Supper Mario Broth: Special Zone, Issue 35 (Patreon)

Welcome, everyone, to the 35th issue of Supper Mario Broth: Special Zone.

Today, I will showcase all instances of an obscure feature that Super Mario World and Super Mario 64 have in common: 1-Up Mushrooms that appear when touching a set of invisible activation zones. Both level editor views showing the precise locations of these zones, and animated .GIFs showing the 1-Up Mushrooms being obtained in-game are provided.

I am intending to resume the regular operation of the Patreon with posts for all subscription tiers. More on this and the hiatus on the bottom of the article. Thank you all for your continued support of the Supper Mario Broth blogs even as I ran them at limited posting capacity during a difficult time in my life.

Hidden Lives

Secret 1-Up Mushrooms have always been a staple of the mainline Mario series. After Super Mario Bros. introduced invisible Question Blocks containing 1-Up Mushrooms, nearly every following game either contained them or expanded on the idea hidden extra lives in various ways, such as e.g. Super Mario Sunshine, where 1-Up Mushrooms can be obtained by spraying certain unmarked objects with water.

However, Super Mario World and Super Mario 64 feature one of the most cryptic ways hidden extra lives can be obtained: by making Mario touch invisible activation zones (the size of a single 16x16 tile in Super Mario World and the size of a cork box in Super Mario 64) to make the 1-Up Mushroom appear. In both games, absolutely no in-game hints or even suggestions from the environment layout are given for the location of the zones, which likely means that the developers intended a small number of players to find them by chance, and then share the secrets through word of mouth (as was the entire stated premise behind the oblique secrets in the NES Legend of Zelda, for example).

In Super Mario World, the 1-Up Mushrooms are obtainable only by touching four activation zones each, in a specific order. The requirements have been relaxed for Super Mario 64, where most of the mushrooms have fewer than 4 zones, and those can be touched in any order. Still, as you will see, the locations of some of them are nearly impossible to guess without knowing about them beforehand or stumbling upon them by chance, which would not be very helpful as the 1-Up Mushroom offers no indication of what exaclty the player did correctly for it to appear.

For this article, I have used screenshots that I took in Lunar Magic, a fan-created Super Mario World level editor, and Toad's Tool 64, a fan-created Super Mario 64 level editor. You may have seen the information I present in this article, partially, in other places before (The Cutting Room Floor contains information about the Super Mario World mushrooms, while Super Mario 64 expert Pannenkoek2012 has covered the Super Mario 64 ones around 8 years ago); I do not purport to be the first one showcasing it. However, I have never found a site where all of the hidden 1-Up Mushrooms were shown together in one place both with a technical view and with video/animation, which is the reason I wrote this article and why I hope it may be more useful to you than text-based summaries of this information you may find elsewhere.

First, let us start with Super Mario World. I will be going through the levels in which the secret 1-Up Mushrooms appear in roughly the order they would be reached in-game.

The first can be found in Yoshi's Island 4:

This is the beginning of the level. You may notice that the top of the platform is visible; this is possible only in the editor as the game prevents the screen from scrolling upward in this level. As this already suggests, it is not actually possible to see the platform the activation zones are located, and the 1-Up Mushroom must be obtained by flying into the top left corner, and then walking right until Mario falls down, back into the screen. The translucent 1-Up Mushrooms with numbers on them are the activation zones; they must be touched in order, with Mario's bottom half, to create the 1-Up Mushroom.

In the footage, you can see me waiting for Mario to land before walking to the right. If I had pressed Right earlier, I would have not had any way to know if Mario was still in mid-air and could have missed some of the zones. Note also how long it takes for the 1-Up Mushroom to fall down. It is easy to imagine that many players might have actually activated it but moved to the right after falling quickly enough to not notice the mushroom.

An important thing to note is that all 1-Up Mushrooms activated this way become unavailable for the rest of the play session, i.e. until the console is powered down. If you wish to collect one of them multiple times, you must save the game and reset the console to do so.

The next one of these is in Donut Plains 1:

This is the first of many instances of the activation zones being placed around a block. In this case, Mario must touch the top of it and then go counterclockwise, touching the sides. 

I first defeat the Chargin' Chucks (interestingly, this particular variant is named "Confused Chucks" in Nintendo Power's Mario Mania guide because they throw baseballs despite being football-themed), as leaving them alive and attempting to touch all the activation zones would have been extremely difficult due to the baseballs. Note also that the resulting 1-Up Mushroom always jumps in mid-air, and always spawns moving in the direction Mario is facing. In areas like these, it is not important where Mario is looking, but in others, looking the wrong way while touching the last zone may cause the mushroom to jump down a pit.

The next one is in Donut Plains 4: 

This is one some players might have discovered on their own simply because of the oddity of being presented with a Stone Block at the end of a bonus area reachable only by flying. Jumping at and around the block has a chance of randomly touching all the points in the correct order, although of course it is not easy to replicate if the player is not given any feedback as to what actually happened.

After this, in Morton's Castle:

This one is perhaps the easiest to obtain as all it takes is to walk down the small dead end. However, the Dry Bones would dissuade most players who are not Cape Mario from entering that passage.

As I have taken care of the Dry Bones beforehand using the Cape Spin, this one is the most trivial one of them all to collect.

The next one is in Vanilla Ghost House:

I have previously made a post about this specific one on the main Supper Mario Broth blog due to the sheer randomness of the requirements; note how the player is essentially required to jump back and forth across these platforms without any visible pattern to get the 1-Up Mushroom to appear.

It is interesting to imagine this happening to random players all across the world in the 31 years the game has been out; many of them likely were surprised and wanted to show this happening to someone else, and could not replicate it both due to the cryptic requirements and the fact that even if they did jump on the same platforms, the 1-Up Mushroom would not spawn again in the same game session.

After this, in Vanilla Dome 4:

This one has a high potential of being lost if Mario is facing left when touching the last zone, which is highly likely given that the intended movement has Mario walk left off the block. In my footage, I show a slow but functional way to get Mario to look right when touching it:

Next, in Vanilla Fortress:

Note that this one can only be obtained as Small Mario since the first checkpoint is underneath a block and Mario needs to touch it with the bottom half of his body, while Super Mario cannot duck while swimming and simply has no way of touching it. (This has been pointed out by Patreon user HEYimHeroic.)

The 1-Up Mushroom still spawns facing left, but changes to facing to the right after bumping into the ceiling due to a peculiarity of item movement.

After this, in Cookie Mountain:

Here, the activation zones are also placed in order, and can be touched just by emerging from the exit pipe of the level's bonus area and running to the right without jumping. However, as many players like to randomly make Mario jump when running across vast stretches of open space, some players have undoubtedly missed the 1-Up Mushroom by inadvertently jumping over one of the zones.

The next one is in Forest of Illusion 3:

Here, it is a repeat of the cryptic positioning from Vanilla Ghost House, requiring the player to randomly jump around on top of the blocks to discover.

Then, in Chocolate Island 2:

As Chocolate Island 2 is a very complex course where every area changes based on what Mario did in the previous areas, the screenshot is not helpful to show how exactly to get to this point in the level. This is the variant of the second area that appears if Mario has collected anywhere from 9 to 20 coins in the first area before going through the pipe.

Next, in Wendy's Castle:

Unlike most of these zones that surround a block, this one goes clockwise instead of counterclockwise. It is also relatively easy to discover simply by jumping onto the block and then accidentally falling down the right side of it.

Note that the blue Exclamation Block, while normally helpful, results in the 1-Up Mushroom being deflected back into the dangerous area with many Skewers.

As we are nearing the end, there is a level that contains two such hidden 1-Up Mushrooms, although there is a catch. In Valley of Bowser 2:

There are two areas very close to each other in the room with the rising and falling floor that each contain their own 1-Up Mushroom. However, it is not actually possible to obtain both of them without resetting the game, as the developers overlooked that collecting one set of the zones automatically disables the other set, as discovered by Twitter user IsoFrieze.

There is also another issue with both of them. Observe the footage:

If you are playing as any form of Mario outside of Small Mario, then getting the 1-Up Mushrooms may require ducking and jumping rather than walking. This is due to the odd limitation I mentioned earlier: Mario's bottom half has to touch the activation zone. If he merely walks through them and touches them with his top half, it does not count. It took me a very long time to determine this; at first I simply could not get either of them no matter what I did despite seemingly touching all the zones. I both asked associates to also try it in their games, and looked up footage of people playing the game online, and was unable to get any confirmation of anyone actually collecting the 1-Up Mushrooms until I finally attempted the technique shown in the footage.

The second-to-last one is in Larry's Castle:

This one is very difficult to collect because once again, the game baits Mario into looking to the right when touching the last zone, making the mushroom jump away into oblivion. Without knowing in advance what to do, the mushroom will almost certainly be lost.

Finally, there is one in Gnarly, the first level of the Special Zone:

This one is peculiar not for its positioning, but for what happens to the 1-Up Mushroom afterwards, which I presume was due to a lack of testing as this is an optional level. Here is what happens when the player is Cape Mario and can slow down to match the speed of the mushroom:

The player is able to slow down and catch it. However, let us assume the player knows where the mushroom is, but is only Super Mario:

Even though the player lands on literally the highest available floor after the activation zone, the 1-Up Mushroom simply despawns due to its horizontal height from Mario, and never falls down. I can only assume that this was not tested, as I cannot imagine this being the intended behavior.

If the player uses a P-Switch to create invisible blocks that are slightly higher up than the Note Block, the 1-Up Mushroom will not have the opportunity to despawn.

That is it for the 1-Up Mushrooms that can actually be obtained, but in the game's code, there are two more instances of these activation zones:

The test level also has two sets, with the same limitation as Valley of Bowser 2. However, there is no legitimate way to enter the test level without performing extremely advanced glitches.

Note also that there are other types of invisible items in Super Mario World:

Hidden Super Mushrooms exist that have only one activation zone and jump out when Mario touches it, usually hidden in bushes; but this is beyond the scope of this article.

Next up, Super Mario 64.

First, I must clarify that there are two types of hidden 1-Up Mushrooms in Super Mario 64. There is the type that works like the one in Super Mario World where the zones are invisible, and one that is attached to trees or poles, and appears when Mario touches the top of the tree or pole in question. I will only cover the former, as the latter is technically less "hidden" as trying to climb every tree or pole in the game will reveal them all, although there is one exception I will cover later.

In the courtyard of Peach's Castle, there are two coins under the bridge:

I have highlighted the activation zones for the 1-Up Mushrooms in yellow. In some cases, like this one, they coincide with the hitboxes for coins, so that collecting the coins activates the zones and vice versa; but they are not the same object - the coins are separate from the zones, and a coin that coincides with a zone is completely indistinguishable from a regular coin.

Collecting both coins, possible only with wall kicks after draining the moat, causes a 1-Up Mushroom to appear:

Please excuse the suboptimal gameplay; the hardware I use creates considerable lag when I record the gameplay, so that I play overly cautiously to compensate for the lag.

Continuing with Peach's Castle:

This one is extremely well known and most players would have encountered it, but I am including it for the sake of completeness. Going inside this hole in the Jolly Roger Bay room (opposite the Secret Aquarium) causes a 1-Up Mushroom to appear:

Regarding the Aquarium itself:

Here, the zone is directly above the star spawning point, in the middle of coin ring:

As such, it ironically rewards suboptimal movement. Someone who wants to collect all coins and moves perfectly along the outside of the ring would not activate it. There are several of these zones places inside coin rings in this manner.

While we are still on the first floor of Peach's Castle, the Princess's Secret Slide has the most obscure hidden 1-Up Mushroom in the game:

Note the three activation zones under the arches. However, this is not all. There is a final zone Mario has to touch to actually spawn it:

It is located behind the star podium at the end. To summarize, the player must pass under the three arches while perfectly centered on the slide, and then for no apparent reason walk behind the podium to obtain the mushroom:

It would have been an obscure enough secret to put the mushroom there without the arch requirements, but adding them just makes it unnecessarily convoluted. I theorize that this was done as a way to prevent players from repeatedly collecting the 1-Up Mushrooms by skipping most of the slide with a well-timed jump and only touching the final zone, but this slide is actually the hardest one in the game to perform a successful skip on, and anyone who is able to do that either has no need to farm 1-Up Mushrooms or has other ways to do it more efficiently.

The final one in Peach's Castle is found in the basement:

Here, Mario must touch all corners of this passageway after draining it (although of course it can be done before it is drained, with the only difficulty being the slow movement speed underwater):

This is another one I had previously made a separate post about due to its obscurity.

After draining the moat, the Vanish Cap under the Moat area becomes available:

Here, the three coins in the area around the star spawning point coincide with the activation zones.

On to the actual courses, here is one in Bob-omb Battlefield:

Here, the activation zones coincide with four of the coins around this flowerbed, so that simply collecting all coins makes the mushroom appear:

Another example of the zones being activated automatically when collecting coins is found in Whomp's Fortress:

Here, the second and fourth coins on the outside of the spinning platform must be collected, which simply requires Mario to stand on the outer edge of it when it is moving from the left end back to the right end.

Another example of the zone being in the middle of a coin ring is found in Jolly Roger Bay:

As the editor does not show the exact position of the actual coin ring, here is footage of it:

In Lethal Lava Land, there are activation zones around the fire spitter on the rotating island to the left of the Big Bully boss:

Mario must run against the rotation of the platform to collect them:

Of course, if the player is willing to take damage, it is also possible to set Mario on fire and run around in the direction of the rotation instead.

In the pyramid in Shifting Sand Land, there are these stepping stones in the sand on the bottom:

Touching the four marked in yellow causes a 1-Up Mushroom to appear on the last one: 

This is also easily missable as it is relatively easy to skip some of the stones, and most players would be using them to get to the outside ring of the pyramid, in the direction opposite of the one needed to activate the mushroom.

In Bowser in the Fire Sea, there is another one that is highly unlikely to be discovered by accident:

The construct with the white platforms and slopes moves up and down. To reach all three activation zones, the player must wait through one cycle of it reaching the uppermost point and the lowermost point while remaining still at the end of the highest platform:

It is interesting to imagine what the thought process was behind this, as most players would not spend several seconds waiting in the same spot like this and would more likely run and jump around the platform.

In Dire, Dire Docks, one activation zone is hidden inside a clam:

This is interesting as the clam appears empty when it opens, but any player still willing to swim near it is rewarded.

In the downtown area of Wet-Dry World, there are zones around the central monument:

While it is clearly intended to touch them as Mario tries collecting the ring of coins, due to the shape of the monument, jumping for the coins may make Mario slide down a side and no longer make the player need to touch all corners. In addition, it is possible to collect these coins while the town is flooded, missing the floor entirely.

In the secret Tall, Tall Mountain slide, there is another set of corners Mario must touch:

I have already covered this in my in-depth article about the slide before:

Another example of the zones coinciding with coins is found in the huge island on Tiny-Huge Island:

And finally, yet another one is found on one of the spinning platforms in Bowser in the Sky:

This one is also less likely to be found due to how perilously positioned the coins are and how, being a Bowser course, there is no benefit to collecting coins here outside of refilling Mario's health.

One hidden 1-Up Mushroom that most players would have found is in Tick Tock Clock:

The game places an empty platform conspicuously at the end of a small platforming segment, enticing the player to get to it:

And simply by crossing over the platforms, the 1-Up Mushroom is spawned. If every one of these locations was as well telegraphed as this, there would have not been a need for this article, as then most players would have discovered them by themselves.

Finally, here is a special case, in Rainbow Ride:

The object highlighed in yellow is actually not the same type of objects (based on its internal ID) as the rest of the 1-Up Mushroom activation zones; instead, it is a mushroom that is supposed to spawn from a pole or tree.

This is the only instance of the "pole or tree mushroom" object appearing outside of a pole or tree, but it works correctly even without them, just by having Mario touch it:

This is due to the "pole or tree mushroom", despite being its own object type, not actually being bound to Mario's climbing state in order to spawn. This means that every tree that spawns a 1-Up Mushroom can be made to spawn one without climbing it, merely by making Mario jump very close near the tip.

And this concludes the complete list of hidden 1-Up Mushrooms with invisible activation zones in these games.

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To my readers:

I cannot express my gratitude for your continued support. Since last year, the health of one of my family members has been declining and I needed to be a caretaker for that person. As some of you who closely follow the Supper Mario Broth Twitter account might recall, that person entered a critical state earlier this year and passed away in June. It was a very difficult time for me and I hardly had the energy to update my public blogs, much less devote the necessary time to the Patreon, during that time. However, I believe I have now reached a point where I can once again regularly create Patreon posts. Please let me know if you enjoy the length and frequency of these posts as I continue to make them, and I will adjust it in accordance to your feedback. If you are a higher-tier supporter, posts for these tiers will also follow.

Thank you once again from the bottom of my heart. I hope I will be able to continue to provide interesting Mario information for you more regularly from this point forward.