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It's a-Mario time... again! Submit your comment on the second section of Super Mario 64 for The Deepest Dive, covering everything in the game from the first Bowser fight through the second Bowser fight... so the basement levels, basically! For the next discussion airing next week we'll be covering everything else in the game.

Also, because we're continuing to grow, please keep your one comment to around the length of a tweet. We want to get to as many comments as possible. We hope you understand.

Please submit a comment below with your specific thoughts on the first third of the game. Let's talk about your favorite star, piece of art, sound effect, buzzard, please get specific. The more specific you are, the higher the odds of us reading your comment during the discussion. We'll finish collecting comments on Thursday morning.

Remember, you can watch us record The Deepest Dive live on Thursday at 6pm Central if you're at the $10 Backstage Pass tier on Patreon. The link will be in the Backstage Pass tier on the Discord. Thanks for your support!

Comments

Anonymous

Mario has a low-poly model used when the camera is far away. Back on a CRT it wasn't noticeable, but now you can clearly see it popping in and out. It's more comical than anything, but still...

Anonymous

I just noticed this after all these years! Did you know that you can kill flying enemies by jumping under them?! I have killed those pesky gasmask shyguys in the Hazy Maze Cave by doing that. It is so much easier! I guess there is a reason why Mario has his fist up when jumping other than hitting ? blocks.

Anonymous

Can we agree that shifting sand land is the most frustrating level in the whole game? Instakill areas are everywhere and it makes moving around the world incredibly difficult and punishing

Anonymous

Also, the only reason I knew you could run up the sides of those red pillars in shifting sand land was because a friend told me. Was there some hint I missed or is this just something the game hopes you figure out?

Mike Po

What in the blazes is going on in this castle's basement? The levels off the main entrance are a bay, a battlefield, a fortress and a snowy mountain. The basement houses a desert with an ancient curse locked away in it, a lava maze, a creepy mine with poison gas, and a submarine station. The shift in difficulty and level tone in this second portion of the game is more drastic than I remembered from my childhood.

Anonymous

I was surprised with the checkpointing in the volcano in Lethal Lava Land. I died (totally not my fault, I'm amazing) and was expecting to have to make my way back to the volcano. I was pleasantly surprised when I was dropped into the volcano. I believe this checkpointing is also in the desert stage as well, in the pyramid.

Anonymous

As much as I love the world design in this game, I think the basement levels have some of the weakest examples of it. Both Shifting Sand Land and Lethal Lava Land don't really feel like realized worlds. They're both big flat squares that kind of just end abruptly and fade out into nothingness. The only thing that saves them for me is being able to explore inside the pyramid and volcano, respectively. Hazy Maze Cave is probably the best level of this section in this regard, with work elevators, directories on the wall, and an underground lake that feeds to the waterfall outside the castle. I looove that sort of stuff.

Anonymous

I believe shifting sand land is the first level in the game where you can lose your hat? It's always quite disapointing going into an old mario 64 save to discover that old you never bothered to get the hat back, and now you have no memory of where it is.

Anonymous

Hey cohorts! Alright, the game is starting to pick up in difficulty in some fun and not so fun ways (the not so fun ways specifically being shifting sand land, I hate that dark quicksand stuff!) With my lives slowly dwindling down, I thought about the tricks in other mario games to stockpile lives real quick. The koopa shell on the stairs in the original and the koopa shell in the small cave in 3D world specifically. Are there any well-known cheeses to easily stockpile up on lives in this game or have you found any easy strats yourself to do this? Let’s-a-go! -Beeks from Grand Rapids, MI

Anonymous

There are 3 1-ups on the slide at the beginning of the Vanish Cap stage in the moat. I always just grabbed those 3, exit course, then go back in and repeat.

Anonymous

Here’s a simple one for you all: what was your favorite level in this segment of the game and why?

Anonymous

Something new I just discovered in this game: if you grab the monkey in Tall Tall Mountain he grabs your hat and if you grab him again he gives it back. Maybe that's a well known thing but this is the first time I've experienced this

Anonymous

Im going for the 120 star run and im really enjoying my time, but the tick tock clock and rainbow ride suck. The camera and controls had me falling off the stage at 99 coins more than once. seriously eff these levels.