... the tale of how I went from Peach's Castle opening to Bowser's defeat in just under two hours! (I'm proud of myself)
Now many of you might not really be impressed with that. In fact, about a quarter to midnight, when I proposed my plan to Daisy that I would beat Super Mario 64 in two hours, she herself didn't see any reason why it couldn't be done with ease. So let's get on the math train and see just how serious an undertaking we're talking about here. With only 120 minutes of total working time and 70 stars necessary to even gain access to Bowser, that leaves only about a minute and forty-two seconds to grab each star, which is to say nothing of the three Bowser levels that do not necessarily yield stars, or all that time spent running from one world to another. So let's not jerk around here: you'd need some major know-how about Mario's world, not to mention the skillz necessary to pay the billz. You better believe it and I'm loaded with both.
I started this little gambit with pretty much no mental preparation; just jumped right out of that Warp Pipe and hit the ground running. The Big Bob-omb was defused within two minutes. Somewhere in between the dashing, short-cutting, and assorted acrobatics, I tried to formulate some kind of plan to attack. But I kept on chugging, jumping back into the Bob-omb Battlefield time and again to race Koopa the Quick, shoot to that island in the sky, and free the Chain Chomp. I figured that winging to the sky for the 5 secret coins would take far too long if I didn't have the Wing Cap, and there was no way I was going to waste my time on the Red Coins, so I booked right out of there and into the nearest available level, Cool Cool Mountain.
So by now it was obvious to me, as I'm sure it is to you at this point, that star selection was going to be a major factor that would make or break my goal. I mean, to get 70 stars at a rate of around a minute-and-a-half each, I had to make sure I wasn't plodding along looking for stars that were going to take more time than they were worth. So 100-coin Secret Stars are right out, as are most of the Red Coin levels. In the end, the only Red Coin stars I got were from Lethal Lava Land, Big Boo's Haunt, Tall Tall Mountain, Snowman's Land, and Tick Tock Clock. Every other level would have taken up too much time collecting them, understand? So it just couldn't be done. For another thing, Rainbow Ride in its entirety was completely out of the question. I think there's one star there that I could have grabbed without riding around on the magic carpet, and the Red Coins there might have been do-able in around two minutes, but my memory was a tad fuzzy on that level on a whole so I figured I should just do without. On I went.
It was probably between fifteen minutes and a half hour into the adventure by the time I squared off against Bowser the first time, but at this point I had at least 20 stars so I wasn't really sure if I was doing well or if I needed to worry. I'd picked up about four or five stars from each of the First Floor levels, the Wing Cap Secret Star, and one of the two stars you could get on the Secret Slide. I forgot to go back for the other one until I had beaten Bowser a second time for some reason. The only star I regret not making a play for was "Blast to the Stone Pillar" on Jolly Roger Bay, which I'd also forgotten about at the time.
I was doing alright, though. More or less, I was sticking to a pace of earning about a star every minute or so. Looking back at it, Jolly Roger Bay might have brought my average rate down a tad, but overall I was doing alright. I don't believe I'd even died yet. I had a scare when the eel knocked me a bit, bringing me down to only one point of life left at damn near the bottom of the sea, but I'm an excellent swimmer so I somehow made it up for air in time.
To really understand the feel of it all, you'd have to know that one main reason that Super Mario 64 is so damn fun for me to play is probably the same reason I'm pretty fun to watch. I go around like a coked-up Flying Grayson, to the point that Daisy said I play like a maniac, and also to the point that she told me to slow the hell down quite a few times when I hit a snag due to my non-stop flipping and whatnot. I wasn't just joking earlier when I said it was pretty intense; it got hot enough from raw concentration and willthat I had to take off my long sleeve shirt to keep myself from sweating. Thankfully Daisy was sweet enough to fix me a PB & J and a glass of milk to "keep my strength up." It was at that point that I realized that girls don't really do things like this, as she responded to my "strength" reasoning with, "You know, that's not actually you doing all that." I guess I might think that way, too, if I also lacked the essential Y-chromosome that gives my brain an almost metaphysical link into all things virtual. Of course, all you N-Philers True Gamers out there know that this kind of thing can be pretty strenuous. I recall many-a-time that I was literally dripping sweat during Smash Bros. tournaments. In fact one time, this one kid was visibly shaking in anticipation of his match in a Melee tournie. When you're really into it, things get intense.
Anyway, I digress. Moving to the basement, it didn't take more than about five seconds to grab that little bunny. That's a nice quick star right there. And Lethal Lava Land? Thanks to the Wing Cap, I was only a long jump and a short flight from anywhere on the level, so that whole world went by in about five minutes. I flew right over the gate of the "Red Hot Log Rolling", and really the only hangup I had at all was that it took so long to get up to the top of the volcano. Not too long, but longer than anything else on the level by far. On a side-note, it was somewhere between "Red Hot Log Rolling" and "Pole Jumping for Red Coins" that Daisy and I realized that Mario had almost entirely shifted his theme from drug references to homosexual undertones since his days on the NES. That provided some nice laughs that warded off my feeling guilty that I was playing videogames for two hours while my sick girlfriend watched and fed me, all-the-while putting up with the constant swearing and incredibly cocky attitude that I traditionally adopt when I get into gamer mode.
Although I generally regard the Basement as my least favorite part of Mario's adventure, it was a total blessing to my cause. My pace exploded from steady in the First Floor to outright manic in the Basement, what with such incredibly quick finds as "8 Coin Puzzle with 15 Pieces", "The Manta Ray's Reward", and "Shining Atop the Pyramid". It was also relatively easy business to get the last two Caps, and after I'd plundered Dire Dire Docks of everything but its Red Coins, I made a bolt for Bowser, blew through his defenses with amazing form, and moved upwards. You should really see me play Bowser in the Fire Sea sometime. It's incredible.
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