pannenkoek2012

A-Button Challenge

A closeup of a Nintendo 64 controller showing the A button (blue), which pannenkoek2012 has challenged himself to avoid

Since August 2013, pannenkoek2012 has challenged himself to beat Super Mario 64 by pressing the A button as few times as possible. This is significant because the A button makes Mario jump, a maneuver which is practically required in platform games like Super Mario 64.^[4][5] In one video, pannenkoek2012 showed that he was able to collect the "Mario Wings To The Sky" objective without pressing the A button by exploiting glitches that enabled him to "clone" a large amount of Goombas to form a ladder. This challenge took him two years of planning to achieve and the video took 55 hours to make.^[6] In a notable case on January 12, 2016, pannenkoek2012 uploaded a commentated video for the "Watch for Rolling Rocks" objective.^[7] Highlights in the video include an explanation of his "half A-press" notation, his use of a hyperspeed glitch to reach "parallel universes" (a collision glitch caused by integer overflow), his methods to manipulate the motions of the Scuttlebug enemy, and many other techniques that are almost never experienced in regular playthroughs, to obtain the star with only 0.5 A-presses. This strategy originally took thirteen hours in-game from start to finish, most of which were spent "building up" enough speed (i.e. exploit a glitch enabling the player to gain virtually unlimited in-game speed) for the "parallel universe" movement.^[8][9], but has since been reduced to 5.4 hours.^[10] After its release, the video was critiqued and spoofed online.^[8][11] In response to the video, Nadia Oxford of USGamer noted that pannenkoek2012's work, as well as that of other high-level video game players, is of high value for scientists in various fields. She noted that pannenkoek2012's analyses of Super Mario 64's mechanics may be of interest to mathematicians and physicists, and said that there may be sociological implications as well, since one could ask why a large group of people feels compelled to turn a video game inside-out and abuse its mechanics as pannenkoek2012 does.^[12]

Impossible coins

In June 2014, pannenkoek2012 collected what was known as "the impossible coin", an item hidden in the "Tiny-Huge Island" level of Super Mario 64 that was deemed impossible to reach. In 2002, the coin was discovered by a GameFAQs Super Mario 64 message board member named Josiah.^[13] The coin was placed underneath the ground, likely by one of the game's developers by accident. Considered unobtainable, the coin was dubbed "the impossible coin"; pannenkoek2012 managed to collect it using tool-assistance by jumping and kicking on a single frame while moving out of water. pannenkoek2012 noted that it should be possible to collect the coin without tool-assistance, but doing so would be highly difficult and require a lot of practice.^[2]

In the Super Mario 64 level "Bowser in the Sky", pannenkoek2012 discovered a misplaced Goomba located at the bottom of the level, which he dubbed "the Mystery Goomba". Since Goombas drop a coin once killed and the enemy currently seems impossible to kill, he called the Mystery Goomba's held coin the "new" impossible coin.^[14] In October 2016, pannenkoek2012 discovered another "impossible coin" in "Tiny-Huge Island". He claimed that the enlarged version of the course had a line of four coins, even though coin lines in the game always contain five. He showed that there was a fifth coin that activates a failsafe that no other coin does.^[15]

Other videos

In August 2015, Twitch.tv streamer DOTA_TeaBag encountered a glitch in Super Mario 64 level "Tick Tock Clock", where Mario suddenly teleported upwards in the level. The "upwarp", as it is described, caught pannenkoek2012's and others' attention, as if they could find out how the glitch was performed, it would allow players to skip large sections of the game or complete the game with fewer uses of the A button. If high-level players could reliably recreate the upwarp, they could potentially shave off seconds during speedruns. pannenkoek2012 offered a $1,000 USD prize to anyone who could recreate the upwarp glitch and send gameplay data to him.^[16][17] The bounty has not been successfully claimed, though the glitch has been recreated by hacking the game and changing a single bit of memory pertaining to Mario's height. Since this has only been achieved by hacking the game, the bounty is still unclaimed. One hypothesis suggests that a stray cosmic ray caused the bit to change.

pannenkoek2012 started working on a video detailing the workings of Super Mario 64's geometry in summer 2016. He eventually finished this video in May 2017, releasing it under the title "Walls, Floors, & Ceilings". The video details how Mario's movement is measured in the game – which varies depending on whether Mario is located on the ground, in the air, or in water – and how the character interacts with the hitboxes of objects along the way. pannenkoek2012 noted that he considers the information in this video "extremely important", as he has been using this information to help him execute or dismiss strategies for years. Gamasutra described this video as a "passionate delve into the most granular details of level design".^[18][19] Since then pannenkoek2012 has released two more videos on this subject, titled “Walls, Floors, & Ceilings Part 2” and “Walls, Floors, & Ceilings Part 3” respectively. These videos contain more in-depth analysis of how the mechanics of hitboxes work.