As one of the most beloved games of all time, Super Mario 64 has been endlessly dissected by fans and speedrunners in the 27 years since release. Now, one runner has conquered one of its final secrets: collecting an “impossible 1-Up” without dying.
The 1-Up in question is located in Cool, Cool Mountain’s slide shortcut, and it’s long been thought impossible to collect without dying due to the fact that it immediately falls below the floor when it spawns, seemingly due to developer error. However, in a new tool-assisted (TAS) video, runner PaLiX uses many pinpoint wall jumps and three hours of stored speed to clip through a wall and collect the 1-Up without falling into the pit.
In the above run from 2021, you can see TASer Terb collect all the 1-Ups in the level, leaving the impossible 1-Up for last–and dying in the process. It seems unlikely that this new three-hour strategy will change much in the world of Super Mario 64 speedrunning, but it’s interesting to see that it is indeed possible. Now, if a real human somehow manages to perform those wall jumps without the help of save states, we’re really in trouble.
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