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 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 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 commenters 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 a ROM Hack, which was most notably played by YouTuber and speedrunner SimpleFlips.

In normal gameplay, nine of the worlds 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 1-up Mushroom is decently fast, outpacing Mario unless he's constantly running full tilt, and it can fly much more freely; the challenge lies in the player refining their movement and knowledge of the stage, as it requires complex and creative maneuvers in order to keep the Green Demon away from Mario. While the challenge the hack 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.

Tropes used in Green Demon Challenge include:

• Ability Required to Proceed: Downplayed from the original game, as the Wing Cap is the only one required at bare minimum. While the other two caps are also not required outside of their stages (or even within them), they could potentially make life easier). Several of the other Red Coin stars also naturally require stars from other (usually previous) stages to unlock.
• Dead Character Walking: Mario's death animation won't start until he touches down on land or in water; this can be exploited in Wing Mario Over the Rainbow to keep control of him and maintain flight via cannons. You can even collect all eight Red Coins!
  • ...but you won't be able to collect the Star, since he can't interact with them in any way if he hit zero health previously.
• Difficulty Spike: Doubling back is practically required in some of the more "linear" stages, and Bowser in the Fire Sea in particular forces you to dodge two of them on top of that! The already-long-and-difficult later levels also become more hectic as well.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: A significant amount of the challenge lies in keeping track of the Green Demon's location. 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: Tiny-Huge Island's pipes have a tendency to cause a softlock during the transition, forcing a reset; it's all the more likely if the Green Demon is near it, or else catches 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 his star-collecting animation. If this happens, however, things will proceed as normal: the star still counts, and 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, with the worst 'punishment' 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 before they can start their trek back to the area.
  • The code used to "create" the Green Demon alters the 1-Up to remove its ability to grant extra lives, which is an aversion of this trope normally.
• Memetic Mutation: After SimpleFlips' initial playthrough, the Green Demon became a recurring meme within his community; Green Demon-style 1-Ups are noticeably more common trolls in some of the hacks he plays.
  • One of the "cheats" available for viewers during one of his Crowd Control playthroughs of Super Mario 64 was a slightly different type of Green Demon. Naturally, viewers took to springing them on him soon as they could, even frequently combining it with the "gay baby jail" cheat that holds Mario in place - usually just moments away from collecting a Star.
  • SimpleFlips himself created a stage designed around the original challenge in Super Mario Maker 2 using the remarkably similar Zombie Shrooms.
• 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, in a literal sense.
• Nintendo Hard: Not only is a far higher level of quick thinking and pathing ability required for it than a normal playthrough, but 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, instantly setting Mario's health to zero.
• 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 games.
• ROM Hack: A relatively simple one that uses two minor tweaks provides a solid amount of additional challenge.
• Super-Persistent Predator: The 1-Up Mushroom can and often will clip through walls and platforms to reach Mario, 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 quickly enough in order to swim away from the 1-Up Mushroom, though there have been claims to the contrary. This is much more definitely the case with The Secret Aquarium, which starts with Mario already in the water.
• 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...
• Yet Another Stupid Death: Liable to occur often, especially if the player collides with walls and accidentally grabbs ledges.