Green Demon Challenge

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The Green Demon Challenge is a ROM Hack created by IngoH, based on a Self-Imposed Challenge for Super Mario 64 that revolves around the 1-Up Mushroom. The challenge is a Meta Game of sorts that has players collect all 8 Red Coins and the corresponding Power Star in the game's worlds while avoiding a 1-UP Mushroom that homes in on you (the titular "Green Demon").

The original challenge was rather popular on Nico Nico Douga in Japan for several years after the game's release; some NicoNico.jp videos were uploaded to YouTube in 2009, and their rediscovery caused a rise in said popularity as the videos began receiving more frequent comments as early as 2014. Another surge of interest occurred in 2017, after the Game Grumps posted videos showcasing their attempt at it.

Before long, it finally became the subject of this ROM hack, most notably played by streamer and speedrunner SimpleFlips; SimpleFlips has an ongoing series of videos dedicated to the hack, found here (All Red Coins, Star Road Edition, and All Stars) and here (All Stars only). IngoH himself was kind enough to update the hack regularly as the series went on.

In normal gameplay, nine of the worlds spawn the homing 1-up in the same area as its Red Coins. The ROM hack extends this to every single world and sub-world outside of Bowser fights by making two critical changes to the base mechanics that can be summarized simply as follows:

1. A homing 1-up now appears soon after Mario enters each stage.
2. Both it and every other 1-up will reduce Mario's health to 0 if he touches it.

Otherwise, all other aspects of the game remain unchanged.

As the 1-Up Mushroom is decently fast, outpacing Mario unless he's constantly running full tilt, and can fly much more freely, the challenge lies in the player refining their movement and knowledge of each stage and understanding how the 1-Up navigates. The ROM hack is ultimately designed for seasoned Super Mario 64 veterans, as complex and creative maneuvers are often required in order to keep the Green Demon away from Mario. While the challenge the hack is made for focuses on the Red Coin Stars, players can attempt this with every stage if they so choose.

The ROM hack and its various versions can be found here. A release video for the latest version (2.0) by IngoH can be found here as of March 2021.

Tropes used in Green Demon Challenge include:

• Ability Required to Proceed: Downplayed from the original game, as the Wing Cap is the bare minimum required if the player is only going for the Red Coin Stars; with sufficient skill, the other two caps are also not as heavily required, though they still make life easier. Several of the other Red Coin stars also naturally require stars from other (usually previous) stages to unlock.
• Boring But Practical: Successfully trapping the Green Demon (see Weaksauce Weakness) more often than not renders collecting the Star ridiculously easy afterward (at least for a while), at the cost of sucking away most or all of the intended challenge. Justified in that some stages may not leave you much choice in the matter otherwise.
• Dead Character Walking: Mario's death animation won't actually start until he touches down on land with both feet or ends up in water; while this is true of Super Mario 64 as well, it isn't as readily applicable there. This can be exploited in stages such as Bob-omb Battlefield and Wing Mario Over the Rainbow to keep control of him and maintain flight via cannons. You can even collect all eight Red Coins in the latter stage! ...but you won't be able to collect the Star, since he can't restore his HP or interact with Stars in any way if he hit zero health previously.
• Difficulty Spike: To be expected of a challenge hack. As for the unexpected...
  • Doubling back is practically required for the Red Coin Stars in some of the more "linear" stages. One such stage, Bowser in the Fire Sea, forces you to dodge two of them on top of that! The already-long-and-difficult later levels, such as Bowser in the Dark World, also become more hectic as well.
  • Many boss battles and races also become markedly more difficult; the dialogue prior to each will stop Mario cold in his tracks - it also stops the mushroom as well, but unlike Mario it retains its momentum afterward, and if you didn't get enough distance...
  • Dire Dire Docks, to the point of being That One Level: you're immediately dropped in the water, which forces you to properly maximize swimming speed immediately or be killed in seconds, and maintaining that distance constantly while maneuvering underwater is just as grueling, to the point that it was thought to be actually impossible for some time. This also applies to the Secret Aquarium as well, which is an entire underwater stage.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: A significant amount of the challenge lies in keeping track of the Green Demon's location, and players who get too far away or assume it's stuck without double-checking may be in for a nasty surprise. There's plenty of cases where it seems stuck, only for the player to be nearby when the Demon suddenly clips through something...
• Game Breaking Bug: In earlier versions, Tiny-Huge Island's pipes had a tendency to cause a softlock during the transition, forcing a reset; it was all the more likely if the Green Demon was near, or else caught you on the way in.
• Implacable Man: Walls and platforms don't always stop the Green Demon, and not even Metal Mario is safe from its wrath!
• Kaizo Trap: The mushroom can still catch Mario during or after the star-collecting animation. Fortunately, the star still counts, and things will proceed as normal. In previous versions, Mario only died after the player chose to continue the game from the subsequent menu, usually punting him outside the castle; more recent versions avert this completely for course-specific Stars (e.g. 100-coin Stars are excluded), restoring Mario's health to full upon leaving the portrait as usual.
• Meaningless Lives:
  • Version 1.3 adds infinite lives, with some of the worst 'punishment' now coming from falling into pits in stages like Wing Mario Over the Rainbow - these send the player back to the castle grounds before the death animation actually plays, forcing them to wait much longer before they can start their trek back to the area. Dying is also quite painful if it results from a botch late in the middle of a 100-coin or Red Coin Star attempt.
  • The code alters the 1-Up to remove its ability to grant extra lives, which is an aversion of this trope normally.
• Memetic Mutation: After SimpleFlips tried his hand at the original challenge, the Green Demon became a recurring object within his community - this hack was one of the many results.
• Missile Lock On: The Green Demon constantly tracks Mario's position from the moment it appears.
• Names to Run Away From Really Fast: The titular Green Demon, literally.
• Nintendo Hard: Not only is a far higher level of quick thinking and path-making ability required for it than a normal playthrough, but your ability to improvise will be thoroughly tested - any mistake at all could be the one that lets the Green Demon close in. And that's without the potential for one miscue to lead into another...
• One-Hit Kill: All 1-Up Mushrooms are lethal on contact, and instantly set Mario's health to zero instead of inflicting "normal" damage - this also has the effect bypassing the Nigh Invulnerable Metal Mario form.
• Poison Mushroom: The "demonized" 1-Up Mushroom. Version 1.2 even re-textures the 1-Ups to be purple like the Poison Mushrooms in other Mario games.
• ROM Hack: A relatively simple one that uses two "minor" tweaks to provide a solid amount of additional challenge.
• Super-Persistent Mushroom: The 1-Up Mushroom can and often will clip through walls and platforms to reach Mario, earning its "Green Demon" name; you'll have to do a lot of luring away more often than not to maintain any reasonable distance.
• Weaksauce Weakness:
  • In some stages, it's possible to trap the mushroom using certain walls or platforms, allowing the player to collect the Red Coins at their leisure. This only works some of the time, though...
  • It's also possible to crouch and have the Mushroom hover harmlessly over you. Of course, don't do this unless you have a plan on getting away from it again.
• Yet Another Stupid Death: Liable to occur often, especially if the player collides with walls and accidentally grabs ledges.