miss 4 other secrets?

I had missed 4 other secrets. Two in alcoves while climbing the tree, one in the moat around it (the location was hinted at by a series of coins). The last was even more challenging than the rest. At this point, I was growing frustrated with the game and my lack of progress. I hadn't even managed to reach a real level, yet I was stuck. The secrets here were my only lead, so I knew the last had to be somewhere. Wandering around and around, I eventually noticed an alcove halfway up a tall blue structure. "Aha!" I exclaimed, and I climbed the blue structure (it was a giant children's slide, which I feel like I should have internalized way earlier), but upon trying to jump down and air kick into the alcove, I realized the slide blocked the way. I retreated back to the ground to try and triple jump wall kick up, but even that was not working. Was this really a secret? I began doubting myself, but within a few minutes, a solution dawned on me. There was a switch on the other side of the blue structure which made some wooden platforms appear, but perhaps it also made additional platforms appear on the other side to help reach the alcove. I tried it and I was right -- the third star was mine, and I could finally access the 3-star door.

I expected at this point that things would go a lot smoothly from this point out. The game would open up perhaps and I might have some options for how to continue. Besides, it was a fun challenge in a way to figure out exactly what 3 stars were accessible at the beginning of the game, one that you wouldn't get in most Mario hacks.

But I was treated to a small dungeon and a 4-star door. I guess we were still on a linear path. Oh well, I could understand -- the only way the developer could control your progress and keep doors locked was to know all the stars you had, otherwise doors would serve no barrier. The area in here was pretty deadly, and I received my first game over, which consisted of the game crashing. I figured this was probably my fault for not wanting to download Glide or Parallel Launcher and playing on P64 instead. Not a big deal, I relaunched the game, was slightly annoyed by the small trek back to the 3-star door, but it didn't take too long.

The dungeon required you to complete 5 jumping challenges to reach 5 secrets. They were challenging, but not too bad. Though at one point I did clip through a wall and fall out of bounds on trying to do a triple jump wall jump off a pushable box, which reset my progress with the death. I also found myself fighting with the camera a lot too, as the area had some small interior sections, but having a terrible camera was a symptom of every Mario hack, even the good ones that programmed in their own camera. It was just something you had to accept. A few attempts later, the fourth star was mine, but upon travelling through the 4-star door, I was hit with my first insurmountable roadblock.

I was in a small hallway, most of it being sand. At the other end, a platform existed that would be reachable by perhaps a double jump if it weren't for the sand below. To my left and right, a 5 and 9 star door, as well as a sign informing you that those doors' purpose was for shortcuts on the event of a game over, and that the sand in front of you was not deadly (because it was strangely dark like it was).

I made my way across the sand to the other side, but like I said, the platform above me seemed unreachable. At best, with a lucky jump out of the sand, I could do a weak walljump off the wall, but it sent me in the wrong direction, away from the wall. If I could just wallkick off the left or right wall, I might be able to get up, but alas, those walls were actually ceilings, and couldn't be used to my advantage. I kept trying and trying, but it seemed like there either had to be something I was missing, or some advanced technique that I didn't know about. The latter here seemed strange -- why would the game teach me advanced techniques as simple as jump-kicking up a slope but not how to make a high jump off of sand?

If only I had just one more star, I could access the 5-star door and unlock more of the game. But it seemed like my progress was being carefully controlled. I then had an idea, remembering how I had clipped and fallen to my death earlier -- the wall next to the 5-star door seemed incredibly thin, and it was strangely sloped as well. Could I just clip through it?

With good fortune, it was very quick and easy for me to make the clip, doing so out of a dive roll, almost accidentally. I was through! There was a warp here, and I figured that it would maybe take me to a star and permanently allow me to progress. I was right, in a way -- there was a star visible just across a series of jumps on koopas over deadly quicksand. If I could just make the --

I died. I cursed the game, because there was no certainty that I would even be able to clip the 5-star door again. I tried to recreate what I did to abject failure. Perhaps after 5-10 minutes though, I managed it again. I was nervous now, because I didn't want to fail this jump. But three koopa-squashes were in the cards for me, and the fifth star was now mine!

I was curious though if there was some passage that I had missed earlier, so I backtracked until I got to the platform that I couldn't reach before. I saw no secret passageway around me, so it left me confused about the intended method, though I figured I'd let bygones be bygones and moved on to the next area.

This area was actually somewhat open-ended. It informed me that there were 4 stars in the room, and I could get them in any order. Of course, you'd need all of them to move on through the 9-star door on the other side of the room. The first challenge I decided to take on was a trek across some thwomp-like enemies: a roller and two crushers. Staying atop the roller as it moved across some quicksand was perhaps the hardest challenge I had faced yet, as time after time I fell and fell. Eventually I learned to balance my movement with air kicks and by staying slightly ahead of the roller, but the crusher thwomp-type enemy would move back and forth and up and down, so the final jump off the roller required some finesse. A long jump was hard to perform too, because the roller wouldn't give you too much time before rolling back to where it came from. Attempt after attempt I failed, until I finally managed to ledge grab the crusher (look idk what these guys are called, and I don't feel like looking it up because I'm kind of comfortable with where my hands are on my keyboard and I'd have to move all the way over to the mouse and etc...).

Anyway, I was lucky to make the jumps across the crushers first try, and the sixth star was mine. At this point I was actually really appreciating the non-stop nature of the game. It was relatively uncommon in romhacks, and even more uncommon was this kind of interlocked, cavernous exploration style. That exploration was somewhat hampered by the fact that you had lives and could game over, resetting your position, but I guess that's what the shortcuts were for.

Star 7 I found to be really clever actually. Sand prevented you from reaching a star on top of a pillar, but if you looked carefully, there was a very, very tiny pyramid in the ground for you to triple jump off of. It was a difficult maneuver, but you only had to perform it once, and there was little punishment for failure, so it didn't frustrate me.

Star 8 was a bully battle on a pool table. I for some reason thought the billiards' surface was lava-like so I stayed on the edge of the table, instead opting to lure the bullies to their deaths instead of facing them directly. It worked without too much trouble, until the big bully appeared, who was more difficult to trick. So I took the risk and jumped down, and upon realizing the floor was not in fact lava, the big bully was pretty easy to defeat.

Star 9 did frustrate me a bit. It had you kick a big bully across down a hallway that had a narrow path of grass on it, while the left and right sides of that path were sand. The sand wouldn't kill you, but it made it difficult to move and kick the bully, as it would move past you and run back to its home. Now, this wouldn't be too much of an issue if it weren't for the flame generating balls. Avoiding the fire coming toward you, as well as directing the bully on the path in just the right way was frustrating, but after dropping the bully in the first hole (of a multi-story challenge), the bully actually began walking against the wall, trying to get back to its own home, which was in the same direction as I was trying to get it to. So that fortunately made the process a bit easier since the bully wasn't resetting my progress when I failed to kick it. After a bit, star 9 was mine, and I made progress through another star door.

A short race with Koopa the Quick had me having to jump across a very narrow pathway in quick time, but seeing as the whole thing was 6 seconds I didn't find it too bad. Upon winning, Koopa the Quick commented that after I got the next star, I could go and use his nephew's remains to progress through the next area and he wouldn't mind, a joke which I actually found kind of funny. Usually the dark jokes in these romhacks fall flat for me -- I think the tone of the games (as in, the original Super Mario 64 and other Nintendo games, i.e. family friendly) should generally be kept, and cussing and inappropriate humor just makes the games weaker. I mean, unless its actually funny, which it usually isn't. But this time it was, simply because yeah, it was pointing out the absurdity of Mario stomping and riding around on Koopa shells while still interacting with Koopa characters.

Once you got the shell, you traveled back across the path you raced on with it, up a small slide, and then used it to get to a platform above water that was previously inaccessible. Eventually, you come to a dead-end and have to abandon the shell, diving underwater through a swimming challenge which had you collecting coins to stay breathing. On the other side of the tunnel, you came up into an area with another shell challenge; this time, jumping across some of those thwomp-like crusher enemies with the shell to reach a lava platform, and then from there, hitting a switch, jumping on some wooden platforms (or are they corks?, idk), and finally reaching a star (#11). This was quite difficult and I did fail a few times, which did frustrate me because I had to go grab the Koopa shell again, all the way back in the Koopa the Quick area, then go through the underwater tunnel again, and so on, but it wasn't difficult enough that I wanted to use save states, at least not yet.

With the 11th star I now had access to a new door a ways back in the dungeon. I was liking the way that you were going back to previous areas to find more things, like you might in a Metroid game or Zelda dungeon. This time there was a challenging switch race requiring the shell, but first you had to go through a door (which you couldn't take the shell through). There was a regenerating shell box (the regenerating part being much appreciated) on the other side, but there wasn't enough time to hit the box and then navigate upon it, so you had to hit the box first, then hit the switch, then go through the door and hope the shell was in a convenient place for you to hop onto it. Completing this took you to another open-ended, 4 star area.

The first star I got involved finding 5 secrets among 5 floating inverted pyramid platforms. The secrets weren't marked, so it was tricky to find them, especially before you knew they were there. The platforms were designed like steps, and the ball flame generator enemies were there to burn you as you tried to jump up the tilting platforms. But to ease with understanding the problem, the secrets on the bottom were easier to find than the ones on the top, which required you to put your weight on the platform for long enough to displace yourself downward and reach the secret. It was a challenge, and yes, kind of frustrating (as the flame generating enemies are always pretty annoying), but it wasn't the most difficult among them.

More frustrating though was a ride across a meshed platform through the green poison-lava stuff. Mostly due to camera issues. Even being in close-up Mario cam wasn't enough to save you this time, as the spaces were cramped and the margins so narrow that you would easily lose track of yourself and burn to death. The same issue applied to the other star in the area, where you had to navigate through a small moving maze of vertically oriented Bowser sliding puzzle pieces (while on a shell), and the spaces were cramped so you had to use close-up Mario cam, but if you did that, then you couldn't see behind you. The puzzle pieces would move, and if they hit you, you'd lose your shell and die. But again, the maze was small so the challenge was short.

The hardest challenge in this area were the 8 red coins. 4 of them were fairly trivial, only involving as much as spinning around an eye or being careful not to ride your shell into a volcano. One was complicated, but once you learned the process, not too difficult -- you had to jump into an area and lose your shell, then triple jump off a moving mesh platform into a small alcove -- something that was tricky to figure out the first time, but subsequently was a lot easier. Another challenge had me failing it a lot, but the punishment for failure was minor -- you had to jump across some mesh platforms with the shell to reach a coin, but falling just meant having to climb back up a hill to try again, and usually did not spell death.

Two red coins did spell constant death though. A tricky series of jumps up some rotating fire bars with only a small radius for landing, at an acute angle, which meant you had to stop and turn before jumping again. It was also seemingly meant to be done on shell because it was above the green-lava-poison, but I don't think I ever managed to start and finish this red coin still on the shell. I realized it was easier to just lava damage up to the third platform where the coin was, then long jump back to safety, taking some fall damage in the process. In the end you were left with little health, but some coins got you back up to speed.

The last coin was on some bridges arranged in steps that were opening and closing. Now, you'd think because these bridges are only semi-solid (meaning you can go through them on the bottom and on the sides) that this challenge would be fairly easy, but I was having the most difficulty with it. The issue was the timing window was pretty short, so you'd pretty much have to wait out a cycle on one of the bridges while it was tilted upward. On the walls were lava, and touching them meant losing your shell and meeting your doom. Unlike with others areas too, there was no safety net on failure. You could reach a standable section on top of the wall there, but there was nowhere to go without a shell. At best you could damage burn yourself once over to a nearby volcano, but it was difficult to climb shelless, so this virtually meant your death. After quite a number of attempts though, I managed to get all the coins in a single go, securing my 15th star.

With that, it was boss time, which was with King Whomp. A rather easy fight, with only a minor setback being that the ground was sand, so jumping atop him was made just slightly more difficult. Upon defeating Whomp though, you realize the real challenge was not defeating him, but getting his star. For deadly quicksand surrounds your area, and you could only escape before by using Whomp himself as a platform. With him dead, you're dead too. There was a purple switch that would briefly spawn some platforms, but you had to be quick enough to press it, deal a killing blow to Whomp, then jump back to the star. I couldn't decide if this idea was clever or frustrating.

16 stars brought me back to the hub, with another door to explore. This door led to the sewers with a red coin challenge. What you'd think would be easy is made difficult because the water is poisonous, meaning your health drains twice as quick and doesn't heal you upon surfacing. Also, the star appears back at the entrance so you have to make sure as you swim through the water that you leave enough coins to collect on the way back. Again, like Whomp, I can't decide between this being clever or frustrating.

On the 17th star I could finally climb the tree, but a key door blocked me from accessing the interior. Another door at the top led to a shell, and so I could now explore the hole which I couldn't earlier. More metroidvania elements, which I found enjoyable. But this is the section that finally broke me. The shell navigation section wasn't too difficult, but you eventually go into a sub-level which is brutal.

It starts with you having to kick down three wooden planks in a row over a death floor. Easy enough right? Haha, actually, no. I died so many times to this, it's ridiculous. Fortunately, dying at this point loses little progress; you're just kicked back to the end of the shell section so you can pretty much go right back into the sub-level, and a 1-up mushroom is even there to prevent game overs (though sometimes you'll die trying to get this 1-up).

What made the plank kicking difficult is your own kickback. The planks were angled from each other, so you'd go flying in the other direction, usually to your doom. Sometimes I'd just dive into the plank instead of kicking it. Other times, I'd fall straight down, where a gap between one plank and the next would be your doom. I guess I was unaware of optimal plank kicking. I had a lot of difficulty with it because I was trying to kick in the parallel direction as the plank, which was exactly what was sending me to my doom. But the actual strategy I should have been using, and eventually learned through much trial and error, was just to kick in the center of the plank. Even after knowing this though, I died frequently. After a minorly dangerous winding path you come to two sliced avocado looking things, and this is the specific obstacle that did me in.

So it's not even clear exactly what these things are when you're looking at them. You can't tell if they're ground or lava, or whatever. Your first attempt is probably going to be trying to jump on one of them, realizing it's lava, and dying. Second attempt is probably you trying to cheese this section by doing a lava boost over to the next platform and sacrificing a hit, but there's not, say, invisible walls to prevent any of that -- instead the literal death plane blocks you directly.

If you squint though, you can see some rotating bridges rotating around the interior of the sliced avocados, and you'll eventually see where you're supposed to gain an opening. Problem is, this jump is really tough, especially considering what you'd been through in the previous section. I gave up here. I save stated. I was not having this.

And I was probably right too, because I'd still be there now if I didn't. Even with save states, it took me dozens of times before even managing to land on this bridge platform that's inside this avocado shaped thing. The issue is that you've got to land on the bridge at a perpendicular angle to it, and if you over or undershoot you'll either burn or fall to your death. After that, you've got to make a few more jumps from one bridge to another, then some jumps over some hazards as the bridge rotates, and these are more standard difficulty, but they manage to compound the difficulty that's already there.

The level's not even done after that though. You've got some jumps over death-sand to attend to, inside of a small area where the ground underneath is moving. It's not insanely difficult, but given what you would have just gone through, it's that much harder, especially because you've got to do triple jump dives in a pretty small area to get through. Once through there, you get to Bowser, which is kind of cute because you essentially throw him to the end of a golf course where there's a mine in the hole.

First key in hand, I'm able to enter the tree's interior and the second area of the game. Looking around this area, there are a few doors -- 20, 35, I think 47. So I figure I need to collect three stars in the area. There are some red coins strewn about, but a sign says I would need both blue and green caps to get them all, and I had neither. There was a neat little puzzle combat challenge though involving an aquarium with five piranha plants inside, having you figure out ways to get the water level to where you wanted it to be to reach certain sections -- this was a good star.

Contrast that though to the frustration of the next star, which was still frustrating even with my liberal use of save states. In order to reach a fight with the Big Boo, you had to open a bookshelf by kicking the three books in. In order to kick in each book, you had to complete a different jumping challenge, two moderately difficult and one annoyingly so. The two moderates had you jumping up tilting platforms or jumping across falling ones, all while dodging books. The most difficult had you jump across some slanted cork boxes on a timer, which was hardest because of the way you'd need to start a triple jump from the first box instead of the ground, as well as the final slanted box being particularly hard to stand on. Two issues compounded this further -- I think there's an order you have to hit these books in. I think. I don't even know. I'd hit a book, and then two seconds later it'd reappear, and I wasn't sure if I was just hitting them out of sequence or if I had just failed to hit it, or even if that was normal behavior.

Then the second issue was the fall damage you'd take in this area, as well as the damage from the enemy books. There weren't any coins reachable from where you were, so your health was limited, and given the number of times you might try this (I initially did try to do this star without save states), it meant death. Especially because I don't think I ever managed even a single time to hit the book from the falling platforms without then falling and taking some damage myself. After a lot of tries, the door opened, and the Boo fight was pretty simple.

19 stars. I just needed one more for progress. But search and search I did, but to no avail. Standing atop a cutting saw in one corner of the room took you to a level with red coins, but it was clear you'd need the blue cap to complete it. I explored around that level, including an underwater section, but I didn't find a blue switch. Another path in the second hub took you through a pretty difficult timed platform challenge involving two tricky triple jumps, up to a level with a slide.

The slide here was pretty simple compared to the first slide way earlier -- just straight paths, flat portions for you to stop at the end of each, with red coins placed in easy-to-get locations, and no enemies within the level. All that was fine, until you get the last coin, and perhaps I should have been weary given the green cap that had appeared at the beginning of the level. The star appeared in an alcove underneath the slide, seemingly unreachable without pressing a switch to spawn wooden platforms. Problem was, the switch was in water, so I couldn't press it without the metal cap. I was aware of how speedrunners will press the switch in Hazy Maze Cave to get a star there without the metal cap, but trying to do that here wasn't working for me. It seemed possible because there was shallow water, but I had no success, so I retreated back to the hub, to be stuck.

I considered some other options -- I noticed on the pause screen that the sewer level was in an actual level instead of being a secret star like all the others had been. Perhaps then I could obtain a 100 coin star in that level? I went back and only managed to get 72 coins. OK, but maybe I missed something on the way to Bowser. I was heading back that way before I realized I really didn't feel like getting past the avocados again.

Maybe I missed something in the saw level that I thought I'd need the blue cap for? I headed back there, and read a sign that I hadn't before: "Check the piles of sawdust, and there are secrets in this snowfield." The first part just led to a red coin, but upon further inspection there were a bunch of secrets randomly strewn about a snowfield. I was elated. Had I finally found a way to unstuck myself? I prayed all 5 secrets would be obtainable, and it took some searching, but I did it. The 20th star appeared.

"It's kind of high up though, innit?" I thought. "Really stretching the player here. Oh well, just gotta do a triple jump ground pound..." -- wait. That didn't work. I tried again. I was so close, but just couldn't reach the star. But I kept trying, because there were no higher platforms anywhere in the vicinity, and having blue or green caps here didn't seem like it would help you -- it'd be the same challenge either way.

Five minutes of attempts yielded nothing. Nothing. How could this be? Was there some cannon somewhere in the level? That was the only thing I could think of. Perhaps in one of the sawdust piles? Nothing.

I had another terrible thought. There was an underwater section, with a purple switch hidden in an alcove inside. The switch was only pressable though, of course, with the metal cap. I wasn't certain, but I figured the solution had to involve that switch -- which meant I was barking up the wrong tree.

Back to the hub. I was despondent at this point. I felt like I had tried nearly everything. I couldn't find another star, and I was beginning to doubt that the hack was even completable. You'd think the romhack would've been play-tested, but this wasn't Nintendo with Mario Maker here; there was no guarantee that what you were playing was actually feasible (after all, one of the first signs in the game, marking the path to the first slide, misspells "down" as "donw"). Certainly, with some advanced techniques the likes of Pannenkoek, some of those stars that I had spawned could be obtainable, but I have nearly no experience TASing, and don't even know where to start when it comes to cloning objects, or even how to effectively backwards long jump.

Using Lakitu camera, I peered on the other side of some of the star door walls. The 20-star door didn't seem like it led anywhere -- it was a place of all white. I doubted trying to clip that wall would do much good for me. However, the 35-star door had a courtyard with some boos behind it. Maybe if I could get in there, I could find a star and make some progress? It was a longshot, because the wall here might've been thin, but it was also flat, so I doubted my ability to just walk right through it.

I tried anyway though, deciding to backwards long jump against the door. The boo actually flew over to me, but couldn't go through the door, instead clipping through it a slight amount to the other side. It may have been pushing me toward the ground, or pushing me some way or another, because after a few minutes of attempts and bouncing off the door, floor, and boo, I made it through. I was happy, but cautious -- was there anything even in here for me?

My first sight was a 50-star door, which sunk my heart in. My second sight was a green cap box, translucent like ever. My heart sunk further. It seemed the only purpose of the room was to get a single red coin. Had God forsaken me?

I jumped up some rotating platforms to get to a flower and look around to observe closer, but upon doing so, I disappeared. I warped! A new level! With a whole new level, I'd have to find something inside, right?

I was in a small field, lava on one end, a koopa in front of me. I took a step forward and -- the game froze. Huh? Was the game just saving or momentarily pausing? ...

...

No, it was frozen. Perhaps this was the end of the line for me. Even if I did make progress, the game would always freeze here anyway. I briefly flirted with the idea to download Glide, but discarded it. Would my save state even be compatible with it? I wouldn't want to do the door clip again.

Maybe this was a one-time glitch though. I did have a save state just before entering the level, so I reloaded and the same thing happened again. A consistent error, unfortunately. I wanted to know what was causing the bug though, so I persisted. Was it a loading error? Was turning the camera around causing some previously culled object to be rendered and then freezing the game? I hobbled over to the back of the level without turning the camera, managing to even get a shell and picking up a single coin before the game froze. This was not good; the game was even freezing without me moving the camera.

OK, but it looked like I could walk to the back of the level just fine, as long as I -- no, it froze again. Uhhhhh, that wasn't happening before?

I tried again, this time jumping around instead of walking. To my surprise, the game wasn't freezing! I could even turn the camera around, collect the shell, explore the small area I was confined to -- as long as I didn't pick up a coin or walk. Hmm, this was an interesting challenge. Of course, who's to say if there was any stability to this process, but I vowed to press forward as far as I could.

Issue was, without the caps, that wasn't very far. My best chance for making more progress appeared to be a room with all lava for walls and an open ceiling. If I could get two good lava boosts and a good trajectory, I could maybe make it a bit higher in the level, as long as the game didn't freeze in the process. It did take a few tries, but I eventually did manage to ascend.

More barriers seemed to confine me though -- mesh walls that required the blue cap to pass. My only route appeared up a quicksand path with those big bowling balls rolling down it. Something that would be challenging enough without having to worry about the game freezing if I walked instead of jumped. Well, at least I had save states.

Really, it wasn't too hard of a path. Halfway up even, the game stopped freezing when I walked, so the challenge level even went back to normal levels. I rode the shell up to the end of a path, where a star floated, waiting to be collected. Was this my salvation? Were the godless nights over?

As if to taunt me, it was behind a mesh wall -- with a blue cap box right next to it. There was literally no challenge to be had in grabbing the cap and getting the star -- if you already had the cap. But I didn't have the cap, so the star twirled in its tiny cage, laughing at me. The worst part was that the mesh wall was paper thin. It seemed like it would be simple to clip right through it with such thin walls, but after trying and failing to clip for minutes, my cope was laid nude for the world to see. This was a fool's errand. I was a rat in a maze with no exit, cheese locked just behind the walls, humans laughing just barely audibly, wearing their pearly white lab coats. Me? I was the jester, dancing for the gluttonous gods above me, flailing about in my shame.

But I would not submit to my masters above and below. I knew there was a way. There had to be some way. I had so many options for stars that were just out of reach. Giving up was a sin. It was despicable ... it was ... just not me. I remembered my feats in the past -- it was I who spent 50 hours grinding Solgryn to beat I Wanna Be the Boshy, it was I who spent 15 months of my life (on and off) to beat Super Kaizo World on cartridge. I had beaten Battletoads, Gauntlet, Ninja Gaiden III, Bayou Billy, To the Earth, The Immortal, and countless other nigh impossible NES games. Was I about to give up with multiple stars mere inches out of reach?

My best chance, I thought, was the second slide. The one with the 8 red coins, but requiring the metal cap to hit a purple switch to make it to the star. There had to be a way to do this, whether it be finding a way to hit the switch, or some clever platforming to reach the star without it.

I spawned the star and surveyed my area. The ground all around the bottom of the level was deadly quicksand, and the star hovered just above it, in an alcove that was underneath the slide. Theoretically, could I reach it with enough speed and a first frame wallkick against the opposing wall?

It became apparent soon why this was an issue. The wall I was trying to wall jump off of was actually a slope, so wall kicks would not work. But I noticed that I could slide into the wall, then slide off it back in the other direction. Perhaps with enough speed, it would be enough to get through the alcove? I gave this many attempts, getting better and better with each try. It seemed like doing a dive mid-air would get me even closer than just jumping, but maybe that was an illusion within my own head. Either way, Mario was but a foot away from this star. But try and try and try as I might, it was always at least a foot away. I could not close the gap.

I was so confident though in my ability that I had even begun screen-capturing my attempts. I thought, wow, this would just look so sick the way Mario slides down this, slides off the wall, and then flies into this star, it'd be like the sickest thing. I knew I'd get it eventually, but hundreds of attempts later, I guess fate was not in the cards for me. I kicked back up to the start of the slide to survey the situation further.

Perhaps, I noticed, the walls just inside the alcove that the star was in were wallkickable themselves? With the slide going the way it was, you were parallel to them, so that was infeasible, but if you long jumped from an earlier point in the slide, you'd be perpendicular, and with some quick walljumping you'd be able to get the star. After one attempt, it seemed possible -- I was able to get enough distance to be at the entrance at the right angle.

So confident I was that I even unmuted the game (I generally play with the game muted to listen to my own music, but I thought it would make for a better recording to have the game's audio). I figured this would take at most, minutes. I had a save state just before the jump, and I used alternate save states when I was just a moment away from the wall.

But I reloaded and reloaded and reloaded ... for upwards of 30 minutes. Not a single time -- not once -- did I even manage to wallkick off the first wall. I could wallkick the exterior quite easily, but the interior alcove, I couldn't even bonk against. If I could just manage to get a single wallkick, I thought, I would know this was possible. So I kept trying. And trying. Again and again I reloaded, reliving Mario's agonizing screams as he fell to his death, breaking his bones again and again, drowning in quicksand, his pores filling with silicon. I imagined what the tortured Mario would be saying to me if he was real, "Please-a, mamma-mia, stoppa-it! This is-a so-a painful, just a-shoot-a me."

Doubt crept into my mind. I might be wrong, but if I could just get lucky, just once, my scatterbrain could finally be optimistic. All I needed was for Mario to run those 15 steps, long jump, and if he wallkicked I could get that success on videotape. But right now? I was sulking high and dry, ultimately just daydreaming. Those walls were a different color than the exterior -- being green -- did they even have the same properties; could you even go climbing up those walls? I willed to stick to the present tense, stay in the moment, or else my spirit would fade out, let down like a house of cards. My bones jittered as I thought about the numbers, minutes adding up little by little. Maybe, just maybe, if everything was in its right place, Mario could get a wallkick, but for now, he and I were in limbo. "There, there", I assured myself, trying to lift my gloaming, but eventually I had to reckon that there might be no surprises after all.

I let Mario die this time. Bowser's chilling laugh resonated down my spine, and I was back in the second hub. Perhaps there are limits on the human condition. Things that we can do and things we can't. There are things that we will never know, such as where the developer-intended 20th star is. Was it even something that was knowable, or was it an unanswerable question, like the questions of "What am I?", "Why are we here?", "Where are we going?"

I was defeated. Defeated in a way I didn't know was possible. I let my controller drop to the floor, not even hearing the thud over my anguished screams and the tears searing down my face. I curled up in fetal position, like a baby, feeling ready to be unbirthed. Had Mario done this? I recalled how I had thought the game was called the "Tree of Life" instead of the "Tree of Dreams", but were they really any different? Is life not but a dream? Will life itself go only 24% fulfilled with 19 out of 80 stars collected? Is there a God? How could he let this happen? How could he let this happen?

I sat up, wiped the tears from eyes, and listened for once -- no music of my own to distract me. I ... knew this song. It was in the Mario 64 soundfont, but not from the OST ... was it the Rosalina storybook? No ... this came from the realm of popular music. This was Radiohead -- "No Surprises". I hear Thom Yorke's lyrics through the game's MIDI:

"A heart that's full up like a landfill. Bruises that won't heal. You look so tired, unhappy. Silent, silent, this is my final fit. My final bellyache. With no alarms and no surprises please -- get me out of here."

God, Thom, I think, that's kind of dark, man. It's just a Mario romhack, no need to make a big deal out of it.

Anyway, I like the idea of it, being a fan of metroidvanias like I said, but I do think there are number of things that would clear up frustration. Particularly with long, difficult sections. I actually do like it how the path forward isn't obvious, but there's always a balance that needs to be made with that -- too simple a path, and it's boring and you're hand-holding, but too obscure, things end up frustrating and unplayable. I might play it some more later and post some more thoughts.

***THE NEXT DAY***

I decided to take one last look around. I headed back to the avocados on the path to Bowser, because it was one of the few things I had neglected to search when looking for the 20th star. To my expected disappointment, I found nothing new. I loaded up the save state I made behind the 35-star door, with the star that was behind a thin mesh cage, taunting me. I tried to backwards long jump a few times again, but no fortune was to be had.

However, I realized I didn't have a clear picture of what the rest of that level looked like. I warped back into the level from the flower, to start from the beginning. I prayed by some miracle that the freezing on walking glitch was gone, but no mercy was to be spared for me.

The situation was even worse than I had remembered -- the only way out of the room other than the lavafall was a 36-star door. I damage boosted up the lavafall, and atop it was a mesh gate, a different lavafall that led even higher, and another 36-star door. Perhaps this second lavafall led somewhere? My main issue was I was down to 3 health, so would be unable to take a single hit from the lava. I was not without hope though, because I thought I remembered having decent health when I had made my save state by the star.

It was true! There were some coins along the treacherous path to said star. I made my way up the challenge again, dodging bowling balls, deadly quicksand, and the game freezing if I took a step, and with shell underfoot, I collected the 4 coins leading to the star. The star itself still taunting me behind its mesh armor, I retreated back down to the second lavafall and abandoned my shell.

Good fortune was finally catching up with me, because I could walk again! Going up to the top of the level, perhaps destroying the shell box (who knows?) must've freed up some memory, so I was no longer severely handicapped in my movements. Maybe getting up the next lavafall would be easier?

No. It was impossible -- the path upward required a metal cap. With just a few attempts, it was obvious that there was no safe ground to stand on, and the path forward was through a tunnel where lava was on all sides. Huh. I guess this was it then. I had explored all my options.

It was then that I noticed a small aberration in the ceiling: a small white rectangle that may have very well been a graphical glitch or a shadow. I had ignored it earlier because trying to investigate it would have likely led to the game freezing, but with the glitch gone I took another look. What I found was that it was a small hole, just barely bigger than Mario.

I recalled back to when the star at the top of the level taunted me before. Below the star was a passageway, presumably to give you a way out after collecting it. In most Mario hacks, this would be an unnecessary addition, simply because the star would warp you back to the hub and prevent softlocks. This game was non-stop though, so that warping wouldn't happen. It was a longshot, but perhaps I could wallkick up this narrow tunnel?

I didn't get my hopes up -- I remembered how certain I was before that I could walljump off the interior walls of the alcove in the slide level, and God showed no mercy toward me. This tunnel in the ceiling was at least easier to reach though, so I wouldn't have to use save states to just test if the walls in there were kickable.

My test was successful -- wallkicks would indeed work. The tunnel was tiny though, so almost immediately Mario fell out of it. I tried again, this time mashing the jump button to see if doing multiple wallkicks in a row was possible here. Fate was kind to me on this day, because my mashing worked! Up and up I ascended until it seemed that Mario reached a stopping point -- a ceiling that could go no higher.

I didn't understand. No matter how many times I tried, Mario would seem to reach his limit just a few wallkicks in. He could still wallkick back and forth, but he could go no higher. What was happening with this tunnel? Were the walls changing part of the way up?

I used Lakitu cam to get a better view from out of bounds, and the problem was now clear: the tunnel did not go straight up, but it was a chute -- a slide that Mario would use to avoid taking damage from a long fall. The tunnel was too small to try and jump kick up the slide with Mario on his butt, but it looked like all I'd have to do was navigate Mario with the angle of the tunnel.

Save stating this was a challenge given the rapid number of inputs my right hand was making, while my left hand needed to maintain direction, but with some determination and a flip of the camera mid wallkick to the other side (because the lavafall then got in my way), I could see the shadow of the star, mere feet away.

I had forgotten one thing: the cork box that blocked the tunnel initially, just under the star. I had come so far, but now would this box be the new reaper of my hopes and dreams? Mario bonked the top of it, and the cork box exploded. I was not stunted. Nothing stood in my way now.

For once, I could feel the warmth of the gods above channeling through my skin. The air felt euphoric to breathe in. On this day, I was touched by a miracle. For countless moments I had been a rat staring at its cheese, but I had chewed through the walls and made my very own mousehole. The cheese was mine.

With the 20th star in hand, I could now open the star door that had sat locked for so long. My first glances into this new room were not what I had expected. When I had poked the camera in earlier, I had only seen a white void, and assumed that the room just hadn't loaded. Now I was in this room, but it was still a white void.

I walked forward through the empty whiteness, and a small dark object was visible in the distance. As I got closer and closer, I knew what it was: the piano. Every Mario 64 player knows what the piano really is: an abomination -- a monster that reveals itself when you are victim enough to walk in its vicinity, and then proceeds to thoughtlessly devour your soul and childhood dreams.

This was my reward for all my struggles? The horrific jaws of death in an empty void? Nothing else was even in this room besides a translucent blue cap box. I had suffered as much as I did just to experience more suffering?

When the piano awoke and gave its chase, I did see something new: it blocked a small alcove. And as if to taunt me further, this alcove contained but a single item, worthless to me: a red coin. Since another red coin in the area was locked in a mesh cage, I still wouldn't be able to obtain its star, and even if I could, what would it matter? The next available star door was at 35.

This couldn't be the end. There had to be something more! Something I missed! And for once, there was. All white, blending into the void itself, were some platforms, and jumping up these platforms led to an icy alcove -- an icy alcove that was actually a pathway to a new level.

A quick 21st star was to be had after a short challenge, triple jumping up icy slopes. The path forward afterward led across some tricky bridge jumps into a circular area with a translucent blue cap box in the center. I grew worried. Was I supposed to have the blue cap switch pressed already before coming here? A red coin sat behind a mesh wall, but there was still another path forward. Some tricky pole jumps took me to plank that when I kicked, jutted out back into that center room. A box with a shell in it was also here, but at the moment, it didn't seem like there was anywhere that a shell would be useful.

Walking out on the plank, I now noticed that there were other plank platforms that were still up, so the puzzle here appeared to be to knock down the plank on either side, and then you could use the shell to explore a new path. But I saw no other way to go. My best guess on how to proceed was through the mesh, which I needed a blue cap for. How could I have missed something? Was it the end of the line for me? Again?

I went back to the pole jumping section and all I could see in the other direction was a giant bottomless pit. The walls on either side of it curved around and away from where I was able to see, so was it possible to do some tricky wallkicks to make progress that way?

This turned out to be the case. A few difficult walljumps later, and the other plank was kicked down. I could then ride the shell up to a higher path to kick down another plank -- but this time there appeared to be no where else to go. My brief spurt seemed to be over, and I assumed yet again that I would need vanish cap to progress.

But then I took another look at the small window above one of the doors. Was that really a window, or was that another path? I jumped to it from the plank, and the path continued. Perhaps this all really was the intended path. I also did enjoy this design of returning to a central area, even if the whole process was stressful due to me not knowing if it was possible.

Probably not intended though was that the freezing had returned. A platforming challenge up a collapsing bridge would crash the game. Assuming the problem to be related to the bridge objects, I tried to work around it by walljumping through the section, not touching the bridge at all. Even achieving that though, the freezing was still occurring. Sure, I could keep hopping forward, but for how long? If I encountered a door, I'd have to walk into it, and then perhaps I'd be locked out of the rest of the game forever.

I caught a break for once -- the freezing only applied to this one tiny area, and once I was out of it, I resumed making progress. At the top of a pole was a star, the 22nd. The next area had a plank on the other side of a pit, and the way to reach it meant reaching a platform through a small cavern with translucent walls. Below the platform was gravel, so trying to jump from directly below it was impossible. Instead, it appeared you had to complete a series of difficult walljumps on oddly angled walls with many polygons -- all while dealing with an extremely dodgy camera. After giving it a few attempts, I thought, "Wow, this is really advanced. This game might be even more kaizo than I had thought."

Of course I looked past the obvious solution of jumping on one of those flower enemies to have Mario twirl over to the other side. With that, it was smooth sailing until I reached a puzzle room. A sign told me that Mario could only go through the walls with the vanish cap. Oh no! Not the vanish cap again! I looked around a bit in the area and didn't see the way forward, but I did find one of those translucent blue cap boxes.

It certainly didn't seem like the game would assume you had vanish cap already if I had managed to come this far, but I wouldn't feel safe until I pressed that blue switch once and for all. It appeared the puzzle required you to push a block through some walls -- walls the moveable block could go through, but you couldn't. You eventually needed the block to use as extra height to reach a pipe. Seemed simple enough, but at the last wall before the pipe, a crack in the floor prevented you from pushing the block any further. I figured maybe I could push it across if I pushed a switch to enable a cork box, and then I could push the block over it, but the block still refused to move.

Nah, this puzzle was OK, you just had to take the block on a different path. That cork box was just for Mario to stand on later so he could push the block through some walls.

I jumped up to the alcove that contained a pipe and jumped in. Uh, wait. Nothing happened when I jumped in. I jumped in the air and tried again, but Mario just stayed in place. What kind of pipe doesn't work in Mario 64? How was it not taking me anywhere? Was it a secret warp? I stood still for a few seconds and prayed, but nothing happened.

No, no, no, no, no, no. This was not where this was going to end. So many times, I had beaten the odds. So many times I had prevailed after fighting my way through what I thought were obstacles that were insurmountable. When Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay got to the final ridge before the summit of Mount Everest, did they turn back down just because Andrew Irvine and George Mallory had died trying to make this ascent some 30 years prior? No. Giving up was not an option for me. I would do whatever it took to make this pipe work, and so I started my ground pounding. This destroyed like a box or something underneath and now the pipe worked.

It took me to a small enclosed room with a slope. At the top of the slope, a magical site. I felt like Romeo, gazing up at Juliet at her balcony window -- the blue switch. It was a short walk to press it, and with that, I knew so many new worlds had just been opened to me. The stress evaporated from my conscious, like how the sun destroys a shallow puddle on a hot summer's day. Incidentally, did you know Romeo and Juliet ends with both characters dying?

The next 9 or so stars were entirely up to the player to do in whatever order they wanted. I had some difficulty with one where the path forward was blocked by cork boxes, until I realized that you could destroy them from above in a snowfield -- the snow had obscured that part of the ground was a hole plugged with boxes. I was somewhat annoyed by another challenge where you had to weigh down a see-saw to access a purple switch, then jump back on the see-saw to quickly reach the timed boxes -- mostly because I had to do this three times: once to get a star atop an apple tree (well, inside the apple); again when I had neglected to realize that there were secrets hidden in blue torches around the level, and one of them was in the area with the apple tree; and then yet again when I needed a vanish cap to ground pound a flaming pole, and the only accessible cap was the one you got from the see-saw. At the end of all of these, I had 31 stars, enough to go through the next star door.

The 31-star door opened to a vertically-oriented cylindrical room, a closed cannon at the bottom, and 4 mesh grates at the top of the room on all directions of the cylinder. Climbing the room and going through the only accessible grate got you to a red bob-omb, who kindly opened the cannon. From there you had to do a challenge involving stepping on a switch, riding a shell across the room, then using the block spawned to kick down a plank so that you could go and do that again, but this time keep the shell so you could head to the back of the room to access another door.

A 33-star door. Huh? How did that make sense? I even had checked the other unused grate, but it appeared to be a red herring -- just a small alcove with nothing in it. But why would the developer require you to have 31 stars, make you do this whole difficult challenge, and then block you with a 33-star door? -- One that you couldn't see from the other side of the room very clearly either.

I headed back to the hub because I figured getting 2 more stars wouldn't be that difficult, especially if I clipped the 35-star door again. I collected 7 of the red coins and went to collect the last, which was behind said door, but clipping it was proving difficult. In the process of this, I thought again about how strange it was to put two star doors in a row like that. Having no success with the clipping, I returned back through the icy alcove. Annoyingly, to get back to the 31-star door, I had to kick out all the planks again, do a dash to a grate with the vanish cap, then swim through an underwater section.

Once there I jumped back in the cannon, and fired myself into the dummy grate -- the one I had found no purpose for. My hypothesis was that I had just missed the warp trigger to go into the level. I did have my doubts, because in order to do so I had to miss it going into the small tunnel, and then again when I came back out, but it was the only explanation I could think of -- and I was right.

There was in fact a level here, just a small circular tunnel where you had to find 5 secret alcoves. A fairly easy star, especially when using Lakitu cam to peer outside the walls. The first star was easy, but I still needed one more, and it didn't seem like this level held anything else for me to explore. I glanced at my star count, and bizarrely I had 33 stars -- the 31st star had counted for two! The sign in the room alluded to this in riddle form, something about seeing double, but I was still surprised that I could get two stars and not notice a change in animation.

It was all well and good then, and behind the 33-star door was a boss fight. A wiggler fight over deadly quicksand, where you had to jump down on it, then land on one of the two floating platforms in the room. I had no resolve about using save states at this point, and this fight would've definitely been god-awful without them. The 34th star was mine.

34 stars was not enough to get through the 35-star door back in the hub though. I figured I could definitely cheese something, somewhere, but unlike before, I knew I was probably forgetting something obvious. And I was -- the saw level with the red coins and sawdust came to mind. Doing that challenge gave me those 35 stars I needed, and I was finally caught back up to where I had sequence broken. This was worrying, because it could potentially mean being stuck again.

I was not too worried though -- while the developer intended you to need the metal cap to obtain one of the red coins in the hub, it seemed like it would be possible to get it without. You had to ride three of the tiny-sized arrow lifts through three flame jets coming out of the wall. With the metal cap this would be trivial, and even capless, it seemed like it would be tricky, but doable. I gave it a few attempts before deciding to maybe go and see if I could find the metal cap first, because the effort here might not be worth it.

I warped on the flower to be taken to the area from before where if I walked, the game would freeze. By some miracle though, this was no longer happening. Perhaps translucent textures take up more memory than solid ones? Or perhaps the game's state was just different than before? Whatever the case, it was fortunate for me. What wasn't fortunate, however, was that the only way into the next part of the level was through a mesh, and the vanish cap was locked behind a 36-star door. And that 36th star? I had already obtained it as my 20th in my sequence break from before.

I sulked. I was beginning to feel trapped again. But then I remembered that there was a vanish cap that was still accessible to one with only 35 stars: the one just outside the mesh wall of that star that had taunted me so fervently not so long ago. I would have to climb the pathway back up to it, but with the freezing absent and liberal save states, this was not much of an issue.

It felt ironic in a way. Before, I had cursed this mesh wall for keeping me from getting to the star that was a mere foot away from my face. I derided the trivial nature of the vanish cap box sitting on my side of the wall, as if it was made to specifically and deliberately taunt me personally. But now, this blue cap box was my savior. What once was damnation was now salvation.

I got the blue cap, slid down the chute, and made my way through the mesh wall that had prevented further access into the level. I was quick to notice a 38-star door -- since I had caught up to the sequence breaks, perhaps I was now just delaying the inevitable. I could at least get 1 star in here though, so I could have easier access to this area through the 36-star door.

I got both stars in the area, putting me at 37. I doubted any other star would be available to me, because the game would assume I had 38 now so I could head through the next star door. If I tried to clip this door, well, even if it was possible, I would keep running into the same issue over and over again -- I would never have enough stars, always being just one off.

The ace up my sleeve was the red coin star back in the hub. The game assumed you couldn't get it until you had the metal cap, meaning that if I got that star, I would be safe until I pressed the green switch. With just three lifts to ride and three flamethrowers to dodge, how hard could this be? I had save states after all even!

It was pretty rough. The first lift wasn't too bad -- you could just wait until the end of the flamethrower's cycle to time things just right to be able to grab the next lift (the flamethrowers turned on, then off, but the lifts were small and moved slowly so that you couldn't dodge the fire). Problems began at the second lift -- it started moving immediately as I touched it, so there was no more timing things with the cycle of the flames. I now had to deal with the cards that I was given.

I tried again and again and again, but no matter what I did, the flame seemed undodgeable. If I could simply get some momentum, I would maybe be able to long jump or double jump off the arrow lift and ledge grab the next one or wallkick, but my moveable area was minuscule. I was still determined, because it seemed like a possible challenge, but slowly my spirit was being crushed.

With the rote tedium of this repetitive process of perpetual trials, my mind wandered. In 1963, the South Vietnamese president named Diem was a faithful Catholic, despite the country's large majority demographic of Buddhism. He invoked a law to prohibit the flying of religious flags the day before Buddha's birthday. Buddhists were no doubt upset by this, and in protest they flew their flags anyway. They marched on a government radio station, where they expected a speech in their support, but instead the Armed Forces showed up and they were greeted with bombs and gunfire. Nine people died, and this was the start of a 6 month long "Buddhist crisis".

It didn't end well for Diem, the President of South Vietnam. The crisis ended with a coup -- he was arrested and assassinated. It was performed by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (the ARVN), who just a few months prior were complying with the government's cruel requests. For instance, on June 3, it was them who poured liquid tear gas onto the heads of praying Buddhists. Why would the ARVN have a change of heart? Well, the United States was funding the South Vietnamese army, and during the Buddhist crisis, they withdrew this support. Without funding, why should the soldiers stay loyal?

But what was it that drew the United States' attention to this crisis? Well, on June 11, in response to the tear gas attacks as well as to South Vietnamese religious discrimination in general, Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc lit himself on fire for the world to see. You probably have seen this image, if not in context, then on the cover of Rage Against the Machine's self-titled debut. This act of martyrdom brought the crisis to the attention of the American people (as well as the whole world).

OK, so this was going to all be lead-up to the revelation that I was going to intentionally burn Mario to get through this section, but that all feels a bit crass and disrespectful now. Uhhh...

OK, well I did that; it required some careful jumping, as well as air kicking to maintain my position, but with lots of save stating, I grabbed the coin, then fell all the way down to ground. I was down to just a single sliver of health, but I had done it. The rest of the red coins were trivial, so a 38th star was mine.

The next 5 stars were all in their own area, and things proceeded pretty smoothly. Again, they wouldn't be so smooth if I weren't abusing save states, but long was I past a notion of such purity.

The 43rd star took me back to the previous level, but in a new area. This was pretty apparent because when I went to hit a coin block, the game froze. Luckily I could still walk at least, but I knew I had to be careful. It appeared the only way forward was through a mesh wall, but there was no blue cap box in sight. Instead, there was a vat of green lava with a circle of coins surrounding a heart within the center, and a bob-omb sectioned off to the side. I didn't quite know what to make of this.

Fortunately, I could see a blue box clipping from under the vat. Since the vat was raised from the ground, I tried to open the box from below, but to no success. I remembered the bob-omb, and figured that maybe I could throw it, and it would break the box through its explosion? But in a few attempts, it didn't seem like I could manage to throw it far enough.

Then I spotted a switch, hiding inside one of the vat's support legs. With a cork box spawned, I could quickly throw the bomb into the center of the green lava pool, where ... nothing seemed to happen. I checked underneath the vat, but there was no cap on the floor. I tried this a few times, wondering how one was expected to think to do this. Were you supposed to see the box clipping? A heart in the center of a vat really didn't seem to be that great of an indication of anything, especially when this was working in such a finicky way.

After a few attempts at this, I think I managed to break the box. I say "I think" because the indication that I had done so was that the game had frozen (in hindsight, I probably didn't break it). Now, I would go on and on about how I thought this was the end and I had met my match, how there wasn't much I could do at this point because there were no objects to deload, etc, etc -- but you can see that the scroll bar still has a ways to go. No, I went and broke that coin box, the one that had been freezing the game early, but like carefully (?) this time, idk. Look, this time it didn't freeze, so I think that was just enough to free up the memory so I could now break the blue cap box open. Which still, by the way, was tough. Partially because I thought the cap would spawn under the table, but instead it spawned in the vat itself, meaning you had to get burned to collect it. Also it was probably tough because you weren't meant to throw the bomb, just jump in the center of the vat to let the bob-omb sink in first before exploding.

In the next area, you had to rehit that purple switch from before to access a climbable ceiling, reminiscent of the third star I collected. What was helpful for solving this puzzle, though, was that there was a cork box in the corner of the room, which you could access the climbable ceiling from. This part of the ceiling was entirely disconnected from everything else, but its purpose was simply to serve as a demonstration to the player that the ceiling was climbable (because it wasn't obvious), and also that you couldn't wallkick or triple jump up to the ceiling -- it had to be a simple jump or else you wouldn't stick (something an expect Mario 64 player might know, but I'm more of an enthusiast).

Some minor design things about this though: I might try and separate the ceiling more from the rest of the room -- there was only a tiny crack to indicate this, which wasn't even visible from the ground. Second, some players might be confused by this cork box in the corner of the room, so instead of having this part of the ceiling lead to literally nothing, it might be better to put a 1-up mushroom up there or something. It still indicates the same information, but without the confusion that a red herring might bring.

Anyway, the next door led into a large Wet-Dry World type room, with holes in the walls leading to sub-areas and lots of water level switches. It was actually a pretty cool room (first you bring the water level to the top by solving a series of sub-rooms, then you lower the water back down to get a shell, then you ride the shell through a different series of sub-rooms to reach the max height and enter a pipe), except I kind of totally solved it wrong, so I got confused thinking there was more to the room. What happened is that there's one area where you're meant to use the shell to get through, but you could also just kick up a steep pyramid in there to jump off of it and do the platforming shelless, bypassing a lot of the puzzle. If that room had been filled with deadly quicksand instead of regular, it would have prevented this. (Also, as I'm listing off really minor things to change about this room, the hole in the wall with the enemy book in it that had a water level switch at the bottom should have had the floor slightly higher, because Mario would swap between swimming and walking as the water ebbed up and down and it was annoying when trying to walljump out of there. Then, the part where you need to break the box through the hole in the wall is extremely sketch too -- I clipped to where I needed to go easier than I could figure out how to break the box, which I later managed to do with a breakdance kick.) If everything worked, I'd probably think this was the best puzzle room in the game.

The pipe at the top of the room was for the green switch, and so my feelings were bittersweet. On the one hand it was great to finally have another cap switch pressed, but on the other -- my sequence breaking advantage was now gone. I might be safe for the rest of this level, but once I got back to the hub, I might be stuck -- for good this time. I put the thought out of my head and pressed on.

With the metal cap, I could now access some sections at the top of the level where defeating a couple of bosses would net you a couple of stars. A hunt by shell across a deadly sandy room had you killing 5 little boos to spawn the big one, which was kind of neat. The other boss fight was ... bizarre.

King Bob-omb actually tells you exactly what to do to defeat him, because otherwise I never would have guessed that the developer would make this the intended solution: you need to throw him twice, then pick him up a third time and swim with him to throw him up to a final floating platform. OK, so here's the weird thing about it -- the fight takes place on a small plank so that you need to jump around the King, and above the plank are water level switches, so that they're unavoidable when you jump. You have to be pretty perfect to throw King Bob-omb twice and then pick him up, because the dev needed to make sure you could pick him up a third time, but not manage to throw him. The result of this is fairly interesting -- you would never think that you could swim with the King, nor would you think that you could throw the King while you were in water. On the other hand, the strictness of this pretty much guarantees that you should be using save states -- the message at the beginning of the game really should've maybe just said to give up on the notion of doing this game stateless, because it wasn't designed for it (though, having 1-ups around does make it designed to have failure, so it's a bit contrasting).

With all of that, I was back in the hub with 47 stars in my belt. The next door was 50-stars, so the dev wanted you to find three around the hub -- one in the saw level, one in the slide, and the red coins. Since I had collected the red coins already, I went and retrieved the other two. Both of these stars I had previously tried and failed to collect capless, so it was bittersweet to finally collect them. Sweet because I did finally have them, but by getting them in the intended way, it reminded me of my failure to do so earlier.

49 stars. Perhaps this was the end. My options really had dwindled now -- before I had a litany of possible stars to sequence break, but now I had collected all of them. I backwards long jumped into the 50-star door for just a few moments, but I knew it was a complete shot in the dark. I racked my brain for where I could have missed the intended 20th star -- perhaps in the bookshelf, where you have to kick three books in to get to a Big Boo fight? I had done that star earlier, but didn't get a great look around the Big Boo arena. I never wanted to ever do the challenge again, but I figured that it was one of the few places that had gone unchecked. I opened the bookshelf again, but found nothing. This was for naught.

In the end, I guess I knew I was delaying the inevitable. I always knew that eventually I would reach a point where I caught up to my sequence breaking, and I would be stuck, same as it ever was. But I rethought this glumness -- so what if I was stuck? Is the endgoal of the journey really what matters? Is it not the journey itself that is most important? Sure, I might never see an endscreen, I might never live a life completely fulfilled, but being half fulfilled is still an achievement! Couldn't I enjoy just that? Was it not worth it to come this way, simply because the work was the reward?

I thought back to the Buddhist crisis. What if the other Buddhists had given up after some of them committed self-immolation? What if they had decided after a few months of protests that it really wasn't all that worth it in the end for their own religious freedom? What if they learned to accept the rule of their Catholic leader, perhaps even choosing to convert to Christianity themselves? If they had done that, what would have become of Quang Duc's self-sacrifice? A vain morbid gesture? A footnote in the history of mankind's penchant for misery?

Fate had brought me this far, so was I going to turn my back on it now? A mere 49 stars in? With whole swaths of areas left to find, explore, and conquer? I heard Jeff Goldblum whisper softly in my ear: "Life finds a way." If there was a way forward, I would find it.

I stood in front of the 50-star door. Sure, I could try and clip this thing, but it would be just like before -- I would always need another star. I needed to find a better way, a way to give me an advantage for longer than just a single door clip -- if I could sequence break and grab something that normally the dev would think I'd need the wing cap for, I would be safe until I pressed down the red switch.

There was only one place I could think of. It was a place that was accessible from the very start of the game, but I hadn't mentioned until now because it wasn't relevant: a picnic basket just by your initial spawn point when you power the game on. Jump in there and it leads to a level where you stand on a floating island, bottomless floor below you, and only a translucent red cap box to tell you that you came there too early.

Off in the distance though, was an unassuming block of stinky, holey cheese. And with a long jump from the start, you get just enough distance to land in that cheese. Landing on it wasn't enough though. Your goal in this level appeared to be red coins, but in fact, there was another star that you could get from collecting 5 secrets, and I knew at least some of those secrets were attached to coins inside the Swiss cheese.

When I was stuck at 19 stars, this route never occurred to me because the only way inside the cheese was with the vanish cap, which I didn't have. At this moment though, it was mine, so I could collect the cap and jump inside.

The cheese's innards were no joke though. While inside these narrow tunnels, your health would drain from the poisonous stinky fumes. My first goal was to determine if there even were 5 secret coins contained within, or if some of the coins were elsewhere, in unreachable locations. Some short surveying later though, I had found all the coins -- I think. It was hard to tell because I wasn't getting them all in one go, instead opting to check each tunnel and then reload a save state.

This was extremely promising though, and I managed to collect 4 of the 5 coins. I wound up on a platform to the side of the cheese, and I just had to jump back through once more to spawn the star. The problem was getting back to the top of the cheese. A platform on a different side of the cheese had a red tile, and the red tile would warp you back to the level's spawn point. From there you could jump back down.

That wasn't where I was, but I could see that platform just around the corner. If I could just long jump to it ... but it was no use. The corner jutted out only a little too much for me to get by it. With a save state I was determined. I kept trying and trying and trying, adjusting my angle, trying to start from the very edge of the platform I was on, utilizing the control stick mid-air to move left and right.

And then I got it. I landed on the platform, but my momentum was still going strong, I channeled that into a side jump, and paused the game and save stated. It was too late though. On unpause, there was nothing I could do from preventing the side flip from bonking the wall and then Mario falling to his death. I reloaded back to the old platform and kept trying. Within only a few minutes more, another attempt had me land where I wanted, and this time I was able to control my sideflip. Collecting the fifth coin, the star spawned.

It was the one thing I was worried about. If this star spawned way high up in the level in a place I'd have to fly to, then it would all be over. I crossed my fingers, and God was on my side this time: the star was easily accessible. The 50th star was mine.

The 50-star door took me to a platforming level before a Bowser fight. The fight itself was like the golf one from before -- you had to throw Bowser several times to guide him to a mine on the other side of the room. This time though, you couldn't just throw him, because it wouldn't get you far enough in the first section.

Instead, you had to figure out to use Bowser's charge mechanic, where you have to guide him across a narrow curved platform that you can't stand on yourself. It's interesting because it's a new application for an uncommon mechanic, but it's also the kind of thing where this would be designed differently if you were making it from the ground up instead of in a hack. (Nintendo designed the Bowser fights with mines on all sides because controlling Bowser's spin was difficult. Thus direction was less important. This difficulty also had them realize it was better to just restrict the fight to 1 successful throw in the first two encounters. Had Nintendo designed Bowser throwing golf courses themselves, they probably would have made them more controllable, and Bowser's position otherwise would be more static, rather than him chasing you.) I mean, ultimately, the fight with Bowser is fine, but it's definitely not something I would ever want to do without save states.

Defeating Bowser nets you the key to the tree's canopy. The next barrier door is 55 -- since I got a star on the path to Bowser, that meant I'd need to find 4 stars. One star came from a penguin race, but after that I wasn't sure where else to look. Stumbling around, I eventually realized one of the thwomps was on a very long cycle, and you could ride it up to another sub-area, in which you had to fight an ice bully over deadly quicksand while riding a guidable arrow elevator.

I was back to the canopy hub with 2 stars left to find. It took some searching with Lakitu cam (to see on the other side of the hub's walls) but I found a slightly transparent wall leading to another area. Since it was solid and there was a vanish cap in the room that I hadn't found a purpose for yet, I grabbed it and went to pass through the wall. Except the wall was still solid, even with vanish cap. How did you open this wall then? Perhaps you didn't and it was just a one-way wall -- using Lakitu cam you could see that the wall wasn't even visible from the other side.

I put aside the wall for now and began to explore again. I still didn't know what to do with the vanish cap or the shell-box that were both in this room, so I kept them at the forefront of my mind. I figured I might as well try climbing every tree in the room in the room too, in case one of them had an owl inside. With 9 out of the 10 trees climbed, I realized how absurd this idea was -- I was really grasping at straws now on what to do.

There actually was an owl though in the last tree that I searched, and this got me started on a red coin search in the canopy hub. There was one atop a tall tree, two in rings that you'd fly through with the owl, and a horizontal ring that you needed vanish cap to jump through -- this giving a meaning to the vanish cap (I was still perplexed by what the shell did though). Not being able to find any other coins, there was a giant hole in the wall that led to the other side of the translucent wall that I had seen earlier. 3 more red coins were here: one atop a thwomp, one in the corner of lava pool that you needed to quickly cross before your caps ran out, and the last coin was a bit trickier.

I was in a small area with a mesh elevator, a thwomp, and the one-way door leading back to the main part of the hub. Riding the thwomp seemed to yield nothing, as did riding the elevator. Confused by what the purpose of these two elements were, I looked around in close-up, and I spotted a red coin floating high up in the air. It seemed like you could jump to it from the top of the elevator, but upon reaching the top, I couldn't even find the red coin anymore. I got some better positioning toward the back of the elevator, and now I could see that the red coin was much higher up than I thought -- you couldn't even see it while doing a triple jump off the elevator toward it. Fortunately it didn't take me too long to accidentally hit a switch that was below the thwomp, the switch activating some timed boxes that would let you reach the red coin. I had only missed this previously because the entire ground was covered with a layer of non-solid but opaque grass/moss/leaves.

That still left a final red coin -- I searched around again in the main hub using the owl -- a hexagonal bee hive looking alcove led to a metal cap, and a cloud at the top of the room led to a new level. A mesh wall halfway down the room seemed unreachable without the wing cap because vanish cap would run out before you could get over there with the owl. I tried to survey the inside of this area by getting close with the owl (without having vanish cap) to see if the red coin was hiding in there, but it was hard to really tell what was inside the mesh, besides another star door. I became even more skeptical of a red coin's presence inside when I used the close-up camera near a wall to try and peer inside from the bounds of the level -- it was hard to get a full view, but a red coin was nowhere to be seen.

After doing even more searching, I came to the conclusion that I had to be mistaken -- the coin had to be inside, for there was nowhere else for it to be. I was saddened that I would have to collect the 7 coins I had previously collected over again, but it couldn't be helped. I flew into my last available option: the level inside the cloud.

I breathed a sigh of relief when it became apparent that there were at least two stars in here: a red coin star, and (after accidentally falling to the bottom of the level, where a layer of poisonous air threatened your life) 5 secrets inside some craters. This star went by pretty quickly since there was an easily accessible metal cap, and thus I now only needed one more star to continue. As long as all 8 red coins were collectable in here without the wing cap, I'd be fine.

Things were going well. I got the first three coins without too much hardship, needing to make a few difficult jumps to some pillars. I worked my way up to the top of the stage -- there floated a ... translucent red cap box. I ... I wouldn't be able to get the star. I surveyed the rest of the room quickly and surmised that there wouldn't be any way for me to cheese this without wing cap. I hung my head low and went back to the canopy hub.

I had a new crazy idea: why not try and hit the red switch early? I didn't mention it, but this thought had crossed my mind earlier, before I had done the Swiss cheese level. See, all the switch rooms are connected to each other; glass surrounds the rooms on all sides, but long tunnels connect them. Each of the long tunnels requires a different cap, so you're meant to collect them all in a gauntlet (once you've hit all the switches) to obtain a star that's in the center of the level.

I figured maybe there was some way to cheese this by going to a switch room that I'd already pressed. I made my way back to the blue switch through the ice level, and upon arriving, the situation seemed less practical than I had anticipated. Going clockwise around the room required the vanish cap, but its box was in the red switch room; going counterclockwise required having pressed the red switch to be able to use the wing cap.

A couple mesh grates and a long tunnel were really all that was stopping me from getting to the red switch though. I briefly and half-heartedly tried to backwards long jump against the grate and -- wait, did I just clip through the ceiling and grab the edge of the tunnel? I pulled myself up and I was outside the glass that surrounded the rooms. Now all I had to do was walk across the tunnel and find a way back into the red switch room, which turned out to be easy since the red switch had a hole in it for a flying section. I pressed the red switch.

I did the brief gauntlet to collect the star at the center of the room, and now I was curious to find out where the red switch's pipe would take me. The other side was quite limiting -- I was trapped in a cage with a 62-star door blocking me (meant to serve as a barrier on entering the cap station, but the door blocks both ways).

I exited the level and went and cleaned up some stars around the hub (the picnic and cloud levels' red coins), bringing my star count to 57, putting me well over the needed 55. Before entering the next star door though, I checked out what was behind the mesh wall that I couldn't access before, but it was just a 71-star door. I also got all 7 red coins again and failed to find the eighth for the second time.

I went through the 55-star door to a new level. This one was essentially a castle in the sky. In fact, from this early area it appeared like I could grab the wing cap already and do some sequence breaking, but I figured I might as well stay on the correct path for now (plus there was an unopened cannon, so I wouldn't want to miss the red bob-omb by skipping things). A pipe a little ways ahead took me to a similar looking level, but at night. A 56 and 57 star door were on my sides, but I decided to play by the rules and not take them yet. The next star was pretty easy anyway, just a there and back again from one floating castle to another through a metal cap section and breeze gliding, putting you on the other side of the 56-star door. A purple switch press and a few wallkicks later and I had the star!

Then I was having difficulty with where to go next. I didn't see any other obvious paths in the level, so I figured I'd just take a peek in the 57-star door just to see where I was supposed to go. It warped me straight to the next star, so I got it, but I still wanted to do this the right way too. I popped out a mesh window to find out that I was right above the 57-star door, but this was castle height, so it was way higher than you could ever jump. I observed the exterior of the castle and saw a platform that was against the wall and lower than the rest, but still out of reach. Hmm...

It was Chekhov's purple switch yet again. Cork boxes spawned to help you get the 56th (my 58th) star, but also back in the other direction on the exterior of the castle. Taking this path upward led to an elevator, which led to a mesh platform that moved on a path once you touched it. This was a pretty tough challenge too, the kind of thing which (again) would be pretty awful without save states, because it involved adhering your cap-acquisition and purple switch presses to pretty specific timing windows. All this led back to the star which I had already gotten early.

Up another path was a red coin section, something that this time, I didn't have the option of cheesing. It was a creative moving platform maze which would probably be a lot more fun if the camera wasn't so awful, being in tight quarters. Most egregious was a section where you had to get a vanish cap, drop down a floor, hurry across some platforms, then go back up a floor to just barely make it through a mesh. The issue was you were changing altitude so quickly that even in Mario cam, you'd end up with a wall in your way and not being able to see what you're doing, and you didn't have the time to adjust or else your cap would run out. I collected my 60th star and headed through the 58-star door.

I was back to the first area, but way up high now. Pretty soon afterward, a shell race against a purple switch timer brought me to my next star, though the camera once again nearly killed me in the process as I went through a small interior with sharp turns at full shell speed (well it did kill me, but I had save states).

I came to a sign, which told you to ride a magic carpet. Well actually, it made a crude joke about the carpet being a skeet blanket -- before I had mentioned how the humor in this game was generally actually landing for me, and how keeping a family friendly tone is preferred for me unless there's a joke that's actually funny. This wasn't really funny to me -- I don't have an issue with crude humor, but crude humor is like playing with fire: use it well and you can make a stunning display of pyrotechnics; use it wrong and you'll burn yourself. Specifically, comparing magic carpets to skeet blankets wasn't making light of anything pertinent to the Mario universe -- the carpet models weren't unusually stiff compared to other magic carpets in other literature, nor were they weirdly stained, nor was there anything to pre-prompt this comment. It was a non-sequitur in its essence; at least (for example) crude jokes about Mario, Peach, and cake were applied to something in-universe.

Humor aside (and what would I know about humor anyway besides how to kill a joke with too many words?), the magic carpet section was neat -- it was all about needing to touch the carpet to keep it alive while needing to do things like collect caps and do platforming. Again, terrible without save states, but also again, I'm past that. Even with save states, I was having a lot of difficulty with the final section, where you need to keep the carpet alive underwater, then grab a shell and mount that before the carpet flies up and away, though this was probably partially because I was trying to do all that while also grabbing the red coin at the bottom of the pool, which might've been nigh impossible.

The end of the carpet meant speaking to the red bob-omb, who opened the cannon back at the start of the level. This gave you access to a pole that let you start climbing the castle tower. Humorously enough, because I had the wing cap, I could easily just take a shortcut to warp up to the top, but I again wanted to play the level as intended. Though I did cheat the next star using the wing cap instead of doing the platforming, because it was an easy straight path to it. I then proceeded to do a pretty difficult series of jumps on the tricky triangles to reach the top of the tower, where the door to the red switch was -- though you needed 62 stars to go through that door. With my 63, I had 2 extra at this point, so had I gotten here fairly, I wouldn't have had enough to be able to enter that door, which would've probably angered me given the hard platforming I would have just done.

What followed was one of the most perplexing stars to date. A door led to a small caged-in room, with a narrow, winding path to a star. If you strayed off the path, it meant instant death -- you couldn't even jump over that section, as the void extended upward. Walking on the path meant sinking into deadly quicksand. My first thought was to fly through this section, but I did figure this was unlikely because the player would have yet to have obtained the wing cap. Either way, this was impossible, as you couldn't take sharp enough curves to follow the winding path.

Next I tried hitting the purple switch in the area to see if it spawned some cork boxes along the path, making the problem into a tricky timed challenge. No luck, but I couldn't rule out another hidden switch somewhere. I observed that the ceiling was green, so it was either lava or maybe a hangable ceiling. I tried jumping up to it to grip it, but I just couldn't go high enough. There were a couple alcoves on either side of the wall for some decorative eyes, so I tried to jump from there, but I had no luck with this either, instead usually just clipping out of the small room.

I thought maybe you could phase through the cage with a vanish cap and a shell that was placed in the room -- after all, what was the shell there for? (Later I realized it was to get the last star that I had just cheesed.) This didn't work; the cage was solid to vanish Mario. The shell seemed like the most likely way to be able to cross the sand though, so maybe there was some other way to get it inside? I noticed the shell box was placed unusually high up, requiring Mario to double jump kick to be able to open it. Doing so applied some momentum to the shell in the direction Mario was facing. Was this some subtle design to encourage players to discover an obscure property about shells?

I had a few plans about how to get the shell inside with this method. Maybe the shell would just phase right through the cage? Nope. Maybe you had to aim it just right toward the door, and maybe it would pass right through that? Nope. Maybe direct it toward the door, but then enter the door and mount the shell at the same time? I tried this, but had no success. Perplexed and out of ideas, I somehow accidentally double jumped and managed to hang on the ceiling. Huh, I guess you could make the jump up. After I got the star, I tried to get up to the ceiling by double jumping again, and I realized that it was in fact possible, as long as you had a running start. I wondered why I was so bad at ceilings.

I was now caught up to my sequence breaking, so it was almost time to start getting worried again. Not yet though -- I had the other stars in this level to get. I got up to 67 stars and figured there were probably 2 more that I could get before getting stuck again. I did a tricky purple switch, wing cap, shell jump, then shell ride through a tiny room with deadly quicksand to reach a 67-star door. This is another case where had I came here any earlier, I would have been really annoyed by the fact that I would have to leave, come back, and do this again -- you'd think it wouldn't be so hard to make it visible that you needed 67 stars for this from the outside, before you attempted the challenge?

The sign that's in the next area says that there are "inexplicably invisiable" [sic]* walls in it, and actually tells you that it's frustrating enough that you should most definitely use save states here. Actually, it even implies that you might've gotten here without save states, lul. Anyway, if the game recommends save states, I figured this section would have to be pretty bad.

*Note to self: If you're going to point out misspellings, make sure to triple** check your own words.

**Note to past-self: Triple check? Are you kidding me? This already will take me like 3 hours to read; isn't double checking enough for you?

Anyway, this place wasn't too bad. It starts with a free star, then gives you 4 easy-to-collect secrets, and lastly the final secret requires a pole jump to shell to vanish cap gauntlet. I almost left back to the previous level at this point (actually, I even jumped back in the pipe to return, but there was no way to get back to the rest of the level from there without dying), but then I remembered that I hadn't used the metal cap in there for anything substantial. You were meant to lava boost through a pipe to reach a higher area, but when I tried, I just kept getting trapped in the pipe, boosting into a lava ceiling and unable to free myself. See, I had forgotten that I was in the alcove where the final secret was, and I didn't see that there was another alcove higher up that would bring you to the next level. Fortunately, I found that before I quit the section.

As it turns out, this was part of the dusk castle level -- it was cool how you'd return to previous sections to explore more of the level. Up here, you could get the wing cap to fly to the top of a tower and unlock this castle's cannon, which allowed you to climb another tower. The climb involved a neat collect-the-caps gauntlet, though again, I would hate to do this without save states because of the instant death floors here (which I tried to jump in first, thinking it was lava and I could get a boost from it). At the top of this gauntlet was a passage to a boss room.

This time it's a twist on the Eyerok fight: the floor is instant death and Eyerok hovers above it, so instead the only way to hit them is by throwing boxes. Like some of the other boss fights, the concept is pretty neat, but you'd never ever design something in the way this hack does if you had complete control over everything.

At first you're confused how it's even possible to hit the thing -- the vulnerable hand is all the way on the other end of the room, and your throw barely goes a fifth of that distance. You think you've got to make an awkward jump across some cork boxes that are on a purple switch timer, but jumping while holding a box is extremely limited, and every time you come close to landing on the next platform, you collide with it, and the box you're holding breaks open. Once you have the clever realization that boxes can slide across the deadly floor though, it actually seems like a neat idea. It's like skipping stones across a lake, or maybe it's like being at a bowling alley -- hey, that might've been a way to prime people with the idea without telling them exactly what to do: make the level an ancient bowling alley.

Figuring out what to do isn't the real problem with this fight though. The issues are pretty obvious -- you have six boxes and Eyerok takes exactly six hits, and the boxes don't respawn. Did the "this part can be played with save states and I'll still count it as save state-less" apply to this section too? Second, the boxes can't even make it to the other side of the room without despawning. You have to go right to the edge of the instant death floor to even ensure the box can make a hit. A sign in the room warns you of this, but until it happens to you a few times, you don't even comprehend what the words you're reading are saying. There's not really a threat of danger otherwise though, so this is really just a rinse and repeat aiming challenge (just like real life bowling!).

After defeating Eyerok and heading back into the daytime castle level to collect one last star, I now had 73 stars. I was wrong earlier about being stuck before being able to get to 71 -- it seemed at this point I might be able to even get up to 77 stars before getting stuck again. After all, there were 2 stars I skipped (red coins in canopy hub, and another you're meant to get around the time you first get access to the tree's interior), and there was 1 final star in an area you could only get to with 79 stars.

I considered a new thought though: the Eyerok fight had increased my star count straight from 70 to 72 -- another double star. When this happened before back in the alcove past the 31-star door, there was a prompt hinting at the concept of double rewards. With Eyerok though, what was there? That Eyerok has two parts, so you're beating two bosses? Was it possible (and of course I was just spitballing here) that perhaps another star somewhere else in the game was meant to act as a double star? Or maybe a key was meant to also give you a star too? The possibility of a glitch like this couldn't be completely ruled out.

Before I moved on though, there was one small thing I wanted to check. Over the course of this game, I feel like I've slowly become intimate with this developer's little tricks. With my greater experience, I think I had a pretty good idea of how to get past the initial problem that had me stuck -- all the way back to the chamber after the 4th star. Figuring this out wouldn't get me anything, of course, but it might finally satisfy my curiosity.

In case you forgot, this was a chamber of all walkable sand, with a platform that you couldn't get to just out of reach. Now what puzzle had I seen repeated at least four times already? Chekhov's purple switch -- a purple switch that appeared to have a purpose in one area, but that you would later use again in a completely different area out of view. (If you're familiar with TVTropes, it might be more accurate to call this a "Purple switch brick joke", but the term "brick joke" is kind of confusing for the uninitiated. As a further demonstration, let me give you an example of one such joke: Liam is trying to build a new walkway up to his front door, and he's going for a rustic look, so he decides to make it out of bricks. He goes to the store, buys a pack of 100, and works hard all day by digging and placing bricks. At the end of the day, he's satisfied, and he was almost perfect with the number of bricks he bought -- he only had one left unused. Not knowing what to do with the it, he decided to just throw the brick up. Straight UP.)

Anyway, my intuition was right; the purple switch in the previous room also spawned some cork boxes over the sand. With that, one of the three mysteries of the game was solved. This one was the most trivial because it yielded no star, but perhaps with the morale boost of this discovery, I could uncover one.

In the interior of the tree (the 2nd hub), there was always something that bothered me. There were three wooden elevators (like the one in the original Mario 64's Wet-Dry World) on the walls of this room. They rested at the top of their track, and would only move downward when stepped on, before rising back up. These three elevator seemed to serve no purpose. My best guess previously was that they were to help you get back to the ground without taking fall damage, but after playing the rest of the hack, this seemed a bit absurd -- avoiding fall damage was a pretty basic thing to do, and the rest of the game had you do things of many magnitudes more difficult.

My intuition now was that there were unmarked secrets on your way down as you rode the elevator. You'd think I'd have found at least one before, but I also didn't spend that much time with them. Now that I was giving them a more thorough search, I ... still found nothing. To prevent further frustration, I decided to move on up to the canopy.

I investigated the 71-star door. It led to a 72-star door, which led to a 73-star door, which led to a ...

So, I guess I did need all the stars up to this point to advance. I could see the final door was for 75 stars, and beyond it, a giant floating toilet. Fitting for my predicament. I could at least try and search again for the one missing red coin in the canopy -- I at least knew it was in my current area, unlike the other star, which could potentially be anywhere in the early game. Also, I was nearly softlocked in my current area (two mesh grates blocked me from going anywhere, and no vanish cap was available), and had to do walljumps to take fall damage to escape (since the hub had no option to exit the course).

Minute after minute, I scoured the area. I still didn't have an explanation for why the metal cap or the shell were even in this room. I had a crazy thought that maybe you could break down the semi-transparent 1-way wall by running into it with the metal cap. Worth a shot at least, right? I actually was pretty bad at even getting this to happen, mostly because I also had a simultaneous goal of wanting to collect all the caps and the shell at once. Maybe there was an extremely obscure mechanic where you could defeat those tray enemies that throw you by hitting them while having both a metal cap and shell? (I was really really reaching now, the kind of crazy you get to when you're way out of ideas and just want to try anything.)

I noticed while flying around with the owl that I could gain height by flying into the steep slope of the big tree. This gave me an idea of something I might be able to do with a shell -- the last hack I played, Star Revenge 3.5, had you use the shell to get up some very steep slopes at one point. Could this tree, which appeared to be composed of vertical walls, be the same way?

I walked over to where the shell-box was, but before hitting it, I wanted to survey the tree. I went into close-up Mario cam and began looking around. Instead of focusing on the tree though, my eyes were drawn to something I didn't expect: the ground texture appeared grid-like. Had it always been that way in this area? You normally couldn't see the ground in the canopy because there was a layer of non-solid leaves covering it, but I felt like I would have noticed something like that the previous times I had searched under the leaves in close-up cam.

Could this be a mesh for the vanish cap? I found it unlikely that I wouldn't have already accidentally fallen through it if that was the case, but it's not like I wasn't right about to check this. To my amazement, it was in fact a secret mesh! A small tunnel filled on all sides with lava was the only thing down there, giving an explanation for the metal cap or shell-box, or both (a little bit later I realized the shell was the intended method, while the purpose of the metal box was to protect you enroute to the toilet, as the 74-star door opens to a lava puddle). I tried to grab both, but missed the shell-box and fell in the hole. Turns out the shell was optional, as a brief tour through the tunnel got me the elusive red coin. I collected all 7 others again and got my 74th star.

With two of the mysteries solved, this might now truly be the end of the line. Before committing myself to the frustration of searching for the ever-elusive 20th star (as in, the star I was supposed to get as my 20th), I figured I might as well just check and see if it was possible to clip the 75-star door. Getting there required a race through some mesh gates with the vanish cap, and upon my arrival I began backwards long jumping into it. I figured I'd try this for a minute before giving up, but --

I clipped through! I was on the other side of the door, the giant toilet just ahead of me. However, I had neglected an important detail: I needed to be quicker. The giant toilet required a flight with the wing cap to reach, but my wing cap had run out while trying to clip the door. I sighed. Was it worse to know that something is possible, but to be unable to achieve it, than for you to think it was not possible at all? I really did not want to have to race all the way here, then somehow miraculously Wilko clip this door so I could make my flight in time. I didn't want to -- but yes, it was possible.

Before throwing myself at either the search for the 20th star or the toilet clip, I had one more thing I wanted to try -- a potential oversight by the developer in one of the levels. Before, I had tried to collect 100 coins to get a star in the sewer level, but found there were only 72, but I remembered that there were a lot of enemies that dropped blue coins in the level in the flower warp behind the 35-star door: boos, books, and piranha plants. If I could get 100 coins there, would a star appear? Starting from the vat entrance, I took a tour through the level, and there were actually well over 100. I had some fear that the 100-coin star would already be blued out though -- I'd seen that done in other hacks where you could use it as an extra star completely unrelated to collecting coins.

Nervous upon the collection of my 100th coin, I prayed once again to the gods above and below. Out popped a star -- as golden as a cavity-ridden SpongeBob drinking lemonade at Fort Knox on a hot summer's day. I grabbed the star and watched my counter increase to 75. With this, the unanswered question could go unanswered and I could still complete the game! This 100-coin star was my own permanent fix to my unsolvable problem -- the ace up my sleeve, the diamond in my rough.

I had anticipated writing a giant spiel here about how we always delay the inevitable, how fate always catches up with us. That we can push off the unpleasant, but it always eventually comes back and catches up with us. I always thought the 20th star would be one of those things. I always thought it was like the two other unavoidables: death and taxes. But now who's to say those are truly unavoidable either? Perhaps tax evasion was in my future, or even immortality? With the collection of this 100-coin star, worlds opened for me. Possibilities that I never dreamed of being obtainable felt within reach. The Riemann hypothesis? Maybe I could go and prove it. P=NP, the most famous unsolved question in computing? After completing this romhack, maybe I could give that a shot.

I guess I had always thought of fate as predetermined. What would happen would happen again endlessly, never changing. Before now, I felt powerless before the gods' games of dice, being whipped around in the tumbler like a cow in a tornado. But now my dice were loaded, and I was about to roll a yahtzee. All there was to do now was stick the landing.

Filled with pride, I entered the giant toilet. The big challenge inside was a red coin quest littered with puzzles, timed dashes (against caps and purple switches), pole jumps, and tricky platforming. I did run into one big roadblock here: one section had you jump through a mesh with vanish cap into a large room with poles near the ceiling. It seemed like the way to get up there would be to wall jump between two grates (probably needing to time it so your vanish cap ran out just in time), but the grate I tried to kick off of was not only solid, but seemingly unclimbable. I tried for minutes and only bonked. I found a workaround though by doing a tough long jump back to a previous platform and finding a way in from an alternate entrance.

The other task of interest was another that was good in concept, but rather frustrating in practice. You had to lure a bob-omb through a small tunnel that you couldn't enter by leading it from above. When the bomb exploded, it would destroy a box, which would then drop a shell through a shaft down to an area below that was filled with deadly quicksand. I especially liked the dropping idea here, rather than just giving you a shell, but hitting the box with the bob-omb was super finicky, and then when I did finally achieve success, the shell was almost barely in reach with a long jump. The shell's velocity on box exit was probably unpredictable, so if you had it going away from you, it wouldn't be long before jumping to the shell you worked so hard for became impossible -- and to try again, you'd have to climb way back up the room. If you were playing save state-less, you'd probably end up sinking in the quicksand, which would then mean having to do two other sections again too.

After getting all the stars here, it was off to the final Bowser fight. Like the others, it had you perform quite a trek to get Bowser to the mines, and this time there were three of them. I may have said earlier how I would hate to do sections of this game without save states, but if there was one section of the game I'd hate to do without them more than all the others, it was this one. After needing to do several precise throws on rotating platforms to reach the first mine, the only way forward appeared to be through a flying section where you dodged moving walls over an instant death floor.

If you tried to fly through the next part of this hallway though, you'd wind up suddenly dying instantly out of nowhere -- one of those death tiles that extended upward blocked your path. With some clever insight, you might realize that the moving platform below you could be stepped on to have it cross the death tile, which allowed you to cross it as a bridge. Personally, if I were designing this, I'd put a trivial example of this situation first, so that you would understand that it was even possible to cross a death tile (ala Jon Blow puzzle design (not that he invented this concept, I distinctly remember the Sly Cooper developers talking about the concept of M+1 in the casino level's commentary about the roulette tables way back in 2002)), but also what do I know about game design; the game I made has less sales than this hack has downloads.

Then you come to a tricky cap race involving more instant death floor (I feel like I'm bad at describing between tiles that have death in 3d space vs just on their surface; in this case, it was both, but mostly the latter). What's neat here is that you can also just wallkick to end up on the level's roof and basically get to wherever you want at this point, though it's not really that useful. This whole section lets you get the metal cap so that you can press an underwater switch back in the first area, so that you can access a door using the cork boxes that spawn. Wait, you forgot to throw Bowser to the next area before going through the gauntlet? Haha, you have to do it all again because the timer and your cap will run out.

I really didn't want to repeat that gauntlet though, so I just used some first-frame-wall-kicks to reach the level's roof (something that'd be nearly impossible without save states, but is less effort to do if you have them). Then you have to do an extremely awkward throw with Bowser where he goes underwater or possibly through a wall? It wasn't really clear to me if I had managed to hit the mine; I had to swim into the area to check myself to make sure. Also, the kickback knocked Bowser back to the first area, which meant I had to throw him once again to return him to the second and then either repeat the gauntlet or do the firsties again. I chose the latter.

Another annoying thing here is that the doors to get through each section are 77 and 78 stars each. There is a chance that you could conceivably come in here, do the first Bowser throw and the whole gauntlet afterward, and only then realize that you didn't have enough stars (because only the 77-star door is obviously visible). This kind of thing would be pretty rage-inducing because you'd have to repeat all the impossibly hard stuff you did, but tbf, because of the roof exploit you would still be able to beat this boss with 77 stars, or even just 75.

After all that and throwing Bowser into the third mine, the Grand Star appears, though don't be fooled by its charm -- the game isn't over yet. The Grand Star instead just serves as a warp to the 79th star, and a shortcut back to one of the first areas in the game: the grate room. See, at the very beginning of the game, there's a pipe behind you leading to a room with a simple grate and a sign: "When you have one less than eighty, we'll remove this pesky grate-y." With 79 stars, the grate should be gone, right?

Wrong.

But why? I had one less than 80! Was it possible that this grate worked differently than the rest of the doors in the game? That instead of being based on the number of stars, it did an actual check on all the stars in the game that were collectable, meaning any extra stars didn't count because they weren't part of the check? That seems like the kind of thing that would take additional programming, but not having ever made a romhack myself, I couldn't say for certain.

I kept running over the grate, in disbelief that I couldn't pass through that final gate. I noticed one of the edges had some weirdness to it -- it seemed like Mario's y position was rapidly changing in a very unnatural way. Tiptoeing to the edge, Mario would actually grab its side, and would even briefly clip through the grate! ... Though he would immediately pull himself back up. Maybe there was a chance I could clip this grate (funny, because if possible, I would've been able to do this even with 0 stars). I gave this maybe five minutes of attempts; I hypothesized that by pressing Z to let go of the wall in a 1-frame window, Mario would fall into the grate. But no matter what I tried, I couldn't break through.

With 79 stars, this was finally the end. It was either find the 20th star, or give up. There were no more exploits. There was nothing else to cheese, nothing else to break. Even if there was another 100-coin star somewhere else, it wouldn't matter. I couldn't believe how far I had come just to be blocked right before the end. I couldn't believe how many times I thought the end of the line was upon me, but then I found a way out. I would give one final search for the star. If after that I found nothing, then I would just have to accept my failure.

I really didn't feel like scouring the 2nd hub again, so I decided to ride the shell over to first path to Bowser. I'd try to be even more thorough in my search than the last time -- on the shell I went in every direction and turned the camera every which way before continuing, then once I got to flat ground, I went into Mario cam and looked all around; I spotted nothing. I entered the sublevel now and looked around again before hitting down the planks. It didn't seem like there was even any place to hide anything except -- what about down?

I was standing on a high mesa, surrounded on all sides by white instant death liquid that was far below me. While I had fallen to my death before (many times) and not noticed anything, had I really checked here?

I hadn't. Going straight back and falling down led to a secret alcove. It turns out the 20th star had been below my feet and I hadn't even known it. After a shell race with Koopa the Quick in this subterranean cavern, the last mystery was solved. The star that had eluded me for so long was mine.

As it turns out though, the 79-star grate would've opened without it anyway. When the area loads, the game checks if you have less than 79 stars, and if you do, the grate spawns. The key phrase here being "when the area loads". See, the final Bowser's star is actually in the grate room itself, so when you entered, the grate had already been loaded. Getting the 79th star doesn't trigger anything to hide the grate. All I would have simply had to have done earlier was exit and re-enter the area.

The final star was just a slide where you have to collect 100 coins. I imagine without save states that it would actually be quite difficult, since while you can go down the slide multiple times and keep your coins, Mario turns invisible after the first run (presumably due to a bug, which the developer acknowledges on a sign). Reading about how much work went into the game does make me hope that if the dev is reading this, that the 23 thousand words here don't come off as me tearing the game apart.

I know when a parody game of "The Witness" came out, "The Looker", the game's director, Jon Blow, was unhappy with that, and would even ban people in his chat for mentioning the game. The ironic thing is that "The Looker" is a hilarious parody game, and it really could have only been made by people who understood and loved the original. My point here is that more than anything else, this giant wall of text is really just an exercise in humor. But very rambling, conceptual, dry humor. It's like how my uncle has a book in his house called "How To Live With a Very Large Penis". It's a lengthy book with many chapters, but you're supposed to laugh at its very existence, and not really meant to sit down and read through it. So perhaps that's what I'm doing here -- laugh at the fact that a novella length review of a Mario romhack exists, but don't actually read it. Though if you're at this point, you already did. Hmmm ...

To prove that this is an attempt at humor, let me tell a simple joke: In order to dodge expensive plane fares, a stingy man takes a small plane out of an obscure airport on an old, uncomfortable plane. So old is the plane that the windows don't even have glass and are instead open to the sky. It's a small plane, of course, consisting of only a dozen people or so. The plane takes off, and wanting to get some sleep, the man relaxes and closes his eyes. Behind him, however, is a middle-aged lady with her dog, who won't stop barking. The man first kindly requests that the woman should silence her dog, and she tries to comply, but doggy treats would only distract the dog for so long before it began barking again.

The dog continued to woof and woof next to the man's ear, and now he flipped out. "I HAVE HAD A VERY LONG DAY AT WORK! IF YOU DON'T SHUT THAT DOG UP RIGHT NOW, THEN I WILL THROW IT RIGHT OFF THIS PLANE!" This only served to anger the woman: "That is very rude, sir, and I would advise you to watch your tone or else I might report you to the police once we land."

The man snatched the dog straight from the woman's lap, and her mouth opened, aghast. The man held the dog toward the window, it still barking right in his face. He had no intention of throwing the dog out of the plane, but at that moment a gust of wind hit the the wings, and the turbulence caused his unsteady hands to go flying out the window.

The woman screamed, and reflexively threw her own hands out the window to catch the dog. Luckily the dog was OK, but when she pulled her dog back into the plane, it oddly had something in its mouth: THE BRICK.

god i hope someone somewhere finds brick jokes funny

So basically that's it. I got 81 out of the 80 stars. It was a unique experience -- discovering sequence breaks is pretty fun, and so by me getting stuck, I wound up with a more memorable and a more interesting experience overall. I complained earlier about the player's lack of choice, but inadvertently, the game created an experience that empowered me in ways that few other games have done and with a large amount of player choice. I needed to formulate plans, rack my brain for potential exploits and little details, and there was no simple fix to put me back on the game's original track (other than finding the missing star, which I only did at the very end).

What happened is a phenomenon called divergent gameplay: situations unplanned by the developer had come about, and interesting puzzles were formed without a human's guiding hand. The sign at the end of the game says the dev might make another hack if there's any demand for it -- and yeah, I'd play it, if I knew about it. I think experience is a powerful sculpture, and with more of it, the next game could be even better. In fact, I'd say that this had the bones and ideas to be one of my favorite hacks, from its overall adventurous structure to small interesting applications of the game's mechanics -- with iteration, ideas like the ones in this game could be further refined to like, not frustrate the player.

I said this earlier, but I was actually kind of hoping that my playthrough would end in my failure. I had some fun ideas on how to completely unravel my sanity, but with completing the game 100%, I can't exploit those emotions anymore. Instead, things end here positively, my sanity intact. If you're like me, you think to yourself, "So after all that, a happy ending?"

Well no, not really. I probably could have like found a job or something if I was willing to put as much effort into that as I am this text.