Regular Pasta is a Super Mario 64 ROM hack by anonymous_moose entered in the 8th version of Simple Flips ROM Hacking Competitions, and won first place.
In it, Mario is relaxing in a pasta restaurant with great pasta. But this is no ordinary establishment — it was founded by a famous painter who painted a portal to an alternate pasta dimension, where they get all their pasta from. Mario decides to jump in the painting upon learning that Princess Peach has gone in it herself to make sure she is okay. Inside, a Bob-omb mistakes him for the electrician and tells him to check out the light switch, so being the hero he is, he agrees to it.
And then everything goes insane as reality starts tearing itself apart.
This hack contains examples of:
- Adaptational Villainy: Princess Peach is the Big Bad of the hack seeking to ascend into a godlike form by destroying reality.
- Background Boss: The Princess stands in an unreachable spot while fighting you with various projectiles.
- Big Bad: The Princess is the entity tearing reality apart in order to ascend to godhood.
- Bittersweet Ending: Mario defeats the Princess and reality is saved from total destruction but the Mushroom Kingdom and reality are still left in shambles and Mario grieves beside the now-static screens that once were the Princess inside the ruined remains of her castle.
- Black Eyes of Evil: The Princess, the reality-destroying Big Bad, has them in her image on her giant monitor.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall:
- One Bob-omb Buddy lampshades a music change early on.
- The Princess refers to murdering Bowser as freeing his object bank, and tells Mario that “there's not enough RAM for the two of us”.
- Department of Redundancy Department: A Bob-omb Buddy, when giving the history of the pasta restaurant, trips up a little.Established years ago, this fine establishment was established many years ago, when...
- Expy: The Princess blatantly resembles Photoshop Flowey from Undertale, as both are eldritch final bosses with tentacles and a monitor that features a flickering, human-like face with Black Eyes of Evil.
- Level Ate: The spaghetti dimension is an alternate dimension made of pasta, meatballs, sauce, and some wood. It is where the pasta restaurant gets its pasta from.
- Mechanical Abomination: The Princess has become a giant computer with several tentacles sticking out of her and the power to tear the fabric of reality itself asunder.
- Mind Screw: A lot of the story is rather confusing due to the cryptic dialogue.
- Mood Whiplash:
- The pasta dimension is a goofy Level Ate where everything is made of pasta. Until Mario presses the giant switch at the end, at which point it turns into a darker version and the soundtrack switches to the dramatic 'Bowser In The Dark World'.
- At the end of said level, Mario finds Bowser's corpse, which has been completely torn apart in gruesome detail, and from there the Surprisingly Creepy elements kick into overdrive.
- Sudden Soundtrack Stop: In the second area, the music stops as soon as Mario steps on the platform with Bowser's dismembered corpse, just to drive home the Wham Shot.
- Surprisingly Creepy Moment: The hack seems to be more comedic despite being inserted into a creepypasta-themed contest. Mario is chilling in a pasta restaurant and decides to go find Peach, who went inside a painting to an alternate pasta dimension where all their pasta is from. At first, everything seems relatively fine. Then Mario finds Bowser's mutilated, dismembered corpse and learns that reality itself is being torn apart, and it gets darker from there culminating in a fight against the princess herself having turned into a Mechanical Abomination.
- Tactical Suicide Boss: The Princess can only be defeated by luring the giant flame projectiles she shoots periodically back at her screen.
- Turns Red: After hitting the Princess twice, she will cause the floor to start bumping up and down, making it a little harder to dodge her attacks, and fire bombs that home in on wherever you are standing. Then when hit some more, she will cause several tiles to disappear, leaving you with less solid ground to stand on.
