YMMV / Super Mario 64: Last Impact

• Awesome Music: The soundtrack mainly consists of remixes of other video game tracks, though the game has some original tracks of its own, like the beautiful Above the Clouds, the haunting Dusky Doomed Dale or the epic Final Boss theme, Last Impact.
  • Other worthy mentions are the oddly soothing Giant Desk, the groovy and bizarre Livid Surreal Dream and the particularly awesome Colossal Circuits. The latter even has a HD Version made by the same composer!
  • Here's the playlist for the interested ones!
• Best Boss Ever: The final battle against Rashay is very impressive for a Final Boss in a Mario 64 romhack, being a tough boss with two forms, cool cutscenes, and Awesome Music.
• Best Level Ever: Like with Star Road, the great level design and multiple fun stages and tasks are one of the high points about this romhack.
  • Stonesnake Shatters is an easy introductory level that shows off how much work went into this hack. The inclusion of FLUDD is the most notable example of this because of how surprisingly well it works despite the limitations of the N64. It also has the Stone Snake as an indicator of how unique the bosses will be.
  • Dusky Doomed Dale is a good example for being a varied area in terms of tasks (most notably the prison break one) as well as a great level in its own right, along with memorable music.
  • While not challenging, the Luna Park stage makes for a rather pleasant experience all the same due to its soothing music, relaxed atmosphere, fun amusement park design, and overall easiness among a cluster of frustrating stages.
  • Big Beast's Belly is truly a sight to behold, if a rather unpleasant one. From its design to its textures, the effort that went into making this level as visually impressive as possible really paid off.
  • Colossal Circuits really shows off how creative Kaze can be. Surrounded by a background with binary codes is an amassment of computer hardware, ranging from circuit boards to wires as platforms, hard work has been put into making this level as wonderfully detailed and textured as possible. It's an incredibly fun late-stage level that will put your jump skills to quite a test. Its music is also heavily regarded as a fan-favorite. The Viruses also make for a fun late-game boss and a nice throwback to Dr. Mario.
  • Rainbow Road does a damn good job at showing how the Mario Kart mainstay would look if converted to a level in a platformer: the rainbow designs are dazzling, the music is great, and the platforming is just the right blend of challenging and fun.
• Breather Level: Despite being located in the third hub world (which is full of fiendishly difficult levels), Luna Park is rather simple. Both of its stars are easy to get with few enemies, and a lack of bottomless pits makes the somewhat tricky platforming a lot less stressful than it could be.
  • While it is the second-to-last main level and is by no means an easy course by itself, Livid Surreal Dream is fairly sandwiched between Colossal Circuits and Rainbow Road in terms of difficulty due to it being more oriented around puzzles and exploration rather than any sort of Platform Hell. The only real enemies in it (the Hand Spiders), while rather powerful in terms of damage, aren't that hard to take down once you figure out how to do so, as all you need to do is to lure them into attacking a nearby tree, and you are likely to discover this by accident.
  • Rainbow Road as a whole is one of the hardest stages in the game, but the third and last two stars are easy. The third star has you go on a cart ride, and the only obstacle standing between you and the star are a few easy jumps. The fifth star is the red coin star, where all of the coins are in the big circle at the start of the level and require only some long jumps to do, while the last star is a Breather Boss.
• Breather Boss: The Chomps in the last star of Rainbow Road. All you need to do to beat them is grab the Rainbow Star in the middle of the room, then touch them all before time runs out (and given how big they are, it is not hard at all). Rather simple, and very easy compared to the rest of the very challenging course.
• Broken Base: The quality of the game in general; it's probably one of the most divisive games among SM64 hack players.
• Camera Screw: The less positive aspect of the game is how the camera misbehaves or gets stuck when it's forced into small corridors. Even with the ability to raise and lower it as well as spin it toward Mario's back, the camera can still be a little screwy at times.
• Complete Monster: Rashay is a snarky, cruel moon spirit who seeks to force the moon to crash into the Mushroom Kingdom, and kill everyone on the planet solely for the thrill of it. After revealing his presence near the end of the game, he kidnaps Princess Peach and forces Mario to exchange a large amount of Power Stars for the Princess to ensure her safety. After infiltrating his Moon Cellar, where at one point Mario is forced to fling himself through painful lava for Rashay's amusement, Mario fights Rashay, only to find out that he can't be hurt through conventional means. Upon this revelation, Rashay defeats Mario and continues to viciously beat the fallen plumber even after his loss, purely out of a deranged sense of bloodlust.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The Bloopers in Big Beast's Belly can be quite a pain to deal with thanks to their tendency to hover out of reach and smack Mario with fast and hard to dodge attacks.
  • The Freezies in Melty Molten Mountains easily qualify as this. They can not be defeated at all and their breath attack has a large range and will deal plenty of damage to you. The Freezies found on the level's ice side are easily the worse of the two, as its breath will momentarily freeze you in place… after which there's a chance that you're still close enough to its range that you'll be immediately frozen again.
  • The Thunder Lakitus in Rainbow Road also pose quite a threat. Usually, they're floating too high above you for you to be able to reach them, and their thunderstorm is not only difficult to dodge, but deals pretty quick damage and stuns you in place. Dealing with them is also incredibly burdensome when you're on an already tight pathway.
• Difficulty Spike: The game is already hard enough as it is, but after Bowser's stage, it becomes even harder, and only goes up from there.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • The color-shifting butterflies found on Sky-High Islands can only safely be defeated when they're pink, but will explode and thus damage you if you touch them while they're blue. Normally they wouldn't be significantly annoying… if only so many of them weren't positioned on tight bridges or roads so that you can't outright avoid them and where you could easily fall into the bottomless pit if they so much as hit you.
  • Even worse are the Little Mousers in Gamble Game Gallery. They're so small and fast that it's frustratingly hard to even land on them.
• Goddamned Boss:
  • Kamek in Dusky Doomed Dale dies in one hit, but is a headache to deal with due to him zipping all over the arena, the camera's wonky behavior, and him only periodically stopping to cast a spell before zooming off again. He's certainly not hard, due to the Goombas he spawns being a good source of coins to patch up any damage he does, but it's a real headache of a fight all the same.
  • You're not likely to die from the Giant Fish in Crystal Caves if you know just how close you can get to it and that you can stay underwater indefinitely if you let Mario's head rest right on the cage's ceiling, but luring it into the cage can be a very lengthy process. It only very slowly reaches towards you if you're close enough, but will then wildly swim out of control again if you're too far away. It is also a pain to fight for anyone with Thalassophobia, which big sea monsters tend to trigger.
• Memetic Mutation: In the SM64 ROM hack community, "BETTER THAN LAST IMPACT OPIEOP" and claiming that everything was "better than Last Impact" was a common joke for a while.^note For example...
  • Last Impact's camera is perfect.^note Kaze claiming he had improved on the original game's camera, despite many people finding it worse became a source of jokes.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: This game's climax takes place on the Moon, much like Super Mario Odyssey.
• Hype Backlash: Some people had this reaction to the game, given that the game was highly anticipated and when it realesed many people touted it as the ultimate SM64 hack. For a lot of people, the end product was a noticably flawed game with a lot of jank, collision issues and annoying boss fights (see below) that did not live up to this promise, even if general consensus on the hack is overall positive (and later versions attempted to fix some of the game's issues).
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: The game doesn't seem like it's much harder than the original, until after Bowser's Fiery Castle; from then on, the courses are much more challenging, with hard-to-reach Power Stars, more dangerous hazards, and complex boss fights. Furthermore, Mario has six units of health compared to the original's eight, and the air meter is now separate from the health meter, meaning that Mario can no longer refill it by grabbing coins underwater, nor can he re-fill his health meter by jumping in the water.
  • Sequel Difficulty Drop: On the other hand, it is significantly easier than Kaze's first full length hack SM64 MADNESS.
• That One Boss: Several, which can cause problems when trying to go through the unlockable Boss Rush:
  • The second encounter with the Goomba Bros. on the courtyard overworld isn't entirely difficult, but the blue Goomba with his spring-loaded boxing glove is a different story. He walks away rather quickly from you as you approach him, while his boxing glove will launch every time you're in range, which will not only deal quick damage to you, but will also drag this fight out even longer.
  • The Devil Big Bully in Underground Depths is a shockingly hard version of the Big Bully (which are usually considered laughably easy in the original Super Mario 64) that fires out a red wave every few seconds which will burn Mario if touched, making kicking it into the lava incredibly difficult.
  • The Invisible Boo Gang in Rival a Reflection are ridiculously hard, and a downright nasty way to start Dusky Doomed Dale. The fight consists of you battling four waves of Boos that can only be seen through a mirror. The fight itself is hard enough due to the screwy camera and wonky nature of fighting enemies you can only see through a reflection, but the second and fourth phases are especially frustrating: the second phase introduces electric Boos that not only hurt to touch, but move incredibly quickly and home in on you, and the window of time through which you can hurt them is incredibly small; and the giant Boo at the end is prone to teleporting all over the place and is a nasty source of collision damage due to his massive body. Almost appropriately, the boss fight song here is a remix of a song used for an infamously difficult boss fight in another game.
  • Dark Mario, the boss of the Shadow Factory. Not only is he very hard to hit without getting hit yourself, but he can take quite a while to defeat since he has six hit points like Mario and uses almost all of the techniques Mario has. After taking enough hits, he will begin throwing instant-kill shadow spots at you. Many have compared this boss to Dark Link from Ocarina of Time in this regard, since it's even introduced in a similar way.
  • The Giant Spider boss in the cave area of Harried Honey Hive is notoriously difficult to beat without save states. Mario has to jump towards and ground pound the spider's torso region, but it's easier said than done. Not only does Mario have very little room to land on, the spider is also deceptively fast and can even dodge Mario's jumps. Miss one jump, and Mario's health can be quickly drained by the spider's attacks, which have a large area of effect. It's frustrating to the point that even Youtuber and Twitch gamer SimpleFlips (also a professional SM64 hack player and world record setter) had problems with this boss.
  • Mischief Masher in Gamble Game Gallery is an enemy rush with three waves of enemies, during which there are fire-launching orbs everywhere, which remove three of six health points and make it hard to punch the Pokeys without either accidentally touching their prickly body or getting burned. Most annoyingly, in two waves, there's going to be a Chuck-Ya on a tiny platform with a fire orb on it as well, which will make grabbing the Chuck-Ya and throwing it a nearly impossible task without you taking heavy damage in the process. The last wave also has two Little Mousers, which are fast, small, and hard-to-hit. What's worse, you won't get any coins from defeating a single enemy; instead, you'll only earn coins whenever you beat one wave. With you only having a maximum of six health points, this is one battle that will get on your last nerve.
  • The Final Boss, Rashay, is very difficult to defeat. The first form is a Hopeless Boss Fight in which even getting to him requires you jump onto rapidly moving platforms that he throws at you, and he then flings you away, costing you 2 of 6 health points, before chasing after you so fast that you need to constantly Long Jump to get away from him. His final form takes 5 hits, is very fast, and hits hard. To damage him you have to jump over his head and then Ground-Pound it, which is much harder than it sounds due to his speed and quick turns.
• That One Level: Given that this hack is harder than the original game, there are naturally several of these.
  • Crystal Caves has "Underwater Race". Using the Frog Suit from a cave nearby (which allows you to swim indefinitely and with increased speed), you have to challenge a mermaid to a race. Sounds simple enough, until you see just how annoying said race turns out to be. The race begins with you having to swim into a specific entry, which you may or may not even have known about up until now, to a circular section, which is where you don't just have to beat the Mermaid in a lap around said circular section, but you also have to swim through red rings, which seemingly have Hitbox Dissonance and if you miss one, the ring that follows will not be active, forcing you to swim back just to reenter the ring you just missed, potentially costing you your position (and thus the race). You will only win the race if you get to the last blue ring and stay ahead of the mermaid. It quite literally feels like Superman 64 underwater. All of this is not helped by the camera. Just as the race begins, the camera stays on top of the water, refusing to focus on you while underwater unless you swim deep enough, which is only possible when you get to the circular swimming section. Simply adjusting the camera to a favorable position alone could cost you your position, given how you can't even see anything until then. And if you lose, the mermaid laughs at you and you have to exit the course to try again.
  • Underground Depths is an aggravating stage all around. Aside from one of the Stars requiring you to beat the Devil Big Bully, the other star has one point where you have to drop down to a set of boxes that swim on lava, which you can't see until you actually jump off the ledge, because they're positioned in such a way that they're almost completely out of your camera's view (not even the zoomed-in perspective can help you out here). What makes this worse is that you absolutely have to land on the boxes unharmed because you'll lose your Fire Flower ability upon damage, which you need to light two torches that are up ahead to progress. Basically, it's a leap of faith that will put you into an Unintentionally Unwinnable situation should you fail in any way.
  • Bowser's Fiery Castle can be a wake-up call of a level, even though Bowser isn't quite as hard as the Shadow Factory's boss. The firebars are very hard to avoid thanks to how large their hitboxes are (though that's been a problem with the original Super Mario 64), some of the platforms are rather small and easy to miss, and one slip to the bottom means death by lava.
  • Dusky Doomed Dale isn't quite an example, but two of its tasks are; "Rival a Reflection" and "Escape the Prison", respectively. The former has That One Boss as its first star, and the latter is an aggravating Stealth-Based Mission where it's incredibly easy to get spotted by the Bob-omb guards, which will cause you to lose a life, especially in one instance when you have to hide behind a barrel and then run to the next part when the guard is not looking, but you have a very short time frame to get past such a large distance. The latter mission was so frustrating that version 1.1 reduced the sight range of the Bob-omb guards.
  • Aside from the Giant Spider mentioned above, Harried Honey Hive also has "Bee Mario Exploration" and "Bee Skyrace". The latter has you trying to jump up high platforms to ask the Bee Queen for permission to use the Bee Suit before then having to use it to jump very long distances and hop onto small platforms, culminating in a final jump that is unbelievably frustrating due to the camera angle — and getting a Game Over means you have to make you way to the queen all over again. The latter involves you using the Bee Suit to challenge a bee on the hive's outskirts. Just upon entering the race through the door that leads outside, the bee will immediately declare the race, without any "Yes" or "No" prompt. The route itself is designed in such a way that long jumps are all but required to reliably reach the next platforms up ahead, where one mistake could send you falling to your death, as well as several platforming sections along the hive's walls where you have to wall jump a lot of times, which will hinder your progress significantly should you not do so quickly enough.
  • Both Gloomy Ambiance stages are quite tough. The "desk" one is set in some sort of "lava" landscape where it's incredibly easy to fall and then die (given how Mario has 6 health points and lava takes away 3). The latter is preceded by a section where the darkness consumes the place, and if you don't make it in time, Mario will get consumed. It is very fast, leaving Mario with little room to mess up. Thankfully, the rest of the level is comparatively easy.
  • The Above The Clouds stage hidden in Sky-High Islands is by far the hardest secret course in the game. Just getting to the course requires you go to a part of the Sky-High Islands (near the giant windmill, where the rainbow coins are) and jump down a ledge to a platform/large vine that is completely out of sight even when using the zoomed-in perspective, your only clue being a Bob-omb near the edge giving a very vague clue about something down below. As with the Undergound Depths, it is likely that you will miss the small area to land in and fall to your doom. If you manage to enter the actual course, you have to keep up with a small flying ship and use it to jump to other platforms and get the red coins. Problem is, the level combines incredibly precise platforming with the need to be quick lest the ship leave you behind, not helped by the fact that many of the gaps require long jumps and the limited Cloud Mario Power-Up to cross, and as a result it is very easy to slip off, or jump too far/not far enough and lose a life, or get hit by some of the flames around the level and lose the Power-Up, essentially dooming you. And of course, getting a Game Over means you have to make your way to the hidden platform/vine all over again. Overall, this level is likely to be a Last Lousy Point for players looking to get all the stars.
  • The Shadow Factory has an abundance of small platforms hovering over a large pit of black shadow. There are also shadow spots that move back and forth, which will instantly kill Mario if he even brushes past them. Despite this, the trek up there isn't too hard... but getting the red coins and the other hidden star is a nightmare, since the former are placed at the most precarious platforms and the latter at the top of a series of large, turning gears- just getting to the gears requires a precise jump, while trying to jump onto each gear without either falling off or accidentally going in between the gears is almost impossible — and one slip into the shadows means starting all over again. As if that was not enough, it is also home to Dark Mario, one of the hardest bosses in the game.
  • Gamble Game Gallery. From the Piantas being completely unhelpful and vague, to the grueling jumps the level makes you do, to the introduction of Little Mousers, some fans find the course to be the worst out of all the levels. But aside from the Mischief Masher mentioned above, two of its stars stand out as being incredibly aggravating; "Scale the Casino" and "Coins in a Pinball Machine". The former is nothing but pure Platform Hell that neither the courses before it, nor even the courses after it have. You have to perform extremely high but precise jumps from tiny platforms to make it to the next ones. The final stretch to the star is a Guide Dang It! situation where you wouldn't know that you're supposed to scale the very inconspicuous-looking monkey bars to make it to the star. Should you fall from any of those sections, you most likely have to begin the frustrating climb all over again. The latter requires Mario to get the stars in a giant pinball machine with himself as the ball- but the area is notoriously glitchy, and the machine is placed very steeply, making it incredibly hard to control Mario as he will be sliding half the time unless he is on the platforms above. One wrong move, and you will fall to the bottomless pit below and lose a life.
  • While Livid Surreal Dream isn't such an example, its second star, "The Bottomless Pit", can get rather nasty. It involves a pit of hexagonal shape with 5 star buttons along the walls, each with a different height. When you land all the way to the bottom of the pit, there's an exit that will instead repeat the pit all over again, giving you essentially endless tries to touch all 5 of the star buttons. But things can go pretty downhill from there, as the buttons are very hard to hit, and falling damage could take away about 2 to 4 of your 6 health points depending on your falling height. It's also possible that instead of pressing any star button on your way down, you'll instead bump against the wall, which will leave Mario completely "paralyzed" as he will be unable to ground pound afterwards, which you need to safely land on the ground. There are plenty of coins on the pit's bottom to replenish your health with, but once you've used up all of them, all is left to chance and you might eventually end up in a One-Hit-Point Wonder situation if you don't press all the buttons quickly enough. Even getting to the pit requires tough platforming and jumping, and if you lose all your health in the pit, you have to make your way there all over again.

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