More saliently, if you start from the front lobby and constantly take the highest door in each area, you'll eventually reach an area in close proximity to the final Bowser, vaguely reflecting SM64's progression. A rule-of-thumb of "upward = progress" can be of aid elsewhere, too.
B3313 may come across as and be cast as a largely unnavigable web of meaningless symbols, but in my experience there are a few pinches of internal logic.
For instance, there are no "basement-coded" areas which have exits leading downward, or which suggest further floors below.
Me before my B3313 playthrough: I'm getting depressed. I should play a game.
Me after my B3313 playthrough: I'm still depressed but I guess I'm omniscient now.
B3313's deep cuts are simply too deep
0 lives brain: B3313 is a horror game.
99 lives brain: B3313 is a Yume Nikki-like.
M1 lives brain: B3313 is a Stanley Parable-like.
*hears about B3313* Damn, how many floors does Void Stranger even have
*reading the premise of B3313* So the idea is that Peach's Castle has its own Plex server? And they're streaming a bunch of different background music variants? Hmm, kind of high-concept but OK.
Classifying B3313 castle lobbies into either Common, Uncommon, Rare or Mythic
B3313 v1.0.1 release notes: "Minor changes and qol improvements."
v1.0.1:
If Noelle from Deltarune played B3313 she wouldn't find any jumpscares but she WOULD go into that one snow painting and get randomly sent to the empty dark "particle test" level (with the blizzard effect that's unused in actual SM64) and then never be able to go back to it later.
The most fricked up and spine-chilling B3313 fact of all time is that the Red Stars are in the actual SM64.
One of the funnier parts of B3313 is that Bowser has his own game-specific leitmotif (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_up9It5avao) that gets mixed into various other music tracks (e.g.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDIEt7ci_ag), like this is Galaxy or Odyssey or something.
Today I'd like to give morning salutations to whoever was responsible for this one star in B3313. They really did just put it there, cross their arms and say "your move, Mario brothers".
Me the next day after I get so congested with allergies that it takes me until 8AM to fall asleep
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu_Z1jvGwtg[⚠️WARNING: COMPLETELY BANANAS COMPARISON DETECTED IN POST – PROCEED WITH CAUTION ]
The normal music in B3313 is like Daily Passing By in Higurashi, and the night music in B3313 is like Daily Passing By (Celesta) in Higurashi
Reminiscing about an uncharacteristically beautiful level in B3313 and feeling nice…
Thinking about B3313 music… This track is really good at expressing the feeling of being 30 hours into the hack and still finding new areas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ix1V8szmZ-s&list=PLoXqKKf4801jzrvdiTctYebp-KMP5hKyc&index=67– Finally, while there's a lot of context you're not going to get when playing the hack (being a homage to/montage of a lot of amateur horror videos) I strongly recommend reading this TCRF article, in entirety, before playing to understand the main ideas:
https://tcrf.net/Prerelease:Super_Mario_64_(Nintendo_64)/1995– Also, if you do reach the final Bowser, the hack doesn't have a definitive "ending", but instead has a short, highly ambiguous end area followed immediately by a "postgame" level hub. You should consider simply beating the last Bowser to be "the end" for putting the game down.
My rec is that unless you want to "see absolutely everything", then do NOT collect more than 1 Red Star. Having 1 will unlock most star doors. The remaining doors can, surprisingly, almost always be bypassed using other routes (the door to the final Bowser area excepted).
The most noticeable modifier is that health regeneration (from 0.7) gets switched off, which I /personally/ consider to be very rude, considering how much fall damage you end up taking.
There are also a few custom-coded bosses whose HP get gradually jacked up to annoying levels.
Here's some other bits of advice if you're going to play the final version of B3313:
– One big change from 0.7 is a hand-coded "dynamic difficulty" feature, where collecting two or more "boss" stars (Red Stars) will apply increasing difficulty modifiers.
*playing B3313* Ah, I see – the idea was to make an "unfinished SM64 ROM" but they accidentally thought "unfinished" and "unending" meant the same thing. Understandable mistake,
*my room CO² concentration finally cracks 1000ppm* You see… the role of cringe-inducing jumpscares in amateur horror games… is a lot like cringe-inducing sex scenes in eroge visual novels… you may say they'd be "better off without"… but are they not lovable because of that…?
The thing is, this hack owes its existence to hokey amateur horror videos about "discovered" prototype SM64 areas. You can look up the wiki and learn that dozens of rooms are recreations of specific fake Blender mockups or whatever. They are, well, this hack's cultural heritage.
Here's my executive opinion on the jumpscares: yes, they're still here and are now even cornier than before, and a FEW are LOUD, but they're still relatively sparse… and, moreover, I feel like this hack sorta owes itself to include a few to pay homage to its creepypasta roots.
One thing I'd hoped for since 0.7 came true: the last area is Peach's Castle as shown in grayscale in the 1995 Ultra 64 patent. This to me is excellent focus of intent: B3313 is prototype SM64 as it exists in the collective imagination, conjured from what little evidence remains.
Currently feeling very "I would pay money for this if it were legal for them to charge it" about this ROM hack.
I finished the hack after 52 hours… It moved me, it surprised me, it rewarded me – even after having already seen so much. Please play it even if you've played 0.7. Please play it if you haven't played 0.7. Only don't play it if you've never played Super Mario 64.
B3313 is a funny videogame part 331 of 3
B3313 is a funny videogame part 33 of 13
Trying to go somewhere with purpose in B3313 is seriously like incanting a magic spell, but with doors instead of words.
This hack using the freaking Animal Forest Real Time Clock to add a day-night cycle AND change the instruments of several tracks, is a wacky idea that pays off hard. Far from horror-like, the night instruments bring a gentle tone that amplifies the dreaminess of the entire hack.
One slightly unexpected area to get a boost is audio – while 0.7 had a couple of original tracks that kind of got lost amid the mess of Inside The Castle Walls tweaks, this one brings several more originals with instrumentation that demands your attention.
The more I play this, the more impressed I get. This 1.0 actually feels like a full sequel to B3313 0.7 – despite including about 98% of 0.7's areas – with the number of new ideas and setpieces it brings. Do not be misled by the version numbers – this is an extremely real deal.
Other tweaks: most of the dialogue/text has been revised to be less on-the-nose (!) and grammatically smoother, and, best of all: almost all the stars have been de-duplicated, so completing a mission will almost always give you a non-collected star (a very common 0.7 complaint).
Compared to 0.7, it has a bunch of QOL tweaks to be more like a "real" hack, such as respawning outside the painting instead of at a fixed room.
I was concerned this would make things more mundane and predictable, but there's so much going on here that I don't think it matters.
The new final official full 1.0 version of B3313 just came out *an offscreen voice states that it was over a month ago* it literally just came out, so now I'm sinking deep into it.
