Green Demon Challenge

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The Green Demon Challenge is a ROM Hack based on a popular Self-Imposed Challenge for Super Mario 64 that revolves around the 1-Up Mushroom. The aim of the challenge is to 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 challenge itself was rather popular in Japan for years after the game's release; said popularity spiked after the Game Grumps posted videos showcasing their attempt at it. Before long, it became the subject of its own ROM Hack, most notably played by YouTuber and speedrunner SimpleFlips.

In normal gameplay, only nine of the worlds can spawn that particular type of 1-up in the same area as its Red Coins. The hack extends this to every single world by making two relatively simple yet critical changes to the base Super Mario 64 game:

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

The challenge is thus derived from the fact that the 1-up Mushroom is decently fast and can travel much more freely, testing the player's movement and knowledge of the stage as it requires complex and creative maneuvers in order to keep it away from Mario.

The ROM hack can be found here.

Tropes used in Green Demon Challenge include:

• Kaizo Trap: The mushroom can still catch Mario during his star-collecting animation. Downplayed in that things proceed as normal; Mario losing a life only takes effect after the player chooses to continue the game from the subsequent menu.
• Meaningless Lives: Version 1.3 adds infinite lives.
  • The code used to "create" the Green Demon is altered to remove its ability to grant extra lives, which would be an aversion if not for the aforementioned update.
• Memetic Mutation: After SimpleFlips' playthrough, the Green Demon became one of many recurring memes within his community; Green Demon-style 1-Ups are a more common troll in some of the hacks he plays, and it was one of the cheats available for viewers during one of his Crowd Control playthroughs of Super Mario 64.
  • SimpleFlips himself created a stage designed around the challenge in Super Mario Maker 2 using the remarkably similar Zombie Shrooms.
• Names To Run Away From Really Fast: The titular Green Demon, in a literal sense.
• One-Hit Kill: All 1-Up Mushrooms become literal poison mushrooms that are lethal on contact.
• Poison Mushroom: Version 1.2 even retextures the 1-Ups to be purple like the Poison Mushrooms in other games..
• Super-Persistent Predator: The 1-Up Mushroom can and often will clip through walls and platforms to reach Mario, effectively turning it into one of these and earning its "Green Demon" name.
• Unwinnable: Dire, Dire Docks is considered to be unbeatable in this mode, as Mario starts the stage over the water, and the player cannot gain control and move fast enough in order to get away from the 1-Up Mushroom.
• 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...