Oct 10, 2023

SM64 ROM Hack collaboration by various creators

Level made by HIbaNYA

The Stars:

Enter Bowser 1 0:00

[S5] Central Room 0:18

[S6] Submerged Below the City 1:13

[S2] Orange Building 3:10

[S3] Inside the Quicksand Volcano 4:58

[S1] Green Building 7:03

[S4] Blue Building 9:23

[S7] Red Coins / Enter Key 1 11:31

Key 1: Hyperspeed Race vs Fluguy 17:29

An all around below average level both in quality and difficulty, with a few weird quirks as well.

For starters I don't think it needed to be a "flood" type stage, since all that does is make you have to lower the water for 5 of 7 stars (only later I realized S3 didn't require that), a basic yet tedious process to keep repeating.

Most stars are quite short and simple, but on a couple of them it felt like they kinda ran out of ideas: S5, literally handed to you after finding the VC and the strange decision to hide S6 beyond a non-existing wall (though it's funny having to clip below the level like that).

The hardest section is the blue building climb, specifically the precise TJ around a wall followed by some tricky small slopes (this has to be redone for reds). The other two buildings, while easier, have a bunch of troll/invisible enemies, so gotta be careful. The BLJ idea for S3 was cool.

On the aesthetics I have mixed feelings: I liked the overall color palette (albeit a bit too diverse) but the blocky nature of some gigantic structures wasn't too visually pleasing.

The music is alright plus it fits well with the theme, so a little improvement to the level.

As for Key 1 itself, it might have been my favorite part of the whole experience.

Going super fast along the track is pretty fun, however there isn't much lineancy for mistakes to win the race, so I tried minimizing my inputs (it's not easy to do a clean rollout, for example) to focus more on the absolute necessary movement while trying to at least skip getting stuck on 2/3 of the jumps. The deciding section really is the "offset funnels" at the end for which I think I came up with a rather consisntent strat.

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