Actually, I thought tonight's Super Mario 64 experience was pretty good. But I'll get to the better stars in a minute...

First, I got a star from Toad near Hazy Maze Cave. It's almost hard to believe I missed this before (despite that I normally just run toward the cave and jump in, and to find Toad you have to... well, you know) I said before that I had only one star unaccounted for in the castle... Well, that's it (I still have to actually earn the stars from Bowser in the Sky and Wing Mario over the Rainbow)

I got the 8 red coins from Bowser in the Fireworld. It's mostly the last two that are tricky.

I got 100 coins from Hazy Maze Cave. I had to try that one a couple of times. The time before I finally got it, I earned 100 coins... on the way to the star for A-Maze-ing Emergency Exit. The star appeared above the "monkey bars" there, and I couldn't reach it.



The two best stars I earned tonight, however, were "Wall Kicks Will Work" from Cool Cool Mountain and Big Boo's Balcony from Big Boo's House.

Of course, those are earlier stages in the game, meaning I tried going for them a few times, but couldn't figure them out and moved on.

It's hard for me to reconstruct my thought process exactly as I earned the Big Boo Balcony star. I think what I was doing was going into first person mode a lot in different rooms in the mansion, as well as looking for two walls close to each other where I could wall jump up. One bookcase was very close to a wall, and I tried wall jumping between them... it didn't work, but I thought I caught a glimpse of something in the attempt. I went into first person mode, and sure enough...

(Here's a red herring I wasted a minute or two on. There's one pit you fall through, and it takes you to the basement, where the "carousel" is. On the way down, I could have sworn I saw another room. After falling a couple of more times, I thought I saw a red coin, but I couldn't swear to that. Besides, I couldn't remember a red coin in a room that looked like that. Well, I never was able to hit that middle room on the decent -- Mario can't control himself in the air like in the other games. But I eventually did recognize it as a room I saw before).

Anyway, what really made this one of the most memorable stars was that after I beat Big Boo, the star floated way out of reach. I can't remember any other star doing that in this game. (Well, not to this degree... I did think it was slightly harder to find where the star appeared in Tiny/Huge Island for the Tiny Little Secrets than it was to find the secrets themselves) After I finally figured the technique needed to get on the path to the star, I had to contend with the viewpoint. You have absolutely no control over the Lakitu camera there (it won't respond to rotation or zooming commands) and you have to walk an extremely narrow path at an odd angle. I briefly used the Mario camera (the only time I used that camera for anything useful) to zoom in.


After finding that secret room, it was extremely easy to get the other star from Big Boo's House.


I also had been putting off Wall Kicks Will Work for a while. Granted, I've only picked up this game again since Sunday, but since there's only so much to Cool Cool Mountain to explore, I wasn't sure what else I could do to look for it.

What I was looking for was totally different than what the solution was.

I was looking for two walls close to each other, just like, well, virtually every other star I've used wall kicks to earn. However, I could only find one point in the stage that matched that description: The area where you find the hard-to-reach red coin has an ice pillar that holds up a bridge above. I was able to wall kick off the pillar to an adjacent wall. However, it didn't do anything. I couldn't see a star from first person view, but, what do I know? Maybe wall kicks could destroy the ice pillar and unlock a star. Well, nothing like that happened.

I don't know what possessed me to do what I did tonight. Maybe desperation. Or maybe I was just trying to explore in a bizarre way. In any case, I jumped off the top of the stage. I fell to my death, but the interesting thing was that, on my way down, I saw an area of the stage I don't think I saw before. In particular, I saw an arrow made of coins that I was almost positive I never saw before. (I wasn't 100% certain because I had earned a couple of stars in this world a few months ago) Anyway, after that, I made an effort to find that part of the stage and found the star soon after.

In retrospect, I suppose I could have found that area the same way I eventually reached it (with the cannon). You can see the area you need to launch yourself to (well, assuming you use the cannon... FO tells me that she uses a different method). For some reason, I must have assumed I had already reached that part of the stage. Maybe because, from that position, you don't see any obvious signs, like a big coin arrow.

I actually think now that, despite being only the 4th stage in the game, that Cool, Cool Mountain was the hardest stage to clear out. It had two of the hardest stars to find (The Wall Kicks, and also the 8 red coins), while others have had maybe one at the most (like the Big Boo Balcony).




I have now completely cleared out:

Bo-Bomb Battlefield, Thwomp's Fortress, Jolly Roger Bay, Cool Cool Mountain, Big Boo's House, Hazy Maze Cave, and Wet/Dry World.

I think the only stages I still more than 2 stars missing in are Snowman Land, Tick Tock Clock and Rainbow ride.

I have 96 stars, or 4/5 or 80% of all of them.