Often times when tinkering around with one
discovery or concept in a video game, you
find yourself discovering parallel things
that you weren’t even considering.
And today’s video is really a culmination
of those things.
I was testing x when I discovered y, and when
checking out y I discovered z - and z absolutely
blew my mind.
This domino effect is sort of what rippled
across Super Mario 3D Land as new things unfolded.
So join me as I break down the super strange
occurrence of how a single goomba can delete
a level in Super Mario 3D Land.
So not too long ago I found myself checking
out a lot of different things within 3D Land.
Those who have been watching may have seen
my videos where I was testing the smashing
power of Mario’s behind against an army
of Goombas.
Or perhaps my tinkering with the strange title
screen level.
A lot of times when these videos go out people
point out things I should try in the comments,
so I find myself revising these stages over
and over again.
Like the suggestion to place a goal flag on
the title screen level to see what would happen
if Mario grabbed it.
I tried and tried over and over to get this
to work, but despite how I set up the object
or what parameters it was given in the code,
the game would clear out the flags immediately
when the intro sequence loaded.
Disappointing, but perhaps in the future I’ll
figure it out.
So some things end in failure, unlike today’s
topic.
So let’s swing on back over to the very
first stage in the game, because honestly,
this is probably my most active testing grounds.
So something I found very interesting while
making my Super Mario 3D Land Goomba stomp
video was that while setting everything up,
I noticed that certain enemies that normally
would never interact had some special characteristics
for interacting.
You may remember that I had been creating
massive stacks of Goombas to see how many
total goombas could be defeated with a single
ground pound, but this experimentation and
set up is what lead me to another bizarre
finding.
So at the start of the very first level in
the game there are two cheep cheeps that swim
through the rivers and jump out of the water.
It’s actually pretty neat how the developers
accomplished this, because it’s just a giant
cycle.
This is what it looks like underneath the
level.
It’s like a never-ending rollercoaster.
Anyways, while moving goombas into place originally
I noticed that the Cheap Cheap who swims through
the level was destroying my goombas if they
got too close.
So this of course was really strange to me
since most enemies just sorta go through each
other and don’t destroy other enemies.
So this is the y scenario I mentioned at the
start of this video, with x being my Goomba
stomp experiment.
Since I had witnessed time and time again
that cheep cheeps were destroying Goombas
I wanted to see what other sort of enemies
they could destroy.
Perhaps in my head I was thinking about how
funny it would be to have a Cheep Cheep defeat
every single enemy in the game with ease,
but things weren’t that simple.
So I started going through and lining up lots
of different enemies to see how the Cheep
Cheep would effect them.
First up were Koopa Troopas, but for some
reason the Cheep Cheep wasn’t able to harm
them.
I found this odd because the fish was just
obliterating the Goomba army.
That’s when I moved on to Boomerang Bros…
But the same thing happened.
The fish simply swam or jumped through this
enemy without them being affected.
Perplexed, I figured it was time to bring
out the big guns: A single Goomba.
Now here’s the thing - A single Goomba and
a Goomba from a Goomba Tower are not the same
thing truly.
Even when you have one Goomba left, it’s
still a different type of entity than a Goomba
that always spawns solo.
And that’s why the results of this test
weren’t so surprising.
So a single Goomba - spawned independently
who has never been inside a Goomba stack before,
can not be harmed by a cheep cheep.
But the last goomba of a goomba stack still
can be.
One gets defeated with ease, and the other
is left alone.
So my dreams of crushing every single foe
with a cheep cheep were kind of thrown out
the window.
I’m not sure why Cheap Cheap’s have the
ability to only hurt Goomba Towers - but if
there’s a level I’m not remembering where
this happens in, certainly let me know in
the comments below.
It’s definitely really strange!
Of course, there was one last part of this
experiment that lead to something super super
weird.
And that was when I decided to test other
Goomba types to see if the Cheep Cheep could
defeat them.
So in Super Mario 3D Land there’s a lot
of different types of Goombas.
There’s single goombas, towers of goombas,
and then Goombas that have tails.
However, there’s also the giant tailed Goombas.
And that’s the type of Goomba that really
kind of messed things up.
I was thinking, “oh hey, I’ll just spawn
this lil’ fellow near the river or something
and I’ll have this cheep cheep send him
to the shadow realm.”
Little did I know I fell for this goomba’s
trap card though.
So when you place one of these types of Goombas,
they typically tend to hop up and glide.
I wasn’t thinking much about this because
I figured they would just sort of hang around
their spawn location.
But I was wrong.
So the Goomba would instantly leap up and
glide a considerable distance off screen if
I wasn’t quick enough, but when it came
to the Goomba performing its tail swipe, the
game lost all hope.
With the swipe of the Goomba’s tail - not
only did everything on screen take damage,
but it warped Mario across the screen too.
It was like a universal damage of 1 was granted
to everything on screen, and the large tailed
goomba somehow sacrificed itself in the process.
The cheep cheep died, and the Koopa Troopas
were put in their shells.
Now, from what I could gather, this possibly
occurred if the Goomba was offscreen when
swiping its tail.
I don’t know why, but it did.
This caught me off guard and I didn’t know
what had happened the first time, but I had
no idea things could get worse than this.
So I decided to move the Goomba to a different
location and mark this off as a glitch.
I still wanted the cheep cheep to hit the
big big goomba so we moved to the first river.
But man…
That was a mistake.
Because this time, the Goomba did the same
thing - except when it launched its attack
it punched a hole in the universe.
Anything within camera range was basically
vaporized and converted into coins.
The enemies, the level itself, and even Mario.
Mario no longer existed.
All that I was left with was the flowing waterfall.
I couldn’t move or jump, and I wasn’t
able to exit out of the level either if I
paused the game.
It honestly looked like someone just selected
all the objects on the screen and just hit
the delete key.
It’s weird though because I can’t think
of anything that would cause the game to mass
unload everything on screen within its memory.
Especially since it cut off a part of the
level.
The level still continued on and I could see
the rest if I moved the camera, but this first
section was just a ghost of its former self.
Mario himself is an object loaded in the game’s
memory, so that explains why not even he was
safe.
So the only thing I could do was let the timer
run its course so that non-existent Mario
could be defeated and thus the level would
start over.
I haven’t done enough research to figure
out why this deletion occurs, but I’ve never
had it happen before and it definitely caught
me off guard.
Perhaps its a path behavior set to the goomba
that’s causing the error or perhaps its
the environment itself - with the Goomba moving
out of camera range but still having to pull
off its attack.
Either way it’s strange that with one flick
of a tail, everything on screen was mass deleted.
By far it’s the most deadly attack I’ve
ever experienced in a Mario game.
And with that…
Thanks for joining me for this 3D Land purge.
If like stuff like this, consider subscribing
if you haven’t yet.
Thanks for watching guys and gals, and until
my next video, cheers!
