Introduction
Pesky Marios is a Super Mario 64 ROM hack that's a tower defense against the team of Marios out to get your star. This hack was made for the Simpleflips' Chaos Mario Team Competition (
TODO: remember to add RHDC link after the competition page is up) in 2025 where 6 teams were commissioned to make hacks based around the theme "chaos". While I'm certain many folks have played
BAZR and
Super Mario 64: Rogue Chaos Edition I felt like trying the other hacks that came from the competition. Pesky Marios was enjoyable to play despite the hack's current state since planning out how to take down a team of Marios with carefully placed objects was a fun time for me. I highly recommend it if you like tower defense and have a little time to burn.
I wanted to make a TAS because at some point I was trying to see how fast I could clear stages. Since I was doing that I ended up making schematics via screenshots and proceeded to build the TAS around those plans. It also helps that this is a Super Mario 64 hack where I don't have to learn all of the intricacies of Mario movement and mechanics but there are a few that definitely posed a threat.
Run notes
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.10
- Plays the main campaign as Endless and Gantlet modes don't seem to have an ending on their own
- Uses many intentional deaths of Marios, which is the win conditions for stages
Game notes
Cursor movement
The analog joystick moves the item placement cursor around and the C buttons pan the camera around. Combining these allows for faster placement of objects on the map.
Most helpful objects
There are the most notable objects that are key to finishing stages quickly, in no particular order. Of course these aren't all of the objects but it's the ones I definitely have the most to say something about.
- Mines: these can be set off manually when the Marios are active and can instantly kill most Marios in the explosion. It only hurts one per explosion although most stages provide a good amount that surrounding the starting spawn is enough to clear stages on its own if there's enough mines given.
- Bob-ombs: when touched these can kill most Marios on touch. They are subject to gravity which can be used to place them above the spawn point and blow up a Mario just as they spawn. They can also explode if another object explodes next to them so making a line of them isn't al that useful. The explosions can also simply cause a Mario to get knocked back with i-frames for a time if placed incorrectly so caution has to be taken to prevent that.
- Thwomps: while the ability to kill most Marios by crushing them is nice it takes a while to get through a cycle. The main use of a thwomp is its ability to count as solid geometry that the Marios have to navigate around. This can mess up their movement to throw them off course, thereby taking out Marios with the right placement. While not as fast as other methods to take out other Marios, this generally takes care of Capios by getting them to fall into pits, although this does mean some levels effectively have a set fastest time.
- Green demon: these killer mushrooms instantly take out any Mario it comes in contact with a short time after they're activated. The activation time does have to be worked around since the Marios are faster than the green demon for the most part. Placing green demons near the spawn point is useful for taking out Marios that spawn later in a level but in other cases placement is determined by when a Mario has to briefly stop moving forward. The green demon is also one of the other ways to take out Capios.
Capio vanish cap problems
Capio is a Mario who has all three special caps from Super Mario 64 activated at once.
In some levels killing a Mario that's ahead of a Capio causes the Capio to suddenly ignore pretty much all player placed objects. This is a big problem when a thwomp meant to screw up a Capio's movement is simply ignored by them and effectively makes them unstoppable in most stages where this can occur. I'm pretty sure this is a bug but not an insurmountable problem. Levels with a Capio just require first getting a setup handling Capio without taking out the first Mario and then building around that.
Mario invincibility mechanics, against the player's favor
One of the vanilla Super Mario 64 mechanics is that if Mario has i-frames from taking damage he'll remain invulnerable as long as he's in another enemy's hitbox. This is a huge problem for some levels and requires spacing out objects enough to prevent overlap so that a Mario can't simply slip by everything through that mechanic.
Potential improvements
- If there's a later revision of this hack that adds content or has a toolkit rebalance, among other things, then any TAS done on those versions I feel would obsolete this version by default.
- There might just be even faster to build/run object placements that might be faster that I never considered.
