#pacifist run | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

deadcactuswalking · 7 days

Text

Super Mario 3D Land: Pacifist Run

So, I really like Super Mario 3D Land. Nintendo’s 2011 effort to create a 3D platformer on the 3DS resulted in a breezy, pleasant game with the aesthetic of a messy toy box. It’s incredibly easy to pick up and for someone who barely plays video games, it’s comforting to have, I’ve 100%’d it twice, which is twice more than I think any other game I’ve played. I’m… not very good at video games. But you know what game I am good at? Super Mario 3D Land. What I never considered, however, is if I could beat the game completely harmlessly. You can’t, it’s not possible, the main point of the Mario game is that Mario jump on the turtle and win, but let’s see just how much you can avoid.

content warning: language, gore, constant talk about murder and/or manslaughter in reference to cartoon animals (I believe this is what the ESRB considers "cartoon mischief")

Ground Rules

Let’s make this clear. There is an obvious and evident villain of the game, Bowser, and he is a criminal. By all means, it is just and moral to defeat Bowser, who has a large civilian military that encroaches onto Mushroom Kingdom territory and several forts that contain prisoners held without reason – Toads – not to mention he kidnapped the Princess. It’s difficult to call one man versus an entire bestiary a ‘war’, but if police were to catch Bowser, I believe murder is reasonable force considering his strength, stature, weapons being built into his shell, and his impressive amount of people going to bat for him: he’s like an organized crime boss, so if Toadsworth was an officer back in the day, you’d best believe there would be a shoot-out. ACAB includes Toadsworth, by the way.

Speaking of organized crime, I think Boom Boom and Pom Pom would also legally be considered as members of the criminal gang in the way that other enemies cannot. Generally, despite being referred to as ‘enemies’, the characters across the game are more obstacles that hurt the player, but not always intentionally or even reasonably. Like, why should that stupid idiot mushroom bumping into you actually substantially harm you? It’s of completely unreasonable force to stomp on it until it dies. Even those who go out of their way to harm Mario can kind of be explained away. Hammer Bros and Rocky Wrenches use construction gear as weaponry, and assuming they are aware of the ability of Mario and Luigi to jump abnormally high and murder them via one jump, whilst a hammer or wrench will take two to three hits to kill the player, this is reasonable force. Piranha Plants and Chain Chomps bite you, but they’re stray animals. You don’t kill a stray dog for no reason other than it could potentially harm you, and Piranha Plants are, well, plants, with teeth. We don’t kill those, we research those. We will look at more specific exceptions as they appear.

Thirdly, I cannot use power-ups, really. If I gain a Fire or Boomerang Flower, which would be silly because it would be dangerous for me to use them, I can’t actually shoot any enemies, only blocks and coins – which aren’t off-limits because I don’t believe Bowser turned Toads into them, and even if he did, that’s their L, not mine. Get good. I can’t use the Super Star because it would essentially be like running around enflamed onto the streets, and I can’t use the Tanuki Suit. Because of woke. I can however use a Super Mushroom and grab 1Ups (not that I need them, I have like 300 lives) because eating mushrooms may be gross but not really unethical. I’m also not taking warp zones because that feels like cheating. This isn’t a full walkthrough though, I’ll only acknowledge the edge cases and times where I will have to commit an unlawful killing. In Super Mario 3D Land, of course. This is not my diary of real-life murders. I’d put that on WordPress. Let’s-a-go!

World 1

The first two levels, as you’d expect, go largely without issue. I’m playing on a 100% file just to make it easier and less time-consuming, and speaking of the player’s experience, we face the first enemy that you could consider malicious, however it’s clearly not to Mario… or Luigi, I’m playing as Luigi because it’s funnier, and will be describing the player’s character as Luigi from here on. Regardless, we have several Inky Piranha Plants in the level of World 1-2, and they spit ink at the screen which slightly obscures your view of the game. YOUR view, not Luigi. You could definitely say that spitting ink at a camera within the vicinity of spiked balls is dangerous, but for the cameraman, not necessarily the guy in front who is scared for his life on a bridge near spikes, and couldn’t care less about a bit of cave painting.

In World 1-3, most of the level is fine but we come across a tragedy: the forced end-of-level kill, or for the Irish, FEK. I debated whether there was a way to avoid this but it seems not: when you touch the flagpole to finish the level, the five Biddybuds in front of it – they’re little ladybugs – vanish and die simultaneously. I decided that using the Fire Flower to kill them would be even harsher and less ethical as it would be a more painful death and their friends and family would have to watch the moment before it happens to them too. So I’d rather they die peacefully walking around a flag than know those who love them are no longer around to mourn them. That was morbid, but we will swiftly move onto the ethics of castle levels.

Unlike other levels of the game, taking place in grasslands, deserts, caves, mountains, forests or… unclear liminal spaces in the sky wherein blocks and platforms inexplicably reside. These are public spaces, home to much wildlife as well as what can be assumed as permanent, sentient residents such as Toads or even Coin Coffers, which due to their understanding of money’s value, seem to have more human-esque emotional intelligence compared to the more animalistic Goombas or Koopas. However, Bowser’s castles are either forts or homes, and regardless of how you categorise them, those who reside in them are morally grey. For the purposes of this, whilst I obviously don’t agree with the “just following orders” doctrine, I do agree that those who reside in a household do not always reflect those who own the property. Even then, Fire Bars, Lava Bubbles and Thwomps are mostly indestructible scenery and potentially not even sentient. Dry Bones are already dead – you don’t go to a history museum and jump on the skeletons.

Now each castle before World 8 ends with a Tail Bowser, and just like the Fake Bowsers from the original NES games, these are other enemies in disguise, and not really Bowser. We know from Mario’s previous ventures that he is capable of defeating Bowser, but if we stick to the idea that this is one timeline for this one game, Luigi’s use of the switch here to defeat a replica of Bowser, which counts as an unlawful killing, proves that he could potentially defeat the real Bowser, and therefore grants damn near all of the enemies in the castle some level of immunity. By all means, this is either a military incursion or downright home invasion by Luigi – Draglets can breathe fire and Hammer Bros can throw their titular weapons because it is reasonable force to defend a property from a guy who can and will kill your boss. Or at least a version of him. You could even argue that from this point on, any enemy has full reason to kill Luigi because of his unjust actions in murdering a cosplaying Goomba. I’m not here to prove the innocence of any given enemy though, and you can easily avoid all of these enemies anyway, I’m here to discuss how Luigi could sidestep committing unlawful killings, so let’s go to World 2 to see what it has in store.

World 2

World 2-1 introduces Fire Piranha Plants which can shoot fireballs into other enemies – Luigi is not responsible for the cruelty of the animal kingdom. He is responsible for jumping on the flagpole and killing three innocent Piranha Plants in that level and three Paragoombas in the next. World 2-3 introduces the Propeller Hat, a suitable alternative for cannons, which I will discourage use of on the grounds of limiting carbon emissions, but if necessary, they aren’t going to directly lead to deaths, so it’s okay. Also, cutscenes force you to use them before entering an airship level, so they are actually unavoidable.

What will lead to deaths is World 2-4, as there are ‘Baddie Boxes’ – seriously, that’s what they’re called – that spawn Goombas infinitely, and will do so even if there is not a platform under them. Infinitely spawning enemies are likely inauthentic and artificial, created by Bowser – whose head is on these boxes – to harm Mario or Luigi. Killing a Goomba from a Baddie Box or, more accurately, letting one fall into the abyss, is not unlawful, as firstly, it produces a scientific abomination in the form of constantly reproduced Goombas, not an actually contributive member to that area’s biodiversity, and secondly, Luigi didn’t plant the box there, and new Goombas will continue to be reproduced regardless as if they are disposable, whilst if you kill a naturally spawning Goomba at the start of, say, 2-1 and go back, it’s still gone.

That same logic applies to the machinery in airships. I would say that Bowser is likely the manufacturer of these airships, or at least his private military or artillery company is, because his head’s on it. Real egomaniac, this guy. It’s like if Pablo Escobar sold action figures of himself. Boom Boom and Pom Pom are stationed in these airships but I would say they are intelligent and malicious enough to count as compliant to a much further degree. You fight them in a designated chamber with no beds or decoration, and in later airships, they’re coated in spikes or flames. They don’t live here. They hide here to kill you when you get there, and their airships are decked out with flamethrowers, Bullet Bills and Bob-Ombs, which I personally do not think are living. Motion-sensor bombs are motion-sensor bombs regardless of if they have legs or not, and Bullet Bills are just large bullets either shot aimlessly into the abyss or acting as a homing missile. This is artillery with googly eyes, not life. However, Rocky Wrenches are construction workers and whilst they are constructing a military vehicle, it’s very unlikely for them to be throwing wrenches as anything but a precaution. They can’t even see with those fly-ass shades on. As long as they’re throwing wrenches, you can’t kill them. That is an important distinction.

World 3

The cannon seems mandatory in World 3-1 but you can use the eco-friendly Propeller Hat to skip this and climb over the pyramid without killing anything. I think it’s okay to stand on Thwomps but try and avoid the smaller Thwomp creatures, the Wallops. Leave the kids out of it, man. There are also snake-like block creatures called Blokkabloks in this level; I didn’t even notice them on my run-through but I say they’re fair game. They’re man-made objects consisting of blocks, spikes and coins: you don’t have to kill them, but if you wish to, I believe the run still counts as pacifist. In fact, this entire world can be completed without any unlawful killing. You can swim with the fish in 3-2 and run with the bees in 3-4 with relative ease and whilst the tightrope-walking with Fuzzies in 3-4 and the mad rush to avoid killing Biddybuds across white chocolate and cookies, which I’m going to assume was farmed and produced as ethically as possible, are made a tad more difficult, it’s absolutely possible. Not even the airship gives you much trouble. This is immediately reversed in the next world.

World 4

World 4-1 is genuinely a bit difficult when tasked with avoiding killing any enemies, as there are Biddybuds bunched around everywhere, Piranha Plants on levers, etc. It’s a forest bundling with biodiversity, but just make sure to toe carefully. It’s all for nought at the end because there’s a classic FAK with five Para-Biddybuds (they’re the ladybugs from earlier, but with wings). I should note that if the enemies are out of frame when you touch the flagpole, it won’t kill them on screen and you should be fine, but this is rarely actually a relevant tip: they’re either completely unavoidable or you can’t manipulate the camera that way.

World 4-4 is our first Ghost House level, and considering it’s a Ghost… House, I can assume that either it’s a House with Ghosts in it or a House owned by Ghosts. Ghosts can’t sign mortgages because they are intangible, meaning that it’s likely just abandoned and the first option is correct, so Luigi is not committing a home invasion necessarily, he may just be trespassing. All the enemies in this level are already dead but also none of them are unavoidable or easily killable by normal means, so let’s just put a pin in that confusing logic. Other than 4-1, this world goes without a hitch in the pacifist run. A Boomerang Bro is in 4-5, I think it’s fair to see he simply wants to play catch, so you can’t kill him. You can kill the Rocky Wrench in the airship though, specifically the one that throws a Bob-Omb at you. He’s not unavoidable, but still, fuck that guy, he throws bombs. Kill him. It’s in your right to.

World 5

World 5-1 is a Goddamn bloodbath. The first half of the level takes place in a desert with stray Goombas, Boomerang Bros, Pokeys and Sandmaarghs all clearly just hanging out in the wild. However, you enter a door to a dungeon which consist of a rising underground platform – clearly not naturally occurring and similarly unnatural appearances from spiked balls. It could be very possible to avoid those spikes as well as not letting them hit the enemies that appear on the platform like the Boomerang Bros and Sandmaarghs, however the gauntlet is a relatively small platform that gets incredibly full, and the spikes hurt Luigi too, so he would be putting himself in harm’s way to direct the creatures outside of the spike ball’s paths, especially considering some of them are giant spike balls and all of the enemies here are not in a natural habitat but a gauntlet likely planted by Bowser. If anything, Bowser is liable for these deaths, of which there are four: in my run, one Boomerang Bro and three Sandmaarghs perished. I’m sure that could be shortened to two or even one Sandmaargh, but I feel like it is unavoidable to not see at least one enemy perish, and to top that off, we contribute to carbon emissions with the ending cannon. 5-2 is also a dungeon, but this one seems more like a cave or temple, meaning that it’s either at least somewhat natural or a private place of worship, so I don’t blame Bowser for any deaths there, I think it falls squarely on murderous Luigi. The Legend of Zelda tribute level goes smoothly without any killings anyway, but 5-4 does not.

5-4 has you in increasingly tight positions with Morty Moles taking up all available space and Monty Moles coming out of the ground from nowhere. Neither pose a real threat playing through the game normally but are incredibly tedious in a pacifist run considering the limited movement space. I’m sure if you get the rhythms of the Morty Moles completely correct, you can avoid any harm, but the average player is likely to step on the heads of three Morty Moles when jumping across the section populated by that mole posse. Thankfully, these take two hits to kill, so you can safely flatten them and it only counts as grievous bodily harm. Yippee! Additionally, if you really want to ensure no-one gets hurt but yourself, there’s the option to run through the moles and damage-boost to the other side, which isn’t to your benefit and doesn’t change how many enemies are killed but does mean you don’t stomp on anything. I personally think either method is valid for a pacifist run.

As for 5-5, there are Para-Biddybuds near the Flagpole but for once they can be taken out of frame and led to safety if you land on the ground and miss the top of the flagpole. The castle level is also a standard ordeal, as you’re forced to kill one Tail Bowser, which happens to be a Magikoopa this time around, but all other enemies are very avoidable.

World 6

World 6, much like World 3, is completely doable in a pacifist run, but there are some oddities and novelties I’d like to point out. World 6-2 is yet another dungeon of unclear ownership but given its pyramid theme and considerable similarities to 3-1, I can only assume this is preserved for historical reasons and not because anyone other than Blokkabloks and Pokeys reside there. Again, you can probably kill Blokkabloks here, but they’re avoidable enough. 6-3 is yet another Ghost House with several theme park-esque attractions and a library, but given the presence of (again, avoidable) ghost enemies, I doubt these are still running as functioning businesses and even if they were, they’re clearly not successful if all their customers are dead. 6-4 introduces Prongos, whose spiked helmets seem like genuinely unreasonable force, and they do attempt to lunge at Luigi, but when they fail to hit, they land hopelessly in the ground with their ass out, so I say they’re off limits too. Not even the airship level has anything unavoidable, though once again, feel free to kill the bastards who throw bombs, that seems reasonable to me. Also, if you weren’t convinced on Boom Boom and Pom Pom being malicious yet, this airship has Pom Pom throw boomerangs at you in a chamber engulfed in flames. She’s not playing around.

World 7

Fun fact: you can beat World 7-1 in four seconds by just jumping over the pool of water you’re supposed to travel through. It’s easier with the Tanooki Leaf, but as regular-degular Luigi, you can wall-jump off a cliff face and beat the level without even touching the water. This is actually useful in the pacifist run, as it means you don’t need to kill a Piranha Plant that blocks a pipe to the exit from the underwater area, and instead just need to walk far along enough that the Piranha Plant on another pipe near the flagpole is not on camera.

World 7 is probably my favourite world in the game, with some of the most unique level concepts and environments, genuinely tricky and precise platforming, and naturally, given its peculiar, gimmicky levels, most of which use some manmade obstacle course aesthetic, including 7-3’s mixing of it with an organic nighttime setting, this leads to some unique levels for this challenge. Apart from the skip I just mentioned which is some bizarre level of forgetting to playtest, there’s another dungeon of unclear ownership or origin, a tightrope walk that has some close moments with Biddybuds but is otherwise safe, and 7-4, a literal clock.

Probably my favourite level in the game due to its gorgeous and unique texturing as well as a fascinating three-act level structure that has some genuinely risky jumps, it also has a peculiar challenge for the pacifist run as it forces you to get hit by yet another Morty Mole. I tried to see if there was a way I could avoid the Morty Mole in the limited space you have, but the second one you’re forced to encounter involves you either jumping on him twice or damage-boosting through him due to the small container you’re both trapped within. Either way, the Morty Mole can live and there is a flagpole soon after so don’t worry about dying. This clock is also covered in Bob-Ombs which prove their need to be excluded from the run by the fact that some of the Bob-Ombs in this level can fly but still end up falling into pits and sitting there on platforms just allowing themselves to self-destruct. They’re either clearly manmade non-sentient machinery or just utterly stupid: literally or figuratively brainless.

7-5, another one of my favourite levels with its wooden platforms being sawn apart by razors, puts us in a unique dilemma because once again, we are indirectly the cause of deaths by allowing Goombas to remain on platforms we know are going to be sawn and fall into the abyss by the unavoidable sawblades which we can’t manipulate. However, it’s also out of sight, out of mind: when we jump on a flagpole, and the enemies are out of frame, they are still unloaded, and presumably die, we just can’t see them. The player acts as the cameraman as well as the person steering Mario or Luigi, so if the death is not caught on CCTV, there’s little evidence. In the same way that there’s no evidence that we killed the Biddybuds in World 5, as long as I’m fast enough, the player didn’t catch the Goombas falling to their deaths on camera, so as long the airship is no challenge, I’m counting this as an entire world win for the pacifist run… yeah, the airship’s bullshit too.

So firstly, there are Magikoopas all over the place, and I fully think they’re lawful to kill. Not only do they pretty much only ever appear in Ghost Houses, airships and castle levels across the series, but they’re clearly more in kahoots with Bowser and crew due to not just their prominence in these levels, but how Kamek, the leader of the Magikoopas, is one of Bowser’s most loyal minions who even raised him as a child and is incredibly close to Bowser’s own offspring. With that said, my logic is to largely ignore the wider canon and associate them more so with what they do in the level, and sadly, Magikoopas use pretty reasonable force, being magic, which does not exist in real life so has no real comparison, in stark contrast to the Rocky Wrench at the end of the level who once again throws bombs. The morally grey Magikoopas are avoidable, barely, but this guy isn’t, and whilst I’d usually consider him a lawful killing, he blocks the pipe to the boss battle, and is even accompanied by a wrench-throwing mole. Maybe, just maybe, they tag-team Luigi to prevent him from being tag-teamed by Boom Boom and Pom Pom in the boss chamber. Is this bomb thrown out of kindness? Is it reasonable force considering the Rocky Wrench is down in one hit? If we don’t stomp on him and instead throw his bomb back at him, is it fairer? Does the airship setting and increased amount of organised enemy layout constitute a battle of war? There were just too many questions. So I asked a Polish guy, and he said it was lawful. Fuck you, Rocky Wrench.

World 8

Finally, we are onto the last moments of our semi-peaceful adventure. We stand at the last frontier, and the levels do get tougher. There are some trickier jumps, enemies and obstacles are much more plentiful and in some cases, quite bound together in clusters. Just because the levels are more difficult in an average vanilla playthrough, however, does not necessarily constitute an increased difficulty in this challenge, and World 8 surprisingly enough goes by without much of a hitch outside of some now standard ethical questions like Rocky Wrenches which are completely avoidable in 8-3, the castle-dwelling Magikoopas and some spiked balls which you’ll have to be careful and fast to ensure they don’t hit unsuspecting Spinies in 8-1. There’s also a completely pointless cannon in that level as you can both jump to it with the Tanooki Leaf or just use a nearby pipe to get to the flagpole.

Like most worlds, there are some questionable potential home invasions in both the castle levels, the ghost house and 8-5, which is an unclear fortress obstacle course consisting mostly of voids of nothingness, but I question the need to debate the morality of Luigi actually entering these levels when you can easily avoid every enemy contained wherein. Also, there are massive fuck-off Banzai Bills in 8-5 so I can’t imagine this place existing for any other reason than to kill me. Notably, both castle levels – in this world, called ‘Bowser’ levels to differentiate them from more generic castle-themed levels – have the actual crime boss Bowser as the closer, meaning that neither level features an unlawful killing of some random disguised as the villain. Speaking of the villain, albeit tedious, due to that auto-scrolling bone-coaster section at the start and a lengthy Bowser fight I actually had to retry a few times because he kept killing his own Goombas, the final level is absolutely possible, albeit with some offscreen Goombas falling to their deaths in the later sections. He’s obviously liable for those though, considering they’re his employees and he’s destroying the workplace. Just saying. Not Luigi’s fault. Luigi did nothing wrong. Except for the innocents he murdered. Also my control stick started acting up due to how much I played so that’s another death added to your toll, you green-hatted murderer.

Death Tally

If you add morally grey and edge cases, arguably lawful killings, and murders for which there is no clear photographic evidence, the case looks a lot worse for our green fella. However, there are eight clear-cut cases wherein Luigi has been forced to kill to save the Princess, and considering the sheer amount of enemies in the game, that’s not too bad, with most of those being flagpole or switch deaths. If you’re wondering what the other two are, despite the preventable case of 5-1, I’m counting it as I don’t see deaths as avoidable, and I’m also counting the Rocky Wrench in 7-Airship since regardless of the weaponry at its disposal, I fail to see how the Rocky Wrenches are either objectively morally in the wrong nor intelligent and/or capable enough to fully know the gravity of their actions. I think that whilst they can be explained away, they are still not as black and white as say, Bowser or Boom Boom, and hence deserve to be in the objective final kill counter.

Of course, I’d love to see this in action by more technically-talented fans and players. I’m pretty good at the game casually, but I’m no speedrunner who knows all the glitches and tricks, I’m not a modder who knows the ins and outs of enemy behaviour, and I’m not even close to technical enough to try and do a tool-assisted run wherein I can do some frame-precise movements to dodge a Morty Mole or manipulate RNG to ensure the Sandmaarghs are spared. Additionally, I’m not even trying to tackle the special worlds. I have attempted to apply real-word logic to this silly game, and that’s not remotely possible in the bonus worlds which contain repeated, modified editions of prior levels, cosmic clones of Mario and Dry Bowser. It would be way too confusing. But if you got this far anyway, thanks for reading this dry ramble through the first eight worlds of a game I love and cherish, trying to harm as few of its obstacles as possible. I know I review music here, but this was a fun little challenge too.

Credits

I played this on my old 3DS hardware, not an emulator, and I do not possess a capture card because I’m broke so the images provided are from the Super Mario Wiki, not my playthrough. I also cross-referenced my knowledge of the game with their info because they cite their sources very clearly and I consider it one of the most professional fan encyclopedias: it is useful, impressive, organised, usable, constantly improving itself and most importantly, it’s not the SpongeBob one. The images used in this article, including the assets in my logo, are courtesy of Nintendo, but were uploaded by these strong Mario Wiki soldiers: Immewnity, Shokora, 3D Player 2010, 2257, Wildgoosespeeder, L151, PikaSamus, Bro Hammer, The Forgotten Beast, YamiHoshi.nl and user simply called “Mario” so perhaps even the man himself. The picture of the four-second time on 7-1 is from KingBoo97’s tied 2021 world record of the level, available on YouTube.

#super mario 3d land #sm3dl #pacifist run #video games

3 notes · View notes