Bethany Plays: PM Chapter 8 Part 1: Ascent into the Keep

We're going to start with Shooting Star Summit today. I felt it made sense.

Oh come on, are we still doing the static messages? I get it, you had cool text filters, and it's not like this is as horrible in motion as it is in still. But we restored your powers, you don't need to deal with this anymore.

Now, it's not going to be a free ticket, but it's going to be near enough to.

We still need to figure out our plan for beating the Star Rod. We have all seven Star Spirits, but that needs a mechanical answer.

And that would be the Star Road.

And up we climb! There's a cool little jingle while we're ascending.

And, because all the Star-themed locations have one, a cool theme for the Star Way.

This is an Ember. Embers are fiery monsters forged from uncanny blue fire. Max HP: 10, Attack Power: 4, Defense Power: 0. They may look frosty, but they're actually on fire, so fire attacks won't work. They divide themselves when they're attacked. Keep attacking 'em, though. You'll get 'em eventually. They'll probably fight back. Their attacks usually deal out 3 damage points. Water attacks will work well. Let's beat 'em before they get a chance to burn us.

Ember (Lv. 24) appears only on Star Way, and there's a few of them that are hard to dodge on the narrow trail that's constantly and rapidly ascending upwards. They are upgraded Lava Bubbles original to Paper Mario (considering Lava Bubbles are rarely considered monsters in the main games, hardly surprising it never gets recolours). The fact it is a blue flame in this particular shape suggests it may be based on the Japanese hitodama, a type of ghost, but this interpretation is admittedly formed by what TTYD did with the enemy. Although the fact they're on the path to the heavens is pretty solid evidence 64 was thinking about it too.

Curiously, their Japanese name references something that's definitely a TTYD joke.

Anyway, as Goombario mentioned, Embers will create a copy of themselves if hit with a non-lethal attack. Of course, this depends on there being room for a new enemy in the formation.

It's 4 damage to Mario, 3 turns of stun to a partner. Goombario's normally good about describing that sort of thing, but he hasn't done it well here.

One fortunate thing about Embers is that any duplicates spawn with the current HP of their parent Ember- so this one had 2 HP. It's not a game of infinitely spawning fresh Embers because you can't muster up 10 Atk for one enemy.

Even so, that's one new Ember every Jump.

Thankfully, this only hit the partner, and I'm about to close the fight.

Star Way is pretty when you're climbing up it. But like hell you're spotting those Embers swooping down on your head in time to figure out which direction they're travelling in.

I got a First Strike with this one, I believe.

Which set up this perfect opportunity. Jump on the one in back, and all of a sudden I have only enemies who will be oneshot by Power Shell.

With these pillars marking the way, we are ready to arrive at Star Haven.

(The loading zone is the usual shape, hovering randomly in mid-air.)

Star Haven's theme.

...OK, Star Haven is cool, but... could it be cooler? Like with Monstar, this room has a visual effect that emulators, even official ones, can't seem to get a handle on.

Fortunately, the rainbow effect worked just fine in this earlier shot. The floor has this gradient applied to it going from north to south, starting with the yellow colour. It honestly looks even prettier than it does here, although good luck finding such footage if you don't have the game yourself- most people recording from an N64 aren't exactly using the nicest capture tools.

...Then wouldn't you adopt a greeting that isn't useless to you?

If the "place is a boring dull purple" was intentional and not an emulation error, it would actually be a pretty cool one, in light of this line. Still kinda underwhelming, but an underwhelming you can be angry at Bowser for.

End of wishes. Although maybe those are the same, depending on what essentials are running on wishes. Ideally, not as much as you think.

The Stars also have houses, which are fences around brick floors with a panel of light for a door. Some of these houses are just NPC dialogue, though.

This one is a shop! Those are the cheapest prices any of these items have had, although we're erring into "too late to cook anything with them" territory. Pick up Life Shrooms and Shooting Stars if you want them, but those Maples and Supers are just for utility.

That said, those are Life Shrooms.

This is the point I redid my inventory to my liking. I'll have a chance to change my mind, and that chance happens to be located at the most convenient time to do so- the inventory I have before that is just to survive that easier first half.

Well, I guess that explains how Stars die. I... did not need to know that was a possibility.

I like how this morbid discussion of the mortality of the night sky was entirely setup to a terrible pun. That kinda saves this joke from being unfunny.

~~I mean, that's just what Toads do all the time, they can just finally admit it now.~~

Sorry, Toad on the docks, it looks like someone has beat you to your dream of a Toad House in Star Haven.

Heading to the east, we can find the massive building which usually houses the Star Rod.

And where the Star Spirits sit when not in use.

We're ready.

Star Beam is a 0 SP Star Power with an underrated effect. In the context it is given, it is assumed that this power is only good for fighting Bowser, when this is not the case. Star Beam's effect is that it wipes the enemy's buffs. Magikoopas giving intangibility, enemy charging up a super attack, what have you? Just say no! And all it costs is a Mario turn! OK, that's not free, but still. This may be a more useful Star Power than Up & Away.

...Er, sorry, Kalmar.

The way this is phrased is probably why most people don't realise it's a generally useful technique. Star Beam isn't the anti-Star Rod in reserve- in fact, it's not even "draining the power of the Star Rod". It's simply wiping the buff Bowser gives himself that makes him invincible. Anything Bowser can do with that thing in one turn, we're helpless against.

We'll also be needing this.

This is our ticket to the skies.

No, it's not special in any Mario context, it's just what we happen to be using to fly.

Translation: Yes, the other Star Powers are still options to you.

It was already a little too late to turn around when we got to Star Way. There isn't any shortcut back to Toad Town- everything we're doing to get closer and closer to Bowser is a step we must retrace if we want to do anything on the overworld. As such, this is a soft point-of-no-return: There is return, but who would ever take it?

And away we go! There's a jazzy theme here, but I can't figure out what it's called.

Everyone takes the time to wish upon a shooting Star Ship.

You're in luck.

So are you.

...You might have been in luck regardless.

Into the belly of the beast.

...The least they could have done was animate some Magikoopas to convince us not to fly up to Peach's Castle. Then again, we have no idea where Bowser's lair is, perhaps we think this is a better vantage point.

This is the official start of Chapter 8. I felt this time, the pre-stuff fit in.

We dock in the hangar. By this point in the franchise, we have only ever seen Bowser in a Koopa Clown Car. Thank goodness the Koopalings were on vacation this week.

Welcome to the castle proper. It's all on top of the Clown Car, it looks.

The Bowser's Castle theme is apparently a dynamic tune, playing at a different intensity depending on which floor you're on. Here's a compilation pack.

Up there, we can see the 80th Badge Block, although there's no reaching it now.

If we want to make it through the locked door, we're going this way.

And mugging a Koopatrol.

This is a Koopatrol. They're elite Koopa soldiers. These are the highest-ranked guards of Bowser's Castle. Max HP: 8, Attack Power: 4, Defense Power: 3. In case you hadn't noticed, they're fitted with spikes. Don't jump on 'em. When their HP drops low, they'll charge up power for one last-ditch attack. The power of this desperate attack is 10. They've also been known to call in reinforcements when they're in trouble. Don't underestimate these nasty Koopas, Mario.

Koopatrol (Lv. 25), in case you've forgotten them from Chapter 4, will be our bread and butter enemy for quite some time. It's been a while, but we can flip them with a Spike Shield jump or Quake Hammer, so they don't attack us on their turn. With that said, I mentioned something about Star Beam being good on charging enemies?

Oh yeah, all that Atk we've got from the Ultra Boots and the Atk Badges means Mario can oneshot a Koopatrol with a Jump. Despite how overkill this damage looks, this is the lowest amount of damage you can do for an exact kill. One less would give you 2+5, which is 7.

Watt is the partner of choice for an upright Koopatrol. I don't think any other party member can reasonably do 5 damage even with their cheap FP attack.

Oh yeah, now that we're fighting them in numbers, that reinforcement thing might be a gimmick. Since Mario oneshots and Watt twoshots, a Koopatrol that Watt has already hit is wasting its turn doing this.

This one didn't drop any money, just a key.

We can also spot a jail cell back here. The Koopatrol is supposed to be standing in front of it, he just has a lot of freedom of movement to the left.

Onward to the lava-powered machines, then.

Ah, there we are. This Koopatrol is preparing for its charged 10 Atk technique. While in this state, Jump and Quake Hammer lose the ability to flip it, although it does not gain any additional Defence.

Time to show off the Star Beam. Early.

HA HA! The best part of this attempt is that Watt has a free turn to finish the job anyway.

...Although with all these Electro Dashes, I'm going to miss a few.

Luckily, so are they.

...Is that a lava pulley system? Bowser Lava has to be different from volcano brand.

...Of course this is the formation I lose the bragging rights of being at full health for.

This has all the makings of Mario's Lucky Day.

I'll gladly take extra Star Points while it's relevant. Since that was a formation with four enemies in it, the Star Point rewards were boosted from 2 to 3- and that applied to the reinforcements, too.

These are the Hammer Bros. You've seen these punks before, haven't you? Max HP: 12, Attack Power: 5, Defense Power: 1. Be careful of that hammer! If it hits you, you'll get shrunk in a wink. When the Hammer Bros. get desperate, they'll hurl a ton of hammers, so watch it. These guys have been a pain for ages, so let's give 'em an old-fashioned whopping. As always, they're not to be underestimated.

Hammer Bro. (Level 27) is by far the scarier foe to face in Bowser's Castle. Those Shrink Hammers still look scary on this side of all that power gain since Chapter 4.

And 12 HP and 1 Def is a difficult number for Mario. I believe he can secure the oneshot with both Power Pluses, All or Nothing and P-Up D-Down, although that requires having P-Up D-Down equipped against an enemy that can combo you.

Welcome to this room. This is a room design we'll learn to fear.

Bowser has hired three Guard Doors, emblazoned with his face, to keep Mario from getting to him. Each one has something fiendish prepared for us.

...Although this one is being coy about it.

Mario, you are too trusting for your own good.

Or perhaps not used to games that open trap doors under your feet.

I wonder if any Koopa Troop members got dropped down here for insubordination.

Did you consider non-vertical bars? At least make it feel impenetrable!

They always set this option up. He must really have confidence in this generic jail cell. Then again, he's a wall, he can't move under his own power. Any room must feel like jail to him.

...Which does make me wonder if this line is projection. You doing OK up there?

Anyway, that's enough about him, here we can find the Minister! It's been a while since we saw our proto-Toadsworth.

This is basically a less exaggerated Toadsworth line.

This is the Toad Minister. Uh... Pleasure to meet you! My name is Goombario, sir. I'm Mario's right hand, sir. Just joking. But seriously, one day I'd love to be invited to a castle party. How about it?

...Is this the only Goombario Tattle where he addresses the person he is describing directly?

The castle literally spontaneously appeared underneath you. I don't think you can blame yourself for this one.

Only an evil fiend whose taste for grandiose spectacle is matched only by his ignorance of the phrase "collateral damage".

...We need more Star Ships. Or perhaps we could undock a few Clown Cars? Depends on how we're getting out of this cell and back to the front door. It's a pretty long walk if the bars don't disengage.

Tasty Tonic in these crates.

...And also what I believe is a Life Shroom, this is a terrible still frame. Partially because of the bars, but still.

Right, Bombette, we all saw this coming.

The intention of this line is to make the Guard Door look even more foolish about how inescapable this jail cell was, but it makes me realise that they had the opportunity to make all the partners say something cool when you solved a puzzle using their abilities, and this is the only time that happens.

With that said, we have a lot of chances to show off our partners in action in this room.

It's mostly platforming, though. Some blocks will move, and Parakarry is sometimes necessary and sometimes just to speed things up.

This being one of the necessary times.

...If you look closely, you'll notice a lava spiral in the bottom right of the image. I have no idea what's causing that, and while I can mount Spike and go into it, I don't think I want to.

This part is a necessary use of Spike, and they don't make you go far. Spike's cloud is very unhappy about crossing lava (it didn't seem to mind spikes) and in addition to its expression, it also moves slower.

Hitting this button gets the platform moving. As a reminder, we can only leave the lava from these shallower platforms with Spike.

Which means we need to find an alternate means of collecting this treasure.

OK, this is just ridiculous.

More items on tempting pedestals. YMMV on the value of the Mystery?.

...Dangit, I can't use Spike to get out of the lava here.

Back on land, and time to cross through a lava fall with Lady Bow.

Now we can get past here.

...Is it just me, or does the lava seem to have interesting currents here?

...This looks like a productive place to look.

Hello, Kamek.

Just kidding, this is almost certainly not Kamek, he has the same stats as any normal Magikoopa.

...Who gave you Koopatrol armour and called you sir?

Either that or they have pattern recognition from all the Koopatrols I got upstairs.

The Magikoopa rallies his men for action.

And dramatically undersells the danger his minions are in.

It helped, for what it's worth.

Doesn't mean it's going to help him succeed in defending the switch.

This is a Magikoopa. Magikoopas are the elite magicians of the Koopa clan. Max HP: 11, Attack Power: 6, Defense Power: 0. Tread carefully, Mario! Their magical attacks pack a serious punch! They know many nasty spells. We'd better beat them before they can do anything crazy.

In Bowser's Castle, blue Magikoopas (Lv. 26) are quite a bit more impressive than the one that attacked us in Shooting Star Summit, despite being a lower level. In addition to their higher-powered magical blast, they have access to the Atk buff, Def buff, Electrify, Transparent, 5 HP single heal, 3 HP multi-heal, and what I believe is the ability to make copies of itself to make you unable to land a hit on it. One thing it does not have, however, is the ability to teleport up and whack you with his wand. Not that he misses that attack.

You're free now, Koopatrols! Free to rebel against the upper class!

...Never mind, I guess we're doing this this turn.

Star Beam and destroy it is.

Eventually.

OK, so the two in the back charge up...

And the one in the front has the rainbow colour, too, despite not having done so. What did I miss?

Also, as a reminder, while these guys are more defensive when charging...

You can just oneshot them with Mario and Watt working together.

That was a productive battle.

I can eat that right away. Then again, I'm close to a level... eh, it's either eat it now or give up an item.

Hitting the switch causes the lava to stop flowing.

And eventually cool off. This is another partner quote, delivered by whoever, and it's really weird that there's two of them here and no more later in. Perhaps they planned to, but couldn't manage it?

Goombario: Hey, what do you know? It looks like the lava cooled off. It looks like it hardened enough to walk on, too. Awesome! You rule, Mario!
Kooper: Hey! That lava hardened when it cooled off! Now we can walk across it. Let's go, Mario!
Bombette: Ohh... How totally weird! The lava cooled off and became hard as rock! Neat! It seems cool enough for us to walk on, Mario! We can go on now!
Parakarry: The lava seems to have cooled and hardened... Maybe we can walk across it... Oh, excellent. Even I couldn't fly across here.
Bow: Phew... Finally, that hot lava cooled off. Now you can walk on it, Mario! All the difficult obstacles in this castle are really starting to irritate me, you know. Whatever. Let's get a move on. Time for some lava-walking!
Sushie: What!? What is it!? The lava cooled down and turned hard enough to walk on? Oh, how convenient. I didn't really fancy the idea of becoming a fried fish...
Spike: Awww... rad! The lava totally cooled off and hardened! We can walk across it now, right, man? Yeah. Way to use the old brain! That's why you're The Man! Every day, man, I learn something new from you!

Despite the steam, there is zero harm walking on this lava. Real life cooled lava is the same way, but I think it needs a little bit longer than that. I certainly wouldn't want to stand on it until I saw someone else on it first.

Turbo mode.

...Tempting. But I think everything I have is better.

The treasure chest we saw earlier has our Key. Not 100% sure we could get to the door without the lava cooled either, but...

Anyway, you may have saw a hint of this earlier, but there's a path along here. There is nothing stopping you from exploring this area from Spike's back while the lava is hot, but it is much slower and this road is very long.

We come out close to the jail cell.

Life Shroom along the way. Much harder to fit my inventory around.

Keep going along the path, and it turns out we're in the moat outside the castle.

This is how we get our 80th Badge. Drum roll please.

...

Well that's disappointing. Something weird about it when it comes out of the block is that it uses an otherwised unused Badge shape that implies the existence of a "Deeper Focus" Badge, but we don't have numbers on what it would have done and it would probably have still been disappointing either way.

Anyway, I haven't been talking much about glitches, but I'm going to address this one, because you might have a few questions about our access to this part of the map. In normal gameplay, it is impossible to get from here to the front door of the castle- our intended means of getting back to the Guard Door is elsewhere.

If you Tornado Jump at the southernmost point of this cube's construction, you will confuse the game somewhat and clip on top of it. I think it's because this cube is at an angle.

Parakarry from the top of the cube, and it is possible to land on top of this platform up here (and observe that an invisible wall is in place to make sure you didn't get to the front door, although it stops short of stopping us). From this position, it is possible to jump down to the castle door and return to the Guard Door. The Guard Door will consider this a legitimate method of completing the task he has set and let you through- remember how we don't even need to cool the lava to get over here?

I'll take the intended way up, though.

(It does occur to me draining the lava for this key and then doing the skip potentially lets us use a key out of order. Neat. I wonder if it's faster than grabbing the intended key later. Or even if it works.)

...And I immediately regret going into the intended route. These limestone caves are awful. They are also the only extended room in the game to be dark enough to demand Watt and contain enemies to fight.

And here we can meet a new enemy, Bony Beetle (Lv. 25). Unlike Fuzzipede, these do have their own Tattle, because they will appear later on outside of this room, but for the extent of it, we are locked to Watt, and thus we must continue without the Tattle for showing their health bars. Bony Beetle has only appeared in Super Mario World before now, and it won't actually appear again until what I am told is Sticker Star, where it is formally codified as "an undead Buzzy Beetle".

It's a Bony Beetle. They're bony Buzzy Beetles. ...Hence the name. Max HP: 8, Attack Power: 3, Defense Power: 4. It's tough to damage 'em. When their spikes are out, their attack power is 5. When they retract their spikes, take the opportunity to flip 'em over. After that, beating 'em will be a breeze.

Bony Beetle's gimmick is that, whenever you damage them, they will switch between being spiked and unspiked. An unspiked Bony Beetle will hit you with a 3 Atk Shell Toss, a spiked one will jump on your head spikes-down for a 5 Atk one. Despite not being a shelled enemy in the platformers (if you jump on it, it collapses into bones like a Dry Bones and reforms later), it is treated as one here and can be flipped over- this is a huge saving grace, considering that obscenely high Defence.

Like Buzzy Beetles, they only spend the turn on their backs.

How do you feel about Parakarrying over gaps in the dark?

Or looking for hidden items on branching paths?

...I thought they had 6 HP when I tried this.

I paid half-price for that one.

More FP for one reason in particular. I think I can get that last HP level later on.

Not worth it.

...I thought it was all one big room. Never mind, it's multiple.

Honestly, the normal Koopatrols much easier than the Bonys.

Can't even one round them with a Jump.

Always take the lowest path first. That'll give you the best idea of what the top paths are doing.

Yes, you're still good enough EXP I'm happy to see this.

That'll make up for the one I used to hilarious consequences.

...This is probably going to be an interesting fight.

Could've been worse.

...Well, that's just confusing.

Just a jump down.

Blue Magikoopas appear on the overworld, and can First Strike you. They can also appear in exciting formations, rather than just always having one standing in the back. They still have the thing of leaving if they're the last one standing.

Killing one seems to have been an invitation for another Koopatrol to take his place.

...Dangit, looks like that was the Def buff. That upgrades Kooptrols to "mildly irritating".

We are out of there!

And this is how we get to the Guard Door. We don't even use the front entrance. This is why it's remarkable that the clipping method works- you'd think it'd be tied to using this entrance to this room.

There was. You locked me up with an explosive menace!

I'll forget you, though.

This room is still pouring lava, despite the disruption downstairs.

...That is slightly disturbing.

We get our first big save point of the dungeon here.

And down here, a Koopatrol guarding another jail cell.

Let these Toads out...

...Well, OK, they choose to stay here, and that's probably the wiser call. Who knows if engaging some Clown Cars will even get them out of the sky.

...I'd joke about what a bad sign this is for Mushroom Kingdom tourism, but the ship has long sailed on that. Anyone who comes here should know the risks by now.