499 Words About: Bullying Bullies in Super Mario 64
There isn’t any region that prevented my progress through Super Mario 64 more than Lethal Lava Land, and it’s only been in the last year playing on my Nintendo Switch that I was able to actually get the first star. It’s a surreal, volcanic zone populated by floating eyeballs that shoot lasers, angular geometric platforms that are regularly submerged in lava, and horned bomb-ombs called bullies.
There’s also a TON of lava.
The first and second missions in this region involve “bullying” these aforementioned “bullies,” and I died a lot trying to beat these two levels.
And I mean a LOT.
Also “bullying” means kicking them into lava.
Like a lot of the Super Mario 64 videogame, this mission is a combination of puzzle-solving and raw physics. Simply hopping to the actual sight of the confrontation is difficult because it involves configuring how much friction Mario will have as he hops, walks, and runs from platform to platform. And, I have to be honest, I tended to overshoot Mario’s “Sticky friction” and wound up burning his butt repeatedly in the lava, sending him flying and holding his aforementioned poor, scalded bum.
Getting to the dang platforms is a struggle in and of itself.
And then the actual fight begins.
The bullies have one prerogative: they push. The AI that governs their behavior selects Mario in the immediate space and, after making a constipated grunt, they charge at him propelling their entire weight, and unless the player reacts in time with a well placed punch Mario is going to be knocked back, sometimes right into the lava. In the first mission Mario faces off against a single large Bully, but the second mission has him fighting three of these twerps, and then the giant one again for a pathetic sequel.
“Bully 2, The Bullying.”
Mario isn’t fun, or easy, to control in Super Mario 64. Most of that is just due to the limitations of the hardware. The Nintendo 64(N64) is still arguably the strangest configured controller I’ve ever played, and its joystick is handled in binary: the avatar either ran at uncontrollable speed, or piddled along in a snail’s space. This in itself would be frustrating, but when I remember most Super Mario videogames are just obstacle courses, and the later areas are dedicated to maneuvering him carefully around tighter and tighter spaces, well, it’s a wonder how I didn’t completely smash my controller.
Actually, if I’m being honest, I may have done that.
Overcoming these missions was a struggle and, honestly, dispiriting; I watched Mario scream and fly through the air holding his butt again and again. Still, I recognised that these were, ultimately, three dimensional puzzles, and while the physics at play seemed stacked against me, there was a solution. Beating the Bullies was just figuring out how their physics work and using their momentum against them.
I won both the stars, but beating the bullies was just one more challenge on this ever-escalating obstacle course.
Joshua “Jammer” Smith
8.26.2024
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