"I modified the original SM64 to randomly patch Gameshark codes I found on the Internet (or made myself) to the game. This resulted in a pretty funny, unstable, and frustrating game. Don't take this too serious and don't try to get any progress done in the game. You won't."
—Kaze Emanuar, the creator of the hack
Super Mario 64: Chaos Edition is a peculiar rom hack of the iconic portly plumber platformer of the same name, created by Kaze Emanuar. On its surface, it seems to play identical to the original game, but as it unravels, it has more than a few surprises awaiting.
The hack is designed to inject randomized snippets of GameShark code on and off during gameplay, which creates randomized effects on both the visuals and gameplay, which can range from amusing, frustrating, to downright nightmarish.
The hack has become considerably popular due to playthroughs by online gamers like Vinesauce.
On September 27, 2020, Kaze released an Updated Re-release of the game called Chaos Edition 3.0. Another re-release, called Chaos Edition 4.0, was released on September 22, 2022.
Tropes:
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The game occasionally makes Mario an incredibly large size (even bigger than the Mega Mushroom from Mario 64 DS would), but it doesn't affect his gameplay or collision detection.
- Body Horror: When Mario tries to open a locked door with a star, sometimes he'll be stuck in place and his head will do a 360 degree turn through his body!
- Blessed with Suck:
- The metal cap, usually a boon, is horrendous to get in areas where you really want to be swimming. Dire Dire Docks is the worst for it.
- The super jump and super speed boosts can make you jump so high and go so fast you can no longer move accurately.
- Cursed with Awesome:
- Sometimes, the randomiser gives you a metal cap or a wing cap for no reason. The metal cap makes you invincible, which is especially good in the lava levels, and the wing cap is great in Bowser in the Fire Sea.
- Considering how often you're gonna die, having negative lives means it will just keep going down and you'll never get a Game Over.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Sometimes, the game will send a tornado of everything in the level that isn't nailed down, from enemies to objects (including some objects that aren't in the level, like Boos and blue fire) and it's impossible to evade them — you either have to let them mop the floor with you or hope the game crashes from that many objects being in one place. Occasionally the game will let up and allow the objects to stop moving and hang in mid-air, though. It bears noting that this only happens in certain levels, like Bob-Omb Battlefield — other worlds, like "Whomp's Fortress", aren't affected by this.
- Forced Transformation: Sometimes the game will turn Mario into a signpost. He can still move around, jump, and grab things though.
- Game-Breaking Bug: Given how unstable the game is, random crashes are very common. On top of that, even if you do get a star in some levels, it won't exit you out of it! Using teleporters will also trap Mario in limbo and won't let him reappear, forcing you to reset the game. Entering the basement is also very prone to crashing not only the game, but the emulator itself.
- Invincible Minor Minion: On occasion, the Goombas become impossible to kill — if Mario jumps on them, they will endlessly respawn, one after another, on the spot until Mario stops bouncing on them or gets knocked away.
- Invisibility: When the game starts, Mario is completely invisible. This goes away once he enters the castle.
- Kaizo Trap: Inverted. Whomp's Fortress will sometimes throw you right out into the sky below, leaving you unable to beat the level. Lethal Lava Land will also sometimes spawn a killer flying cap that kills you as soon as you set foot in the stage. Sometimes the Castle doors will trap you in the inescapable "Black Room of Death" (the area behind the castle doors both in and outside the castle), even if you entered them the right way!
- Luck-Based Mission: About the only way to get most, if not all stars, and finish the game, is to pray so the game will go easy on you.
- Mind Screw: This game can be described as Mario 64 on one too many mushrooms: Mario's controls and speed can either slow to a crawl or jerk out of control at any time, graphics will randomly become garbled, garbage like patterns, the music will use Mario's voice clips in lieu of the instruments, doors to stages will only work when they feel like it (and sometimes the doors will even teleport you away from them, or in the case of the castle doors, land you right back outside when you enter), sometimes the stages will kill you just as you enter them, the paintings you leave will keep rippling so much that it swallows the entire room, the camera will switch to fish eye perspective, etc.
- Nightmare Face: Mario's corrupted face on the title screen can reach almost Large Marge levels of creepiness.
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Nintendo Hard / Fake Difficulty: Getting even the first star, much less 8 of them, is a Herculean feat in itself due to the game's wonky programming. Getting at least 70 stars and getting to Bowser is hair-pullingly difficult. Beating the game with all 120 stars is practically impossible. - One-Hit Kill: There are oversized flying caps sitting around in some levels, and they will sometimes kill you in one hit if you touch them. In the worst case scenario, they'll even crash the game if you grab them.
- Poison Mushroom: The recurring Wing Caps you'll find floating around the levels without being released from a block. Whatever you do, do not grab them — they'll either kill Mario in one hit or crash the game!
- Sometimes 1-up mushrooms will either do nothing (downplaying this trope) or just take away a life. The latter could be an example of Cursed with Awesome, however, as when you have no lives left, taking one away will leave you with infinite lives.
- Also downplaying this trope, sometimes coins do nothing but heal you, which is very frustrating when trying to get 100-coin stars.
- Press Start to Game Over: The game can trigger some codes that causes you to lose a life upon entering a level, sometimes even making you lose all your lives successively after your barely just respawned, resulting in a Game Over, as PeanutButterGamer experienced here
. - Press X to Not Die: As of 3.0, a message will occasionally pop up telling you to press D-Pad down or die, failing to do so quickly enough will result in instant death.
- Squashed Flat: Mario can get transformed and stuck into this position for no reason. It stunts his speed and makes his jump useless, and it keeps him from punching (but oddly, he can still open doors — when they do want to open. — despite not being able to reach the doorknob). He usually reverts back to normal after a while, but it can take minutes at a time.
- Super-Speed: Sometimes Mario will acquire lightning-fast speed that borders on teleportation, but it's impossible to control it and will more than likely end up getting you killed.
- Super-Strength: Mario was already strong enough to throw Bowser like an Olympic hammer in the regular game, but here the game can let him pick and carry Bowser by his tail towards a bomb with all the effort of picking up a foam block.
- Unwinnable by Design: Invoked. The creator of the rom hack stated that it was intentionally designed to be impossible to beat. Except by sheer luck and enough skill, it is basically impossible to complete the game with all 120 stars, much less play it like standard Mario 64. That said, a few determined players have managed to accomplish this task.
- Wizard Needs Food Badly: Sometimes, the game will decide to start draining Mario's health for no reason — and going into water will not refill it (but thankfully, coins still do the job). Sometimes it stops with leaving Mario with two hit points, but usually only ends with Mario dead.
- Zero-Effort Boss: Amusingly, the aforementioned issue where every object in a level homes in on Mario allows him to lead the bombs right towards Bowser and off him on the spot instead of having to throw Bowser into them — unfortunately, Bowser will float after you too during his death animation and usually won't fall on the ground, keeping you from winning the fight. Alternatively, the game can let you just pick up Bowser directly by his tail and carry him over to the bomb instead of swinging him towards it.
