The Kobashotty Mario

Just a mini-revisit of The Kobayashi Mario feature to yap more about the fun Shotgun Mario 64 hack (created by Dan_GPTV) I mentioned back in the previous Mento's Month (which you've all read of course but I'll relink it just in case you misplaced your bookmarks) and its equally intriguing achievement set over on RetroAchievements (devised by RA user MaddieKittyTV).

There's no real metaphorical nuance behind the mod's name—you have a shotgun now, so therefore you're Shotgun Mario—but the new hardware means there's a few neat mechanical additions where certain approaches that were formerly impossible, or only possible through speedrunning tech beyond the abilities of normal humans, can now be accomplished by anyone thanks to the magic of modern ballistics and the set takes full advantage of that to create some novel challenges.

Those gameplay changes in full:

• You can shoot things. A lot of things will break if you shoot them. Doors, gates, boulders, Thwomps, Stars, you name it.
• There is a third-person shooting mode as an alternative camera that lets you aim. This turns the game into something akin to a Jet Force Gemini or a Ratchet & Clank.
• If you jump and shoot, you'll shoot straight down for some extra height just like the primary function of the rocket-launchers in Quake. It's about equivalent to a normal jump's height, though if you do so while longjumping it'll retain the forward momentum too. You can clear some pretty long distances with it.
• You can't do the shotgun jump while standing. I wondered why this was the case so I attempted a real-life experiment and, well, long story short I no longer have toes. C'est la vie.
• As a reminder from the original Kobayashi Mario, while the achievements that prohibit the A button might make it seem like you can't get any vertical movement going, by running at full speed and hitting the B to dive and B again to roll out of the dive you can still clear small gaps. Shooting while in the dive or rollout gets you even higher. That's usually the key to many of those achievements.

(Disclaimer the First: A large chunk of the achievements are single-point types that amount to "hey, did you know you could shoot this?!" so I've elided those. Others are for standard progression, like beating Bowser, getting all seven Stars for each world, or getting the full 120. I've excluded those too.)

(Disclaimer the Second: Working out how to complete these challenges is half the fun, so I've spoiler-blocked my solutions in case you wanted to figure them out on your own first. The achievement's value, either 5 or 10 points, should give you some idea of the difficulty. There's download instructions in the official RA forum thread if you'd like to give this hack a shot, so to speak.)

"Flying Like a Falcon" (10): Collect the 100 Coin Star in Bob-Omb Battlefield without pressing A

Surprisingly tough achievement to get this early in the run, since reaching the floating island requires some very accurate rollout shoot jumping. I screwed up the first time by getting the island's red coin last and spawning the Star where I could no longer reach it. Oops.

"Sliding Sharpshooter" (5): Collect the Box Star in Princess Peach's Secret Slide without pressing A

This is the tutorial for the rollout jump in case you hadn't figured out how to get height without jumping. Don't even have to hit the box this way: you can blast it first, then collect the Star.

"Stone Cold Sprint" (5): Collect "Blast Away the Wall" in Whomp's Fortress using only the FPS camera and in under 20 Seconds

The FPS camera (which isn't FPS since it's still third-person) doesn't remove your ability to do turn-jumps so getting up to where the broken wall is shouldn't take more than a few seconds. Just have to remember to blow it away before you run up to it and get the Star.

"Wooden Will" (5): Collect "Fall Onto the Caged Island" in Whomp's Fortress from the wooden pillar

The trick here is to not knock the pillar over. Just get to the top with a shotgun-enhanced turn-jump and then it's a longjump and another mid-air blast to reach the cage. No need to wake up Mr. Owl this time.

"Mining the Rubble" (5): Defeat King Whomp in Whomp's Fortress without pressing A, B or Z

Fortunately, you're only prohibited from those buttons once the fight has been initiated. You'd have no way of getting up there without either face button. If your first guess for this one was "just shoot the guy" then you've already successfully identified the core essence of this ROM hack.

"Ye Scallywag, Get Back Here Yer Thief!" (5): Collect "Plunder in the Sunken Ship" in Jolly Roger Bay without lowering the water

Just shoot the box while underwater. Guns still work down there. Obviously. Surprisingly straightforward for a five-pointer.

"Extracting the Sunken Treasure" (10): Collect "Red Coins on the Ship Afloat" in Jolly Roger Bay without pressing A

Two challenges here: getting the red coin at the lowest part of the map (you can't "swim" without the A button, just sort of slowly punch your way through the water, so this is a tight race against time and Mario's lung capacity) and getting onto the ship where the last three coins and the Star are found. Fortunately, besides drowning there's no easy way to die in a water level given the way health works in this game.

"Melting the Ice Caps" (5): Collect "Wall Kicks Will Work" in Cool, Cool Mountain while holding Tuxie

Tuxie, as you might guess, is the baby penguin at the top of the level. This one's not so bad because I've already used this skip in the main Super Mario 64 achievement run and the shotgun jump makes it even easier to pull off. Just keeping the lil' dude in your hands the whole time is the tricky part.

"Breaking Boo's Curse" (5): Collect "Big Boo's Balcony" in Big Boo's Haunt without using a single door or entering the Mansion

I had to look up how to do this because the amount of vertical distance you need is ridiculous. Turns out the play is to start running towards the mansion wall, switch into a triple-jump, shotgun jump at the very top of it, hit the wall for a walljump around the peak of all this, and then do another shotgun jump and you'll have just enough height to reach the balcony. Rest of it is easy-peasy.

"Vanishing into the Void" (10): Collect the Red Coin Star in Vanish Cap under the Moat without pressing A

A nightmare. The first four coins are easy, sliding down that initial slope, but navigating all those spinning elevators when you're not allowed to jump takes some concentration. Also have to perform a careful rollout shotgun jump to get the Star without falling into the nearby pit. That would be heartbreaking.

"Busting Bowser's Doors" (10): Defeat Bowser in "Bowser in the Dark World" with 30 or more coins without taking damage, using only the FPS camera

Just a neat challenge involving FPS-mode (still a TPS camera, dammit). Bowser in the Dark World is the first Bowser stage so it's not that tough to avoid getting hurt and you can shoot those irritating electricity gremlin balls before you ever get near them. Bowser too, of course. The flamethrowers are the only real threats.

"This is It, The Apocalypse" (10): Collect the 100 Coin Star in Hazy Maze Cave without pressing A

Ugh, this one. Hazy Maze Cave is a pain at the best of times and has the least enjoyable 100-coin Star in a casual run given the obtuse layout (though the clock and rainbow ride aren't picnics either). The only truly inaccessible coins are the four reds at the top of that elevator area: anything else can be reached with shotgun jumps or sniped from a distance (like the eyeballs and bats). Just takes a while and there's spots (like the boulder room) that are too easy to die in.

"Burning Passion" (10): Collect "Hot-Foot in the Volcano" in Lethal Lava Land starting a longjump past the second pole for "Elevator Tour in the Volcano" without touching the ground

Issue here is gaining enough height. The longjump from the place indicated will get you comfortably over there, but only high enough to grab the ledge and pull yourself up (which voids the attempt, since you can't touch the ground). The method I found was to aim to hit the opposing wall just under where you can grab it, then wall jump off it followed by a second shotgun blast for the extra height. Fun.

"Stone Handed Menace" (5): Defeat Eyerok in Shifting Sand Land in only 2 shots and hitting each hand once without pressing A or B

This is just like the King Whomp fight except they actually expect you to aim this time. Pfft. The whole point of shotguns is that you don't need to aim.

"Gold Medalist" (5): From the star platform in Bowser in the Fire Sea, longjump to the beginning of the third floor

With some of these achievements, the struggle is in determining what they're actually talking about. There's a third floor? It's the same floor the Star is on, you just have to leap from where the Star appears to where you popped up from climbing a staircase, clearing that lava field with the floating platforms that keep submerging themselves. Not too hard. Get the Star first though, just to be safe.

"Defrosting Heights" (10): Collect "In the Deep Freeze" in Snowman's Land by longjumping from the snowman's head

Like threading a needle but with a shotgun. The Deep Freeze Star is the one trapped in that giant ice block that you reach from the top. Best you can do is line the longjump up as close as you can and use the secondary shotgun jump to fine-tune the descent once you're close. It took one attempt but I've no idea if I was just lucky or it wasn't as tough as it looked.

"Swimming in the Abandoned City" (5): Collect "Go to Town for Red Coins" in Wet-Dry World without lowering the town's water

Shooting boxes underwater again. Well, it's neat that you can do it I suppose.

"Breaking Ukiki's Treasure" (5): Collect "Secret of the Monkey Cage" in Tall, Tall Mountain while holding the Ukiki at the top (Star 2 selected)

Normally, catching Ukiki and agreeing to let him go will cause him to destroy the cage and release the Star. But you already have something that can destroy most things. Only issue here is that he'll keep nagging you to let him go if you refuse to do so, but you can get to where the Star spawns with him in tow no problem.

"Never Surrender. Never Fall" (10): Starting from the wooden line at the first longjump in Tall, Tall Mountain, scale the mountain vertically in under 18 seconds

This is one like the Big Boo Balcony challenge where you really need to be on top of shotgun blasting greater heights by alternating jumps, wall jumps, and shotgun jumps (since the shotgun jump refreshes after a wall jump). 18 seconds does not give you that long to work with so you need to perform at least two of these alternating patterns twice without fault. Fun challenge though.

"Swarm of the Century" (5): Defeat Wiggler in Tiny-Huge Island while only standing on the green platform

Well, I mean, all you need to do is figure out a way to hit the Wiggler at a distance somehow. Hmm.

"Arduous Mountain Climber" (10): Collect "The Tip Top of the Huge Island" in Tiny-Huge Island without pressing A once or entering the tiny island

Oof, I already didn't like Tiny-Huge Island and this challenge reminded me why. Toughest part is either that cliffside with the rolling balls (the last ledge is real hard to reach with just a rollout-shotgun jump) or the last few big platforms before the plank that leads to the top. Your slow swimming speed also makes you vulnerable to that big fish with the shades... or it would if you weren't able to just shoot it. Smile, you son of a-

"Ticking Time Bomb" (10): Collect "Roll Into the Cage" in Tick Tock Clock on the random setting without pressing A

I particularly like the added involvement of the random setting of Tick Tock Clock (i.e. 6 o'clock) as if this challenge would be way too easy otherwise. TTC is a vertical level and even if "Roll Into the Cage" only requires you to get about halfway to the top, that's a whole lot of distance straight up that you have to cover without jumping and on a bunch of moving and spinning platforms no less (which, of course, are spinning at random intervals). Now, you can actually shoot and destroy most of the moving obstacles but this just creates other problems as they become unreliable as platforms: a rotating cube might get stuck in an angled form that has weird slope properties or otherwise becomes intangible. Fortunately, you don't need as many rollout jumps: you can just walk off an edge and then shoot-jump to cover most of the horizontal gaps. Probably the toughest one of these.

"Robbery in the Skylines" (10): Collect "Big House in the Sky" in Rainbow Ride without using a Carpet, Warp and only using the FPS camera

Well, here it is: the hardest achievement in the set. I guess the set creator decided the hardest achievement should be in the hardest level. Your options here are very limited but I'll detail my route (though a video guide would probably help more): shotgun up to the spinning platforms, over to the vertical maze with the coins, up to the top of that with a series of shotgun jumps, onto the top of the transparent block just nearby (also the one involved in the following achievement), over to the pier-shaped block in front of the castle, up to the high window inside the castle (through a walljump/shotgun jump combo), and then a backflip out of the window into a shotgun jump to reach the wall for a walljump which then goes into another shotgun jump (the fun part is that messing up any stage of this will lead to a death and restarting this process) and you'll get to the roof. Just shotgun jump up past the slidy part and you're at the top where the Star is. If that sounded easy, it isn't. Oh, it didn't?

"Wear Your Pride" (5): Collect "Swinging in the Breeze" in Rainbow Ride starting a longjump from the closest blue block to the maze without touching the ground

Way more chill in comparison. Another like the longjump in Snow Man's Land where accuracy is everything. Did it in one attempt though because I'm a superstar or something.

The joy of a hack like this is that, while it certainly does trivialize a lot of the game, it does so in ways that are unexpected and enjoyable to discover—mostly in the vein of "oh hey, I can just shoot this and skip a big chunk of the level". Having this RA set then add some of the missing challenge back in—even if they're on average much more palatable than the ordeals chronicled in the Kobayashi Mario—really demonstrates how effectively a good set of achievements can completely transform a game for the better. It's why I'll always be ride or die on the inclusion of achievements in games (and why I play so few games on Switch): they're often integral to elevating already strong material to even greater heights.

Anyway, expect some feature-length Kobayashi Mario and RetroAchievements antics in 2025. As for me, I gotta get back to polishing off this enormous Mega Archive entry; no time to be sitting around having fun with shotguns when there's Mega Drive games to research.