Super Mario 74 - RetroAchievements (Part 1)

Back to the SM64 romhacks for Game #13 - Super Mario 74.

I had played part of this hack in the past with a couple of friends on the Co-op Deluxe PC port, but I had never played it by myself from start to finish.

And man, let me tell you, my perception on this hack completely changed after doing this.

Putting the achievements aside and just looking at the hack itself, this is a strange one.

I certainly agree that hacks should progressively get more challenging the later you get into the game, but the jump shouldn't be too substantial.

Well, SM74 feels really discombobulated with the difficulty jumping all over the place.

The stars in the first 13 levels are mostly pretty easy, but randomly on occasion there will be a moderate challenge that pops in out of nowhere.

But then, the last two levels (Luminium-Sphere, Ombru-Sphere) and Bowser's Crystal Palace with red coins jump to significantly difficult. It makes sense when I now look at others' experiences playing this hack that they weren't able to finish getting all 151 stars after breezing through most of it.

As for the achievements, for the first 13 levels, the only ones that resemble any kind of challenge are the collecting all the coins in a few of the levels and Fast and Furious (beating Koopa with a sub 10 second time).

But, getting all the coins and all the ! boxes on the last two levels definitely required me doing some research on what the best route was and how to attack it. That way, I could limit how many times I was in a dangerous situation. Obviously you saw that with how frequently I was pausing during those stars.

As for Bowser's Crystal Palace, the red coins are definitely a challenge. All the other stars are pretty easy. The level certainly has a weird design.

That said, this brings me to the worst achievement - Back to the Good Old Days.

This was at the end in getting the 151st star and having to fly underneath the level and back up that small hole to the pipe. I was doing this while in a vc call with a few others, and I was losing my mind on how much I hated this.

I tried doing this blindly at first, but with it being a completely black background for the floor, sky and edges of the level, plus running into the occasional invis wall = PAIN.

Plus, the texture of the surface both underneath the building and on the walls going up the hole are the same silver brick texture, so it's insanely deceiving where the hole actually is and trying not to bonk on the wall going up with that huge speed.

Eventually, I looked up Katze's vod from a few months ago of when he got it. Once I saw how he approached it, I was able to get it roughly a dozen tries later or so.

This star is a good idea in theory, but I think it plays horribly.

Anyways, most of this hack was genuinely enjoyable. So I don't want to sound too negative toward it.

I just didn't like how different the last two levels were in terms of difficulty compared to the rest of the hack on top of the Back to the Good Old Days achievement.

I know there are at least a couple other editions of this hack. Perhaps I will give them a shot later down the road, but it won't be anytime soon lol.

Super Mario 74 achievement list: https://retroachievements.org/game/10546

RA Profile: https://retroachievements.org/user/it...

0:00 Important Information
1:11 Skyward Slopes
15:20 Toxic-Switch of Danger (Metal Cap)
20:23 Azure-Abyss
38:30 Bowser's Badlands-Battlefield
44:00 Confused on what I should do next
45:42 Tower of the East stars (Overworld 2)
54:15 Lava-Switch of Eruption (Wing Cap)
1:01:55 Dice-Fortress
1:21:15 System of a Town
1:43:00 Dust-Switch of Identity (Vanish Cap)
2:12:30 Haunted Factory
2:59:55 Last overworld 2 star
3:01:30 Bowser's Aquatic Castle
3:14:00 Doing dumb strats trying to get to MIPS
3:16:25 Animal Cruelty
3:17:35 Stalagmite Cave
3:49:35 Icecrystal-Tower
4:19:30 Overheating Oasis
4:39:10 Flowery Gardens
5:12:10 Frozen Slide
5:29:10 Valley of the Toads stars (Overworld 1)
5:31:38 Swampy Spring
6:03:10 Sunny Beach
6:34:10 Magma Temple star and Who Put That There?
6:39:20 Cliff of Wrath
7:06:00 Molten Treasure Chest